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Music Curator 25% OFF LONELY PLANET THE READINGS FOUNDATION these books is remarkable, and the ways Dave Clarke Spring is upon us – what better time GRANTS OPEN in which they challenge our thinking is a to begin planning for your next travel Applications for The Readings Foundation testament to the power of literature’. The Classical Music Curator adventure? Luckily, the Readings Lonely grants 2017 are now open. The Readings six books on the 2017 shortlist are: 4 3 2 1 Phil Richards Planet sale is on once more, with 25% Foundation was established in 2009 to by Paul Auster; History of Wolves by Emily off all titles from now until 31 October. support Victorian organisations that Fridlund; Exit West by Mohsin Hamid; Elmet DVDs Curator Whatever your travel style, Lonely Planet wish to further the development of by Fiona Mozley; Lincoln in the Bardo by Lou Fulco is brimming with inspiration to help you literacy, community work and the arts. George Saunders; and Autumn by Ali Smith. prepare for your perfect trip. The sale Applications must be completed and lodged The prize is worth £50,000 and the winner Advertising will be announced on Tuesday 17 October. Stella Charls is on in all Readings shops and online at electronically by 5pm, Monday 23 October [email protected] readings.com.au. 2017. For more information, please visit (03) 9341 7739 readings.com.au/thereadings-foundation. WANGARATTA FESTIVAL OF JAZZ & BLUES Graphic Design 3-FOR-2 SF MASTERWORKS Cat Matteson Throughout October, we have a special MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY The 2017 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and colourcode.com.au offer on the SF Masterworks range of AWARD WINNER Blues (3–5 November) showcases some of science-fiction classics from Hachette Josephine Wilson has been named the the world’s finest local and international Front Cover Australia. Buy any two SF Masterworks winner of this year’s Miles Franklin jazz and blues artists. With over 300 The October Readings Monthly cover titles and receive a third free. From Literary Award for her second novel, artists performing across eight stages, features the cover image from The Douglas Adams to Ursula Le Guin, Philip Extinctions (UWA Publishing). The catch some or all of the music as part of a Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein, K. Dick to George R.R. Martin, readers Miles Franklin judges say Extinctions is weekend getaway in beautiful North East courtesy of Text Publishing. The cover of science fiction will find much to love a ‘compassionate and unapologetically Victoria. Readings is the official retailer of The Trauma Cleaner was designed by of the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and W.H. Chong. See page 12 for more about here. This offer is exclusively available in intelligent novel that explores ageing, the book. all Readings shops (except Readings Kids) adoption, grief and remorse, empathy Blues. Tickets and full program details are until 31 October on stickered, in-stock and self-centredness’. The Miles Franklin available at wangarattajazz.com Cartoon items only, while stocks last. This offer is Literary Award is presented annually to Oslo Davis not available online. a novel of the highest literary merit that oslodavis.com presents Australian life in any of its phases. THE READINGS PODCAST As the winner, Wilson will receive $60,000 The Readings Podcast is a celebration of Prices and availability SPECIAL GIFT WITH RICHARD in prize money. books, music, film, TV and pop culture. Please note that all prices and release FLANAGAN PURCHASE Episodes feature author interviews, dates in Readings Monthly are correct at To celebrate the release of Richard bookseller interviews, publisher interviews time of publication, however prices and Flanagan’s highly anticipated new novel, MAN BOOKER SHORTLIST 2017 and event recordings. We’ve uploaded release dates may change without notice. First Person, all Readings customers will The Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2017 some fascinating conversations with some Special price offers apply only for the of our favourite international authors, month in which they are featured in the receive a complimentary leather bookmark has been announced. Baroness Lola Young, Readings Monthly. as a special gift with their purchase. These chair of the 2017 judges, writes: ‘Playful, including Nadja Spiegelman, Brit Bennett beautiful bookmarks will be gifted with sincere, unsettling, fierce: here is a group and George Saunders. You can find all our Readings donates 10% of its profits each every purchase of First Person in-store and of novels grown from tradition but also episodes on SoundCloud or iTunes. For year to The Readings Foundation: online throughout the month of October, radical and contemporary. The emotional, more information, visit readings.com.au/ readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation and are exclusive to Readings. cultural, political and intellectual range of the-readings-podcast.

A CONTEMPORARY BALLET WAYNE MCGREGOR Afer the book by OLAFUR ELIASSON JONATHAN JAMIE XX TREE OF CODES SAFRAN FOER 4 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

October Events THE BAD SCIENCE PETER GRESTE 12 OF MEDICAL 18 ON THE FIRST CANNABIS CASUALTY THE STATE OF MICHELLE DE 2 BEING EQUAL: 9 KRETSER IN Join Dr Elizabeth Finkel, co-founder of In a world where the first casualty of war quarterly science magazine Cosmos, to is truth, journalism has become the new ON IMPROVING CONVERSATION talk about ‘The Bad Science of Medical battleground. Timely, enlightening and URBAN SPACES WITH SOPHIE Cannabis’, her lead article in the new passionate, The First Casualty is foreign ALAN DAVIES IN CUNNINGHAM issue, with Professor James Angus who is correspondent Peter Greste’s first-hand CONVERSATION WITH chairing the Federal Government Advisory account of how the war on journalism has The Life to Come is the dazzling new novel Council on the medical use of cannabis. spread from the battlefields of the Middle CHARLES R. WOLFE from Michelle de Kretser, the Miles Franklin Cosmos, a magazine that aims to inspire East to the governments of the West. Greste The State of Being Equal is a forum intended to award-winning author of Questions of curiosity in ‘The Science of Everything’, is will share stories from the book. make sure we trump Trump politics by exploring Travel. We are delighted to host Michelle, presenting this event. how society can be more equitable and just, in conversation with Sophie Cunningham, Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events rather than divisive and bellicose. Each event about her novel and the art of storytelling. Entry is $15 per person, includes a copy of Wednesday 18 October, 6.30pm–7.30pm in the series will examine a new title that is Cosmos magazine, and a glass of wine. Bella Union Bar, 54 Victoria Street relevant to global and sexual politics. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Please book at readings.com.au/events & Lygon Street, Carlton 3053 Monday 9 October, 6.30pm Charles R. Wolfe’s Seeing the Better City is Thursday 12 October, 6.30pm–7.30pm Readings Carlton an invaluable tool for constructive, creative Readings Hawthorn discourse about improving urban space. Wolfe MEGAN MCKEAN demonstrates how we might better catalogue 20 STORY TIME the influences of city elements such as urban GRAEME SIMSION We are thrilled to have Megan McKean with us form, neighbourhood dynamics and public 12 & ANNE BUIST for a very special Story Time. From the creator transportation, as well as shares insights From husband-and-wife team Graeme of Hello, Sydney! comes a new look-and-find into how they can use those observations Simsion and Anne Buist, Two Steps Forward adventure, this time in Melbourne. Look out for to contribute to better planning and design is a smart, funny and romantic story that the Lygon Street page, featuring Readings – and decisions. Wolfe will discuss his research and takes place on the Camino de Santiago. our very own Mark Rubbo standing outside! book with The Urbanist’s Alan Davies. Come along to hear the two authors chat about the novel and the concept of renewal: Free, no bookings required. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events physical, psychological and spiritual. Friday 20 October, 10am Monday 2 October, 6.30pm Readings Kids Readings Carlton AN EVENING Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 9 WITH RICHARD Thursday 12 October, 6.30pm Readings Doncaster MATT WILKINSON & FLANAGAN JUDITH 5 SHARLEE GIBB MEET Together with the Wheeler Centre, we’re 20 BRETT pleased to host Man Booker Prize-winning ALICE ZASLAVSKY JANE HARPER IN Acclaimed political scientist Judith Brett author Richard Flanagan for a fascinating 13 CONVERSATION Mr & Mrs Wilkinson’s How it is at Home is discussion about his first novel since The scrutinises the public and inner lives of your opportunity to be part of the creative, Narrow Road to the Deep North. First Person is WITH JO CASE Alfred Deakin, a complex man who was sometimes chaotic home of acclaimed UK-born instrumental in creating modern Australia, the story of broke ghostwriter Kif Kehlmann This month sees the return of Federal Police chef Matt Wilkinson and his partner Sharlee. in her biography The Enigmatic Mr Deakin. who becomes obsessed (or possibly possessed) Agent Aaron Falk in Force of Nature, the They’ll be in conversation with Alice Zaslavsky. by his subject – an infamous conman, and follow-up to Jane Harper’s award-winning Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events corporate criminal. This work of fiction is Entry is $5. Includes a glass of wine. international bestseller, The Dry. Five Friday 20 October, 12.30pm–1.30pm inspired by events from Flanagan’s own life. Please book at readings.com.au/events women reluctantly head out on a hike at a Readings Hawthorn The event will be Auslan interpreted. Thursday 5 October, 6.30pm corporate retreat. Only four return. And the Readings Hawthorn missing bushwalker just happens to be the Presented in partnership with the Wheeler Centre. whistleblower in Falk’s latest case … ELLA MULVEY Entry without a book is $25 per person ($15 21 STORY TIME concession), plus 30c booking fee. Entry with a Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events SARA signed copy of First Person is $55 per person ($45 Friday 13 October, 12.30pm–1.30pm Join Ella Mulvey for a very special Story 5 DOWSE concession), plus 30c booking fee. Readings Hawthorn Time! The Rabbit-Hole Golf Course is a warm Sara Dowse’s As the Lonely Fly is an epic Please book at readings.com.au/events and funny story about a unique Australian story of persecution, migration and dispersal Monday 9 October, 7.30pm–8.30pm experience, with a fantastic rhythmic read- during tumultuous events in the twentieth Athenaeum Theatre, 188 Collins St, Melbourne PICKLING aloud text. In the big old ute, on the long red century, which shines a light on the 16 WORKSHOP: ALEX road, in the desert of my home, we all set off intertwined fates of Jews and Palestinians – a THE LINE ELLIOTT-HOWERY for the rabbit-hole golf course … the best place scenario with deep contemporary resonance. 10 to find rabbits. An urgent and moving novel from one of this BETWEEN FATHER A one-hour, hands-on pickling intensive with country’s most gifted storytellers. AND SON Alex Elliott-Howery, of Cornersmith fame Free, no booking required. Saturday 21 October, 10.30am Join Peter Rose and Jim Davidson as they (author of Cornersmith Salads and Pickles). Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Readings Kids discuss the tenuous link between fathers and Learn about different pickling traditions and Thursday 5 October, 6.30pm sons that have inspired their work. Davidson’s techniques from around the world, and how Readings St Kilda A Führer for a Father and Rose’s Rose Boys to use them in your own cooking. recreate their own personal relationship as a Entry is $10 per person, redeemable off the GARETH EVANS IN basis for realising their own life parameters. price of the book on the night. 9 Please book at readings.com.au/events CONVERSATION Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Monday 16 October, 6.30pm–7.30pm WITH GEORGE Tuesday 10 October, 6.30pm Readings St Kilda MEGALOGENIS Readings Carlton DAVE GRANEY IN Gareth Evans’ highly anticipated follow-up 22 CONVERSATION to Inside the Hawke-Keating Government: HELEN RAZER IN TANYA JOSEV IN WITH GERARD A Cabinet Diary, Incorrigible Optimist is a 17 11 CONVERSATION CONVERSATION ELSON sometimes moving, often entertaining, and WITH STUART always lucid memoir of Evans’ decades in WITH GUY RUNDLE King of quirk Dave Graney will chat to the public eye. Political commentator and Professional provocateur Helen Razer’s MACINTYRE Readings’ own chronicler of the Melbourne journalist George Megalogenis will ask why, latest book, Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Dr Tanya Josev’s book The Campaign Against music scene, Gerard Elson, about his new despite multiple disappointments, Evans Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young is for the Courts: A History of the Judicial Activism memoir Work Shy: My Life as a Bludge. In continues to believe that a safer, saner and anyone tired of wage stagnation, growing global Debate was described by David Marr as: ‘A his inimitable style, he tells the story of his more decent world is achievable, and why, poverty and economists writing desperate forensic exploration of the strange territory childhood in blue-collar South Australia, the for all its frustrations, politics remains columns saying everything would work better, if that turned conservatives in America and punk rock scene of 1980s London, and beer- an indispensable profession not only for only we stopped eating sandwiches. She will be then Australia against the courts.’ She’ll chat soaked nights touring Australia. Dave just megalomaniacs, but idealists as well. in discussion with correspondent Guy Rundle. to historian Professor Stuart Macintyre. might also play a couple of songs.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, no bookings required. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Monday 9 October, 6.30pm Wednesday 11 October, 6.30pm Tuesday 17 October, 6.30pm Sunday 22 October, 5pm Readings Hawthorn Readings Carlton Readings Carlton Readings St Kilda READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 5

EVENING SAGAS CHARLES MASSY RICHARD DENNISS October Launches 23 WITH RICHARD 30 IN CONVERSATION 13 IN CONVERSATION Nov. FIDLER AND KÁRI WITH TAMMI JONAS WITH MARY Join us for a public book signing to celebrate GÍSLASON Is it too late to regenerate the earth? Call CROOKS the release of the Play Like a Girl series, which combines the world of ordinary girls with AFL Broadcaster Richard Fidler and author of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward Together with the Victorian Women’s Trust, thrills, by radio personality Jo Stanley. Kári Gíslason are good friends who share for the future of our food supply, our we are delighted to present Richard Denniss, Saturday 7 October, 11.30am a deep attachment to the sagas of Iceland: Australian landscape and our planet. This chief economist (and former executive Reading Kids | Free, no booking required. the true stories of the first Viking families ground-breaking book will change the director) of The Australia Institute, with who settled on that remote island in the way we think about, farm and grow food. Mary Crooks, executive director of the Middle Ages. Their four-part podcast Author and radical farmer Charles Massy Victorian Women’s Trust, talking about his Join us for the launch of Force of Nature, series about these sagas, Saga Land, is explores transformative and regenerative new book Curing Affluenza: How to Buy Less Jane Harper’s second exhilarating literary now a beautiful hardback book. We are agriculture, and the vital connection Stuff and Save the World. crime novel, following megaseller The Dry. thrilled to host both men, together for one between our soil and our health. Massy will Tuesday 10 October, 6.30pm night only, presenting tales of blood feuds, be in conversation with Tammi Jonas, of Entry is $20 per person and $15 concession. Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. dangerous women, and people who are Jonai Farm fame. Proceeds from the ticket price will be split between The Readings Foundation and compelled to kill the ones they love most. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Breakthrough Actions for the Victorian Women’s Ingrid Josephine will launch Shane Thoms’ The event will feature images and stories beautiful photography book, Haikyo: The Monday 30 October, 6.30pm Trust. Please book at readings.com.au/events from their travels. Modern Ruins of Japan. Readings Hawthorn Monday 13 November, 6.30pm–7.30pm Thursday 12 October, 6.30pm Entry is $40 per person, and includes a signed Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston St, Carlton Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. first-edition copy of Saga Land. THE STATE OF Please book at readings.com.au/events POH LING YEOW Monday 23 October, 6.30pm–8pm 30 BEING EQUAL WITH Join us for the launch of Clare Rhoden’s 13 IN CONVERSATION debut novel The Pale, about a world that was Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston St, Carlton OLIVER VODEB Nov. WITH MATT safe and orderly, until someone rescued a The State of Being Equal is a forum intended to PRESTON young human from the Outside. SARAH make sure we trump Trump politics by exploring Monday 16 October, 6.30pm 23 KRASNOSTEIN how society can be more equitable and just, Masterchef alumni Poh Ling Yeow, now of Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. IN CONVERSATION rather than divisive and bellicose. Each event Poh’s Kitchen fame, will chat to her friend, in the series will examine a new title that is Masterchef’s Matt Preston, about the art of Karen Andrews’ guide, Trust the Process: 101 Sarah Krasnostein has captured the relevant to global and sexual politics. baking and being. Poh Bakes 100 Greats is a Tips on Writing and Creativity is for early hearts and minds of Readings staff with wonderful collection of ways to transform In a world where privatisation and writers, or those returning to the craft. her brilliant work of creative non-fiction, flour into beautiful, delicious creations. capitalism dominate the global economy, Wednesday 18 October, 6.30pm The Trauma Cleaner, an exploration the essays included in Food Democracy: Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. of the extraordinary life and work of Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Sandra Pankhurst, born a little boy who Monday 13 November, 6.30pm Design and Art ask how to make socially was shunned by his adopted family. Readings Hawthorn In Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation, responsive communication, design and art She’s been a husband and father, drag Spinifex co-founder and feminist writer Renate that counters the role of the food industry queen, one of Australia’s first gender Klein details her objections to surrogacy. as a machine of consumption. Editor Oliver PETER CAREY ON reassignment patients, a sex worker, a Thursday 19 October, 6.30pm Vodeb will be in conversation with cultural small businesswoman and a trophy wife 16 HIS NEW NOVEL Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. critic Darren Tofts, Adjunct Professor of Nov. … but this book focuses on perhaps her Media and Communications, Swinburne A LONG WAY most intriguing aspect of all: her work as a University of Technology. FROM HOME The Three Wise Blokes, the latest book from trauma cleaner. For one night only, join us as two-time Booker much-loved Melbourne poet and commentator Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Barry Dickins, will be launched by Salvation Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Prize winner Peter Carey discusses his new Monday 30 October 6.30pm novel, A Long Way from Home. Irene Bobs Army officer Captain Mal Davies. Monday 23 October, 6.30pm Readings Carlton Thursday 19 October, 6.30pm Readings St Kilda loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in western Victoria. Together they Readings Kids | Free, no booking required. enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around ODETTE KELADA SPOOKY STORY the ancient continent over roads no car will The Things That Make Us: 30 WRITING ever quite survive. With them is their lanky Join us to launch 24 IN CONVERSATION Life, Loss and Football, by six-time winner of St fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a Just in time for Halloween, we’re happy to Kilda’s best and fairest award and club captain WITH VERONICA quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher host this spooky workshop in which kids for a record 220 games, Nick Riewoldt. SULLIVAN whose job it is to call out the turns, the grids, will be able to write their very own horror Monday 23 October, 11am – followed by Odette Kelada’s debut novel, Drawing the creek crossings on a map that will finally story – with the help of Creative Write It! public signing from 12pm–2pm Sybylla, addresses the challenges women remove them, without warning, from the lily- Reading St Kilda | Free, no booking required. writers have faced in pursuing the writing Entry is $5 per person. white Australia they know so well. life. She’ll talk to The Stella Prize’s Suitable for ages 7–12. Entry is $50 per person and includes a signed Veronica Sullivan about her book and its Please book at Professor Richard Broome will launch Me first-edition hardback of A Long Way from Home. tremendously original and imaginative set readings.com.au/events Write Myself: The Free Aboriginal Inhabitants of Please book at readings.com.au/events of pictures about the ideas of creativity. Monday 30 October, 4.30pm–5.30pm Van Diemen’s Land at Wybalenna, 1832–47, by Thursday 16 November, 6pm–7pm Readings Kids Leonie Stevens. The Indigenous men, women Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Athenaeum Theatre, 188 Collins St, Melbourne and children exiled from Van Diemen’s Land Tuesday 24 October, 6.30pm to Flinders Island in the 1830s–40s have never Readings Carlton Coming up HELEN GARNER IN before been allowed to speak for themselves. Thursday 26 October, 6.30pm 20 CONVERSATION Nov. Reading Carlton | Free, no booking required. CREATIVE NON- JIMMY BARNES WITH SEAN 26 FICTION WITH 1 BOOK SIGNING O’BEIRNE Join us as Jane Rawson launches Miles Nov. CARMEL BIRD, AT READINGS Join us to celebrate Helen Garner’s 75th Franklin award-winning novelist (and Readings LEE KOFMAN AND ST KILDA birthday and hear about her writing life, bookseller) Alec Patric’s Atlantic Black. It spanning 50 years of work: from her explores a family’s place within a fracturing JANE SULLIVAN Meet Jimmy Barnes, one of Australia’s most Australian classic Monkey Grip to the world, and the inheritance of damage and hope. Join us for a lively discussion and a glass successful ever rock stars. In his critically moving, brilliant literary true crime book Thursday 26 October, 6.30pm of wine, to explore the difficulties and the acclaimed bestseller, Working Class Boy, This House of Grief, and her recent collected Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. rewards of writing creative non-fiction: Jimmy Barnes spoke straight to the hearts works. Garner is one of Australia’s greatest writing that uses literary styles and of Australian readers with his tale of a writers. We’re thrilled to invite you to this Join us to launch The Passage of Love, the new techniques to create factually accurate childhood he was inspired to record after special evening. novel from Alex Miller, the critically acclaimed narratives. We are thrilled to have authors memories evoked by watching Snowtown. two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Lee Kofman (The Dangerous Bride) and In this hugely anticipated sequel, he picks Entry is $55 per person, and includes signed Sunday 29 October, 3pm Carmel Bird (Writing the Story of your up the story of his life as he leaves Adelaide copies of True Stories and Stories: Collected Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. Life) in discussion with much-loved in the back of an old truck with a then- Short Fiction, editions created for this occasion. literary journalist Jane Sullivan. unknown band called Cold Chisel. $5 per ticket will be given to The Readings Graeme Simsion launches Fran Cusworth’s The Foundation of which Helen is the chair. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, no booking required. Bookings essential: readings.com.au/events Near Miss, which explores the aftermath of a near- Thursday 26 October, 6.30pm Wednesday 1 November, 2pm–3pm Monday 20 November, 6.30pm death accident that throws three people together. Readings Hawthorn Readings St Kilda Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston St, Carlton Wednesday 1 November, 6.30pm Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. 6 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

