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Margo Lanagan on Hannah Kent / Mother’s Day Gift Guide

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Hannah Kent $32.99 / $26.95 p6 ky Winter Group) Anna c he Ja

Krien T e ( $29.99 c ien c p14

Clare Vanderpool Cover illustration by soft s Cover illustration $24.95 p19

LES MISÉRABLES $39.95 p20

She & Him Nicki Greenberg on The Great Gatsby $26.95 / $21.95 p21 KATRI NA STR ICK LAND

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LOVE, LOSS AND POWER IN THE ART WORLD The Perfect Gift For Mother’s Day AVAILABLE NOW

CARLTON 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 HAWTHORN 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 Acland St 9525 3852 READINGS AT THE STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA 328 Swanston St 8664 7540 READINGS AT THE BRAIN CENTRE 30 Royal Parade, Parkville 9347 1749 See shop opening hours, browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au

ion T inspiring music In-store May of prevIously unreleased mIxes of prevIously ory of our genera ory Illustrated book wIth exclusIve 15 track Illustrated sT The mosT

Photo: Adrian Cook. Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 3

This month’s news

FREUD CONFERENCE 2013 WINNER OF THE Mark’s At this year’s Freud Conference, Carrie Tiffany has been announced as the winner eminent international and local psychoanalytic for the inaugural Stella Prize for her second novel, Say experts and thinkers will address the theme Mateship With Birds. Set up in order to celebrate ‘Uprooted Minds: Psyche and Society in Times Australian women’s writing, the Stella was named of Crisis’. Keynote speakers include Californian after iconic author Stella Maria Sarah ‘Miles’ News and views from Readings’ researcher, writer and radio personality Dr Franklin and awards $50 000 to the best work managing director, Mark Rubbo Nancy Hollander and distinguished Australian by a woman writer over the past year across a barrister and refugee and human rights range of genres. At a packed awards ceremony You have to admit, women generally do things better and with a greater generosity of spirit than men. advocate Julian Burnside QC. The 2013 in Melbourne, Tiffany also announced that she That was certainly true of this year’s inaugural Stella Prize announcement at Melbourne’s Australian conference will be held at the Melbourne Brain would return $10 000 of her prize money to be Centre for Contemporary Art. The prize, if you didn’t know, honours Australian women’s writing. Centre (Kenneth Myer Building, Royal Parade, shared among her fellow shortlisted authors, Writers, publishers, agents and booksellers flocked from around the country to attend. It was a Parkville) on Saturday 18 May. Please visit Courtney Collins, , Lisa wonderful, joyous occasion, with everyone, including the shortlisted writers who didn’t win, saying www.freudconference.com for the full program. Jacobson, Cate Kennedy and Margo Lanagan. how much they enjoyed it. Shortlisted author Michelle de Kretser () confided that she hadn’t won but she didn’t care; she felt so proud and honoured. Writer Helen Garner gave a MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL DSM-5 PRE-ORDER DISCOUNT wonderful personal address (I hope it’s published somewhere) about the agony and importance of JAZZ FESTIVAL 2013 prizes for writers. The winner was Carrie Tiffany for her novel Mateship With Birds. In her gracious The new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical From 31 May to 9 June, Melbourne will come acceptance speech, Carrie asked her fellow shortlisted authors to join her on the podium and Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), used by alive with Australia’s largest jazz festival, announced that she was returning $10 000 of her prize money to be distributed amongst the other clinicians and researchers to diagnose and entertaining aficionados and newcomers alike writers. ‘It should be more,’ she said, ‘I wish it could be more, but in fact I have some heavy duty classify mental disorders, is the product of with more than 300 musicians and 100 events creditors at the moment and I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep this cheque secret.’ Carrie more than ten years of effort by hundreds of across the city. Highlights include legendary pointed out a number of coincidences – Michelle de Kretser had launched her book and shortlisted international experts. Readings is offering a American vocalist Cassandra Wilson and author Cate Kennedy had been one of the judges who gave her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for special pre-publication price on the DSM-5. multi-Grammy-Award winner Chucho Valdés Scientific Living, the Victorian Premier’s Award for an unpublished manuscript. She omitted one other Order before May 22 and receive the paperback and his Afro-Cuban Messengers. With late- coincidence – she has a writing studio above Stella Prize donor Patricia O’Donnell’s restaurant, the edition for the discounted price of $179 (was night art parties, intimate club gigs, film North Fitzroy Star. O’Donnell was very excited about Carrie’s win. $199) or the hardback edition for the discounted screenings, masterclasses and daily free price of $230 (was $266). Orders can be made at concerts, there’s something for everyone to Jane Palfreyman, Michelle de Kretser’s publisher at Allen & Unwin, was also at the Stella awards night. any Readings shop, or order online and receive enjoy. Visit www.melbournejazz.com for the She was in Melbourne to finish the final edit on Christos Tsiolkas’ new and as yet unnamed novel. It was, free shipping anywhere in Australia. full program and bookings. Readings is a proud she said, a masterpiece and very long: ‘All Christos’ books are long!’ The book is scheduled for October. sponsor of the Melbourne International Jazz Allen & Unwin also have a new novel lined up, to be launched after the Melbourne Writers Festival and will be selling CDs at selected gigs. SEIZURE CRIME + FOOD Festival, and Penguin have announced a new novel for later in the year, Eyrie. There are We’re also holding a fantastic jazz sale in stores also two big local titles in this issue of the Readings Monthly – Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and Andrea to celebrate (further sale details below). SPECIAL OFFER Goldsmith’s The Memory Trap. So it’s shaping up to be a great year ahead for Australian fiction. Seizure is an invigorating new journal that showcases the talents of some of Australia’s Last year, the Pulitzer Prize board deemed that no American novel was worthy of winning. This year JAZZ SALE best young editors, writers and designers. The they found one, Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, a novel set in North Korea. I haven’t read Readings’ annual jazz sale is on again from May latest issue, Crime, features Gretchen Shirm on it yet but I remember one of our more prescient customers urging me to do so last year. Other winners 13 to June 11. It features the biggest names liking men we shouldn’t, P.M. Newton on the art were Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall from the jazz world, including Miles Davis, John of crime, felonious verse by Michael Farrell and (History), The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Coltrane and Keith Jarrett, as well as a huge much more. During May, buy Seizure: Crime in Reiss (Biography), Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds (Poetry) and Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, range of imports from the USA and Europe. any Readings shop or online and receive a copy the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King (General Non-Fiction). Prices start from $9.95. Sale online and in all of Seizure: Food free. Only while stocks last. shops except Readings at the Brain Centre. See more of Seizure at www.seizureonline.com.

Readings Monthly is a free independent monthly newspaper published by Readings Books, Music & Film. Editorial enquiries: Jessica Au at [email protected] Advertising enquiries: Ingrid Josephine at [email protected] or call 03 9341 7739. Design by Sonja Meyer www.sonjameyer.com.au Thank you to Readings staff members and contributors for your reviews. Oslo Davis www.oslodavis.com

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Ryan Bradley Ben Visit the Cinema Nova Bar Leonardo DiCaprio Carey Mulligan Tobey Maguire Gosling Cooper Mendelsohn The new drama from director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) 380 LYGON ST CARLTON www.cinemanova.com.au The highly-anticipated new film from Baz Luhrmann “AnGROUP ambitious BOOKINGS thriller AVAILABLE assisted IN BOTH 3D AND 2D! Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, MAY 9 National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. by excellent performances” Empire MAY 30 4 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

Craft Workshop Cliffy 16 with Kelly Doust 22 Premiere Join craft author Kelly Doust (The Crafty Minx at Join us for a special preview screening of Cliffy, May Events Home, HarperCollins, PB, $39.99) for a hands-on the ABC telemovie based on Cliffy: The Cliff Young For more information and updates, please visit the events page at workshop covering tips and tricks for upcycling Story (Text, PB, $29.99) by Julietta Jameson. The www.readings.com.au. Please note bookings do not necessarily vintage materials and how to make simple, premiere will be followed by a Q&A session. gorgeous decorations from scratch. Everyone will guarantee a seat and some events may be standing room only. Free, but please book on 9347 6633 or at have handmade goodies to take home! [email protected]. E mily $50 per person, or $60 for a double-pass for Lynne you and Mum (includes a copy of Kelly’s book, 8 Gale Wednesday 22 May, 6.30pm 2 Champion craft materials, nibbles and wine by Brown Cinema Nova, Lygon Court, Fiona Wood will launch Steal My Sunshine Brothers). Please book on 9819 1917. 380 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. At 59, Lynne Champion swapped settling into u nch (Woolshed, PB, $18.95), Emily Gale’s wonderful la middle age for botox, killer heels and men of all s new novel for young adults. Thursday 16 May, 6-7.30pm ’ ages. Her debut, Champion Tales, tells all. vent Readings Hawthorn (upstairs) E Deborah ay Free, no booking required. u nch Free, no booking required. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. mother d

23 Conway la Wednesday 8 May, 6pm Thursday 2 May, 6.30pm Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier will play from

Readings Carlton nch nch Readings St Kilda u their new album, Stories of Ghosts ($24.95).

u 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. Katrina 112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182. la la 19 Strickland Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 or at [email protected]. Bart Join us for the chance to hear Katrina Strickland talk with Jason Smith, director of the Heide Hugh 9 Thursday 23 May, 6pm Willoughby Museum of Modern Art, about her new book 6 Mackay Readings Carlton Affairs of the Art (MUP, PB, $34.99). Katrina Legendary musician Bart Willoughby (No Fixed 309 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053. Come and hear Hugh Mackay talk about The Address, , The ) will explore artists’ reputations and the roles u nch Good Life (Pan Mac, PB, $29.99) and address the will be playing from his new album Proud ($27.95). of friends, family and estates in preserving, or la ultimate question: what makes a life worth living? tarnishing, their legacies. Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 Fiona Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 or at [email protected]. $45 per person (includes sparkling wine and a 23 Wood or at [email protected]. copy of the book). Please book on 9347 6633. Thursday 9 May, 6pm Join us for the launch of Fiona Wood’s brilliant

s Monday 6 May, 6.30pm Readings Carlton Sunday 19 May, 3-4.30pm ’ new YA novel, Wildlife (Pan Mac, PB, $16.99), a Readings Hawthorn vent story about first love, friendship andnot fitting in. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. North Fitzroy Star, corner Newry St & St E u nch ay

701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. Georges Rd South, Fitzroy North, 3068. mother d u nch

la Free, no booking required. la Hannah Thursday 23 May, 6.30pm

Women & Power / 13 Kent Anna Readings Hawthorn nch u 6 Destroying 20 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.

In conversation with Angela Meyer Krien la the Joint Hannah Kent’s astonishing debut, Burial Rites Anna Krien’s Night Games: Sex, Power and Christine Nixon will launch two brilliant publications (Picador, PB, was $32.99, special price $26.95), Sport (Black Inc., PB, $29.99) is a brave, Craft Workshop on feminism and culture: the latest issue of about the last woman to be beheaded for murder intelligent and controversial look at the dark side 24 with Helen Tanner the Griffith REVIEW:Women & Power (Text, in Iceland, has taken the publishing world by of footy culture. Sophie Cunningham will launch PB, $27.99), edited by Julianne Schultz, and storm. Join us as she chats with Angela Meyer. this momentous work. Join author Helen Tanner as she reads from Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change her new book, Oscar Goes to the Moon (Vivid Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 Free, no booking required. the World (UQP, PB, $29.95), edited by Jane Caro. Publishing, HB, $19.95), and hosts a sensational or at [email protected]. rocket-building workshop. Suitable for ages 4 to 8. Free, no booking required. Monday 20 May, 6.30pm

Monday 13 May, 6.30pm Readings Carlton nch $20 per person, includes signed copy of the u Monday 6 May, 6pm Readings Hawthorn 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.

la book and the rocket. Places are limited so

Bella Union Bar, Trades Hall, corner nch 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. please book on 9819 1917. u nch u Victoria & Lygon Sts, Carlton, 3053. la la T roy Friday 24 May, 4.30-5.30pm Invisible Women 21 Bramston Readings Hawthorn (upstairs) Andrea 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. 14 u nch of Prehistory Federal Minister Bill Shorten will launch For the

7 Goldsmith la What if we were descended from peaceful True Believers: Great Labor Speeches that Shaped In conversation with Mark Rubbo societies, in which women were respected by History (Federation Press, HB, $64.95) by Troy Caroline Pearce Our very own Mark Rubbo will chat with Andrea and equal to men? At the book launch of Invisible Bramston, a former speechwriter for Kevin Rudd. 26 & Ceri Hale Goldsmith about her novel The Memory Trap Women of Prehistory (Spinifex, PB, $39.95), author Free, but please book on 9347 6633 or at Come and celebrate the release of Frilly May’s (HarperCollins, PB, Was $30, Special price $24.95). Judy Foster, along with Tricia Szirom, Chris Sitka u nch [email protected]. Musical Day by Caroline Pearce & Ceri Hale with and Alex Nissen, will discuss all this and more. Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 la music and fun for all. or at [email protected]. Free, no booking required. Tuesday 21 May, 6.30pm Free, but please book at [email protected] Readings Carlton nch u Tuesday 14 May, 6pm 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.

Tuesday 7 May, 6.30pm la Sunday 26 May, 3pm Readings Hawthorn Readings Hawthorn nch u Readings Hawthorn (upstairs) nch 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u la

u nch 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. Kate la la 22 Mosse Wine & Chocolate On In conversation with Louise Swinn Tom 8 Tasting Class 15 Motherhood Together with the Stella Prize, please join us 27 Trumble u nch in welcoming Kate Mosse, co-founder of the Introduce yourself to the wonderful world of Join Anna Goldsworthy (Welcome to Your New la In conversation with Simon Hughes wine and chocolate tasting, and learn how to Life, Black Inc., PB, $29.99), Jo Case (Boomer & Women’s Prize For Fiction (formerly the Orange match the perfect beverage with the perfect Me, Hardie Grant, PB, $24.95) and Monica Dux Prize). She’ll speak to Stella committee member Come and hear Tom Trumble discuss Rescue sweet treat. Brought to you by Sisko Chocolate (Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting), and director of Sleepers Publishing Louise at 2100 Hours (Penguin, PB, $29.99), the story and Brown Brothers. MUP, PB, $24.99) as they chat about motherhood Swinn about women’s literature and her latest of an attempt to rescue a group of 29 Australian – the good, the bad and the downright ugly truth. book, Citadel (Orion, PB, $32.99). airmen from Timor during World War II. $24 per person (includes chocolate and wine). Strictly limited to 30 people. Please book on Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 Donation to Stella Prize on entry. Please book Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 9819 1917 or at [email protected]. or at [email protected]. on 9819 1917 or at [email protected]. or at [email protected].

s s Wednesday 8 May, 6-7.30pm ’ Wednesday 15 May, 6.30pm ’ Wednesday 22 May, 6.30pm Monday 27 May, 6.30pm

vent vent Readings Hawthorn

Readings Hawthorn (upstairs) E Readings Hawthorn E Readings Hawthorn u nch

ay ay 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. mother d mother d 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. la 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch u nch u nch la la la Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 5

Sandy 27 Watson Meet Hungarian Ambassador Anna Siko will launch the Bookseller He is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Sandy Watson’s One Perfect Day: Hungary 1956 Amy Vuleta – Readings St Kilda (PB, $22.95), the story of Veronika Csosz and He created the music that has become the her experiences during the Hungarian Uprising. soundtrack for the lives of his millions of devoted Free, no booking required. fans all over the world.

Monday 27 May, 6.30pm

Readings Carlton nch u 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. la

Michael 29 Fullilove In conversation with George Why do you work in books? Megalogenis I’ve always loved to read, and when I was a Executive director of the Lowy Institute Michael teenager I realised that most of what I knew Fullilove will be in conversation with George about the world – of history, geography, Megalogenis about his new book. Rendezvous biology and relationships – I had learned With Destiny (Penguin, PB, $35) is the untold story from reading stories. I’ve always sought of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the five extraordinary knowledge of the world in fiction, which may men he used to pull the US into World War II. seem counterintuitive to some people but actually makes perfect sense to me. Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 or at [email protected]. What was your favourite book as a kid? Wednesday 29 May, 6.30pm Readings Hawthorn I loved the picture book The Jolly Postman 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. when I was little – discovering the handwrittenu nch letters and cards inside the envelopesla is such a vivid memory. When I Just was older, I read everything I could find in 29 Between Us the local library by Victor Kelleher. I loved his otherworldly characters and settings. I’m Join editor Maya Linden for the launch of Just really pleased to see that Taronga has been Between Us (Pan Mac, PB, $27.95), a collection re-released by Penguin in the Australian This is his story – in his own words, of essays examining the highs, lows and loves Children’s Classics series. for the very first time. of female friendship. What’s the best book you’ve read Free, no booking required. lately and why?