NEW AUSTRALIAN WRITING Stahr, correctly observed that no biography Mark’s could be written of a novelist as they were not News and views from Readings’ Managing Director, one character but hundreds. Mark Rubbo Perhaps we all contain multitudes. Say Anyone who reads a novel as a memoir is in First error. Anyone who does not read a memoir as We’ve just completed judging the Readings New Australian Writing Prize for Fiction. The a novel is even more mistaken. Readings judges Gabrielle Williams (Malvern), Marie Matteson (Carlton), Annie Condon But I can reveal that Ray is Mark Rubbo. (Hawthorn) and Ann Le Lievre (Library sales and in absentia) were joined by myself and Person Kif, the writer, arrives in Melbourne, writer Christos Tsiolkas to choose a winner from the six books shortlisted by the Readings there’s nothing he sees that he likes; he’s judges: The Windy Season by Sam Carmody, Australia Day by Melanie Cheng, Jean Harley Was Mark Rubbo interviews being manipulated by the publishing CEO Here by Heather Taylor Johnson, The Good People by Hannah Kent, The Lost Pages by Marija Richard Flanagan and Siegfried Heidl, the conman. Is he Pericˇic´, and From the Wreck by Jane Rawson. It was a lively two hours, moderated by our very powerless? able prize manager Bronte Coates, who kept us focused and on message: ‘No, the Prize can’t Your new novel First Person has some I have no idea. We seem to live in an age that connection to your own experience, in that it thinks all is defined by power – who has it, be shared; there can only be one winner.’ Judging is always subjective and possibly unfair and is about a young writer who is commissioned who doesn’t. Foucault, who is to blame for it’s probably never ‘right’. Our discussion was, in my opinion, respectful and considered. The to ghostwrite the memoir of a notorious final choice a unanimous one and it will be revealed on 24 October. conman. You were commissioned to a lot of this thin reduction of human life, Our previous guest judges for our relatively young award were Hannah Kent and Maxine ghostwrite the memoir of notorious conman transformed his proclivity for sado-masochism Beneba Clarke, so we were all interested to hear from Christos. Some of us hadn’t met him John Friedrich. Why did you decide to write into a motif for all human life. That he did it a novel based on this experience? previously, but we were all impressed by his generosity and openness. We were interested to with a certain brilliance doesn’t mean he was hear what he’d been doing and excited to hear that he’s finished a draft of a new novel about the Why not? At some point someone would right, but nothing alters reality more than apostle St Paul, which will be published in 2018. Christos, of course, is best known for The Slap, a have, and I thought better me than them. an unrealistic idea. The consequences for stinging contemporary take on middle-class Australia, so a historical novel is a bit of a departure. Perhaps too I grew to be haunted by how the modern world have been incalculable: Of course, it had involved a considerable amount of research, travelling and reading. ‘Another Friedrich – in his solipsism, in his narcissism, everything from the plotting of Game of Thrones thing I’ve been doing,’ he confided, ‘is reading poetry’. Like many of us, I suppose, he hadn’t read in the power of his lies to corrupt and destroy to Donald Trump to Manus Island stands any poetry since university and felt it as a gap, so he resolved to read a poem a day. ‘Poems are – how he, in his dark visions, began to seem a in Foucault’s debt. But Mark, do you think short so it doesn’t take long.’ Christos talked excitedly about his project and the way he’d learned harbinger of a terrifying new world that was human affairs might not just be a little more about poetic structure, and about words and language. Intrigued, I did a bit of digging around coming into being. complex, a little more hopelessly entwined our shelves for some books I thought might help if one wanted to embark on a similar project; Is it inevitable that people will read it as than just who has and doesn’t have power, the best seemed to be The Oxford Book of English Verse by Christopher Ricks, How to Read a Poem your memoir? I remember when Monkey who subjugates and who is subjugated? Kif is a came out, some scallywags printed a and Fall in Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch, Contemporary Australian Poetry edited by Martin Grip mess of many things. And so too perhaps us all. ‘Who’s Who in Monkey Grip’. Will they do Langford; Language for a New Century Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East Asia and Beyond by the same here? I want to know who Ray is. At one point Kif writes that his ‘novel Tina Chang, and the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry by J.D. McClatchy. mattered more than anything else’ and then You may not know it, but Readings has produced a lot of fascinating podcasts with authors, Greasing the great social changes of recent ‘it’s okay to write rubbish’. Can you as a writer relate to that? publishers and booksellers. I particularly liked bookseller Sean O’Beirne’s conversation years, driving the new inequality and with Booker Prize shortlisted author, George Saunders. My favourite so far, though, is my perpetuating the new powerlessness, is the Not particularly, but I did wish to write a conversation with author and bookseller Leanne Hall. Leanne planned to be a lawyer but has cult of solipsism, a cult that leads to everyone book about the strange act that is writing – ended up an award-winning children’s author, a children’s bookseller and manager of the on their various social media wanting to be it’s struggle, it’s labour, it’s essential mystery. Readings Foundation. She talks about writing, bookselling, censorship, diversity, philanthropy, the first person and yet each person feels Above all other things writing is always about and Amazon – an intriguing mix. Go to readings.com.au to find the link to our podcasts. more than ever that nothing offers them any exploring all that you don’t know. We were saddened to learn of the passing of Agnes Nieuwenhuizen. Agnes was a great insight into their own mystery. Every first As the project goes on, Heidl seems to champion of youth literature in Australia. She was an early advocate for young-adult person feels themself ever more alone and become more and more manipulative. A literature and set up the Centre for Youth Literature at Victoria’s State Library. She also lost, and prone to the great pandemics of our Faustian bargain? established the biennial Reading Matters youth literature conference. She was driven by a age: depression, sadness, emptiness. It only occurred to me when I had finally vision of giving young people the opportunity to explore the world through reading. I became interested in the current vogue finished the novel that it might be a retelling for memoir, the literary equivalent of the of Faust for the age of Trump. But it wasn’t selfie. We have been encouraged to search for my intention. Maybe a writer only discovers meaning within ourselves, and in art that has their subject when their book is done. Dear manifested itself as an explosion in the cult of Fortunately your career as a writer didn’t Alison Huber, memoir. Everyone writes memoir now, and go the same way as Kif’s. Were there times Head Book Buyer sometimes it seems that the less you’ve lived when you thought it might? Reader the more valid the memoir. For all I know, as I thought I might go under several times. I write publishers may be signing ultrasounds But I never thought I’d sell out, easily bought When October rolls around in bookselling, a certain kind of anticipation fills the air. for three-volume memoirs. The cult of though I am. The deliveries get bigger, shelving becomes a serious logistical exercise, and we start to memoir arises out of a sense that only stories I know you’ve always taken an interest prepare ourselves in earnest for the annual book-exchanging festival ahead (also known as rooted in demonstrable experience have in the publishing industry; some of the ‘Christmas’). Lots of authors come to our party too, offering us some of the big books of the meaning for us, that invented stories cannot characters and practices don’t come off too year. It’s an exciting time to be in the shop. do justice to our world. well. How do you see the industry now and Richard Flanagan publishes First Person, our Fiction Book of the Month, and his first novel what do you think is its future? since 2013’s Man Booker Prize-winning Narrow Road to the Deep North. Mark Rubbo (or, having Well, the book industry is not TV, nor is it film, read the interview on this page, should that be ‘Ray’…?) says ‘this is Flanagan’s best work to FIRST where behaviour that would make a North date’, which means it’s simply a must-read for 2017. Meanwhile, 2016’s break-out success PERSON Korean despot blush is routine. For another story, Jane Harper, follows her debut, The Dry, with Force of Nature, and Miles Franklin winner Richard Flanagan it is full of book people, who still believe Michelle de Kretser brings us The Life to Come. Our reviewers praise the debuts of David Knopf. HB. Was $39.99 books matter. And in a world where the other Unaipon Award recipient Paul Collis (Dancing Home), and Tasmanian Premier’s Unpublished $29.99 avenues for thought and discussion are either Manuscript Prize winner, Lois Murphy (Soon). Jennifer Egan’s biggest fan at Readings is Available 2 October closing down – politics, mass media – or where Robbie Egan (no relation). He got us all reading A Visit from the Goon Squad way back in 2011 – it is being enclosed and monetised – social For more about the his new mission is Manhattan Beach (I agree: it’s great). Look out for new books from Jesmyn media and the net more generally – books book, see Mark Rubbo’s Ward, Helen Sedgwick, Jeffrey Eugenides, Kamila Shamsie, Alan Hollinghurst, Ann Leckie, become more rather than less important. review on page 7. John Banville, Jonathan Dee, Edward St Aubyn, Amit Chaudhuri, Alice McDermott … and the Mark Zuckerberg has said that privacy is final work of the late Henning Mankell. YA readers of all ages have been longing for new work no longer an accepted norm. More recently from Philip Pullman and John Green: both publish books mid-month. he has gone further, speaking of Facebook’s Our Non-fiction Book of the Month, The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein, immediately And that is why I had no desire to write intention to liberate us from secrets. ‘The days ignites interest in anyone who hears its premise; I predict it will be one of the books of the year. a memoir of my time with Freidrich, but to of you having a different image for your work I love putting advance copies into the hands of the right staff member: Armistead Maupin’s write a novel, doing what novels should, and friends or co-workers and for the other people autobiography, Logical Family, found its rightful home with Jason Austin, who describes reading that is ask questions of us. I want this novel you know are probably coming to an end it as ‘like being wrapped in a warm blanket of words and memory’. Other notable releases in to be a defence of novels, to argue for the pretty quickly,’ he said. ‘Having two identities memoir/biography include Eddie Ayres’ Danger Music, Jonathan Eig’s Ali, Sigrid Rausing’s power and necessity of fiction, of stories, in a for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.’ Mayhem, Sarah Goldman’s Caroline Chisholm, and Alice Waters’ Coming to My Senses. The author world that believes truth resides in numbers, Reading and writing remain deeply of last year’s bestselling The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben, turns his attention to The whether it is the numbers of neo-liberalism, or private acts. In an ever more conformist age, Inner Life of Animals. Margareta Magnusson’s The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning provides a the numbers of the tech imperialists. And so when one of the most powerful corporations genuinely charming perspective on how to deal with a life’s worth of material accumulation. the novel is about books, and it’s about writing in the world wants such private acts ended, I’m keen to read new writing from Rebecca Solnit and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Patti Smith’s Devotion –that strange struggle, its beautiful alchemy, books have become a subversive voice. And gives keen insight into the process of creative production, while fellow unique creative mind and the necessity of story, invented story, that books, despite reports of their imminent John Waters advises us to Make Trouble. Michael Brooks’s The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook will defines us as a species different than any other. death, continue to grow in popularity and appeal to readers of popular science, philosophy, biography, history and all points in between. Scott Fitzgerald, who was both Gatsby influence. Ignored by mainstream media, And finally, dear reader, we offer two ways of escaping the everyday this month, with 3-for-2 and Tom Buchanan, as well as Daisy and books feel like the new counter culture. It Science-Fiction and Fantasy Masterworks titles AND 25% off Lonely Planet books. Myrtle, Dick Diver, Nicole Diver, and Monroe feels like a great place to be. READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 7

New Fiction at the heart of this novel and it’s through bad way. It refuses to sit comfortably in any Blackie’s story that we gain some insight. one genre. It draws freely from crime and Blackie’s a sympathetic character: switched- horror tropes but isn’t restricted to them. It Fiction Book of the Month on, funny, sensitive and educated, but by even, in its own way, deals with the corporate virtue of the colour of his skin, the privileges take-over of rural and urban Australia, and that might be afforded a white man with a government’s unwillingness to assist those FIRST PERSON similar qualities don’t fall his way. in crisis if that crisis is too hard to define. Richard Flanagan Dancing Home is at times heartbreaking, But the story comes mainly from the intense Knopf. HB. Was $39.99 sometimes mystical, often laugh-out-loud relationships between the few characters that $29.99 funny, and reads like a road movie cranked remain in the town. Each has a strange and Available 2 October up to 11. Paul Collis is a welcome and desperate relationship to each other and the Probably Australia’s largest fraud case involved John essential new voice in Australian writing. town that everyone else has fled, which only Friedrich, executive director of the National Safety Council of Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton adds to the sense of discomfort and dread. Australia. Friedrich embezzled almost $300 million from a number The fact that Lois Murphy has spent some of banks through an elaborate scheme that was discovered in 1989. FORCE OF NATURE time on the road in Australia shines through in Just before going to trial, Friedrich committed suicide in 1991. An this novel. The characters are misfits, already Jane Harper Australian publisher gave Friedrich a substantial amount to write his on the outer before the mist arrives, unable Pan Mac. PB. Was $32.99 memoir and commissioned a young writer to help him complete the to sit neatly in twenty-first-century suburban $27.99 book. That young writer was Richard Flanagan. Australia. Though, instead of being people In First Person, another young writer, Kif Kehlman, is commissioned to help complete Available 26 September who have done their time in regular society the memoir of Siegfried Heidl, ex-CEO of the Australian Safety Organisation, charged with Jane Harper’s The and have now decided to live on the road, embezzling many millions, awaiting trial. It’s tempting to draw parallels between history and Dry was the book these people are victims of circumstance: the fiction; how is Flanagan’s lived experience mirrored in the novel, if at all? As you read, you realise of 2016. An Australian world has passed them by and forgotten about that the narratives diverge. Kif and his wife are expecting twins; they are struggling financially debut that grabbed them. The desperate fatality of individuals with their mortgage, secured through a solicitor at usurious interest rates, when he gets a phone everyone’s attention, it and groups trying to survive in a world that is call from, Ray, an old friend; would he be interested in a job? Ray is working for a man who needs won awards, hit the top trying to erase them is what drives this tightly some help writing and Kif’s a writer. As Ray explains more, Kif’s first reaction is no. He’s trying of bestseller lists, and wound, menacing book. captured a Hollywood to finish his novel; the twins are on the way; Heidl is a crook. Just think about it, the money’s Michael McLoughlin is from Readings St Kilda good. His partner Suzy agrees, but when he loses his part-time job, there doesn’t seem to be a movie deal in the choice. He’s a writer after all, and it’s okay to write rubbish if that lets him finish his novel. When process. Following up such enormous SUBURBIA success isn’t easy. Reading Harper’s second he meets Heidl, he finds a man who is manipulative, deceitful, evasive, frustrating, intrusive – but Jeremy Chambers sometimes charming and charismatic. He uses these attributes to exercise power over people book, Force of Nature, brings with it a sense Text. PB. $29.99 around him, Kif included. ‘He was after your soul; he wasn’t quite evil, he wasn’t quite not evil.’ of trepidation: can she recapture the magic Available 2 October But Kif has entered into a Faustian pact and there’s nothing good here. and do it again? As it turns out, yes she can. Jeremy Chambers’ debut In my opinion, this is Flanagan’s best work to date; it’s a book I’ve been constantly returning Force of Nature sees the return of Federal novel, The Vintage and the to – mentally unpeeling another of its layers, pondering one of its scenes or sentences, and Agent Aaron Falk. This time, he’s drawn into Gleaning, was rave- admiring a writer who is on top of his craft. I feel so privileged to have read it. a case that’s less personal than what he was facing in The Dry, but every bit as interesting reviewed by everyone Mark Rubbo is managing director of Readings and layered. Five women walk into the bush from The Guardian to The on a three-day hike as part of a corporate Age, with high-profile fans including Alex other characters. Like Pippa, they also felt team-building exercise, and only four Miller. His long-awaited Australian Fiction real, but in the way that you might almost return. The woman who has mysteriously second novel, Suburbia, is run into them in the supermarket. This novel disappeared is an informant that Falk has a coming-of-age drama about the end of is acerbically funny, heart-twingeing and been working with, and he’s the last person THE LIFE TO COME innocence, amid the flickering light of incredibly moving, and I enjoyed every page. she tried to call before she disappeared. Michelle de Kretser The structure of Force of Nature moves memory and desire. Teenage Roland is in love Ellen Cregan is from Readings Doncaster A&U. PB. Was $32.99 back and forth between Falk’s present-day with Cassie Noble, the daughter of his $27.99 parents’ friends. But when Darren Wilson DANCING HOME investigation, and the story of the hike Available 27 September told from the point of view of the women moves into their golden-lit outer suburb and I have to be honest Paul Collis taking part. Allowing the reader to see attracts the interest of both teens, a conflict – this is the first UQP. PB. $29.95 things through the eyes of the women gives emerges that threatens the friendship time I’ve ever read Available 2 October necessary insight to a range of complicated between the two families. Michelle de Kretser. She Fresh out of characters, and works to build the tension is one of those names in prison and driven as things go increasingly wrong for the TWO STEPS FORWARD Australian literature by a hunger for drugs, group in the wilderness. Graeme Simsion & Anne Buist who has been on my revenge, and a A gripping mystery full of juicy secrets, Text. PB. $29.99 mental ‘to read’ list for hankering to reconnect Force of Nature is the kind of book you’ll Available 2 October quite some time. I’m with his grandmother’s want to read in one sitting. Fans of The Dry This smart, funny glad that The Life to Come is my first country, Blackie won’t be disappointed. romantic journey from embarks on a road trip Australia’s favourite encounter with her work, because I think Nina Kenwood is marketing manager of husband-and-wife it’s a fantastic example of contemporary back to Wiradjuri Readings Australian literature. country. Along for the ride are former writing team has already This novel is set mostly in Sydney, but cellmate, Rips, and friend, Carlos, chosen SOON been optioned for film for his pale ‘whitefulla’ skin to drive the rights (by Ellen travels to Paris and Sri Lanka. It also moves Lois Murphy in time; mostly these shifts are insignificant, stolen car, so as not to attract the cops’ DeGeneres). Set on Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 but occasionally de Kretser skips back attention like a Koori driver would: Spain’s famed Camino Available 1 October decades. For the most part, the story affixes ‘Dark-skinned dark characters.’ Trail, where widowed artist Zoe and itself to Pippa, a relatively successful author All roads lead to Dubbo and to a cop A fleet of divorced engineer Martin hope to come to living in Sydney. She is the glue that holds named McWilliams, who put Blackie forebodingly terms with their recent past, this is a novel all the other characters together, and is behind bars for something he never did, official-looking vehicles about renewal: physical, psychological and (to be blunt) a pretty awful person. She just because he could. Fuelled on speed arrives one winter spiritual. And it’s about what you decide to acts exclusively in her own interests. She – both the amphetamine and the fast-car solstice in the West keep, what you choose to leave behind and interacts with people only to use them for kinds – Blackie’s on a payback mission. It’s Australian town of what you rediscover. character inspiration in her books. She is a tempestuous ride to showdown, and there Nebulah. The vehicles jealous, delusional and selfish. When she are moments of great humour and pathos disappear as DRAWING SYBYLLA does go out of her way to help others, it’s in this highly original ‘Koori-noir’ tale. mysteriously as they Odette Kelada because she’s thinking about the attention Dancing Home is the winner of last year’s appeared, and with them go the birds and UWAP. PB. $24.99 she’ll receive after tweeting about it. Her David Unaipon Award for an unpublished wildlife. Before long, the hauntings begin. A Available 1 October character – like the others in this novel manuscript by an Indigenous writer, and in strange mist envelops the town at night, The winner of the 2016 – is formed so truthfully. Pippa’s ugliness its opening pages, author Paul Collis invites tapping on windows and whispering Dorothy Hewett Award emerges despite her many, forceful, attempts the reader to be ‘active’ while reading the insults. Those caught outside disappear as for an Unpublished at self-fashioning it away. De Kretser shows novel, to ‘take sides’ and to ‘think about mysteriously as the vehicles that were a Manuscript is a powerful Pippa for who she really is, and it is because poverty, power, privilege, suicide, and precursor to the mist. The only safeguard is exploration of the lives of of her flaws that Pippa feels so very real. Aboriginal deaths in custody’. to hide inside, lock up the doors and women writers, and the This is a relatable novel. In Pippa, we This novel is as much political as windows, and put the telly on. Pete, an obstacles they face – with see not just any archetypal self-absorbed poetic and entertaining, and as a reader it’s ex-cop, and a handful of survivors are all reference to Charlotte creative, but one we actually know. I got a difficult not to be active while reading. The that are left to tell the story. Perkin Gilman’s classic slightly different feeling from de Kretser’s injustice met by our indigenous people lies I found it hard to place Soon, and not in a feminist short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. 8 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