Wednesday 29 May, 6.30pm I loved Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell. It’s

Readings Carlton nch a take on the classic hardboiled noir-style u 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. story, but set in the hills of the Ozarks in la Arkansas. The femme fatale role is filled by a skinny girl with tomato red hair, dying to Brown Brothers get out of her backwater town, and the fall 30 Winter Poetry guy is endearing, loyal and really someone you want to get behind. Woodrell is a brilliant Festival writer. I’ve also read a couple of really On the first of our winter poetry evenings, impressive new releases from Australian curated by local poets Bonny Cassidy and Tim writers recently – Steeplechase by Krissy Grey, L.K. Holt will read from her newly released Kneen, Ghost Wife by Michelle Dicinoski and chapbook, Stages of Balthazar. She’ll be joined Entitlement by Jessica White. They were all by guest poet Luke Beesley and emerging poet beautifully written and compelling modern and critic Tim Wright. Australian stories. Father Bob Maguire, ‘the people’s priest’, Was a counter-terrorist operation in Gibraltar Free, no booking required. What’s the best experience you’ve is a man of passion, creativity and humour, the success it was cracked up to be – or a had in a bookshop? and at 78 he shows no signs of slowing human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Thursday 30 May, 6pm down, giving in, or shutting up. Sue Williams Toby Bell must choose between his conscience The best experience I’ve had in a bookshop is the first person to attempt to capture and duty to his service. If the only thing Readings Carlton was at the Housing Works second-hand his life story. necessary to the triumph of evil is for good men 309 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053. to do nothing, how can he keep silent?

bookshopu nch in New York. Last year I waited

outsidela the shop in the rain for an hour and Joshua a half to get a seat at The Moth StorySLAM, 30 and it was worth every damp minute. The Santospirito Moth podcast is about people telling true Bernard Caleo will launch Joshua’s The Long stories, live and unscripted. We heard a Weekend in , a graphic novel based bunch of New Yorkers distil an experience on an original essay by Craig San Roque about they’d had into a five-minute story in ways Carl Jung’s idea of the Cultural Complex. that were funny, heartbreaking, illuminating and entertaining. Free, no booking required. Name a book that has changed the Thursday 30 May, 8pm way you think, in ways small or large.

Readings Carlton nch

u The Final Solution by Michael Chabon 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. la has a character in it that keeps bees, and a wonderful scene of him extracting the With her irresistible humour and optimism, Riley, an orphan in Victorian London, is honey, and it seemed to put the idea in my Lorraine Elliott reveals the pitfalls, triumphs suddenly plucked from his own time and and challenges of becoming a full-time whisked into the twenty-first century, GOLD COIN DONATIONS: We’re now head that I wanted to be an apiarist. Now I food blogger, and shares the best of her accused of murder and on the run. asking people who attend our events to Riley must stay alive and stop have my own hive in my backyard! new-found wisdom: the secret to winning please make a small gold coin donation, assassin-for-hire Garrick returning to his a man’s heart through food, tips on hosting own time with knowledge and power that when possible, to The Readings Foundation. unforgettable dinner parties, and how to could change the world forever. There will be a tin for donations at each create a successful blog. event. All contributions over $2 are tax penguin.com.au deductible. Thank you for your support. 6 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

New Australian Writing Feature

Hannah Kent’s astonishing debut novel, Burial Rites, has taken the international publishing world by storm. It tells the dark, fated story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be executed for murder in nineteenth-century Iceland. Here, she talks to Margo Lanagan about discovery, her painstaking research and her mentorship with Geraldine Brooks.

he saga of Burial Rites began when, at 17, Hannah Kent spent a year in ‘The family Iceland as an exchange student. For the first few months, ‘I didn’t speak pointed out three Tthe language, I was homesick, I was horribly conscious of the fact that I “did not belong” mounds on the while simultaneously being very conspicuous, bare plain; on Myth, and the winter darkness compounded all of that discontent. I think I was probably depressed – I one of these ... remember sitting in the shower, unable to stand up because I was so sad.’ a murderess Needless to say, Kent did stand up. She might admit to being ‘scared shitless’ while called Agnes writing her debut novel, and she might have Murder, given a TED talk about her close acquaintance Magnúsdóttir had with impostor syndrome, but she has a steelier been beheaded, side. It’s visible in what little, as yet, can be found online about her, and it runs like reinforcing mesh the last person through the grimly gorgeous Burial Rites. The literary magazine she co-founded and edits is to be executed in called Kill Your Darlings, for goodness sake – Mystery clearly she’s no wimp. Iceland.’ She credits Iceland with this facet Margo Lanagan interviews Hannah Kent about her of herself. ‘My first time in Iceland forged my character completely. I became so sick of debut novel, Burial Rites. myself that I started to go for long walks in the snow. I’d tramp up the icy slope of the hill How was Kent able, from Australia, to where the cemetery was and look out over to research an obscure Icelandic murderess? the town’s dark harbour to the mountains on ‘At first, I struggled to find much information the other side of the fjord, and watch the light about the murders and Agnes’s life,’ she shift and alter, and everything was set right and says. ‘I read indiscriminately: academic peaceable within me.’ articles about everything from parish law, Visiting a valley in north-west Iceland kin networks, smallpox epidemics and the with one of her host families, she asked about the supernatural, memoirs, Icelandic fiction, landscape they were driving through. The family plays and poems, diaries written by British pointed out three mounds on the bare plain; on scientists arriving in Iceland to study geysers, one of these, they told her, a murderess called song lyrics, recipes, the great and wonderful Agnes Magnúsdóttir had been beheaded, the last sagas. If it was about Iceland in the nineteenth person to be executed in Iceland. century, I read it.’ For a long time, the execution mound During this phase, Kent felt she was was only one of many impressions Kent brought ‘blindly feeling my way in the dark, making back from that bleak, treeless and myth-soaked guesses that could well be completely land. But four or five years later, she found herself incorrect’. But most of her guesses were ‘still filled with questions and curiosities about right on the nail, as she discovered when she the murders’ that Agnes and her accomplices went back to Iceland for a six-week research had committed. By the time she got permission trip. ‘This is where I found out about Agnes’s to write her novel as a PhD in Creative Arts early life: from parish and ministerial records, at Flinders University, she’d found that her censuses, letters from the trial, and so on. murderess had left very little trace in the historical That was a real thrill, finally getting my hands record, and that when people did mention Agnes I think when I sent the manuscript to her, I was It feels like a just reward for Kent’s on the primary sources after two years of they called her a witch or a monster and moved fussing at things on sentence-level – not seeing years of careful work that the novel has done pining for them!’ on. Kent’s project ‘to supply a more ambiguous the forest for the trees. Geraldine brought my so well so far. At the Australian Independent ‘Much of the research,’ Kent admits, portrayal of this woman’ was born. attention back to the themes of the story, its Bookseller Awards in March, eyes lit up at the ‘and certainly the writing, was completed Agnes Magnúsdóttir was beheaded emotional truth.’ Brooks urged Kent to ‘let a bit mention of this book. Pre-publication press under an enormous shadow of self-doubt. I’d with a broad axe in 1829, as was Fridrik more light in’ to a tale that of necessity would has been full of exciting phrases like ‘massive never written a novel before, and didn’t know Sigurdsson for the same murders. Between the have to end in darkness and death. advance’, ‘multiple bidding wars’ and ‘foreign how one goes about it. The thing is to keep night of the murders in 1828 and the day the The finished novel certainly packs a rights in how many countries?’ Such upfront going anyway. You get used to the shadow. I’m axe fell, Agnes was first held in prison, and then punch as it moves inexorably along its parallel buzz often raises expectations so high that the astonished by how clean the process seems, billeted with a family on a farm at Kornsa, near tracks. Kent admits, ‘I was often emotional book itself can only disappoint. I have no such looking back. At the time it felt like only chaos the proposed execution site. Kent focuses on when writing. I felt the setting and characters fears for Burial Rites; if there’s any justice in the and anxiety.’ that time, that family and the young Assistant and story all very intensely.’ But this is the world, it’s going to win every accolade going. A mentorship conducted by email Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson, who was Kill Your Darlings deputy editor writing here with author Geraldine Brooks helped Kent in charged with readying Agnes to meet her maker, – not a drop of sentimentality leaks through, Margo Lanagan is the author of Sea Hearts the later stages. ‘The ending was very grim, to show us the woman behind the crime, and and the story is all the more powerful for this (Allen & Unwin, 2012) and Cracklescape and very sudden – even more so than it is now. the society that confined and shaped her. masterly restraint. (Twelfth Planet Press, 2012). Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 7 paris madeleine: a life of sketchbook madeleine st john ottolenghi's Jason Brooks Helen Trinca mediterranean feast $35 $32.99 $29.95 Text. PB Laurence King. HB Yotam Ottolenghi takes us on a culinary The first and definitive biography of Part guidebook, part illustrated journey from Tunisia through to the spice Madeleine St John (The Women in Black journal, Paris Sketchbook is a markets of Morocco and the exotic eateries of and The Essence of the Thing) that whimsical journey through the Istanbul in this riveting four-part series. captures the remarkable and troubled life city of light and love by leading of an Australian expat, artist, writer international fashion illustrator and intellectual. Jason Brooks. the green kitchen David Frenkiel & Luise Vindahl my mum is $49.95 o-check vase beautiful Hardie Grant. HB $29.95 Jessica Spanyol David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl are the new faces in exciting vegetarian cooking. A beautiful decorative $16.95 Based on their widely popular blog, The vase whose design Walker. PB Green Kitchen is a delightful, nourishing is loosely based on a A sweet and cheering book with a feast of healthy, simple daily dishes. vintage Chinese medicine sympathatic eye for busy mums run off their bottle. A lovely addition to feet, and how small, simple gestures can the home and table. mean so much love.

little french songs Carla Bruni $21.95 to be loved A warm and intimate album of folk, Michael Bublé pop and traditional French tunes from model, actress and singer Carla Bruni. $21.95 Canadian crooner Michael o-check recipe box Bublé is back with his sixth spice penguin bags studio album, featuring $34.95 covers of Dean Martin, The $19.95ea kitchen These blank recipe cards and dividers are perfect for Jackson 5, Elvis Presley Ragini Dey Two beautiful cloth bags from Penguin India, writing, keeping and organising all of your favourite and Frank and Nancy based on Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small $45 meals. Includes a handy little stand to hold the cards Sinatra, as well as four Things and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. Hardie Grant. HB up while you cook. original songs. Exclusive to Readings. Spice Kitchen is a collection of chef Ragini Dey’s favourite Indian dishes. It includes over 100 recipes for authentic regional curries and street foods, from delicious pork belly ribs with curry downton leaves to twice-cooked abbey: fish jhalferazie. mother’s season 3 $44.95 the memory trap destroying As recovers Andrea Goldsmith the joint: why from World War I and SPECIAL women have $24.95 day a wave of financial PRICE to change the HarperCollins. PB uncertainty sweeps the world country, the Crawleys WAS $29.99 Jane Caro (ed.) When Nina Jameson’s life falls apart, she battle to safeguard gift ideas their beloved home, $29.95 returns to Melbourne, only to be caught up in a circle of work, love and obsession and new arrivals bring UQP. PB among family and friends, from her own scandals for those An entertaining and sister, Zoe, to the celebrated pianist above and below provocative collection of Ramsay Blake. the stairs. essays at the cutting edge of burial rites culture and feminism by some Hannah Kent of our most energetic writers mummy's kisses SPECIAL and leaders, including Penny Paula Clark & Lisa Stewart (illus.) $26.95 PRICE Wong, Corinne Grant, Emily Picador. PB $15.99 Maguire and Clementine Ford. WAS $32.99 Scholastic. PB In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is A mother echidna accompanies her baby puggle condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of through the day, encouraging her little one with two men. Based on a true story, this dark, fated tale is kisses to make friends, try new things, learn to swim vividly brought to life with melancholic beauty. and much more until it’s time to sleep. 8 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

New Fiction From World War II. Arthur Wheeler is a young soldier the Australian who develops an infatuation with a Japanese youth, leading to personally devastating Fiction consequences. Throughout the novel Arthur Books recalls his brief time together with Stanley in

minute detail. Every moment they share – a Desk Burial Rites gesture, a conversation, a dream – is treasured Hannah Kent with an intensity we may recognise in our own Picador. PB. Was $32.99 pored-over memories, brought out again and —Martin Shaw, again. While Stanley remains elusive to us, Special price $26.95 Readings Books Division Manager Arthur is revealed fully in his confession of In rural Iceland, Review: how their meeting shook his understanding of 1829, a woman named Agnes himself. There’s a sadness underlining his story, Magnúsdóttir is sentenced to quiet and yet surging, which is reminiscent of a It’s shaping up to be a blockbuster May at Readings, with several of the year’s most anticipated death for her part in a brutal Kazuo Ishiguro novel. books hitting our shelves just days apart. First up there’s Anna Krien, who might just be installing double murder. As she awaits While I didn’t connect as strongly herself as a short-priced favourite for next year’s Stella Prize (amongst many other awards) with her execution, she is sent to with Arthur as I did with Martha, it was a Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport, her riveting diagnosis of that institution of modern Australian board with a local family on pleasure to read something from a local society: the AFL. She examines not only its allure to a broad section of society and its high media their farm: District Officer Jón Jónsson, his wife, author that steps away from the kinds of profile, but also its murky depths, particularly when it comes to the aberrant moral behaviour of some Margrét, and their two daughters, Steina and stories that I’ve come to associate with a of its players. Does the league sometimes seem to perpetuate as much as reject sexual stereotypes Lauga. Cold, intelligent and proud, Agnes is lot of recent Australian literature. Taylor is of women? And what does the average punter make of it all? How are their attitudes, and society’s shunned as a murderess and an outcast by all. challenging herself as a writer and what I find generally, shaped by this dominant cultural force? Our reviewer says nothing less than that Night Only the Reverend Tóti, the young priest most exciting about her writing is still here. Games ‘is one of the most incredible works of investigative non-fiction that I have ever read’. appointed to her during her last months, has I’ve always loved a good romance and that is any interest in divining her story. And, as the Burial Rites exactly what we get with My Beautiful Enemy, Also much-heralded is Hannah Kent’s debut novel, , a masterful evocation of a time and bitter winter drags on, and the family are forced a love story that is tender and original. place. Set in late nineteenth-century Iceland and based on actual events, it is the incredible story to live in closer and closer confines, they and of the last woman to be executed on the island. Perhaps the biggest hurdle for a writer of historical we become the audience to her strange and Bronte Coates is the online and Readings fiction, particularly when the setting is a country at great geographical and cultural remove from one’s wary confession. Monthly assistant at Readings own, is to be convincing. Yet Kent has a near-miraculous touch here: her details ring true, the natural Burial Rites is the debut novel by environment is a character in itself and the tale of a savage double murder is played out by a great Australian writer Hannah Kent, deputy editor of Elemental cast of characters. Booksellers around the country have fallen in love with the book in advance of the Melbourne-based journal Kill Your Darlings. Amanda Curtin publication, and I can’t help but feel that as our Aussie winter starts to grip, this will be the novel for She had a dream run when the manuscript our own long, cold nights. UWAP. PB. $29.99 sparked an international bidding war last year, resulting in a reported seven-figure deal for the Review: In her final Perhaps to continue the northern theme – Karl Ove Knausgaard has released the second volume in his Australian, US and UK rights, and it’s easy to years, Meggie Tulloch writes epic autobiographical novel-series, A Man in Love, and will doubtless be a hot ticket when he visits our see why. her life story as a gift to her shores for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Everyone’s favourite thriller writer John le Carré returns with A Great literary historical fiction granddaughter. From her Delicate Truth and David Sedaris is also back with Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. There are also new generally relies on two things – world-creation childhood in rural Scotland novels from Lionel Shriver (Big Brother) and Andrea Goldsmith (The Memory Trap), and a posthumous and a compelling voice to guide you through. at the start of the twentieth novel from the wonderful Janet Frame (In the Memorial Room). Finally, Robert Hillman’s Gurrumul: His It’s a combination that should spell you century to her youth in fisheries Life and Music – a pictorial tribute with accompanying CD – rounds out this big publishing month. into another place, the strange stuff of gutting herring and her emigration to a young near-fantasy. Burial Rites has both these in Fremantle, Meggie fills exercise books and letters with stories for her Laura-lambsie. spades. Kent’s nineteenth-century Iceland East to anchor her story. At times, she writes In this act of life-writing, Amanda Bone Ash Sky is assuredly and beautifully realised, full of so adamantly it’s hard not to feel hit over the Curtin’s Elemental looks at memory and family Katerina Cosgrove sickening snows and cold valleys, cramped head with righteousness. Ambitious in its aims, history as narrative. ‘There’s no-one can tell Hardie Grant. PB. $29.95 badstofas and damp crofts, whale fat smeared Bone Ash Sky can be clumsy with exposition a story true,’ Meggie Tulloch writes, worrying on wood and windows made from dried Review: In the first few and character development, excessive in its over what to include and what to omit. At times, sheep’s bladders. Agnes is but one voice in pages of Katerina Cosgrove’s descriptions and unashamed about its political when experiences are too hard to divulge, she the chorus, but she commands us through Bone Ash Sky, Anoush agenda. But it is also a deeply humane novel, drops into third person, using story as proxy. this strangeness with strong, dark grace. Pakradounian, an Armenian- full of passion and prayer – a true call for Much like Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Elemental The mystery of who she really is and what Turkish American journalist, forgiveness and for the deliverance of a more draws Meggie’s act of writing as cathartic: an she really did is drip-fed to us throughout, arrives in Beirut to report on a compassionate world. exorcism of demons from family history, paired making you want to both linger and read tribunal. Her father, a member with an understanding that truth can never be Nicole Lee is a freelance writer on impatiently. Burial Rites, and its poetic, of the Christian Phalangist militia, is being tried told in its entirety. subsuming world, is a beautifully executed in absentia for the massacre of thousands of Although the novel is divided into work of the genre. Palestinian Shia refugees in the Lebanese civil The Memory Trap parts as per the four elements, water is the war. It is this inquiry and the quest for the Andrea Goldsmith Jessica Au is editor of the Readings Monthly strong point that holds Elemental together. In details surrounding her father’s death that HarperCollins. PB. Was $29.99 Meggie’s childhood Scotland, water is held propel Anoush through four generations of her Special price $24.95 in the wind with grit, salt bites at wounds, and My Beautiful Enemy family history across Syria, Turkey, Lebanon stings are wrapped in bandages damp with Review: It’s been three Cory Taylor and Armenia. vinegar. ‘The sea is a witch,’ Meggie’s Granda years since Andrea Goldsmith’s Text. PB. $29.99 From Beirut, the plot moves quickly warns, ‘a witch an’ a mother.’ Throughout Reunion, a big, bold work. In into early-twentieth-century Syria, where Lilit, Review: Earlier this year I the book this depiction of the ocean as both both Reunion and her new Anoush’s Armenian Christian grandmother, is read Me and Mr Booker, antagonist and carer rings true. The sea novel, The Memory Trap, bought as a slave by a Muslim Turk, and Lilit’s regional winner of the 2012 provides refuge for Meggie, giving her work and, relationships, family, ambition, brother, Minas, runs from a death camp in Der Commonwealth Book Prize, later, a new life in Australia, but it is also a space lust and goodness come ez Zor. Concurrent to these stories are those and immediately fell in love in which the darker parts of the Tullochs’ history together to make a magnificent story. of Anoush’s father and his affair with Sanaya, a with Cory Taylor’s writing. takes place. Nina, a consultant on memorial Palestinian Muslim. Cosgrove offers yet another Sixteen-year-old Martha’s The strength of Elemental ultimately projects, returns to Melbourne after many cross-cultural relationship in Anoush’s present- voice is fresh, wry and completely addictive as comes from Meggie. Curtin has managed to years of absence and a broken marriage. She’s day partner, the Israeli Jew, Chaim. She displays she describes her life in a small town – her create a character rich with their own voice. ostensibly come for a job, but also to be with finesse with structure – as the novel moves parents’ strange and estranged marriage, and On her love of reading, Meggie writes: ‘What her sister, Zoe, and her return rekindles old towards its inevitable conclusion, the revelations her affair with a married man – exploring the precious things, no matter their flaky spines and memories and friendships. Zoe’s marriage come so quick and fast that, by the time I put complexities that haunt us in our own oily smudges smelling of fish. What exhilaration to Elliot, a biographer, is overshadowed by the book down, I barely registered that 200 relationships. Now, with My Beautiful Enemy, to open a book and disappear!’ So too does her obsessive devotion to a childhood friend, pages had so swiftly passed. Taylor gives us a whole new set of Elemental provide this immersion, one that is a Ramsay, who has now become a world- It’s interesting that Cosgrove, a writer complexities to contend with. dense, lyrical rendering of a life. renowned pianist. Ramsay is a charismatic of Greek and Irish-Australian parentage, chose The story is set in a Japanese genius, yet totally self-obsessed and emotionally James Butler is a freelance writer the Christian–Muslim tensions of the Middle internment camp in regional Victoria during selfish. His influence on Zoe and his brother Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 9