multitude of perspectives that we glimpse and Paravis is working at a greengrocer’s, most moving. International Fiction them from – although the story really figuring out a way to follow his passion Sedgwick’s writing and structure are belongs to Johnny Sparsholt, David’s son. In for audio engineering, while still fulfilling assured throughout. I think most readers MANHATTAN BEACH his understated style (which contrasts nicely Isma’s desire for him to be able to support will be surprised by the ending; it’s perhaps with the ambitious scope of the novel), himself. In a coffee shop in Massachusetts, unexpected, but will make you think and Jennifer Egan Hollinghurst quietly moves the narrative Isma meets Eamonn Lone. Eamonn is the contemplate for days after. Corsair. PB. Was $32.99 forward in time, letting the reader figure out son of Karamat Lone: the UK’s current home Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton $27.99 the historical setting. By hinting at details – secretary, the son of Pakistani immigrants, Available 3 October for instance, we are never told the exact year known for his harsh stance towards A LIFE OF ADVENTURE Jennifer Egan’s that a bell-bottom clad Johnny has an eye- Islamic immigrants to the UK. After being AND DELIGHT wonderful new opening night out at an actual gay nightclub shown a photograph of Aneeka, Eamonn novel Manhattan Beach during one of London’s apparently frequent falls hopelessly in love with her. Upon his Akhil Sharma begins in Brooklyn blackouts, but it’s easy enough to deduce – return to the UK, he begins to pursue her, Faber. PB. $27.99 during the Great the reader does the contextual work, while and the lives of these two families become Available 27 September Depression, where the author focuses on the characters and dangerously intertwined. Akhil Sharma’s A smooth union bagman the scene at hand. Hollinghurst’s restrained It’s hard to recount the plot of this novel Life of Adventure and Eddie Kerrigan is style evokes the propriety of the English without giving too much away – Shamsie Delight is a collection of struggling to keep his middle and upper classes, but also works to has structured it masterfully. For lack of a brilliant short stories, all family above water. Eddie moves easily show how societal change that appears to better word, this book made me ache, and I of which have been among men of power: tipping his hat at the take place in the background subtly impacts felt every sentence of it keenly. published in The New right moment, knowing when to leave, Yorker – an incredible day-to-day life. Ellen Cregan is from Readings Doncaster discretely making drops that keep the Without bashing you over the head accomplishment. wheels in motion. But Eddie is a conflicted with context, metaphors or judgements KURT VONNEGUT Sharma’s skill lies man, and when he ducks out for a quiet – which would be easy to do in a novel COMPLETE STORIES in his acute characterisation. Not only is smoke on the balcony, he finds his concerned with the big themes of love, he able to inhabit flawed characters in a Kurt Vonnegut responsibilities weighing increasingly art, sexuality, class, ageing and mortality – compassionate way, but the characters heavily atop his shoulders. Hollinghurst lets each beautifully rendered Seven Stories. HB. $75 become more real because they are only To improve affairs, Eddie meets with episode speak for itself. The Sparsholt Affair Available 2 October too aware of their faults. Sharma executes Dexter Styles, a nightclub impresario is an evocative, emotionally resonant Kurt Vonnegut is this using pathos and humour. In the story for the mob weighed down by his own and, of course, profoundly British novel, indisputably one of the ‘The Well’, the narrator muses: ‘I went to desires – for legitimacy. Eddie brings his and fans of Alan Hollinghurst will not be great writers of the Rutgers for college. I was fat. I didn’t know daughter Anna, an oft-consulted good luck disappointed. twentieth century. And much about women. My father once told charm, to the meeting at Styles’ Manhattan more than half his me, “Pavan, don’t be proud. Marry someone Kelsey Oldham is from Readings Hawthorn Beach home, where the men come to an considerable output was taller than you.”’Half the stories occur in agreement that Anna understands to be MRS OSMOND short fiction. These 97 Delhi, where the characters are trying to portentous. Thus the narrative ignites, stories, collected in a live good lives while managing traditional John Banville and by the time Anna is 19, Eddie has handsome hardback, were originally expectations. In ‘If You Sing Like That for Viking. PB. $29.99 disappeared, World War II consumes the published in sources as disparate as Me’, a woman watches her new husband Available 16 October world, and American women are working magazines, books and online – and five are and brother-in-law move furniture into the trades that fuel the wartime economy. Fans of Henry James and published here for the first time. their tiny rooftop flat. The furniture is her Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard John Banville alike will dowry, and she watches, frozen, as her new inspecting parts, but she dreams of the relish this unexpected THE GROWING SEASON life unfolds. She is filled with fear about chance to be a civilian diver. It is an new offering from the Helen Sedgwick what will occur that night. extraordinary time, for women finding latter: a sequel to Portrait Harvill Secker. PB. $32.99 The stories set in America focus on the independence, for a nation stepping into of a Lady. Having fled Available now immigrant experience, and a desperation to Rome and a stultifying the world, and for opportunity to be seized In The Growing understand local social and sexual mores. marriage, Isabel Osmond by those who understand the potential of Season, the world is In ‘Cosmopolitan’, Gopal, an older man, is in London, brooding on America’s cultural ambitions. much like it is now, with tries to woo his neighbour ‘Mrs Shaw’ by the recent disclosure of her husband’s Her first novel since the sprawling, one major difference. For reading American magazines at the local shocking, years-long betrayal of her. genre-defying A Visit From the Goon Squad, three generations the library to decipher women’s romantic and Reawakened by grief and the knowledge of Manhattan Beach is an entirely different FullLife baby pouch has sexual desires. Many of Sharma’s other having been grievously wronged, she work. A straight historical novel, it resides enabled anyone, protagonists are male Indian students determines to resume her youthful quest easily within its constraints, bringing regardless of age or who are confused by the overt sexuality for freedom and independence. Soon Isabel characters into focus against the physical gender, to affordably and of fellow students. They may take part in must return to Italy and confront her and social realities of their lives. It is a safely grow their own baby. Whether through student excesses of drinking or socialising, husband. But will she succeed in outwitting brilliant, visceral portrayal of the time, and IVF or naturally conceived, the embryo is but are only too aware of parental and him, and securing her revenge? a haunting portrayal of the fractured nature moved to a pouch (available in a variety of cultural expectations. of human consciousness. It is a book of ‘Surrounded by Sleep’ is a touching HOME FIRE colours, with optional accessories) with history, of longing and striving, failure and adjustable straps that enables it to be carried story of two brothers, and the aftermath of strength, and it is an absolute triumph. Kamila Shamsie by a number of different people. At night the one brother’s near drowning and resulting Bloomsbury. PB. $24.99 Robbie Egan is manager of Readings Carlton pouch is moved to a custom-made stand, disability. This story expanded to become Available now hooked up to an incubator and fed Sharma’s award-winning 2014 novel, Family THE SPARSHOLT AFFAIR Imagine living in a appropriate nutrients. The pouch has Life. Sharma has received much recognition world where every overseas, particularly in the US, where he Alan Hollinghurst become the new standard in childbirth; that act you undertake is lives and teaches creative writing. I can Picador. PB. Was $32.99 is, until a number of tragic deaths create politicised, against your concern that the pouch is not the infallible only hope that this wonderful book furthers $27.99 will. For some readers, product that it was once believed to be. With his reputation in Australia. Available 26 September this will be a reality. their doubts seemingly confirmed by one of Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn Spanning 70 years, Kamila Shamsie’s latest FullLife’s scientists, reporter Piotr and Alan Hollinghurst’s novel, Home Fire, depicts activist Eva search out evidence of THE LOCALS long-awaited new novel this very phenomenon. It wrongdoing, tracing all the way back to Jonathan Dee begins with a group of tells the story of the Pasha family: Muslim FullLife’s now-reclusive founder. Corsair. PB. $27.99 friends at Oxford during Brits living in the shadow of their father’s From the above description, you Available 10 October World War II and follows terrorism, and the politics of the powerful may already have started to come to This politically infused the ensemble over the people who treat them with hostility and conclusions about how this novel plays out new novel by the Pulitzer years and generations. contempt. (I certainly did), but The Growing Season shortlisted author of The The book is divided into Twins Paravis and Aneeka were small is not a simple good-versus-evil tale. It is, Privileges is not a direct four parts, set in four distinct periods of the children when their father died on his way rather, a thoughtful meditation on science parable of the current late twentieth century. It alternates between to Guantanamo Bay, and were just 12 years versus ethics, opinions versus facts, and political climate – but it four different perspectives, beginning with old when their mother and grandmother the importance of continual debate. It is speaks directly to it Freddie Green and Evert Dax, who meet the died within a month of each other. Isma, also a study in one’s convictions and how nonetheless, through the enigmatic David Sparsholt at Oxford in 1940. their elder sister, was forced to put a they are developed and maintained. This is experiences of a The action then moves to Cornwall in the budding career in academia aside to care highlighted by the author’s use of multiple Massachusetts small town taken over by a 1960s, to the circle of artists that orbits Evert’s for her siblings. This is a family unit that is points of view; always reminding us of wealthy money manager who moves decrepit London mansion in the 1970s, and cohesive and loving, but underpinned with the humanity beneath the characters. As permanently into his summer house, then to the present-day. great pain. As the novel begins, Isma has left impressive as the scientific and ethical escaping post-9/11 New York. Mark Firth is a Every character is fully formed, with the UK to recommence her PhD in America. arguments are, it is the moments detailing home builder who, after being swindled by a each distinct personality enhanced by the Aneeka is studing to become a lawyer, human connection and loss that are the READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 9 financial advisor, feels opportunity passing soon-to-be-father. He persuades his heavily him and his family by. When Philip Hadi pregnant wife to set off to the shops before hires Mark to turn his house into a secure it gets dark, then stops all the gaps under location, the two men’s very different worlds doors and windows with towels, unhooks – rural vs urban, middle class vs rich – the gas tube from the oven and brings it New and Forthcoming collide. ‘Amid the heat of today’s vicious into the bedroom, then arranges himself FROM TRANSIT LOUNGE political climate, The Locals is a smoke comfortably on the marital bed. You’d alarm.’ – The Washington Post expect a book that starts off with such a grim premise to be heavy, but it’s a tribute THE MOST DANGEROUS to the author that it manages, even from PLACE ON EARTH page one, to have a lightness of touch. Lindsey Lee Johnson Set in Brooklyn sometime in the forties H&S. PB. $19.99 or fifties, the book follows the story of the Available now young widow Annie, and her baby Sally, who are taken under the wings (and habits) With her electric of the nuns of The Little Nursing Sisters debut novel, of the Sick Poor after Annie’s husband’s Lindsey Lee Johnson has body is discovered by Sister St Savior. skilfully teased out the Feeling sorry for the young widow (and everyday dramas that now-single mum), they arrange for her to WINNER exist in ‘The Most work in the convent laundry with crotchety TASMANIAN Dangerous Place on PREMIER’S PRIZE FOR Sister Illuminata, while little baby Sally AN UNPUBLISHED Earth’: high school. Set plays at their feet. The years pass by, and MANUSCRIPT in one of the world’s Sally grows from baby to toddler to girl to wealthiest communities – Mill Valley, adolescent, under the watchful and utterly California – Johnson’s novel opens with an loving eye of the nuns. Annie too, finds Soon Atlantic Black epigraph from Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘The deep friendship among the nuns and the Lois Murphy A. S. Patric mind is its own place, and in itself can make various inhabitants of their neighbourhood. a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.’ Here, in a A haunted and dying town, The story takes place over one There’s something of Ann Patchett in neighbourhood rich in natural, cultural and yet some people can’t, or day and night, New Year’s Eve Alice McDermott’s writing, with a touch material splendour, Johnson’s novel revolves won’t, leave. Heralds a 1939. The RMS Aquitania of Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn thrown in. This around a class of students who we meet in compelling new talent. steams across the Atlantic is a delight from start to finish, and I can’t the eighth grade. In the opening chapter, one ------Ocean. On the horizon the recommend it highly enough. student is bullied to the point of tragedy. world is about to explode. The Most Dangerous Place on Earth then Gabrielle Williams is from Readings Malvern ------follows these students over the course of four years, tracing the effect of this tragedy THE LAST HOURS on their adolescent lives, with the point Minette Walters of view alternating chapter by chapter. A&U. PB. Was $32.99 It’s a remarkably convincing constellation $27.99 of voices – which Johnson handles with Available 27 September nuance and empathy, her prose clean and Crime queen Minette often coolly funny. For the majority of Walters moves into the novel, the students are 17, and each Geraldine Brooks vignette explores the everyday dramas territory with this Readings_Oct.indd 2 28/08/2017 8:50 PM of their complex interior lives: exam gripping story of human pressure, inappropriate student-teacher ingenuity and endurance relationships, controlling parents, absent in the time of the Black parents, drugs, sex, house parties, and, Plague. It’s 1348. No one through it all, technology. It comes alive knows what this new with each account of teenage worlds played sickness is – or how it spreads and kills so out on the internet – Johnson’s writing quickly. The Church proclaims it a is strongest when it takes on these forms. punishment from God, while Lady Anne of Texts, clickbait ‘news’ articles and social Develish gathers her serfs within the city media streams spark on the page, and elicit gates and refuses entry to outsiders, even a sense of unease that makes it impossible her brutal husband. And then food stocks to put this novel down. run low, the nerves of all are tested. Interspersed between chapters, we return to the students’ young English NK3 teacher, Molly Nicoll, who desperately Michael Tolkin wants to connect with her class. This Grove Press. PB. $29.99 adult perspective, and the cast of parents Available 27 September and teachers littered throughout, enables Present-day Los Johnson to skilfully demonstrate the Angeles already fraught power dynamic between and feels pretty post- among adults and teenagers. A smart, apocalyptic. In NK3 tightly-paced read perfect for fans of recent Michael Tolkin takes releases like Marlena and Girls on Fire. the inequality, violence, October’s Must Reads Stella Charls is marketing and events misogyny and horror of The First Casualty The Book of Dust - The Road to Mexico coordinator at Readings contemporary Beverley Peter Greste La Belle Sauvage Rick Stein Hills, Culver City and THE NINTH HOUR Extremely timely, enlightening Philip Pullman Mexico is the new India. This Skid Row and melds it with our worst and passionate. Peter Greste’s Philip Pullman returns to the world landmark book and major BBC Alice McDermott North Korean-related fears. first-hand account of how the war of His Dark Materials with this series from Rick Stein brings his Bloomsbury. PB. $24.99 Four years after the dreaded Kims on journalism has spread from the magnificent first volume of The expertise and joie de vivre to the Available 1 October have released a memory-wiping virus into battlefields of the Middle East to Book of Dust. hottest food trend. the governments of the West. This review is the US, the amnesiac population of LA Munich Origin going to be difficult drifts, dreams, marauds and abuses its way Talking to My Daughter Robert Harris Dan Brown to write, because The through the apocalypse. A former police About the Economy When the stakes are this high, Robert Langdon, arrives at the Ninth Hour is so chief, stumbling upon a way to partially Yanis Varoufakis who are you willing to betray? Your Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to masterful, so charming, recover people’s memories, has set up a A letter to his daughter by the #1 friends, your family, your country or attend the unveiling of a discovery bestselling economist using vivid, your conscience? A new spy thriller that “will change the face of science so delightful, it’s going to nightmare fiefdom in the city’s formerly universally accessible stories to from the Sunday Times bestselling forever”. But the meticulously be hard to do it justice. I opulent suburbs. He viciously polices the explain what economics is and why author of Fatherland, Conclave and orchestrated evening is blown apart want to gush, but gushing acolytes of his new religion, regularly burns it is so dangerous. An Officer and a Spy. before the discovery can be revealed. is clumsy and knock- the drifters outside the compound’s fence, and kneed, and this book is so opposite-of-that. cynically cherry-picks who gets to undergo Alice McDermott is a National Book the memory restoration process. But it’s not Award-winning author, and her latest all villains: a motorcycling rebel trawls the book starts off with the suicide of a young, city for his long-lost love; a guerrilla group 10 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 attempts to jerry-rig an aeroplane at LAX; a to move, in effect, beyond the first paragraph: against the incredible cityscape of New York. For fans of the series, this novella is a pop starlet is commandeered for propaganda the magic of the start. It’s a kind of addiction.’ One of the brothers is an escaped convict delightful little nugget that sees the return purposes, and an envious drifter named In this novel, Chaudhuri does dwell in (living under an assumed name and identity), of well-loved characters (including my Siouxsie Banshee plots her way into the post- the magic of a beginning – of a memory, another is a seminary drop-out (with an favourite: the mute, almost certainly vampiric apocalyptic elite. an anecdote, a fragment of history – each imaginary poet as his companion), and housekeeper, Molly, whose culinary expertise The City of Angels is instantly familiar one distinct and complete as a fingerprint. they live in the home of their jazz musician has only improved off the back of her here, though its heat, corruption and A Friend of my Youth is a wonderful and brother. In the week of their arrival in the Big obsession with The Great British Bakeoff). For desperation have been magnified. The mass evocative read that will especially appeal Apple, the brothers’ adventures lead them newcomers, The Furthest Station is a bite-sized horror is all the worse because the victims to fans of contemporary auto-fiction, as through jazz joints, warehouses and through a treat that will leave you wanting more. here literally have no way to contextualise practised by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel terrible game of catch-and-run with a hitman. Lian Hingee is Readings’ digital marketing manager what is happening to them. But through the Cusk and our own Helen Garner. With its ear for dialect and film-noir vision, hazy darkness of it all some universals remain Anaya Latter is from Readings Carlton this novel is ambitious and warm-hearted. As PROVENANCE fully intact: love, solidarity, kindness and hope. he builds towards the final sensational scene, Ann Leckie The strength of the best sci-fi is the light it SING, UNBURIED, SING Mathews prepares us with intricate back- shines on the present. Tolkin’s gift is not just stories and apt descriptions of reckless youth, Orbit. PB. Was $32.99 Jesmyn Ward his à la mode nod to our impending sense of love and hope. Set in a world in transition, $27.99 Bloomsbury. PB. $24.99 doom, but his ability to seductively stylise the reminding us there is nothing new in the Available 26 September Available 1 October dark underbelly a lot of us already live in. world, this novel allows us to imagine what The nervous Sing, Unburied, Sing is authors might later write about 2017. foster-daughter of Chris Dite is from Readings Carlton an intensely lyrical, For fans of Humphrey Bogart and Bette a high-ranking politician bruising novel. Jesmyn Davis – and for readers that enjoy a good sells everything she owns DUNBAR Ward writes the kind of old-fashioned romp through city lights. to break a notorious thief Edward St Aubyn sumptuous prose in which out of prison, hoping to Hogarth. PB. $29.99 every line thrills you with Chris Gordon is events manager of Readings win favour with her Available 16 October its poetry – even the ambitious mother and Booker-shortlisted rippling effect of air on a FRESH COMPLAINT humiliate her conniving Edward St Aubyn car window is imagined Jeffrey Eugenides brother. But has Ingray liberated the correct mastered the into vivid life, the shuddering glass as ‘alive as Fourth Estate. HB. Was $34.99 person? And will they cooperate with her fictionalising of a bed of molluscs fluttering in the rush of the $29.99 half-baked plans? Thus begins a spiral of aristocratic family tide: a shimmer of froth and sand.’ To read this Available 6 October political intrigue and diplomatic disaster. dysfunction in his book is to be immersed in it. Open the cover The Pulitzer prize-winning True to the title, much of this story’s savagely sad, darkly and step inside another world where the author of The Virgin Suicides tension relies on the question of provenance. funny, achingly tender unburied roam, tethered to the earth, and and Middlesex has been Ingray’s people place great value in ‘vestiges’: Melrose series. Here, he where the children are not okay. steadily publishing finely artefacts that commemorate historical takes on Shakespeare’s most devastating As with Ward’s award-winning debut, formed short-stories events. The alleged history of these simple family story, King Lear, to produce an Salvage the Bones, Sing follows a teenager throughout his career. This material items is what makes them cultural excoriating novel for our times – and a who will break your heart with their book, bookended by two treasures, but accusations of forgery threaten raging capitalist patriarch who resembles a resilience and tenderness in the face of new stories, is his first to render them worthless. This anxiety about blend of Rupert Murdoch and Donald harsh circumstances. Thirteen-year-old collection. origins and authenticity extends cleverly to Trump. Henry Dunbar, the once all- Jojo and his younger sister Kayla live with the characters themselves – from Ingray’s powerful head of a global corporation, is their grandparents in rural Mississippi. difficult relationship with her foster family, imprisoned in a care home after handing When their father, a white man, is released Science Fiction to a complex series of forged identities and over control to his two eldest daughters. He from prison, their mother Leonie packs politically dangerous impersonations. Ingray escapes – but who will find him first, his the children into her car with a friend. is a charming character: determined, but devoted youngest daughter Florence, or the Together they set off to collect a man she AN EXCESS MALE gullible. Ann Leckie’s science-fiction is subtle two who are out for themselves? loves with a toxic passion. This story is Maggie Shen King and warm, so I’ve always been surprised narrated by three characters: Jojo, the HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 that her book covers feature pictures of FRIEND OF MY YOUTH self-warring and drug-addicted Leonie, and Available now spaceships. This is decidedly ‘soft’ sci-fi, in a ghostly hitchhiker whose connection to A chilling dystopian tale Amit Chaudhuri which technology takes a back seat to human the family is revealed in the stories Jojo’s of politics, inequality, Faber. PB. $27.99 and alien anthropology. There are plenty of grandfather shares about his time spent marriage, love, and Available 27 September mechs and spaceships in this story, but their working on Mississippi’s Parchman prison rebellion, set in a This loving, gentle design and function are of minor concern farm during America’s Jim Crow years. near-future China, book evokes the compared to their meaning to people: for Ward draws on numerous literary where the One Child chaotic colours and instance, the legality of their ownership, traditions in this multi-layered and referential Policy and cultural sounds of Bombay or their potential to breach interplanetary read. She skilfully employs supernatural preference for male heirs through the eyes of an treaties. Leckie’s technological future often elements to heighten the novel’s themes – have created a society expatriate writer, feels commonplace – which isn’t a problem, from the literal ghosts that haunt our living overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. returning to his because her characters and their delicate characters, to the magical traits Jojo inherits childhood home. schemes and interactions are where the real through his grandmother’s family line. Ward THE FURTHEST STATION Weaving through time at fascination lies. mourns America’s history but does not allow an eddying pace, Amit Chaudhuri describes Ben Aaronovitch This self-contained story is a great place it to rest. In doing so, she powerfully speaks his childhood friend Ramu in criss-crossing Gollancz. HB. $26.99 to jump in to Leckie’s multi-award-winning to the contradictory state of American life encounters and fragments. Beautifully Available 26 September work if you haven’t read her before. And if today. An immensely moving and gripping written and evocative, this book immerses Ben Aaronovitch’s you’re already a fan of her Imperial Radch examination of the corrosive power of trauma, the reader in a whirlwind of impressions series of PC Grant trilogy, you’ll enjoy this visit to a very Sing is one of the best books I’ve read all year. – of the narrator, his friend and the city novels are urban different side of the same universe. itself – vividly realised through the food Bronte Coates is digital content coordinator fantasies that somehow Ele Jenkins is from Readings Carlton and the gestures of the proprietors, as and manager of the Readings Prizes. manage to combine the writer Chaudhuri attends to various jaunty ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello of a readings and publishing events. THE WORLD OF traditional British police Poetry Chaudhuri reflects on the legacy of his TOMORROW procedural with the rich birthplace, amidst the duties of a novelist on Brendan Mathews mythology and history of the press circuit. Ramu, always remembered, S&S. PB. Was $32.99 the city of London. The newest instalment in THE SUN AND waited for and recollected, becomes as the series, The Furthest Station, sees our $27.99 HER FLOWERS yearned-for and elusive as Godot. Chaudhuri favourite constable-cum-wizard-in-training Available now Rupi Kaur writes: ‘In the meantime, because I’m writing Peter Grant on the hunt for a supernatural S&S. PB. $24.99 I’m thinking of Bombay. I think of Ramu. Brendan Mathews entity that’s been causing a nuisance on the Available 3 October The Ramu I know and the Ramu I’m writing chose 1939 as his well-travelled Metropolitan tube line. about have become indistinguishable.’ There setting because this year A former writer for Dr Who (you can Instapoet Rupi Kaur's is a beautiful quality to this book’s structure. in history is echoed in the blame him for the levitating Daleks), Milk and Honey has been At one point, Chaudhuri elucidates the present. America was in Aaronovitch has created a wonderfully a worldwide bestseller. ​ difference between a novel and a poem, and an economic slump, there witty story that pays cheeky homage to its The New York Times it seems to be an important clue: ‘You can was a refugee crisis and source material with lines like ‘we don’t describes it as: ‘Poems follow the arc that characters’ lives make in fascism was a rising want to talk to them, per se. It’s just that tackling feminism, love, a novel ... over the novel’s duration, you’re trend, worldwide. I we’d like to ask them a few questions’, while trauma and healing in witness to a flowering and attrition. The poem thought about this many times as I read. simultaneously indulging in the kind of very short lines as smooth as gives you a beginning endlessly. It represents The narrative centres on three Irish English ghost-hunting that involves packing pop music.’ This new a fascination with openings. It never wants brothers and their shared aspirations, set a thermos of hot tea before setting out. book celebrates love in all its forms. READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 11

New Crime Dead Write FROM THE SHADOWS THE SCARRED WOMAN Neil White Jussi Adler-Olsen with Fiona Hardy Zaffre. PB. $29.99 Quercus. PB. $29.99 Crime Book of the Month Available 27 September Available 26 September The first in a new series, Jussi Adler-Olsen is the A DANGEROUS LANGUAGE this novel sees defence master puppeteer, Sulari Gentill lawyer Dan Grant holding the threads of five different cases for Pantera. PB. $29.99 working on a last- his seventh book about Available 1 October minute case, thrown to him only weeks before Department Q, About halfway through this book, I had to put it down – for trial. He’s supposed to Copenhagen’s cold cases something trivial like sleep, or dinner, or spending time with just dot some i’s and division. The team, my family – and saw a review on the cover comparing Gentill to cross some t’s, letting headed by detective Carl Evelyn Waugh. This holds some truth – there are a lot of ridiculously everyone go home happy – well, maybe Mørck, is in knots, wondering if these cases wealthy young people having far too much fun spending the early except the accused. But Dan starts afresh, have anything to do with the elderly decades of the twentieth century getting into salacious situations, with his investigator Jayne Brett – a woman woman found dead in a park. Her death drinking heavily and offending their elders, while the ramifications of the war bear heavily who owes Dan and his determination a very seems similar to one a decade ago, but they on them. Yet, as someone who had to literally put down Brideshead Revisited because I found big personal debt – and they find much can’t quite fit them together – or with it so frustratingly meandering (and, this may shock you, but I generally love meandering more in the case than expected. This is a anything to do with the hunted women on writing), I couldn’t help but think that unlike Waugh, Gentill – on her eighth Rowland suspenseful courtroom thriller where the other side of town. While Denmark’s Sinclair book now – has a lightness of touch and a clarity to her plot that appeals much nothing is what you’d expect – from the darker sides are brought to light, their more than Waugh, at least to the likes of me. obvious stalker killer to Dan himself. colleague Rose is struggling against her When I wasn’t reading A Dangerous Language, I thought about it – wondered who the own past, and the realisation that she killers were, hazarded a guess or two about which characters in the book were based on herself might be connected to these crimes. real characters (delightfully, a vast amount). It is always a pleasure to follow Rowland THE ROOSTER BAR This is a harrowing procedural, with a team Sinclair, a wayward grown child of the eminent Sinclair family of New South Wales, as he John Grisham you’ll happily perch on a desk to be beside. and his band of scandalous artist friends do their best to become immediately involved in a H&S. PB. Was $32.99 crisis every time they leave his estate. $27.99 TRUST ME Here, it’s 1934, and the international activist and journalist Egon Kisch is coming to Available 24 October Zosia Wand Melbourne – unless the rising tide of fascism stops him from disembarking the ship he’s John Grisham releasing Head of Zeus. PB. $29.99 arriving on. Rowly is roped in by the Communist community his friends are part of to a new book is kind of Available now assist Kisch’s arrival, and will do all he can to get this man (who once saved his life) into like Cadbury releasing a At the moment, British Australia. Because, by God, he needs someone to spread the word of impending Nazism – new bar of chocolate – a crime writers really love something Rowly has been trying to convince the authorities of, with little success. slightly different taste, to give you an unreliable Combine this with an international air-race, a murder on the steps of Parliament House, sure, but delectable as protagonist – someone withered relations between Rowland and his long-suffering stick of a brother Wilfred, the always. Three law you can’t trust to be telling seductive reappearance of an adolescent lover, and a solid sprinkling of fisticuffs, and you students, all with you the whole truth, even have the ingredients for a story told in a most satisfying language indeed. graduation in sight, as you follow them on the come to the dawning realisation that the page. In the perfectly law school they’d forked out to attend is rendered, wish-I-was- AFTER THE FIRE book, set in 1995. On the day Summer not quite up to scratch. Which, they find there Lake District, 27-year-old Lizzie lives Henning Mankell Ryan vanishes, her father calls his friends out, means they’re unlikely to pass, find a before the cops try to find her, since the with her older husband and her stepson, Sam, Harvill Secker. PB. Was $32.99 job, or survive without bankruptcy – and, only ten years younger than she. She’s happy, authorities don’t look kindly on the since the school’s owner is only interested $27.99 of course. Until Sam starts to withdraw from Ryans. Summer, yes: a bright, good, in making money from student loans – Available 16 October the family, and she suspects something’s church-going girl; her sister Raine, all neither is anyone else at the school. So Since his passing in 2015, wrong, that an older woman is grooming him wildness and trouble, no. But Raine is the Mark, Zola and Todd decide that the only readers have been – but their close-knit community has their one who searches for her sister with the way to beat the system is to get out of the eagerly awaiting the suspicions set firmly on her. A gripping tale of most determination, as the police aren’t system ... and drop the hell out of school final book from Henning a family tearing apart, a community closing fit to trust – not when they’ve been before taking it down. And after a few Mankell – the man who in, and readers that can’t be sure of anything, unable to find the Bird, the monstrous, drinks at the Rooster Bar, taking on a was at the forefront of feather-covered taker of the town’s girls. beyond the need to keep turning pages. the wave of billionaire while faking qualifications Not when they have their own demons, seems like genius. The kind of idea, of Scandinavian crime that their own emotions, to cloud what’s THE VISITORS swept the world. course, that only Grisham could write you happening. The son of one of their fallen out of – and we’re always glad for it. Catherine Burns Following on from 2006’s Italian Shoes, where men finds himself helping. A brilliant, Hachette. PB. $29.99 his story started, 70-year-old retired surgeon heated, storm of a read. Available 26 September Fredrik Welin now lives alone on a Swedish STOCKHOLM DELETE Marion Zetland lives in island, leading a solitary life (mostly due to Jens Lapidus BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD a sprawling but cramped his unpleasant personality), and swimming Corvus. PB. $29.99 Attica Locke house with her every day, even when he needs to cut into the Available 27 September overbearing brother, ice to do so. When his house is burned to the Serpent’s Tail. PB. $29.99 On Värmdö, an island John, and has for years ground, Fredrik escapes with barely more Available 11 October in Stockholm’s lived this small-scale than two left-foot wellingtons ... and complete Locke is one of those archipelago, a security life: just her and John, bafflement when it’s later discovered that authors who can talk alarm is triggered. The some patronisingly arson is the cause, and suspicion falls solely about bad things in a guard following the well-meaning on him. As much a meditation on loneliness beautiful way – dead alarm expects nothing neighbours, and the bears she still sleeps and ageing as it is a whodunnit, Fredrik, bodies, sore history – much – and definitely with, even in her fifties. She is frightened of rambling about in his boots over the following but he makes it real, not the slaughtered, everything: saying the wrong thing, weeks and months, contemplates friendship, deep and utterly unidentifiable body he upsetting anyone, asking her brother the his relationship with his newly-discovered readable. Texas Ranger comes across in the house. Outside, in a wrong questions about what’s happening adult daughter and her problems, and reflects Darren Mathews is car, is a man covered in blood: Benjamin down in the cellar. She understands some on his past. Farewell, Henning – and thanks suspended from the position he believes in Emanuelsson, who says nothing except to of what is down there – that John is only for all the crime. so dearly, one he thought dealt with his ask for Emelie Jansson to be his lawyer. helping the visitors, of course – but she also home state’s brutal racial tensions at the So far, so logical – but Emelie has only frontline, instead of behind a cushy desk. knows what not to talk about with anyone ALL THE WICKED GIRLS just passed the bar and her company from outside. No secret that is big enough Chris Whitaker His efforts to help a friend have led both of wants nothing to do with the case. them to trouble, and now all he can do to to fill a room can stay hidden, however – Zaffre. PB. $29.99 Luckily, that never stopped a crime avoid the wrong people is take up another and Marion’s own dark past comes scraping Available 27 September protagonist before – and this case, full of friend’s request to look into the two dead its nails against her thoughts. A dark, Small-town crime twisted loyalties and the past colliding bodies washed up days apart in the bayou oppressive psychological thriller. books can open up such with the present, has much in store for some miles away in Lark: a black man, then a wide expanse of Emelie. Unexpectedly, it will also embroil a white woman. On Highway 59, where the humanity. The Alabama Teddy, the ex-con assisting her with the Also out this month Aryan Brotherhood still lurks or shouts, town of Grace, thinking case – a man once imprisoned for the and racial tensions are pulled tight across itself at the safe end of kidnapping of the accused killer’s father. Melanie Raabe’s The Stranger (Text, PB, the state, they can only believe in Darren a series of Another visceral, high-speed thriller for $29.99), Harlan Coben’s Don’t Let Go (Century, – past the booze and the shattering disappearances, opens one of the crime genre’s most PB, $32.99), Mike Cooper, The Downside relationships – and hope that he can too. wide indeed in this distractingly attractive authors. (Head Of Zeus, PB, $29.99), and more! 12 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