Sean has been pervasive and destructive, not The Swan Song of only to them but also, indirectly, to the people Doctor Malloy close to them. A POWERFUL The novel’s trajectory follows the lives Robert Power of Nina, Zoe, Sean and Ramsay and the ultimate Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 NEW NOVEL resolution of their respective relationships, or, London-based scientist at least, the beginning of a resolution. This is Anthony Malloy has made a MAY RELEASES a wonderful and engrossing novel, and much discovery that will hugely of this is due to Goldsmith’s ability to sketch benefit global health, and he’s wonderful characters – they say and do things thrilled to learn that a that you know probably don’t happen in real life, BONE pharmaceutical company is but that you can imagine yourself or somebody keen to market his invention. else doing if you or they were bold enough, However, their support comes at a terrible price, selfish enough or good enough. I loved this entangling Anthony in a web of intrigue and book, and the people in it. blackmail that has unforeseeable consequences Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director for the women in his life, and propelling him on a conscience-ridden journey from London to ASH Creative Writing Vietnam, Chicago and Bogota. For Beginners The Shadow Year ‘A terrific account of a terrible day, Colin Batrouney Hannah Richell and of what followed … Written Affirm. PB. $24.95 with compassion and insight.’ Hachette. PB. Was $29.99 SKY Books + Publishing Review: With creative Special price $24.95 writing workshops and On a sultry summer’s day in KATERINA degrees attracting more 1980, Kat and her friends students than ever, there’s stumble upon an abandoned been a lot of discussion about COSGROVE lakeside cottage hidden deep whether writing can be taught, in the English countryside. At but much less about why so first, it seems like the perfect many of us are drawn to enrol in the first excuse for a holiday. Then an place. Colin Batrouney’s second novel, unexpected visitor appears at their door. Three Creative Writing For Beginners, may hold part decades later, Lila arrives at the same cottage of the answer. with her marriage in crisis and finds solace in Joel, a disaffected twentysomething, renovating the tumbledown house. As she glibly enrols in a course in order to fulfil a begins to wonder about the previous requirement of his unemployment benefits. It inhabitants, she can’t shake the feeling that is there that he meets fellow misfit Phillip, who, someone is watching her. ‘Humane, blackly funny, heart- unlike Joel, shows little interest in others’ writing, breaking, full of believable people yet harbours grandiose notions about his own and with a touching, magnificent output. Despite their differences, they find hero in Sheldon, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. solace in each other’s painful back-stories. International Verdict: brilliant’ Herald Sun Joel’s tale is interwoven with that of his flatmate Nomee, a talented but troubled Fiction actress. Having scored the role of Nina in an upscale production of Anton Chekhov’s Big Brother The Seagull, Nomee soon discovers parallels Lionel Shriver with her lonely and unfulfilled character. As HarperCollins. PB. Was $29.99 her director notes, Chekhov’s play resonates Special price $24.95 because it teaches us ‘to accommodate failure – to live with our limitations’. Review: Pandora is waiting Failure, of course, is an unavoidable at the airport for her older fact of both the writing and acting worlds, and brother, Edison, when she perhaps herein lies the answer to the opening averts her eyes from a morbidly question. While the arts rarely provide security obese man being wheeled into in the way of fame and fortune, what they baggage claim by two flight attendants: ‘Looking at that do provide is consolation from the everyday How far would you go for the and the hope to continue on – something man was like falling into a hole, and I had to one you love? From the award- Batrouney’s characters yearn for. look away because it was rude to stare, and winning author of True comes The narrative itself is rather even ruder to cry.’ Pandora has not seen a beautifully drawn tale of four people struggling to work out Chekhovian – it deliberately ambles and focuses Edison for four years, and she is curious why where their boundaries lie. on the mundane. Batrouney’s prose, meanwhile, he needs a place to stay for a month. When the is highly lyrical and demands a slowed pace man in the wheelchair speaks to her, the voice to fully appreciate. It’s full of those flickering is familiar, but not so his size. Driving him home Buy a copy of to her husband, Fletcher, and two stepchildren, THE LIMIT in moments of inspiration that hit us all, but which any Readings only a gifted few can crystalise into prose. Pandora can only hope they keep their reactions shop, and get Batrouney is one of those enviable few. in check too. a free copy of Lionel Shriver (the Orange Prize- TRUE. Only Emily Laidlaw is a freelance writer winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin) while stocks is not afraid of tackling troubling contemporary last. Me and Rory Macbeath themes in her fiction. She raises important Richard Beasley issues such as what food and eating means Hachette. PB. Was $29.99 to us, and how our self concept is linked to Special price $24.95 what we see in the mirror. As Pandora wonders about Edison, ‘Did he eat because he was Adelaide, 1977. Twelve-year-old depressed, or was he depressed because of Jake Taylor’s life revolves his size?’ around his street, his school and Fletcher and the children are the courthouse where his mum disconcerted by Edison’s presence, and works as a barrister, but when Pandora quickly finds herself trapped between Rory Macbeath moves into the brother and husband. Fletcher is disgusted by red-brick house at the end of Scan for more information Edison, and in return Edison is antagonistic on our May releases Rose Avenue, everything changes. Despite his towards him. Finally, Fletcher gives Pandora early doubts, Jake soon discovers Rory has the ultimatum that if Edison remains in the talents and courage beyond anyone he’s ever house five seconds after he is meant to leave, known, and the two become friends. Then, early their marriage is over. And so, Pandora needs one evening, Rory disappears and everyone on to make a choice – save her brother or save Rose Avenue is about to discover why. her marriage? 10 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

At times the novel is an uncomfortable The story follows Harry Gill, the recipient thought of a similar visit, for it’s unlikely a more A Delicate Truth read, but this is a testimony to the quality of the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, a ‘living insidious, bigoted character exists elsewhere John le Carré of the writing and the compelling story. As memorial’ to the writer Margaret Rose Hurndell. today. Head of Finno-Ugric languages at the Viking. PB. Was $29.95 much as it explores issues around food and After he arrives in the small French village of University of Helsinki, Aurtova is on a quest to obesity, it is also a fine examination of sibling Menton, he discovers that this ‘memorial room’ destroy the last surviving language of an Special price $26.95 relationships, especially those developed is a rather unsuitable place to work – small, with ancient, shamanic tribe that connects Finland to Review: For more than five within dysfunctional families. tiny windows, no real facilities and a severe air of pre-Columbian North Americans. An academic decades, John le Carré has desolation. Amid the inconveniences of finding triviality? Perhaps, but Marani strives to wind a Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn been the revered master of the more appropriate accommodation, Harry also plot round the issue of ethnic nationalism and British spy novel, and his latest finds himself carefully navigating his way around hits the mark. work, A Delicate Truth, is no A Man In Love: Hurndell’s in-laws, the founders of the fellowship, Ivan, the last of the Vostyachs, wakes exception. While the edginess My Struggle Book 2 and battling an acute spell of deafness. to find that the Russian soldiers who killed of earlier classics, such as Karl Ove Knausgaard Without question, In the Memorial Room his father and kept him prisoner in a Siberian Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came Harvill. PB. Was $32.95 captures Frame’s own particular awareness of the work camp for 20 years have left. He runs into in From the Cold, has inevitably faded, le Carré universe around her. As a reflective journal, it gives the woods and starts speaking again, quickly Special price $27.95 continues to do profound justice to the genre. the reader a beautiful window into the author at realising that he can commune with animals Moving away from the Cold War, Review: In 1908, Romain work. And while the end may leave some without through speech and music. This concept of which formed the backdrop for much of his Rolland, the French author who a real feeling of resolution, Frame’s amusing unity between nature and language doesn’t exist previous work, A Delicate Truth sees le Carré won the Nobel Prize for literature fish-out-of-water story doesn’t actually need any in English, and may be clearer in the original experimenting with contemporary espionage. It in 1915, coined the term explanation, for it explores not only the writer’s Italian, but Marani doesn’t slip into banal fantasy. opens in Gibraltar, where a privately funded, top- roman-fleuve – literally, ‘river- condition, but also the human one. After all, this is an author who invented his own secret counter-terrorism operation, codenamed novel’ – in order to describe his language – Europanto – and whose primary Nicole Mansour is from Readings St Kilda Wildlife, is spearheaded by the cunning and own ten volume work of fiction, concern is how international understanding ambitious Foreign Office Minister, Fergus Quinn. Jean-Christophe. The metaphor he was invoking is rests with a shared language. It is apparently a roaring success, or so diplomat easy enough to understand. A long, unbroken The Last of the Aurtova has no redeeming qualities and accessory to Operation Wildlife Kit Probyn sequence of novels, the roman-fleuve at once Vostyachs whatsoever. His brutal cunning and misogyny is led to believe. commentates a generation and expresses all the Diego Marani (translated by leave us more interested in the emotional Three years, a knighthood and ebbs and flows of a single life. Judith Landry) complexities of his ex-wife, Margareeta, and the a generous promotion later, Probyn has a The most famous roman-fleuve is Russian linguist, Olga, who discovers Ivan in a Text. PB. $27.99 chance encounter with a former member of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, but such village and sends him to Helsinki to appear at the Wildlife team, who is suffering heavily from books are not common. Indeed, contemporary Review: In 1942 Hitler paid the Congress of Finno-Ugric languages. What post-traumatic stress disorder. Allegations of novels that exceed more than a few hundred the Finnish leader Marshal follows is part mystery, part Scandinavian-noir, collateral damage, a staggering intelligence pages (let alone stretch into the thousands) are Mannerheim a surprise visit for with a splash of 12 Monkeys. Published to failure and a massive cover up by the Foreign rare. But, just as Proust did a century ago, today his 75th birthday, leaving the acclaim in Italy 10 years ago, and last year in the Office throw his newfound retirement into the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard national hero reticent and UK, this one doesn’t trump Marani’s New Finnish disarray. Alongside Quinn’s former private has written a long, extravagant and ponderous embarrassed. One wonders Grammar, but has all the same concerns, albeit secretary, Toby Bell, Probyn quickly learns that roman-fleuve that expresses, more intensely and what Diego Marani’s fictional in a different uniform. no amount of diligent enquiry will reveal the honestly than I would have thought possible, all acolyte of Finnish patriotism in The Last of the Luke May is a freelance writer truth. The Foreign Office is determined to keep the confusions and pleasures of being alive. Vostyachs, Professor Aurtova, would have the answers he seeks out of the public domain, The first book in theM y Struggle series, at whatever cost. A Death in the Family, was published in 2012, A Delicate Truth is yet another and anyone who enjoyed it as much as I did has instalment in a long career of illustrious been aching to read the second volume, A Man achievements, cementing le Carré’s place as in Love. The two books are unmistakably part WHAT I LOVED one of Britain’s finest writers. of a larger work, but each covers conspicuously different emotional territory. Where A Death in the Dexter Gillman is a freelance writer Family was concerned with the passing of the Never Let Me Go narrator’s father, A Man in Love describes how Kazuo Ishiguro The China Factory Knausgaard met his wife and the births of their Faber. PB. $19.99 Mary Costello three children, and is defined by lightness and Review: One day my younger brother came home to find me Text. PB. $22.99 the promise of fulfilment. sobbing at the kitchen table. I told him not to worry, that I was just Knausgaard writes with an irresistible Review: Much of the reading a book and he said, why would you read something that emotional heaviness. Where other authors pleasure of some books is the makes you cry? I’m still not sure how to answer that question but, might turn to irony as a form of self-defence, he opportunity to travel to another thinking back on the books and films I’ve loved the most, there’s a exposes himself ever more relentlessly. He writes part of the world, and to feel definite trend in this direction. In a strange, masochistic way, the about his children and his family with a shocking and breathe with the locals. ability to make me tear up is my litmus test for any good book, and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro rawness. Whereas Proust’s sentences are Mary Costello’s collection of has passed this test several times. My hands-down favourite is Never Let Me Go. I won’t eminently quotable for their style, Knausgaard’s stories, The China Factory, talk too much about the story itself though, as much of the pleasure in reading Ishiguro are almost without style. The My Struggle series takes us on just such a journey through modern here lies with the surprises he’s tucked into the plot. stands apart from almost anything I’ve ever read. Ireland. We drift along with the everyday flow of Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate version of the 1990s and is narrated by Kathy Knausgaard has no limits. life as it moves through rural and urban H, a ‘carer’ coming to the end of a successful career. As she travels through the English landscapes, with the young and old of Galway Will Heyward is from Readings St Kilda countryside, she reminisces about her time as a student at the seemingly-idyllic Hailsham. and Dublin brought vividly to life. A sense of menace lingers beneath the banality of Kathy’s memories: a woman who visits Comparison to James Joyce’s In the Memorial Room the school recoils in fear from the children; the older students say a boy’s body was found Dubliners is irresistible. We have not only a Janet Frame in the woods nearby with hands and feet removed. These moments float to the surface shared location but also a wide view of society of the narrative so gently that they slip by unseen, all the while gradually and deliberately Text. HB. $27.99 evoked through the intimate details of a small building tension. community. The same sense of hard-boned, Review: Given that the In this way it’s easy to see how Ishiguro could be described as deceptive. He sinewed reality runs through each story, and we history of posthumous has an uncanny ability to lull you into an unsuspecting state of passivity – something akin are often left wondering if, in fact, there is much publishing has not always to boredom – and then all of a sudden, in only a few brief sentences, he’ll hit you with ‘fiction’ in this collection at all. ended happily, one might be an emotional punch. He basically karate chops right at your heart. In Never Let Me Go This shouldn’t suggest that The China excused from feeling a sense of Kathy seems such an ordinary person. Her tragedies are recognisable in our own lives – a Factory is merely veiled autobiography. Rather, trepidation as they approach childish fight with a friend, a crush on a boy with a girlfriend – but these small tragedies are it is richly imbued with a long-contemplated the latest release by New thrown into sharp relief when her background becomes clear to us. Ultimately, I still find and thoroughly lived experience. Each story Zealand writer Janet Frame. Yet, according to a them heartbreaking long after finishing the book. expresses a deeply invested focus on the brief note in the introductory pages, Frame Even more heartbreaking is the manner in which Ishiguro’s characters respond to author’s minutely known world. The China always intended for In the Memorial Room to be their losses by restricting their hopes and hiding their desires. There’s a scene in Never Let Factory is a book many years in the making published after her death, so that any Me Go where Kathy stops for a break while driving to her next job. She walks a little way and represents decades in Mary Costello’s comparisons between real-life persons and from the car, out into a windy day with rubbish caught along the fence line. She stands still, writing life. unflattering character portraits might be avoided. looks into the distance and imagines, just for a moment, a tiny glimpse of what she longs ‘Earth, water, air and fire – that’s Written during Frame’s stay in France for. And then she turns back to the car and drives off. what goes into china. Who’d ever have thought in the mid-1970s, the novel is a fictional account This scene just kills me. I feel so strongly for Kathy in that moment and when I it? The same stuff we’re all made of.’ One of of her experiences as the Katherine Mansfield read a book that is exactly what I want to find: a moment of understanding with another Costello’s most broken characters utters these fellow. It is at once social satire and full of black person, even if it makes me cry. words, but it is also what goes into these finely humour. Yet it also, like the best of Frame’s made stories work, explores that delicate, untraceable line Bronte Coates – Readings Monthly & Online Assistant between sanity and insanity. A.S. Patrić is from Readings St Kilda Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 11