New Non-fiction A jury finds two men guilty of faking at the school seemed to be a possibility Whiteleys, but a year later the appeal that might save him, and so he went to bench sensationally acquits them. Whiteley Afghanistan, to teach and to make a difference Non-fiction Book of the Month on Trial investigates this remarkable case and to save his own life. and exposes the avarice of the art world, Danger Music moves in whirlwind the disdain for connoisseurship and the snippets through Eddie’s days teaching in THE TRAUMA CLEANER fragility of authenticity. Kabul. Students appear and disappear with Sarah Krasnostein startling irregularity. You start to know a Text. PB. $32.99 THE CATCH student as Eddie does and then they drop $27.99 Anna Clark away, disappear. Sometimes they return, Available 2 October NLA. PB. $39.99 but only sometimes. The stress, uncertainty Writer and lawyer Sarah Krasnostein first met Sandra Available 1 October and trauma of everyday life in Kabul are Pankhurst at a conference for forensic support services. Enthusiast and historian felt keenly in this whirlwind narrative. Sandra’s business card advertises ‘specialised trauma cleaning’: Anna Clark celebrates In one moment, Eddie is describing the ‘hoarding and pet hoarding’ and ‘homicide, suicide and death the enduring pleasure of beauty of the young cello players playing scene’ are just two of the many services listed. Krasnostein is fishing, from the first together; in another, he’s wondering how to fascinated at the existence of these kinds of services and is known accounts of get everyone out if suicide bombers and the particularly intrigued about the nature of the person who would Indigenous fishing and Taliban storm the school. I loved this book. perform them, so she contacts Sandra for an interview. early European Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton encounters with Australia’s waters, to the ‘Krasnostein is an astute observer of human latest fishing fads; from the introduction of LOGICAL FAMILY: trout and fly fishing to the challenges of A MEMOIR nature and her understated yet elegant prose is balancing needs of commercial and Armistead Maupin recreational fishers. reminiscent of Helen Garner.’ Doubleday. PB. $35 Available 2 October What she hears is an incredible story about a woman who has survived neglect, abuse Biography Armistead and violence, yet manages to remain compassionate to her clients, who have traumas of Maupin’s nine- their own. Born a boy in 1950s Melbourne, Sandra lived through an abusive childhood and volume Tales of the City a failed marriage with children, before beginning her life again as a drag queen, prostitute ALI: A LIFE chronicle is a cultural and gender reassignment patient in the 1980s. Krasnostein uncovers Sandra’s story bit by Jonathan Eig icon. Among other things, bit as she travels with her to the homes of her clients, who are in need of ‘trauma cleaning’ S&S. HB. Was $49.99 it’s the story of gay life in of their own, both physical and mental. Homes where the ‘smell is so strong it felt like a $39.99 San Francisco from the slap’ and where otherwise intelligent people live amidst decades of rotting garbage. Available 1 October late 1970s, through the Krasnostein is an astute observer of human nature and her understated yet elegant The most AIDS crisis and ending in prose is reminiscent of Helen Garner. She hopes this book will cleanse a little trauma comprehensive, the present-day. His new book Logical Family from Sandra’s life through the very act of telling her story: giving her life a narrative and definitive biography of – a title he has borrowed from his creation, cohesion it has been missing, and sorely needs in order to create memory and meaning. Muhammad Ali that has the weed-smoking landlady of 28 Barbary After spotting books by Grossman, Frankle and Charriere among the squalor of the home ever been published, Lane, Anna Madrigal – refers to a diverse of one client, Glenda, Krasnostein asks about her reading preferences. Glenda replies, based on more than 500 group of people that are chosen as family. ‘anything which shows human strength under the most appalling circumstances helps me interviews with those Beginning with his first attempt at to survive’. A perfect summary for this book. who knew him best, writing at the age of five – the piece was a letter that his mother helped him draft to Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton with many dramatic new discoveries about his life a three-year-old girl who’d fallen down an and career. We’re taken inside the ring for abandoned well in California – through his commanding; and what he felt about both. some of the most famous bouts in boxing childhood, his sexual awakening as a gay Australian Studies No Australian general was more revered by history, and learn about his personal life, man, his time in Vietnam, and an awkward those he led or more famous outside his his finances, his faith and the moments and surreal experience meeting President own command. This book, by the author of when the first signs of his physical decline Nixon at the White House, Maupin’s life has AUSTRALIAN GYPSIES: been varied and fascinating. Having grown THEIR SECRET HISTORY award-winning biography Pompey Elliott, began to show. sheds new light on a great Australian. up in Raleigh, North Carolina in a staunchly Mandy Sayer DANGER MUSIC Republican family, Maupin doesn’t shy NewSouth. PB. Was $35 away from the tenets of his conservative TINKERING Eddie Ayres $29.99 past, despite his status now as an icon in Katherine Wilson A&U. PB. Was $32.99 the LGBTI community. His father once Available now Monash University Publishing. PB. $29.95 $27.99 marched the family out of a Sunday church Award-winning Available now Available 27 September service because black folks were invited to memoirist and novelist At a time when Eddie Ayres was 12 join the whites for communion at the rail. Mandy Sayer weaves traditional work is failing when he saw As a student he ‘railed against Socialists together a wide-ranging as a source of security Afghanistan for the first and peaceniks’ who called for boycotts of and exuberant history of and identity, domestic time. It was on businesses supporting segregation. He admits Gypsies in Australia. She tinkering – repair, television. The Soviets that he doesn’t know who that 20-year-old meets Gypsy families invention, building, had just invaded. He was was, and finds it hard to like him very much. from all over the improvising, and crafting 49 when he last left Maupin’s memoir is a love letter. Whether country, who share the – is emerging as a Afghanistan after he’s writing about his friendships with stories of their ancestors and their own legitimate occupation. teaching at the Rock Hudson, Harvey Milk, Christopher lives. With her own nomadic early life and Katherine Wilson documents domestic Afghanistan National Institute of Music. In Isherwood and Ian McKellen, or about the experiences as a street performer, Sayer tinkering as an undervalued form of material between those times, Eddie, born Emma, sweet relationship he had with his granny (the brings unique insight into the lives of the creativity, social connection, psychological grew up and became a musician and biked inspiration for Anna Madrigal) or his mother, people she meets, and a strong sense of sanctuary, personal identity, and even across a large part of the world and hosted Maupin’s delivery is warm and candid. their extraordinary history. political activism. a radio program in Australia and became Reading this memoir is like being wrapped in POMPEY ELLIOTT AT deeply depressed. Afghanistan in this time a warm blanket of words and memory. WHITELEY ON TRIAL saw the collapse and exit of the Soviets and Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton WAR: IN HIS OWN Gabriella Coslovich a civil war that left space for the takeover WORDS MUP. PB. $32.99 by the Taliban. The Taliban in turn was Ross McMullin $29.99 ousted by coalition forces who in turn FINDING MY VIRGINITY Scribe. HB. $59.99 Available 2 October settled into a protracted conflict that, Richard Branson Available 2 October It was a cause célèbre: despite officially being resolved, continues Virgin Books. PB. $35 The wartime letters and the biggest case of into the time that Eddie moves to Kabul to Available 16 October diaries of Pompey alleged art fraud to teach at the resurrected Afghanistan Ultimate entrepreneur Elliott, Australia’s most come before the National Institute of Music. and original thinker, famous fighting general, Australian criminal Eddie first visited and taught at the school Richard Branson, follows are exceptionally justice system, a $4.5 in Kabul in 2013. At the time everything was up his megaselling forthright – and million sting drawing in hopeful, the orchestra was touring, boys and memoir Losing My illuminating about his one of the country’s girls playing together, Western and Afghan Virginity with this volatile emotions. He most gifted and music, the upward trajectory seemed clear. much-awaited sequel. wrote frankly about ultimately tragic artists, Brett Whiteley, Eddie felt it was clear for him as well. When He shares the secrets what happened to him and the men he was a heroin addict who died alone in 1992. he fell into a despairing depression, teaching that have seen his family READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 13 business grow from a student magazine mattresses and televisions in the squalid into a global brand, his dreams of private bedroom of their £7.5 million mansion. citizens flying to space develop from a In making sense of her experience, childhood fantasy to the brink of reality, Rausing is also trying to solve the riddle and his focus shifts from battling bigger of addiction, which she traces to an rivals to changing business for good. essential ‘emotional deficiency’. But she doesn’t simplify it – on the contrary, her CAROLINE CHISHOLM: careful, coruscating reflections draw AN IRRESISTIBLE FORCE on psychoanalytic theory, the infamous Sarah Goldman marshmallow test, Joan Didion, Edie HarperCollins. HB. Was $39.99 Sedgwick and Andy Warhol, and the Fall of Eden. Fascinatingly, it’s also a reflection $34.99 on privilege, ‘what it means and what it Available now doesn’t mean’. She meditates on their Caroline Chisholm was a 1960s upbringing, and its ‘fine line between take-no-prisoners neglect and freedom’, while asserting game-changer of that her brother was loved. Endorsed by colonial Australia – as cerebral literary heavyweights like Siri well as a charming, Hustvedt and Andrew Solomon, Mayhem is wholly committed, and about more than one life or one family: it’s a utterly determined force complex diagnosis of addiction itself. of nature. Arriving in Australia in 1838, she Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly was appalled by the plight of young female immigrants in Australia: there were no jobs THE FIRST CASUALTY for them, no accommodation, and many of Peter Greste them resorted to prostitution to survive. In Viking. PB. $35 response to this need, Caroline became a Available 2 October woman on a mission. In many ways a In a world where the proto-feminist and committed social activist, first casualty of war is she utterly transformed life in Australia. truth, journalism has become the new COMING TO MY SENSES battleground. Peter Alice Waters Greste spent two decades reporting from the Hardie Grant. HB. Was $39.99 frontline in the world’s $34.99 most dangerous Available now countries, making headlines himself The long-awaited following his incarceration in an Egyptian memoir from cultural prison. Based on extensive interviews and icon and culinary research, Greste shows how this war on standard bearer Alice journalism has spread to the West, in the Waters recalls the murders at the French satirical magazine circuitous road and Charlie Hebdo and the repressions of Putin’s tumultuous times Russia, but also Australia’s metadata laws leading to the opening and Trump’s phony war on ‘fake news’. of what is arguably America’s most influential restaurant: Chez INCORRIGIBLE OPTIMIST Panisse. Deeply personal and modestly Gareth Evans TWELVE ACCLAIMED WRITERS understated, this is a quietly revealing look MUP. HB. $49.99 at one woman’s evolution from a rebellious SIX MEMORABLE ENCOUNTERS $44.99 yet impressionable follower to a respected Available 2 October activist who effects social and political WRITERS ON WRITERS A colourful and central change on a global level through the figure in Australian common bond of food. politics for two decades In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on MAYHEM: A MEMOIR – described by Bob Hawke as having ‘the Sigrid Rausing an Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them. most acute mind’ of any Hamish Hamilton. HB. $39.99 of his ministers – Gareth Available now Evans has also been Sigrid Rausing is applauded worldwide for the editor (and his contributions, both as Foreign Minister owner) of Granta. Her and in later international roles, to conflict grandfather built the resolution, genocide prevention and curbing Tetrapak global weapons of mass destruction. In this packaging empire. An sometimes moving, often entertaining, and heir to the resulting always lucid memoir Evans looks back over fortune, Rausing’s first the highs and lows of his public life. memory is the smell and alienation of being driven in a chauffeured RICHARD NIXON: THE LIFE car, aged four. Mayhem is a layered, John A. Farrell emotionally conflicted yet ultimately loving Scribe. HB. $59.99 memoir that explores addiction from the Available 2 October perspective of family members. Richard Nixon’s legacy Her brother Hans met his wife Eva, an was an America divided American socialite, in rehab. They sobered and polarised. Nixon up, married, had four children. On New launched the McCarthy Year’s Eve 1999, they unwittingly edged era, set South against Forthcoming: into relapse with a champagne toast to North, and spurred the the new millennium. Their return to full- Christos Tsiolkas on Patrick White · Nam Le on David Malouf silent majority to distrust fledged addiction was discovered when Ceridwen Dovey on J.M. Coetzee · Michelle de Kretser on Shirley Hazzard the country’s elites. He Eva was caught with crack in her handbag persuaded Americans to Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria at an American embassy cocktail party. gnaw, as he did, on grievance. In 1974, he For the next 12 years, the family’s private became the only president to resign in hell (including Sigrid taking custody of the disgrace. This is an enthralling tour-de-force couple’s children) was paralleled in tabloid biography of the darkest US president. ‘The headlines, culminating in Eva’s two-months- similarities between Nixon and Trump leap dead body being found beneath a pile of off the page like crickets.’ – The New York Times 14 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

and prejudice to reveal the lives of THE BOOK OF Politics England’s queens in the century after the FORGOTTEN AUTHORS Norman Conquest – from Matilda of Christopher Fowler Flanders, who supported William the WE WERE EIGHT YEARS riverrun. HB. $35 Conqueror in his invasion of England in IN POWER Available 10 October 1066, to the Empress Maud, who claimed Ta-Nehisi Coates to be queen of England in her own right Christopher Fowler Hamish Hamilton. PB. $35 and fought a bitter war to that end. shares the careers of 99 Available 5 October forgotten authors, From 2008–2016, the punctuated by 12 short leader of the free world Cultural Studies essays about faded was a black man. Obama’s once-favourites: presidency reshaped including the now- America and transformed THE MOTHER OF ALL vanished novels Walt the international QUESTIONS Disney brought to the conversation around Rebecca Solnit screen, and the contemporary rivals of politics, race, equality. But Granta. HB. $24.99 Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie it also attracted criticism Available 27 September who did not stand the test of time. and bred discontent – so much so, that the A new collection of world now faces an uncertain future under a feminist essays by the very different kind of US president. In this bestselling author of Humour essential new book, peerless journalist and Men Explain Things to thinker Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of the Me. Solnit’s is a vision Obama era. that doesn’t stigmatise LAW SCHOOL women’s lives, whether Benjamin Law & Jenny Phang TALKING TO MY they include spouses Brow Books. HB. $24.99 DAUGHTER ABOUT THE and children or not; Available 4 October ECONOMY that brings empathy to the silences in Do you accidentally Yanis Varoufakis men’s lives as well as the silencing of get turned-on while Bodley Head. PB. $29.99 women’s lives; and celebrates the ways watching a nature Available 16 October feminism has shifted in recent years to documentary? Are you Why is there so much reclaim rape jokes, revise canons, and feeling emasculated inequality? In this short rethink our everyday lives. because your book, world famous girlfriend has had economist Yanis ON JOHN MARSDEN: more one-night stands Varoufakis sets out to WRITERS ON WRITERS than you? Australia’s funniest, most answer his 11-year-old Alice Pung lovable mother-and-son team challenge daughter’s deceptively the way we think and talk about the simple question. Using ON KATE JENNINGS: intimate in this hilarious, possibly useful, personal stories and WRITERS ON WRITERS sex-and-relationships advice book. Based famous myths – from Oedipus and Faust to Erik Jensen on The Lifted Brow’s popular ‘Law Frankenstein and The Matrix – he explains Both Black Inc. HB. $22.99 School’ column, this is the hilarious, what the economy is and why it has the Available 2 October semi-explicit illustrated book of advice you never knew you needed. power to shape our lives. This beautifully packaged new series DEVIL’S BARGAIN engages deeply with Joshua Green some of Australia’s most Music Scribe. PB. $29.99 significant writers, in Available now the best way possible – DEVOTION Discover the revealing through personal takes Patti Smith inside story of the by other writers who Yale University Press. HB. $27.99 partnership between love them. In these first Available 11 October Steve Bannon and two books, Alice Pung Donald Trump – the key meditates on the An inspired to understanding the rise influence of YA legend exploration of the of the alt-right, the fall of John Marsden, and Erik nature of creative Hillary Clinton, and the Jensen plunges the invention, from the hidden forces that drove reader into the world of legendary Patti Smith. the greatest upset in American political acclaimed novelist, poet A work of creative history. Based on dozens of interviews and pioneering feminist brilliance may seem conducted over six years, Green spins the Kate Jennings, weaving like magic – its source master narrative of the 2016 campaign from in interviews with a mystery, its impact its origins in the far fringes of right-wing Jennings herself and reflections on her unexpectedly stirring. In this politics and reality television to its classic novel Snake. groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s culmination inside Trump’s penthouse on beloved artists offers a detailed account election night. ‘Deeply reported and TOO FAT, TOO SLUTTY, of her own creative process, inspirations, compulsively readable.’ – The New York Times TOO LOUD and unexpected connections. Anne Helen Petersen LOU REED: A LIFE Scribner. PB. $29.99 History Available 1 October Anthony DeCurtis Anne Helen Petersen John Murray. PB. Was $32.99 QUEENS OF THE uses the lens of $27.99 Available 10 October CONQUEST: ENGLAND’S ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop As lead singer and MEDIEVAL QUEENS culture powerhouses songwriter for the Alison Weir like Lena Dunham, Velvet Underground Jonathan Cape. PB. $35 Nicki Minaj, and Kim and a renowned solo Available 2 October Kardashian, exploring artist, Lou Reed The story of England’s why the public loves to invented alternative medieval queens is a love (and hate) these controversial rock. Acclaimed Rolling chronicle of love, figures. ‘An oasis in a sea of hot takes, a Stone writer Anthony murder, war and set of crisp essays on the provocateurs DeCurtis interviewed betrayal. In the first who fascinate and enrage us. With Reed extensively and knew him well. volume of this new warmth and wit, Anne Helen Petersen With unparalleled access to Reed’s series, Alison Weir celebrates the power of being just a little friends, family, and dozens of other strips away centuries of too much, seeking the rebel inside the intimate relations, he brings Reed’s story romantic mythology trainwreck.’ – Emily Nussbaum compellingly alive. READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 15

WORK SHY Renaissance man Jerome Cordano was the Dave Graney first pioneer of rudimentary quantum physics. Cordano gives Schrodinger’s Cat a run for FORCE OF NATURE Affirm Press. PB. $29.99 his money in the contradiction stakes. He Jane Harper Available 26 September was both an ingenious inventor of locks and a From the author of The Dry, 2017 ABIA Book of the Year Legendary Australian perpetual prison inmate; a fastidious scientist Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking showman Dave Graney and a committed astrologer; the founder of along a muddy bush track. Only four come out the other side. veers from a feckless probability theory and a poverty-stricken As Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk delves into the disappearance, childhood in blue-collar it seems some dangers run far deeper than anyone knew. gambler. He is inconsistency incarnate, which South Australia, to the makes him a compelling prism through which punk rock scene of 1980s to learn about this bizarre new field. London, and beer- This is probably the first time Many RECOVERY: FREEDOM soaked nights touring Worlds Theory and Machiavellian FROM OUR ADDICTIONS Australia where he Renaissance family drama have played Russell Brand worked very hard at not working at all. But out side by side, but who’s complaining? The program in Recovery has in slacking off, Graney became one of the given Russell Brand freedom Brooks’ book defies precise definition. hardest working musicians in the industry, from all addictions and it will Which, in his view, is exactly how we constantly evolving, reinventing, staying do the same for you. This should all start thinking. system offers nothing less one step ahead of everyone – even himself. than liberation from self- Chris Dite is from Readings Carlton centredness, a new perspective and freedom from the illusion INTO THE GREY ZONE of suffering for anyone who Natural History is willing to take the Adrian Owen necessary steps. Guardian Books. PB. $29.99 THE INNER LIFE OF Available 27 September ANIMALS In 2006 Dr Adrian Owen Peter Wohlleben and his team discovered A COLUMN OF FIRE Bodley Head. PB. Was $29.99 a new realm of THE SPARSHOLT AFFAIR Ken Follett $26.99 consciousness, a twilight Alan Hollinghurst Set during one of the Available 16 October zone somewhere This masterly novel takes us most turbulent and Another surefire hit from between life and death: through several generations and revolutionary times in history, A Column of Fire the author of The Secret the Grey Zone. Those across key periods of uncertainty and change in British society. is one of Follett’s most Life of Trees. Mother deer who inhabit it are often From the darkest days of the exciting and ambitious that grieve? Horses that mistakenly labelled as Second World War, it moves to works yet. It will delight feel shame? Squirrels that being irretrievably lost, with no awareness the changing world of the socially longtime fans of the Kingsbridge series and is adopt their and no sense of self. The shocking truth is and sexually liberated London of the 1960s, before landing in the the perfect introduction grandchildren? We that they are often still there, an intact mind mid-1970s. for new readers to humans tend to assume trapped deep inside a broken body and Ken Follett. that we are the only living brain, hearing everything around them. things able to experience feelings intensely and consciously. But have you ever wondered what’s going on in an animal’s head? More Personal Development and more researchers are realising that www.panmacmillan.com.au animals in fact experience a rich emotional THE GENTLE ART life. Acting as our interpreter of the animal world and of the fascinating science, Peter OF SWEDISH DEATH Wohlleben brings this new research to life. CLEANING Margareta Magnusson Scribe. HB. $24.99 Science Available 2 October You can never go back − This charming, exquisite but can you forgive? THE QUANTUM little book achieves the impossible: it makes a A haunting story about ASTROLOGER’S book on organising your HANDBOOK life before death into the forgiveness and hope. Michael Brooks perfect gift for your loved Scribe. PB. $29.99 one (or guide for Available 2 October yourself ). When The philosopher Margareta Magnusson’s husband died, she Zeno, of Elia’s had to downsize her home. The experience arrow paradox, is forced her to recognise the power of frustratingly simple. ‘death-cleaning’ and the importance of doing When an archer shoots it with thought and care. How do you deal an arrow we perceive it with your secrets? Tackle photographs and to move towards the letters? Avoid heirs fighting over your target. But we belongings? Based on experience and understand that in its anecdotes, this book will help you make the journey there, the arrow exists in particular process uplifting rather than overwhelming. points on its trajectory at different instants in time – not travelling to or from these points, but at them. If the ‘journey’ is just a Gift Books series of these instants, the arrow is essentially never in motion. It’s definitely MAKE TROUBLE moving but undeniably frozen when we pinpoint it. Impossible! John Waters Welcome to the confusing (and proven) Corsair. HB. $29.99 reality of quantum physics. Just like Zeno’s Available 26 September arrow, atoms can be two ways at once: When John Waters they literally behave differently when you delivered his gleefully watch them. It’s a highly contested world subversive advice to the Meet the extraordinary The first-ever collection of that scientists are only just beginning graduates of the Rhode woman who helped short stories from the Pulitzer Island School of Design, Prize-winning author of to understand. Quantum physics lab shape Australia. results test the limits of our language and the speech went viral, in Middlesex. imagination, and the field proves especially part because it was so difficult for the layperson. brilliantly on point about making a living as Enter science writer Michael Brooks, a creative person. His manifesto that who warns us in his prologue that he may reminds us all to embrace chaos, be nosy, have gone mad. Brooks is convinced that and outrage our critics. 16 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

Food & Gardening AMERICA: THE COOKBOOK with Chris Gordon Gabrielle Langholtz Phaidon. HB. $59.95 MAGGIE’S RECIPE FOR LIFE Available now Maggie Beer with Professor Ralph Do not be put off by this Martins bold stars-and-stripes S&S. PB. $39.99 cover. This is the Silver Spoon equivalent of $32.99 American food, with over Available 6 October 800 recipes. This book Maggie Beer says, ‘I shows and celebrates the have two great passions country’s myriad traditions – sharing my love of and influences, regional favourites and cooking delicious melting-pot fusion – the culinary heritage of a simple food and nation, from appetisers to desserts and improving the health beyond, state by state. And as a special extra, and nutrition of older there are 50 essays and menus from a ‘who’s people.’ Her enthusiasm who’ of 100 food experts and chefs. is very evident in this wonderful new cookbook. Here she has joined up with Professor Ralph Martins (Professor of CORNERSMITH: ince the arrival of the First SALADS AND PICKLES Fleet there have been Gypsies Neurobiology and Foundation Chair in S Alex Elliott-Howery & Sabine in Australia, yet their experiences Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease at Edith Spindler have never been included in any Cowan University) to create a wonderful array of recipes that are delicious but also Murdoch. PB. $39.99 official histories. In Australian can help fight the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Available 27 September Gypsies, award-winning memoirist by providing the nutrients needed for There is a clear plan to this and novelist Mandy Sayer weaves optimum brain health. Maggie has wonderful cookbook: braise together a vivid, wide-ranging generated more than 200 recipes full of some veggies, toss some history from the first Gypsy people beautiful ingredients that will nourish you leaves, sprinkle with nuts to arrive in Australia (including and your family. It’s all about balance, or seeds and then brighten James Squire, the colony’s first variety and choosing foods that give you with oil and vinegars, serve brewer) through to Gypsy families the best chance of being in good health, with bread and preserves. today. now and into your future. Another timeless And then, the most perfect summer meal collection from our very own Ms Beer. will be right at your fingertips. I love that this cookbook keeps everything simple and RIVER CAFE 30 accessible. No fancy talk, no elaborate Ruth Rogers, Rose Gray, Wyn ingredients: just recipes that make sense on Owen & Sian Trivelli any night of the week and for any occasion. www.newsouthpublishing.com Ebury. HB. $55 Did I mention there’s no meat in this Available 16 October cookbook? You won’t even notice, I promise. When I lived in London I visited the HUMMUS & CO. River Cafe for an Michael Rantissi & Kristy Frawley astonishing meal. Their Murdoch. HB. $49.99 truly simple, modern, Available 27 September Italian cooking has People have been asking inspired so many loved the staff at Sydney’s Kepos chefs today. This book Street Kitchen to produce is a salutation from one of the world’s a cookbook for years – and most iconic restaurants on its 30th finally, the wait is over. birthday. There are 120 simple, modern Think: recipes for family Italian recipes – revisiting favourites from barbecues with plentiful the first iconic River Cafe blue book, salads that burst with flavour, or a Sunday updated for home cooks today, and slow-roast of cumin-spiced lamb shoulder, introducing 30 new recipes, with new tips with Persian cranberry rice pilaf and tangy and anecdotes from Ruth Rogers. This vegetables, followed by pistachio and book is a must-have for all food lovers. rosewater cake with plums and mascarpone. There are also, of course, recipes for dips ... CORSICA: including what is apparently the best THE RECIPES hummus recipe in the world. Nicolas Stromboni Smith Street Books. HB. $59.99 MR & MRS WILKINSON’S Available now HOW IT IS AT HOME This is one of those Matt Wilkinson & Sharlee Gibb tremendous Hardie Grant. HB. $49.99 cookbooks that Available 1 October includes travel tales This is a cracker of a book. and photographs that It’s beautifully presented, seem to capture some features sweet family sort of paradise. It’s photos throughout, and especially hard to take has realistic chapter titles while I’m writing this, (like: ‘When Mum’s as the Melbourne wind hurtles past my Away’ or ‘When the Kids window. I long to go there, and this book is are Away’) and a range of the easy, cheap means to do it. This fresh, approachable recipes. There are tricks beautifully photographed book celebrates and treats for every meal, from breakfast right all that is Corsican: the people, the through to evening meals. I like that this geography and, most importantly, the food. family have opened their hearts and home. I It is also home to a unique cuisine – love that they acknowledge that life is chaotic blending the best of French and Italian and that not every evening is about meat and food – that respects its home-grown three vegetables. Sharlee and Matt are simply produce: citrus fruits, grapes, chestnuts, keeping it real. And they have included the cheese, herbs, fish, seafood and Pope Joan recipe for the best chocolate charcuterie. This book breaks my heart. brownies in Melbourne. Frankly, the book is It’s fantastic. worth it for that page alone. READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 17

New Young Adult Fiction the ‘bump n grab’ game, which results in the indecent assault of female students. See books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 18–19 This is a fun and thoughtful exploration of the types of sexism that weigh most on Young Adult Book of the Month teenage girls, and the variety of opinions and attitudes around how best to tackle it. Vivian isn’t always in agreement with her LA BELLE SAUVAGE: friends, and her new boyfriend isn’t always THE BOOK OF DUST VOLUME ONE the perfect male ally. While not a major Philip Pullman focus of the book, Mathieu introduces David Fickling. PB. Was $32.99. HB. Was $39.99 intersectionality and the limitations of the PB Now $26.95 HB Now $32.99 original riot grrrl movement by including Available 19 October characters of colour and LGBT students. A Philip Pullman returns to the world of his highly-praised His Dark rousing example of smart, brave girls using FAMILY Materials series with this exciting first volume of a new series: The creativity and activism to make their own Book of Dust. Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead lives with his parents personal revolution. and his daemon, Asta, at the Trout Inn near Oxford. Malcolm often Leanne Hall is from Readings Kids navigates through the River Thames in his beloved canoe, La Belle SECRETS Sauvage. Across the river is the Godstow Priory, where the nuns live, and Malcolm has just learned that they have a new guest with them, a baby by the name of Lyra Belacqua. ‘Northern Graphic Novels Lights is by any standards an amazing and richly enjoyable narrative.’ – The Telegraph THORNHILL DISCOVERY TURTLES ALL THE she is. Adelaide realises that if you want Pam Smy WAY DOWN something in life, you’ve actually got to do David Fickling. HB. $29.99 something about it. Available 1 October John Green Thornhill is a TRANSFORMATION Puffin. HB. Was $27.99 WARCROSS beautiful book, $19.99 Marie Lu from its striking Available 10 October Puffin. PB. $24.99 greyscale silhouetted The award-winning Available 2 October cover to the pages author of The Fault in Teenage hacker Emika in-between. The book Our Stars is back with a Chen is struggling to contains two stories set brilliant novel about get by. In order to in two different times. love, resilience and make some quick cash Mary’s story is set in lifelong friendship. she works as a bounty 1982, in a children’s home called Thornhill. Sixteen-year-old Aza hunter, tracking down It’s told through her diary entries and is not a Holmes is trying to players who bet happy one. Mary is an intensely shy selective navigate her daily illegally online. But mute who is tormented by another girl at the existence within the when she takes a risk home. This girl (only ever referred to as she or ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. and hacks into the her) is horrific, torturing Mary in every She never intended on pursuing the mystery opening game of the international Warcross imaginable way, from shoving her in a pantry of fugitive billionaire Russell Picket, but her Championships, she glitches herself into the and locking her in overnight to standing best friend is keen to investigate and there’s action and becomes an overnight sensation. outside her bedroom at 2am THUMP… a $100,000 reward at stake. The game’s creator makes her an irresistible THUMP… THUMPING on her door. As Thornhill closes and the other girls are THEY BOTH DIE offer. He wants Emika to be a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament and to rehoused, Mary and her tormenter are left AT THE END uncover a security problem. Swept up in a alone and Mary reaches her breaking point. Adam Silvera world of fame and fortune, Emika soon The chapters set in 2017 are beautiful S&S. PB. $17.99 discovers that there’s a sinister plot that dark greyscale illustrations following Ella Available 1 October could devastate the entire Warcross empire. moving into the house behind the now- Mateo Torrez and abandoned, empty Thornhill. Through Rufus Emeterio will die MOXIE pictures we see that Ella has recently lost her today. The Death-Cast Jennifer Mathieu mum and her dad works a lot, often leaving has told them this Hodder. PB. $16.99 Ella alone. We see Ella notice the shadow of a unfortunate news just Available 26 September girl in the old Thornhill house. We watch her after midnight. These Vivian is one of climb over and explore, we see her find the From the strangers are looking to the ‘nice girls’ at dolls Mary’s ghost has left for her … make a new friend on East Rockport High. Slowly the two stories combine into one, Pulitzer their End Day for She has a small group becoming more harrowing with every page different reasons. of friends, and her turn: the tension building until you’re reading Prize-winning Luckily, there’s an app for that: the Last main mission is to fly faster and faster, desperately trying to finish Friend. The New York Times bestselling author under the radar and the book before dark. Breathtakingly scary in of History is All You Left Me delivers another not draw too much the best possible way, Thornhill is excellent for author of A beautiful, heartbreaking book. attention to herself. anyone 13 or older who loves ghost stories. Her grandparents Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids Visit From the UNTIDY TOWNS describe her as ‘dutiful’, perhaps in sharp Kate O’Donnell contrast to her mum, who was a hell-raising ILLEGAL Goon Squad UQP. PB. $19.95 riot grrrl in her nineties youth. But as it turns Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin & Available 2 October out in the entertaining and highly satisfying Giovanni Rigano (illus.) This highly anticipated Moxie, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Hodder. HB. $29.99 novel by Kate Inspired by a shoebox full of her Available 10 October O’Donnell is a story mum’s old feminist zines and a Bikini From the author of about love, friendship Kill soundtrack, Vivian is moved to take the award-winning and finding your own anonymous action when sexist comments Artemis Fowl series way. Seventeen-year- by male students go undisciplined by their (and the team behind get the whole story at old Adelaide doesn’t teachers. She starts a zine – Moxie – and the graphic novel hachette.com.au want to succeed on distributes it in the bathrooms at school, version) comes a other people’s terms urging the girls around her to demonstrate powerful story about anymore. Instead of their support for their fellow students and Ebo, a boy following in completing her final year at boarding school, fight back. his brother and sister's she runs away back to her hometown. But Unfortunately, there’s plenty of sexism footsteps on a journey when Addie’s grandad gets her a job at the and inequity at East Rockport High – the from Africa to Europe: across the Sahara local historical society, she finds it just as vague and random dress code checks and Desert and along the dangerous streets of dusty and dull as her new life. She starts public shaming of female students, the Tripoli, before reaching the merciless sea. hanging out with Jarrod who appears to be focus on the school football team to the With each step, he hopes to reunite with full of possibilities, but he’s just as stuck as utter neglect of the girls’ sports teams, and his sister and find a new life. 18 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

Book of the Month NEVERMOOR: THE TRIALS OF MORRIGAN CROW Jessica Townsend Lothian. PB. $16.99. Available 10 October

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow is the first book in a charmingly odd, breathtakingly adventurous and entirely magical new children’s series. Debut author Jessica Townsend created a major stir at Frankfurt Book Fair last year and the industry hasn’t stopped buzzing about her book since. I am certain it won’t disappoint expectations, not least those of the children destined to meet Morrigan Crow. Morrigan is exactly the kind of heroine I love best. She’s determined, inquisitive and has a knack for finding the humour in the worst of times. This last trait is extremely helpful, as she also happens to be a Cursed Child, making her responsible for all kinds of local misfortunes (her politician father resentfully foots the compensation bills while Morrigan writes endless apology letters). Oh, and it also means that she’s fated to die at midnight on Eventide. Luckily for us readers, she forgoes this decidedly morbid event and is instead whisked away by an eccentric stranger, narrowly escaping a pack of terrifying, ravenous shadow hounds. Our eccentric stranger is the esteemed Jupiter North of the Wundrous Society. He offers Morrigan a home at the extraordinary Hotel Deucalion, which lies within the city of Nevermoor, and the opportunity to join the secret society from which he hails. To do this, Morrigan must pass a number of mysterious trials and avoid falling into the hands of the odious Inspector Flintlock, who’s determined to exile her for not being a legal citizen. Discerning young readers will no doubt pick up on the connections this novel draws with our own world here. The magic of Nevermoor is shiveringly, thrillingly wonderful. Open its pages and discover a hotel room that changes to suit your personality, a large talking cat with exactly the right amount of cattitude, and children with awe-inspiring magical abilities. This novel is an absolute treat. For ages 9+.