Snapper Paris Brian Kimberling Edward Rutherfurd Headline. HB. $27.99 H&S. PB. Was $32.99

Review: Snapper is the Special price $27.95 story of Nathan, philosophy Edward Rutherfurd captures graduate turned songbird the romance and everyday researcher, and his life in drama of the men and women ‘A GRIPPING southern Indiana. The book is who transformed a humble structured like a series of trading post on the muddy HIGH-OCTANE personal essays. Nathan’s banks of the Seine into the tales about the birds and people in his life are most celebrated city in the witty and full of warmth, but there’s also a world. He weaves a gripping tale of four families CRIME sense of sadness over a homeland still across the centuries, from noble de Cygnes to struggling with racism, violence and neglect for the revolutionary Le Sourds, the bourgeois THRILLER ... the environment. Through each story, we learn Blanchards and the hard-working Gascons. about Nathan’s childhood, his time spent in jail for attacking a parking meter with a two-by-four, Jacob’s Folly YOU’LL LOVE his disastrous relationship with the crazy Lola, Rebecca Miller why he disdains predators like the bald eagle, Canongate. PB. $29.99 THIS.’ and the serious consequences when his Texan uncle hangs a ‘Whites Only’ sign on his porch Jacob’s Folly tells the story of Daily Telegraph as a tasteless joke. three people linked in the most But Indiana is the true subject of unexpected of ways. Masha is a his musings, and the character about whom teenager who longs to escape Nathan is most conflicted. With incredible her Orthodox Jewish family, while tenderness, he describes river swamps, the middle-aged Leslie is pushing beauty of the lakes caused by strip mining, against the constraints of his the woods-turned-meth-labs and, of course, familial responsibilities, and eighteenth-century the habits of the songbirds. Such fondness man Jacob finds himself reborn as, of all things, a is tempered by despair about the shameless fly. From this quirky premise, Rebecca Miller offers urban sprawl of Indianapolis, the covert racism a wonderful portrait of the intricacies of life. that still dominates the south of the state, and the way people – including himself – fail to treat The Limit each other well. Nathan seems horrified that he Riikka Pulkkinen From the loves Indiana so much, but he cannot escape (translated by Lola Rogers) his connection to the land, and then loves the Scribe. PB. $29.95 internationally place all the more for it. Brian Kimberling is gifted at describing Anja Aropalo is preoccupied with human interactions. The subtlety, nuance and death. She’s losing her husband bestselling author awareness with which Nathan’s relationships are to Alzheimer’s disease and has depicted make the story entirely believable – so made him a terrible promise, one comes an urgent believable, in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not sure she can keep. For some of it was autobiographical. Also admirable her niece, Mari, death exists as a human story is the way Kimberling deals with issues of teenage fantasy and an escape race and the environment. All characters are from her dull life, until she begins a relationship within the implicated, but rather than presenting a fixed with Julian, her charismatic teacher and father to solution, the book gestures towards empathy the six-year-old Anni. The Limit draws these four and humility as the traits by which we might people together to reveal how much of our limits framework of a slowly bring about change. are defined by our identities. compelling thriller. Julia Tulloh Harper is a PhD candidate in Buy The Limit at Readings shops and get a Literature at the . free copy of Riikka Pulkkinen’s True. Only while stocks last. Maya’s Notebook Isabel Allende Inferno HarperCollins. PB. Was $29.99 Dan Brown Special price $24.95 Random. HB. Was $39.95 Special price $29.95 The beautiful contemporary Released 14 May narrative of Isabel Allende’s OUT latest novel reveals a new side Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, to the much-loved author of continues the dangerous The House of the Spirits. Maya investigations of renowned has lived in California for all of Harvard symbologist Robert her nineteen years, but when Langdon. In the heart of Europe, NOW she falls into a life of drug addiction and crime, Langdon is this time drawn into her Chilean grandmother sends her to a remote the harrowing world of one of island off the coast of South America. There, history’s most mysterious literary masterpieces: she is left to live among a traditional rural Dante’s Inferno, plunging into a landscape of people, the Chilote, who’ve remained largely codes, symbols and secret passageways. isolated from modern life. The Great Gatsby Southern Cross the Dog F. Scott Fitzgerald Bill Cheng Vintage. HB. Was $29.95 Picador. PB. $29.99 Special price $24.95 Quercus As the Great Flood of 1927 The Great Gatsby is an exquisite bursts the levees of Mississippi portrait of the American Dream, and sweeps away rural homes, and this special edition is the eight-year-old Robert Chatham result of a unique collaboration is separated from his parents between Tiffany & Co. and and friends. His daily adventures Vintage Classics. Based on Love talking about books? through the brooding designs from the Tiffany & Co. Quercus Find us online at Pan Macmillan Australia swamplands, from the infamous brothel at the archives, this hardback reflects the talent, Hotel Beau-Miel to imprisonment by hunters, roll beauty and notorious lifestyle of the Jazz Age. www.corbanaddison.com roslund-hellstrom.com into years as he grows into a young man. An Film tie-in edition also available (Vintage, PB, astonishing debut novel of myth and menace. was $12.95, special price $9.95). 12 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

New Crime Dead Write book with Fiona Hardy of Screwed here she takes on the infamous family and the Red Moon story of a painful yet fascinating dynasty, Benjamin Percy the Eoin Colfer where what is true and what is false has never H&S. PB. $29.99 Headline. PB. $29.99 been entirely clear. There’s the Spanish pope, Red Moon is set in a world not month I was a huge fan of Eoin Alexander VI, his son Cesare (who would later unlike our own, only a bit Colfer’s Plugged, his first be the inspiration for Machiavelli’s The Prince) hairier. Supernatural dystopian Dark Horse foray into crime books. It and his daughter Lucrezia, whose love affairs horror found new fame in Honey Brown was a gritty, hilarious in and out of her family were often cut short. Justin Cronin’s excellent The Penguin. PB. $29.99 rampage through New Jersey Blood & Beauty is a beautifully written, thrilling Passage. In Red Moon, there through the eyes of an Irish and disconcerting read from the winner of the Review: Don’t be led astray by her sweet are not only the countries we transplant (there’s a joke in Silver Dagger Award for Crime Fiction. name – Honey Brown can write a mean know and love, but also a Lycan republic, there you’ll love if you’ve read it). After taking psychological thriller. Last year, I adored her where the werewolves who have always been on the killers of his secret love in the first highly original After the Darkness, and this Two Soldiers part of our fabric reside in peace – until, that book, Dan McEvoy’s world still isn’t entirely year Dark Horse has come along to keep you Anders Roslund is, an American invasion and an uprising. calm and breezy. And things are hardly about unnerved for some three hundred pages. Poetic and terrifying. to settle, with his step-grandmother appearing & Börge Hellström It’s Christmas Day and Sarah to enlist his help in finding his aunt. So that’s Quercus. PB. $29.99 Barnard is frustrated with the world. Instead gangsters, grandparents and a gosh-darned Ex-con Börge Hellström and The Weeping Girl of going to see her disapproving parents, she frightening love interest in the shape of a journalist Anders Roslund Håkan Nesser takes to the Tasmanian mountainside with police officer who’s not afraid of anything or return with their sixth Mantle. PB. $27.99 the one she trusts most: her damaged black anyone. Hooray! mare, Tansy. But, on the ascent, catastrophic collaboration, the story of This is a Van Veeteren book weather floods the mountain, endangering her gang violence and the events without much Van Veeteren, life and trapping her. She seeks shelter and, Blood & Beauty that can turn out-of-control but with enough crime for his as the day passes, realises she is not alone. Sarah Dunant children into lethal adults. colleague, Detective Inspector José Pereira runs the anti-gang squad in the A young man, Heath, is there too – attractive, Virago. PB. Was $29.99 Ewa Moreno of the Mardaam Stockholm suburb of Råby, a place where evasive and disconcerting. It is not entirely Special price $24.95 Police. Years ago, student clear why he is on the mountain or how he juvenile gangs are taking over. Leon, an Winnie Maas was found dead The kids’ TV show Horrible got there or whether anything he says is true. incarcerated member of the Råby Warriors, – the killer, the teacher who impregnated her, Histories does an excellent What is clear is that he is hiding something writes a dangerous letter to his brother, Arnold Maager. One generation later, Winnie’s song about the Borgias, but if from Sarah, but is it just his real name, or Gabriel. Meanwhile, DCI Ewert Grens is adult daughter, Mikaela, goes to meet the man you were born before the year something much more sinister? The nature investigating a prison break that leads back to who killed her mother, and then vanishes. Ewa 2000, you may be interested of their relationship, and the ground beneath the gang, with whom he may have a deeper is nearby on holiday and has just started her in something a bit more them, is constantly changing. You’ll second- connection than he’d like to admit. Soon, they investigation when Maager himself also exhilarating. Sarah Dunant guess yourself throughout while reading this, will all be in on the war. disappears. In this case, the only way forward has written Renaissance crime before, and and probably never go camping again. is to go back into the past.