Bronte Coates is digital content coordinator & Readings Prizes manager

appetite and a sweet little house with a secret. Then we THE WAR I FINALLY WON Middle Fiction have a desperate fisherman who enters into a very bad Kimberly Brubaker Bradley bargain with a power-hungry monkey. And finally, a tiny, Text. PB. $19.99 tricksy tailor gives a promise that not even the most magic MAGNUS CHASE AND THE SHIP Available 2 October of beanstalks can help him escape. This subversively silly OF THE DEAD: BOOK 3 In this sequel to the award-winning trilogy will captivate parents and children alike. Rick Riordan The War that Saved My Life, a Readings Puffin. PB. $22.99 favourite and Newbery Honor Book, Available 3 October ACCIDENTAL HEROES: Ada’s World War II journey Magnus is back to face his greatest THE ROGUES 1 continues. Ada is rediscovering who challenge yet in Rick Riordan’s final Lian Tanner she is after having her clubfoot instalment of this smash-hit series. A&U. HB. $19.99 surgically fixed. She knows for certain Now that Loki the trickster god is Available 27 September that she’s not what her mother said free, he’s readying Naglfar, the Ship of Fans of Lian Tanner’s she was – crippled mentally as well as the Dead, to sail against the Norse bestselling fantasy adventure physically. She’s not a daughter gods and begin the final battle of series, The Keepers, will delight in her anymore, either ... so what is she? Ada and her brother, Ragnarok. If Magnus Chase and his new trilogy, The Rogues, set in the Jamie, live with their loving legal guardian, Susan, in a friends want to stop Loki, they will same richly imagined world. It cottage on the estate of the formidable Lady Thorton. But have to sail across the oceans of introduces a new cast of heroes and when Ruth, a Jewish girl from Germany moves in, things Midgard, Jotunheim and Niflheim in order to stop Naglfar villains, and a thrilling, well-paced intensify quickly. before it’s ready to sail on Midsummer’s Day. Filled with plot, where the stakes are raised, angry sea gods, hostile giants, and even an evil fire- suspense builds and danger looms THE WONDERLING breathing dragon, Magnus’s biggest challenge will be to large. Mira Bartók face his own inner demons and defeat Loki once and for all. This series opens with Pummel, the farmboy seeking Walker. HB. $24.99 work in the city, to better help his family, who are Available now TALES FROM A TALL FOREST struggling back on the farm. Pummel’s naivety makes Mira Bartók’s The Wonderling Shaun Micallef & Jonathan Bentley (illus.) him vulnerable to manipulation and he becomes an is a story full of heart and soul, HG Egmont. HB. $29.99 unwitting, disposable pawn in Lord Rump’s devious and one of my favourite middle- Available 16 October plans. Lord Rump is assisted in his plans by his fiction reads of 2017. This is a story Australia’s favourite satirist, Shaun granddaughter, Duckling, a willing accomplice who about groundlings – beings that are Micallef, delivers us a new and ensnares Pummel in her grandfather’s web under the part animal and part human – who rambunctious take on the traditional promise that this collusion will set her free from any are treated as lesser beings merely fairy story, illustrated by award- future schemes. But Duckling and Pummel become because of their mixed heritage, and winning artist Jonathan Bentley. An unlikely allies, as it dawns on them that they’re both banished to live in an orphanage far innocent princess goes into the forest Lord Rump’s pawns, and they realise the full treachery removed from more elevated society. Headmistress and quickly finds herself trapped of his evil plans. For readers 9–13. Carbunkle, a cruel villainess who reigns supreme over this between a wolf with a ravenous Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster unfortunate institution, subjects the groundlings to READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 19 terrible hardship and suffering. It’s a place where it rains MOUSE HOUSE Literary-leaning children, young teenagers and fans of Neil all the time, where singing is banned and friendships John Burningham Gaiman and Shaun Tan will adore the journey. among the students are discouraged and treated as a Jonathan Cape. HB. $29.99 Mike Shuttleworth is from Readings Hawthorn punishable offence. But these risks don’t stop Arthur, the Available 2 October hero of this story, from standing up to a bully, making a Picture-book genius John new friend and daring to believe in a life beyond the bleak Burningham explores kindness and Activity & Novelty Books orphanage walls. The brave escape in pursuit of freedom empathy in Mouse House. Two and the arduous adventure that follows will have you families live in this house; one is a BUSY BUILDERS: AIRPORT holding your breath in fear, hope and wonder. NP mum, a dad, a girl and a boy. But the Timothy Knapman & Carles Ballesteros (illus.) other is a secret mouse family, who Walker. Box. $24.99 Junior Fiction only come out when everyone is Available 1 October asleep. One day they’re spotted and Experience the excitement of air GOOD NIGHT SLEEP TIGHT the mouse catcher is called ... will travel with this build-your-own they escape in time? A beautiful story filled with hope. airport play set. Busy Builders: Airport Kristina Andres comes with a terminal and runway, Gecko. HB. $29.99 ODD ONE OUT fun slot together aircrafts, figures, Available 1 October Danielle Chaperon & Iris (illus.) and accessories. The 92-cm set comes In this idyllic world, Fox and Auzou. HB. $16.99 with a fully-illustrated, fact-filled Rabbit live in perfect Available 1 October 32-page book that will thrill any harmony. Their only troubles are young adventurer. finding more creative ways to say Clara and Annabelle are good night, and getting to sleep! soulmates, complete in their EGYPTOMANIA Each of the short, eleven- friendship. Then along comes Juliette. Heartbroken, Clara watches Emma Giuliani and-a-half stories – and some are & Carole Saturno only a page long – explore Fox Annabelle and Juliette’s friendship Laurence King. HB. $39.99 and Rabbit’s exploits, with guest blossom as she tags along, feeling on Available 1 October appearances by their friends Kangaroo and Elephant, the outer; life can be so unfair! This is What a feast for the eyes! This is sheepdog Lottie and the inept Granny Wolf; delectably such a common experience in a stunning, large-format, quirky shenanigans which are truly hilarious! This childhood and yet feels singularly coffee-table book that is absolutely beautifully illustrated book is a joy to behold and share. isolating and will resonate with many a child and adult. thrilling in its elegant design and Look out for the added layer of playfulness in the The illustrator, Iris, is a graphic novel artist and the flamboyant colour, with its sturdy charming pictures. And when you’ve finished reading pictures have a simple sensibility. Along with Danielle flaps and incredible reveals. the stories, remove the book’s dust jacket – you’re in for Chaperon’s candid text, they make for a standout Egyptomania begins by describing a surprise! picture-book for children aged 3+. the beginning of civilisation along the This gorgeous, quirky little gem is a must-have for Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn River Nile five thousand years ago and any home library. A wonderful family read-aloud and the way the calendar was planned around the river’s regular a delight for junior independent readers and their SAY ZOOP! flooding each year. It describes the crops and food sources classrooms. Highly recommended for ages 4+. Hervé Tullet of the Egyptian people, their daily lives and different roles in Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern A&U. HB. $22.99 society. We learn about the development of the pharaohs, the Available 27 September numerous gods, and the embalming process. We are shown Bestselling picture-book creator the latest research on how the pyramids were made and Picture Books Hervé Tullet has created another why their shape changed over time. We discover Egyptians’ spellbinding book experience for strong belief in the afterlife and their ritual of weighing the HELLO, MELBOURNE! young children. Filled with sound, heart. There are also many hieroglyphics to explore. Megan McKean colour, motion and imagination, Information is presented in short paragraphs with T&H. HB. $24.99 children will delight in the fun accompanying illustrations. Flaps throughout the book lift Available 1 October interaction. Get ready to sing, to reveal more details, such as the intricately decorated This charming picture book whisper and shout with each turn sarcophagus that opens to reveal text and another detailed from the creator of Hello, of the page. The many fans of Press Here! will be delighted illustration, which opens again to reveal a mummified body Sydney! treats us to a tour of to follow Tullet’s lead again and ‘say zoop!’ covered in symbols. Melbourne hosted by six friendly In a spectacular testament to the unforgettable magpies. The simple, playful THE AMAZING MONSTER Egyptians, this book brings history to brilliant life and illustrations portray Melbourne’s DETECTOSCOPE will turn even the most disinterested reader into an most iconic sites, including Graeme Base Egyptomaniac. This is a must-have book for history fans, Flinders Street Station, the Royal Viking. HB. $29.99 Egyptologists and lovers of art and design aged 6–100. Botanic Gardens and Hosier Lane. Available 2 October Angela Crocombe is from Readings Kids There are lots of fun facts that even A visually gorgeous, funny locals may be surprised by. Did you know that Ned Kelly’s adventure from the acclaimed armour is housed at the State Library, the NGV has the creator of Animalia. When our largest stained-glass ceiling in the world or that you can hero uses his Amazing Monster Classic of the Month discover a penguin colony on St Kilda pier? You can even DetectoScope, he finds that the see Readings Carlton on the ‘Little Italy’ page, with a house is infested with monsters! THE THIEF LORD smiling Mark Rubbo standing out the front. Hello, Can he find the courage to face Cornelia Funke Melbourne! touches on many of the city’s passions – art, his fears? This whimsical take on Chicken House. PB. $21.99 sport, nature and of course, food – in a fun journey with facing childhood fears features intricate paper engineering Available now plenty to spot on each page. This is a delightful and a whole host of hilariously hideous beasties lying in Prosper and his little brother Bo introduction to Melbourne for a visiting child, a reminder wait beyond the DetectoScope viewfinder. have run away to the magical city of of the many reasons to love the city for a local, or the Venice, following the death of their perfect present for an international friend. Hello, TINTINNABULA beloved mother. They join forces with a Melbourne! is suitable for ages 3+. Margo Lanagan & Rovina Cai (illus.) group of young runaways taking shelter in Angela Crocrombe is from Readings Kids Little Hare. HB. $29.99 an abandoned cinema. The group has Available 1 October been taken under the wing of the KOALA BARE In Tintinnabula, a lone young mysterious Scipio, better known as the Jackie French & Matt Shanks (illus.) woman sets out on a journey Thief Lord, who provides for them by HarperCollins. HB. $24.99 through devastated lands and robbing the great houses of Venice. Available now wind-lashed barren fields to a place When Prosper and Bo’s aunt hires a P.I., Victor Getz, to Koalas have been called ‘bears’ of deeper consolation, renewal and track them down so she can adopt Bo and send Prosper to for far too long, but this koala is peace. The brilliant speculative boarding school, the boys must work hard to stay hidden, and out to prove to the world that he fiction author Margo Lanagan (Black more importantly, stay together. is bare – and that never, ever can Juice, Seahearts) teams with young This beautifully written novel paints a wonderful portrait a koala be called a bear. Bestseller Melbourne illustrator Rovina Cai to of Venice – you will feel as if you are exploring its twisting Jackie French teams up with produce a stunning, seductive picture-book for older readers. network of alleyways and canals along with Prosper and Bo. talented new illustrator Matt Rovina Cai’s artwork seamlessly modulates from This is an unforgettable book, with a touch of magic that Shanks to deliver an incredibly harsh, red, ruined landscapes to greener pastures without will have readers of all ages under its spell. funny picture book that’s destined to become an instant ever breaking the spell. And while the text echoes the Ellen Cregan is from Readings Doncaster classic. Includes a free plush toy! Brontes, Whitman and Yeats, the book holds its own vision. 20 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

you’ll meet all sorts of magical creatures, GAY & THE from pixies and fairies to brownies and LESBIAN, COMPLETE imps. Some are sweet and helpful, while THEN & NOW ASIAN others are lazy and naughty. But life is never boring when the magic folk are about! Robert Reynolds COOKBOOK & Shirleene (NEW NAUTICAL Robinson EDITION) PB. Was $29.99 CHIC Charmaine Solomon Now $13.95 Amber Jane HB. Was $59.99 Bargain Gay & Lesbian, Then & Now $29.99 Butchart Now reveals the legacies of homophobia, Instantly heralded as a classic when HB. Was $55 the personal struggles and triumphs Now $15.95 it was first published in 1976, this involved in coming out, and the many Table From Chanel’s coastal updated edition of Charmaine Solomon’s different ways of being gay or lesbian in influential and iconic The Complete couture to McLaren Australia – then and now. It is a moving Asian Cookbook covers 800 classic and and Westwood’s punk-fuelled pirates, account of a quiet revolution. from Jean Paul Gaultier’s beefcake camp contemporary dishes from 15 countries. THE to Tommy Hilfiger’s preppy classics, this is TURQUOISE: Written with the home cook in mind, it belongs in every household kitchen. TRAGEDY OF the first and only book to celebrate nautical A CHEF’S MR MORN fashion and all its iconic looks. Nautical style has an enduring sophistication, and TRAVELS BIG HISTORY: Vladimir Nabokov this volume is a glorious celebration of its IN TURKEY OUR HB. Was $39.99 perennial popularity. Greg & Lucy INCREDIBLE Now $12.95 Malouf JOURNEY, For the first time in DECADE: HB. Was $75 FROM BIG English, Vladimir 1970–1980 Now $17.95 Nabokov’s earliest major work, written BANG TO NOW Rennie Ellis Share Greg and Lucy’s unforgettable when he was only 24: his only full-length Dorling Kindersley & David HB. Was $69.99 journey through the variety and richness play, introduced by Thomas Karshan and Now $19.99 of Turkey and its culinary landscape. Christian (foreword) beautifully translated by Karshan and Showcasing Rennie Recipes are inspired by the places and HB. Was $49.99 Anastasia Tolstoy. Now $19.99 Ellis’s contribution foods they discover along the way, Aligned with the online Big History to photography on visits to spice markets and tiny MIDNIGHT IN Project, supported by Bill Gates, Big and social history, Decade highlights Ellis as soup kitchens, fish sandwiches on the History puts a wide-angle lens on history, EUROPE one of Australia’s most important chroniclers Bosphorus, Ottoman banquets in fine and uses stunning visual timelines and Alan Furst of the seventies. Predominantly in black and restaurants and drinking chay in ancient special CGI reconstructions to show you HB. Was $39.99 white, the photographs explore the cultures tea houses. history’s greatest events like never before. Now $12.95 and subcultures of the time – from political ‘Another fine addition upheavals, the women’s movement, Aboriginal LUKE to his elegant, gripping, rights and Vietnam, to pop festivals, the disco NGUYEN’S MEDICINE: interwoven set of novels scene, fashion and new theatre. FRANCE THE that will someday form a kaleidoscopic map Luke Nguyen DEFINITIVE of European powers forced into desperate DECADENT: HB. Was $59.99 ILLUSTRATED alliances as they fight for their lives ... 1980-2000 Now $14.95 HISTORY Mr. Furst tells galloping good stories, and Rennie Ellis Follow acclaimed Dorling Midnight in Europe is one of them.’ – The HB. Was $69.99 chef Luke Nguyen Kindersley New York Times Now $19.99 as he traverses the culinary landscape HB. Was $49.99 YIRRKALA Decadent is a of France to discover the flavours, Now $19.99 fascinating ingredients and dishes that have Medicine tells the fascinating visual history DRAWINGS snapshot of influenced Vietnamese cooking. From of medicine and our health through the Cara Pinchbeck the wild, opulent, sometimes tacky the bustling streets of Paris to the coastal ages, finishing in the present day. Follow PB. Was $45 hedonism of the 1980s in Australia. cities of Nice and Marseilles, Luke meets the greatest stories of medicine and its Now $15.95 Ellis’s boundary-pushing and sometimes with chefs and locals to hear their stories breakthroughs, with incredible coverage of In 1947 a group of voyeuristic works capture a society that and passion for good food, sampling their disease, drugs, treatment and cures. senior Aboriginal seems to be revelling in its abandonment regional specialities along the way. leaders and bark of the politically charged 1970s (as GREAT CITY painters in Yirrkala, north-east Arnhem documented in Decade). CEZANNE: MAPS Land, collaborated with anthropologists A LIFE Dorling Ronald and Catherine Berndt to document THE SOCIAL Alex Danchev Kindersley the intricacies of their culture and history. ANIMAL HB. Was $69.95 HB. Was $49.99 The result was the Yirrkala drawings, David Brooks Now $17.95 Now $19.99 a group of over 360 works in crayon on PB. Was $25 ‘Original, engaging This beautifully paper. Dynamic, vivid and unlike any other Now $10 and highly illustrated book Indigenous Australian art in medium, style With unequalled persuasive ... Seeing explores the world’s most celebrated and colour, this is the first comprehensive insight and brio, New beyond the outward man, the supposed historical city maps. Richly detailed ancient publication of these magnificent drawings. York Times columnist fractured sociopath, [Danchev] would like and modern maps of important cities CHARLIE David Brooks has to relay the substance of the painter who take you on a journey across the globe in long explored and undertook to deliver “truth” in his art: stunning detail, from Athens to Alexandria AND LOLA: explained the way we live. Now he turns to “Cézanne’s truth may be more important and Cape Town to Cairo, with close-up ONE THING the building blocks of human flourishing than Cézanne’s doubt”.’ – The Guardian views of each city’s most intriguing features. Lauren Child in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating HB. Was $24.99 work grounded in everyday life. BREAKFAST TREASURE Now $12.95 WITH PALACES Charlie and Lola MARGARET LUCIAN Maggie Fergusson introduce the (non-scary) nature of counting FULTON Geordie Greig (ed.) and sums to very young children. From CHRISTMAS HB. Was $39.99 PB. Was $29.99 iconic, multi award-winning author and artist Margaret Fulton Now $16.95 Now $12.95 Lauren Child, One Thing will delight fans new PB. Was $45 Breakfast with From Julian Barnes and old, the world over. Now $12.95 Lucian is an and Andrew O’Hagan THE From Australia’s intimate portrait to Ann Patchett and most loved cookery of the artist as both a young and an old Tim Winton, great writers give us personal MAGICAL writer comes this delightful volume on man. Illustrated with many unseen tours of the museums they treasure. COLLECTION Christmas food. From choosing what to photographs of Freud, it is a uniquely Explore the Villa San Michele on the Enid Blyton serve for Christmas dinner and discovering fascinating, personal and authoritative sunny island of Capri with Ali Smith. HB. Was $26.99 how best to shop and prepare ahead, to account of one of the greatest British Discover an Egyptian temple in the heart of Now $12.95 planning a full menu, and clever ideas for painters of this century and the last – and Copenhagen with Alan Hollinghurst ... and In Enid Blyton’s The leftovers, Margaret will help make your a profile of a man who makes everyone the mystery of Sibelius’s silence in Helsinki Magical Collection, next family Christmas one to remember. else’s life seem less lived. with Julian Barnes. READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 21

New Film & TV fund, or who cannot risk ... showing their film carries a trace of the sweep of a great face at an ordinary clinic.’ – The Guardian screen epic along with the with Lou Fulco straightforward, explanatory qualities of DVD OF THE MONTH THE MOONSTONE mass-audience TV, and is never less than $29.95 absorbing.’ – The New York Times PRIME SUSPECT 1973 Available 11 October The Moonstone by Wilkie LIKE CRAZY $29.95 Collins is probably the first $29.95 Available 11 October full-length detective novel in Available 5 October It’s very satisfying to go back in time and watch the origin story of English. This BBC five-part ‘Cross One Flew Over the a character you’ve come to know well from a long-running series. miniseries ‘should prove a Cuckoo’s Nest with In Prime Suspect 1973, that’s exactly what happens, as newcomer Stefanie great gateway drug for crime Thelma and Louise, set it Martini plays Jane Tennison as a 22-year-old probationary constable drama, costume drama and Under the Tuscan Sun, and based at Hackney police station. Martini is convincing as this innocent, for Collins himself’. – The Telegraph you’d have something naïve, not yet confident, but highly passionate and dedicated younger akin to Like Crazy, a version – one far from the self-assured Helen Mirren we’re used to in the role. PROFESSOR T vibrant and compelling This series follows the investigation of the brutal murder of young woman Julie-Ann SEASONS 1 & 2 look at friendship, Collins, on the local housing estate. The victim is a runaway and drug-user, so CID is quick $34.95 freedom and the fine line between sanity to look for a drug-deal gone bad as the motivation. Concurrently, career criminal Clifford Available 4 October and madness.’ – Los Angeles Times Bentley is due to be released from prison and is planning a big hit when he gets out. The A quirky Belgian crime two investigations inevitably intertwine. drama about an eccentric, As the episodes unfold, we see Jane deal with ingrained precinct sexism as well as gifted professor (a fusion DOCUMENTARY difficulties at home, where her parents don’t consider policing to be a suitable or worthy of House, Monk, Sherlock career choice for her. and Morse): a Jane has some allies in Detective Inspector Len Bradfield (Sam Reid) who takes Jane WHITELEY criminologist and police under his wing and encourages her to ask questions and speak up when she believes Was $34.95 | $29.95 advisor with an she has spotted something others have missed; and fellow constable Kath Morgan (Jane Available now unpredictable nature. Gunning) who offers advice and is someone for Jane to look up to, especially when Kath is Whiteley is a visual offered a position in CID, which is where Jane aims to be one day. It’s enjoyable to watch journey into the private these early, awkward and flawed stages in Jane Tennison’s character: she is yet to exert her HOUSE OF CARDS SEASON 5 life and creative legacy brilliance, but there are glimmers of who she will one day become. of Australia’s most $49.95 Suzanne Steinbruckner is from Readings St Kilda iconic artist, Brett Available 4 October Whiteley, told ‘in his In the midst of the own words’ using UTOPIA SEASON 3 presidential election, personal letters, TV tensions mount in the notebooks and photographs, interwoven $29.95 White House as Frank and Available now with reconstructions, animations, THIS IS US Claire continue to navigate archival interviews and rare footage. Featuring a stellar cast led their political careers and SEASON 1 by Rob Sitch, the award- redefine their relationships THE FARTHEST: $54.95 winning Utopia returns. A – particularly with each other. Available now comedy for anyone who’s THE STORY OF ‘This Is Us belongs to ever been crushed by the VOYAGER what has become a bureaucratic process – and FILM $24.95 fully-fledged US TV lived to laugh at it. Available 4 October genre: a jokey, fast- ‘For any believer in talking ensemble piece, VALKYRIEN SERIES 1 VICEROY’S HOUSE humankind’s instinct to ostensibly cynical, that $34.95 Was $39.95 | $29.95 transcend boundaries, contains at its core a Available 4 October Available now the Voyager 1 and reaffirmation of human This new Nordic eight- ‘Viceroy’s House is a Voyager 2 space probes, nature so brashly sincere as to constitute a parter focuses on ‘a medic handsome, fleet look at and the NASA team that full-scale flight from reality. When it’s light, and an investigator, the months leading up to produced them, inspire This Is Us is sharp and funny, and when it paranoid mavericks, who India’s independence awe. The Farthest, a suddenly gets emotional it doesn’t so much end up running a secret from Britain in 1947, a dazzling documentary written and pluck at your heartstrings as punch you in hospital for those whose milestone that just passed directed by Emer Reynolds, illustrates the aorta.’ – The Guardian treatment the state will not its 70th anniversary. The why.’ – The New York Times

FINAL PORTRAIT October 5 (M) BLUE October 12 (PG) MET OPERA: NORMA from October 28 (E) In 1964 the American writer and art-lover James Lord (Armie Hammer) BLUE is a provocative journey into the ocean realm, witnessing this The 2017-2018 Metropolitan Opera season opens with NORMA. is asked by his friend, the world renowned Swiss artist, Alberto critical moment in time when the marine world is on a precipice. A fusion of sublime melody, vocal challenge, and dramatic power, Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush), to sit for a portrait. As the days go by and As we learn of the ecological crimes occurring worldwide, we also this opera examines an archetypal situation: a powerful woman turn into weeks and weeks, Lord realizes his entire life has been uncover the shocking truths happening on our own shorelines. compromises her ideals for love, only to find herself betrayed by hijacked by this erratic genius. Directed by Stanley Tucci, FINAL Industrial scale fishing, habitat destruction, species loss and pollution her lover. This production of Bellini’s masterpiece stars Sondra PORTRAT is a bewitching portrait of a genius, and of a friendship have placed the ocean in peril and the very nature of the sea is being Radvanovsky as the Druid priestess. Sir David McVicar’s evocative between two men who are utterly different, yet increasingly bonded irretrievably altered. BLUE is an urgent call to arms, and a must production sets the action in a Druid forest where nature rules. through a single, ever-evolving act of creativity. watch documentary. “The Met: Live in HD series, which transmits Met performances to more HHHHH “Geoffrey Rush shines in Stanley Tucci’s “A rallying cry … a beautifully shot and earnest look at the largely than 2,000 movie theaters in 71 countries around the world, continues witty Giacometti sketch.” The Guardian invisible apocalypse affecting the marine world.” FilmInk for its 12th season.” The Metropolitan Opera

Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema 22 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017

New Music highlights include “When Will I Be WILDFLOWER BLUES Changed”, which features special guest Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton vocals and guitar from Bob Weir.’ – $24.95 | Also on vinyl Folkradio.co.uk Album of the Month Available now OUT OF SILENCE Playing together for the LOTTA SEA LICE first time in years, Neil Finn Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile co-founders of beloved $21.95 | Available now Americana band The Be $21.95 | Available 13 October Out of Silence was Good Tanyas, Jolie Also on vinyl recorded and streamed Holland and Samantha ‘I cherish my intercontinental friendships ...’ live on Facebook over Parton, have released a gorgeous new Australian indie-rock sensation Courtney Barnett four Fridays in August. album. Wildflower Blues wanders from rural croons on ‘Continental Breakfast’ – moments later This ‘beautiful on the blues to folk and ragtime, from smoky jazz American spacey-rock sensation Kurt Vile adds, surface and yet to emotive R&B and fearless rock’n’roll. ‘Somewhere on the sphere around here.’ It’s a song that seemingly bottomless’ album sees Finn ‘at aptly transports the listener into the bond between his most contemplative and tender, at the musicians whose respective lives are lived on opposite sides of the world, but who share most troubled of times.’ – The Guardian Folk/World absurd experiences of fame and life on the road. The process of writing Lotta Sea Lice began when Vile wrote a song with Barnett’s CARRY FIRE voice in mind. An email exchange ensued, followed by an exchange of songs, and thus Robert Plant LADILIKAN began the low-key collaboration that would become a record comprised of covers and $21.95 | Available 13 October Trio Da Kali & Kronos Quartet originals. Thoughtful instrumentation, paired with Vile’s trademark laconic delivery and Legendary musician $26.95 | Also on vinyl Barnett’s wry observations, give the album a hazy summery atmosphere. Moments in Lotta Robert Plant says his Available now Sea Lice have shades of Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Blood on the Tracks- eleventh solo album is Take a trio of the finest era Bob Dylan, especially on ‘Untogether’, a wistful but sardonic heartbreak song delivered ‘about intention’. He traditional griot on a wave of slide guitar. Standout tracks are ‘She’s so Easy’ and a brilliant cover of Jen says, ‘I respect and musicians from Mali and Cloher’s ‘Fear Is Like a Forest’ – a tense and haunting interpretation that diversifies the relish my past works but put them in the studio tone of this otherwise overly cruisy record. each time I feel the lure and incentive to with a revolutionary Along with contributions from Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney), Stella Mozgawa create new work. I must mix old with Western string quartet, (Warpaint) and Rob Laakso (Swirlies and The Violators), Jim White and Mick Turner, new’. Plant is joined by The Sensational and the outcome is one of the most unusual this collaboration between Vile and Barnett just makes perfect sense. These nine songs Space Shifters and performs a duet with and rewarding musical collaborations you are demonstrate their strength to move within their wheelhouse – deadpan storytelling, witty special guest Chrissie Hynde. ever likely to encounter: a landmark in streams of conciousness, prodigious guitar playing, and effortlessly well-crafted rock songs. cultural cross-fertilisation. Both parties rank Pia Spreadborough is from Readings Carlton SUPERSCOPE it among the most satisfying musical Kitty, Daisy & Lewis experiences in their diverse careers. $19.95 | Also on vinyl covers … only this time the covers are from Available 29 September TRAILS & TRIBULATIONS Pop/Rock Yusuf’s own 1967 catalogue. ‘There are Superscope is an array of Martin Simpson some I always wanted to hear differently,’ passionate, soulful and $24.95 | Available now he says. ‘Many of my earlier recordings AS YOU WERE fiery songs, injected ‘One of [Martin were overcooked with big band Liam Gallagher with fierce guitars and Simpson’s] finest, an arrangements. They crowded the song out reckless rhythms. The exquisitely played $21.95 | Available 6 October a lot of times.’ – The Independent Liam Gallagher’s debut songs speak of ardent distillation of standards solo album is packed with HAIKU FROM ZERO feelings about love, sex, partying ... and from both sides of the all the ingredients that even psychopathy. Atlantic, with a brace of Cut Copy made Oasis so popular: originals for ballast. A master musician $21.95 | Also on vinyl brilliant guitar hooks, a ALL THE LIGHT on top of his game.’ – The Guardian Available now catchy melody, driving ABOVE IT TOO ARIA-award winning rhythms and Gallagher’s signature vocals. Melbourne synth-pop Jack Johnson Jazz/Blues $21.95 | Also on vinyl ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES group Cut Copy return, with their familiar blend Available now Van Morrison of styles, from new wave ‘This album shares what GRACE $21.95 | Also on vinyl to disco. ‘So much of this has been on my mind Lizz Wright Available now album is about this mosaic of information, during the past year or $21.95 | Available now Van Morrison’s 37th images that we’re surrounded by on a so,’ says Johnson. ‘A Produced by Joe Henry, studio album covers day-to-day basis,’ says frontman Dan year in which I sailed Wright’s sixth album of blues songs from Whitford. ‘Sometimes it feels like overload, through the North Southern-accented, influential artists like but there’s a weird random beauty in it.’ Atlantic Gyre for a documentary about patiently distilled jazz, Bo Diddley, Sister plastic pollution in the ocean. A year in gospel and soul ‘captures Rosetta Tharpe and COLORS which Trump was elected as the president her in the act of lovingly Lightnin’ Hopkins, and features five Beck of the United States. A year in which I shoring up her relationship with the camped, surfed, got stitches, explored, original compositions. $21.95 | Also on vinyl Southern hamlets and resilient inhabitants dreamed, shared time and endless Available 13 October that shaped her at a moment of great social conversations with my family and friends NOT DARK YET The wait is finally over for and political tumult’. – All About Jazz … all of which inspired these songs.’ Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer Beck fans who’ve been $26.95 | Available now expecting this album ‘Sibling harmonies are so Jazz Special of the since it was scheduled for Country central to country that it’s release about a year ago. Month remarkable that sisters Judging by the singles Shelby Lynne and Allison released so far, it will be worth it. The latest, DOWN HEARTED BLUES Moorer have not sung LAST DANCE ‘Dear Life’ is a punchy pop song and two Eilen Jewell together before, pursuing Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden previous singles ‘Dreams’ and ‘Wow’ great $21.95 | Also on vinyl parallel glittering careers instead. Their Was $29.95 party songs. Described by Rolling Stone as ‘a Available now voices interweave majestically on cover $11.95 | Available now euphoric blast of experimental pop’ Colors Eilen Jewell’s versions that stretch with surprising ease Limited stock available at this price will be on many playlists this spring/summer. collection of 12 rare, from bluegrass to grunge.’ – The Guardian bold blues and R&B Keith Jarrett and Charlie GATHERING Haden broaden the scope THE LAUGHING APPLE covers adds to her Josh Ritter potent mix of classic of their duo project to Cat Stevens/Yusuf $21.95 | Also on vinyl country, folk, and early showcase jazz classics $21.95 | Available now Available now rock ’n’ roll inspired original music. With like Thelonious Monk’s From one of the most ‘The 13 songs featured her long-time road band, she includes ‘Round Midnight’ and influential singer– on Gathering touch on dark blues like Willie Dixon’s ‘You Know Bud Powell’s spritely ‘Dance of the Infidels’. songwriters of all time, themes of uncertainty, My Love’ and strips down the sound for Love songs, however, are a focus of this The Laughing Apple mania, laughter and songs like Memphis Minnie’s ‘Nothing in selection, with tender versions of songs such combines newly-written sadness. In addition to Rambling’ and the title track, Bessie as ‘My Old Flame’, ‘My Ship’ and ‘Every songs with a number of the single “Showboat”, Smith’s ‘Down Hearted Blues’. Time We Say Goodbye’. READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2017 23

New Classical Music HANDEL GOES WILD the more typically lavish stagings John L’Arpeggiata & Christina Pluhar Butt’s preference for single-part performance brings a welcome sense of Erato. 9029581169 intimacy. In eschewing the pomp and Classical Album of the Month $19.95. Available now circumstance, John Butt’s approach With Händel Goes delivers a fresh, modern performance Wild, Christina IL DIAVOLO that allows the individuality of the Pluhar and her Accademia Arcadia soloists to shine. Tall Poppies. TP243 ensemble $29.95 Available now L’Arpeggiata once again embark on MENDELSSOHN: Many people know the story of the Devil’s Trill some musical time VIOLIN CONCERTO/ Sonata by Tartini. How he dreamed one night he travel, this time in the company of soprano SYMPHONY NO.5 made a pact with the devil, who took up Tartini’s violin Nuria Rial, countertenor Valer Sabadus Isabelle Faust, Pablo Heras-Casado and played ‘a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played and jazz clarinettist Gianluigi Trovesi. The & Freiburger Barockorchester with such great art and intelligence as [he] had never even album features sumptuously reimagined Harmonia Mundi. HMM902325 conceived in [his] boldest flights of fancy’. Upon waking, versions of some of Händel’s most $29.95. Available 1 October he jumped out of bed and, grabbing hold of his violin, tried to replicate this fiendish sonata. celebrated operatic arias. ‘[Faust] takes the The Accademia Arcadia seize this piece, still considered difficult today, with both hands. radical decision to Along with other baroque works, they present it in this lovely album of early eighteenth- A TRIBUTE TO IDA perform the work century trio sonatas (if you ignore the delightful little theme and variations at the end). as scholars now One of the great aspects of this album is the fact that two of the musicians are locals PRESTI: MUSIC FOR think mid-19th- who work hard at furthering the classical music culture in Australia, while the third SOLO GUITAR century violinists (virtuosic violinist Davide Monti) is a frequent visitor who brings a wealth of knowledge to Cinzia Milani would have done: our shores. The founder of Arcadia, Jacqueline Ogeil, also had a Christofori piano made for Brilliant. 95528 with minimal vibrato, but lots of slides her (one of the first examples of a pianoforte and the only one of its kind in the southern $16.95. Available now between the notes and very different hemisphere) and founded the extremely popular Woodend Winter Arts Festival. Together This recording was bowings, making the piece sound far with Monti and Josephine Vains on continuo cello, they sound like three friends who, for made on the occasion spikier and febrile than the suavely the sheer thrill of playing music, came together to create this recording. of the fiftieth efficient readings one usually hears today. What I particularly loved was the very final track: Monti on solo violin doing baroque anniversary of the Some may think her tone is too parched; I variations on what was a whistled tune by one of the supporters of the Woodend Winter death of Ida Presti, loved it.’ – The Times (UK) Arts Festival, Peter McGrath. Monti heard it and as a joke notated it and improvised upon one of the greatest it. Titled ‘Free Spirit’, I feel it brings the best of the traditional Australian folk tune and the guitarists of the strait-laced baroque style together in a short homage to both genres. twentieth century. Italian guitarist Cinzia Classical Specials Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Milano compiled the program for this new recording, consisting of original works by of the Month Ida Presti, as well as other composers’ TCHAIKOVSKY: MANFRED inevitability but also meticulous in works that are dedicated to her. J.S. BACH: THE SYMPHONY OP. 58 observing tempo and dynamic markings ... The warmth and sonority of the playing at HAYDN & CPE BACH: COMPLETE LITURGICAL Semyon Bychkov & Czech the start is enthralling and the CELLO CONCERTOS YEAR IN 64 CANTATAS Philharmonic performance unfolds with character and Sigiswald Kuijken Decca. 4832320 Steven Isserlis & The Deutsche excitement.’ – Gramophone & La Petite Bande $26.95. Available 1 October Kammerphilharmonie Bremen Accent. ACC25319. 19 CDs. ‘The epic Hyperion. CDA68162 ELGAR: THE DREAM OF Was $89.95 expansiveness of the $29.95. Available 1 October $66.95 Manfred Symphony GERONTIUS If the two Haydn Limited stock at this price suits Bychkov’s Daniel Barenboim concertos are the Available 1 October operatic tendencies & Staatskapelle Berlin most accomplished There was huge perfectly. He clearly DG. 4831585. 2 CDs contributions to the scepticism towards relishes the music’s $36.95. Available now cello’s burgeoning Joshua Rifkin’s, and moments of grandeur, over-the-top ‘The best parts of repertoire written in later Andrew rhetoric and dramatic coups, and the this recording are the eighteenth Parrott’s, notion that Czech orchestra responds with playing of exactly those century, the CPE Bach coupling is Bach’s sacred vocal tremendous character.’ – The Guardian passages when this scarcely less fine. Two charmingly rococo superb orchestra encores complete this latest essential works were originally BEETHOVEN: PIANO gives the impression release from Steven Isserlis. written for solo voices. Now this of floating into interpretation is establishing itself more SONATAS AND MOZART: VIOLIN and more. With this edition of one cantata VARIATIONS celestial regions ... Even when his pacing is unconvincing, there’s a gripping SONATAS VOL. 4 for each Sunday, and the great feasts of the Evgeny Kissin integrity and intensity to Barenboim’s Alina Ibragimova & Cedric ecclesiastical year, Sigiswald Kuijken and DG. 4797581. 2 CDs approach ... Barenboim’s account will Tiberghien his ensemble La Petite Bande espoused this $26.95. Available 1 October approach and give it credence in these takes its place alongside Elder’s (Hallé) Hyperion. CDA68164. 2 CDs ‘What I think excellent performances. and Britten’s (Decca) on my shelf marked $29.95. Available 1 October makes his playing “essential deathbed listening”.’ – The This is a series which remarkable is a JOHN TAVENER: TOTAL Times (UK) continues to redefine combination of the standards by ECLIPSE/AGRAPHON absolute clarity and MOZART: PIANO which these works Paul Goodwin & precision in the CONCERTOS NOS. 14 & 19 should be performed. The Academy of Ancient Music faster passagework As before, the music Harmonia Mundi. HMU907271 with an astonishing ability to vary his tone (VOL. 2) spans most of Was $29.95 from the stormiest, heaviest onslaught to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Gábor Mozart’s life, from 1763 – when he was $12.95 the most tender of sounds within an Takács-Nagy & Manchester just seven years old – to 1782, and Limited stock at this price instant.’ – James Longstaffe, Presto Classical Camerata Chandos. CHAN10958 (another) unfinished present written for Available 1 October his new wife Constanze. ‘The enthusiasm with BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY $29.95. Available 1 October The effervescent and which contemporary NO. 3/WAGNER: communicative MONTEVERDI: composers have taken TANNHÄUSER OVERTURE energy of Bavouzet VESPERS 1610 up the challenge of Andris Nelsons & and Takács-Nagy is John Butt & Dunedin Consort writing for early Gewandhausorchester Leipzig encapsulated again Linn. CKD569. 2 CDs instruments has not DG. 4797208 in this second $36.95. Available now always been evident in $26.95. Available now volume of their The sonic grandeur the result. In the case of John Tavener’s Total ‘As a Bruckner Mozart series. The two concertos of Monteverdi’s Eclipse and Agraphon, however, written for interpreter, Nelsons presented here are among the six that spectacular the Academy of Ancient Music and coupled is direct, clear- Mozart composed in Vienna in an masterpiece is on this disc of striking and often beautiful sighted and spacious, extraordinarily productive year. These expertly realised in music, the confrontation of new ideas – or the performance exhilarating interpretations of Mozart’s this recording by perhaps new-and-old ideas – with pre- guided with a sure piano concertos of 1784 are faultlessly John Butt and Classical ways of playing forms a fascinating hand and a sense of supported by the Manchester Camerata. Dunedin Consort. In direct contrast to conjunction.’ – BBC Music Magazine