OTHERS CAN’T... A TERRIFYING GIFT zap me! to read Chapter 1

The first book in a gripping crime series from MELANIE CASEY ouT Now amba2976rm Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 13

New Young Adult Fiction Cry Blue Murder book See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 19. Kim Kane & Marion Roberts of UQP. PB. $19.95 Paper Aeroplanes The Theory of Review: Being a big fan of the Dawn O’Porter Everything Kim Kane’s book Pip: The Story Hot Key. PB. $16.95 J.J. Johnson of Olive and Marion Roberts’ month Sunny Side Up, I was more than Review: Set in a place Peachtree. HB. $24.95 a little excited about this first called Guernsey (which I Review: It’s hard to know collaborative venture for older Steal My Sunshine discovered upon Googling is an how to act when your best readers. But nothing could have Emily Gale island off the coasts of England friend has died in a freak prepared me for Cry Blue Murder. Celia and Alice Woolshed. PB. $18.95 and France) in the 1990s, Paper accident, especially when you find each other online just as their community is Aeroplanes follows the lives of Review: Hannah feels like an outsider in were the only one there to facing its worst nightmare: a serial killer preying on Renee and Flo, two teenage her family. She is constantly at war with her witness it. People assume that teenage girls in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern. girls struggling with life. older brother, and her parents’ relationship is after a certain amount of time As the horror and anxiety in the local community Renee’s mum died when she was struggling. Her best friend, Chloe, is lively and you should start to feel better, get over it. escalates (told through media, police and young and her dad left just after, so Renee and her full of sass but their relationship is a source of However, this is not the case for Sarah, who is pathology reports), the pair find comfort and sister live with their grandparents, who refuse to tension too. going through just that. Her best friend, Jamie, support through their emails, which bring some talk about anything, especially Renee’s mum. Not Meanwhile, Hannah’s grandmother died in an extremely strange incident at the kind of sanity to their lives. Or so I thought. But I only that, but Renee’s sister is currently starving Essie is a pillar of support and love, but also a school gym and Sarah still can’t stop reliving was fooled. This is a powerful and confronting herself to try and get her grandparents to listen to source of worry and wonder. Essie has a dark what happened. She has gone from a happy, book, one that forced me to question my her. While all this is going on, Renee meets Flo. and mysterious past that has been veiled for social girl with good grades to a failing, assumptions and beliefs. Cry Blue Murder is an Flo’s family is a mess. Her dad has many years. As it comes cautiously to light, it uninterested teenager who can’t get off her important cautionary and psychological tale that is moved out and her mother and brother couldn’t provides Hannah and her family with a history snarkbox. Sarah has discovered the theory of highly recommended for ages 13 and up. care less about him. Her so-called best friend everything – basically her theory of what life is that is necessary for their peace. spends most of her time bossing Flo around and about – and it’s bleak. Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Taking place during a hot Melbourne making sure she feels as insecure about herself But then a deer crashes through the summer, Steal My Sunshine has history, as possible. One night at a house party, Renee gym and dies in the exact place that Jamie did. Out of the Easy mystery and a little bit of romance. Hannah finds Flo in a rather embarrassing drunken state Sarah discovers that in mythology the animal Ruta Sepetys gains both clarity and confidence as she and takes her home. It’s from here that the pair steps into adulthood, and author Emily Gale is believed to be a symbol for speeding dead Puffin. PB. $16.99 form a friendship that provides both girls with has created a great character in the anarchic spirits on their way. She starts to wonder if Josie dreams of life at an elite much-needed support and love. Essie. The novel touches on many emotions Jamie needs help to move on, or maybe it’s not college, far away from her home, Paper Aeroplanes is a fun yet sad experienced by teenagers and the lasting Jamie who needs this? As Sarah starts to let where she’s known by everyone novel about two teenagers who learn that some effects of trauma, while gently celebrating new people into her life, among them Emmett, as a prostitute’s daughter. But friends are more like family members than the family and forgiveness. Jamie’s twin brother, and ‘the possum man’, she when she learns of a mysterious ones you’ve actually got. For ages 14 and up. gradually discovers a sense of forgiveness and death, she becomes caught up Kim Gruschow is from Readings Hawthorn Katherine Dretzke is from Readings calm to what she once thought was a pointless in the search for the truth and the Hawthorn existence. For ages 13 and up. KD clandestine underworld of New Orleans. 14 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

Left Hand Drive Craig McGregor Cultural Studies Affirm. PB. $24.95 Forty-one False Starts New Non-Fiction Review: Craig McGregor is a writer and academic whose Janet Malcolm career has spanned many years Text. PB. $32.99 and many iterations. He started Review: In a lovely essay on as a journalist in the early 60s, J.D. Salinger in her new book, Australian wrote books on contemporary Janet Malcolm quotes a book Australia, became a freelance dismissively ironic review by Non-Fiction feature writer and an expert on pop culture (on Bob Arthur Kazin. ‘Some day’, Kazin of Dylan in particular), and wrote fiction and poetry. wrote, ‘there will be learned Destroying the Joint Yet, above all, he was a critical observer of theses on The Use of the Ash Australian society. As a journalist and feature writer, Tray in J.D. Salinger’s Stories. No other writer has Jane Caro (ed.) the he was an active and enthusiastic commentator on made so much of Americans lighting up.’ Kazin’s UQP. PB. $29.95 Australian politics and his accounts of the Whitlam observation is spot on, but his irony, as Malcolm month Review: This collection of dismissal make for fascinating reading. He reveals, is misplaced. Rather than being some essays, edited by Jane Caro, befriended on one of his early tours of mere reality effect or narrative padding, the Night Games: Sex, was written in response to Alan Australia and was invited to Bob’s room to listen to cigarette, Malcolm suggests, offers the writer, ‘a Power and Sport Jones’s infamous the first acetates ofBlonde on Blonde ... and he great range of metaphoric possibilities’. Cigarettes made a few suggestions. His most provoking ‘have lives and deaths. They glow and they turn to Anna Krien announcement that ‘women are destroying the joint’ and the observations, however, are on the inequalities ashes. They need attention. Others threaten to Black Inc. PB. $29.99 subsequent retaliation on social of contemporary Australia and the power of burn the smoker’s fingers.’ This is a moment Review: That football culture is ever-present in media. Covering everything from Julia Gillard’s entrenched vested interests. characteristic of Malcolm’s astuteness, an Melbourne is a given. Whether you love it, hate it misogyny speech to the difficulties of a nine-year- Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director attention to detail not for its own sake but for the or are indifferent to it, chances are you’ll still know old girl understanding the abortion debate, it resonance detail evokes – the hidden metaphoric a good deal about it. On a cultural level, its teams examines the socio-political atmosphere possibility. Malcolm is a fine literary critic and and flags are a tangled roadmap of suburban and surrounding the discussion of equal rights, and F aTHER Bob journalist, but she would have made an equally generational loyalties. In the pub or workplace, its how these power structures can be dissected, Sue Williams impressive detective or psychoanalyst, for whom personalities, triumphs and controversies drive disrupted and destroyed. Penguin. PB. $29.99 such detail counts as evidence in a bigger picture. conversation like an uncontrollable rumour. On an The collection traverses the political, This is the life story of Father For Malcolm, the bigger picture is economic level, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. environmental, economic and cultural landscape Bob Maguire, the much-loved always the question of character. On visual So, whether you’re a fan of the game or not (and of Australia through diverse contributors, from ‘people’s priest’, social activist art she is competent, but it is the characters, I’m not), Anna Krien’s brilliant new book, Night Senators Christine Milne and Penny Wong and media performer. Sue behind and within the work, that she is Games, will hold many a revelation. to , Carmen Lawrence, Williams takes a look at the really interested in. This fascination, which is Krien’s first book,I nto the Woods: Clementine Ford and Michelle Law. Of particular times that shaped the man, from psychoanalytic in nature, is strikingly revealed The Battle of Tasmania’s Forests, enjoyed huge note are Monica Dux’s reflections on parenting a lonely childhood to working in the opening essay, ‘Forty-One False Starts’, success, and Night Games is her second full- in a patriarchal society, Lily Edelstein’s with the army during the Vietnam War and about the American painter David Salle. The length work of literary journalism. The book manifesto for teenage girls and Catherine collisions with the Vatican as a young priest. essay, as the title suggests, begins and begins begins with the 2010 grand final – in which the Deveny’s 12 steps to destroying the joint. The again. It approaches and retreats, cumulatively Pies beat the Saints after the first match ended plurality of these pieces provides the collection building a portrait of the artist in much the way in a draw – and the rumour of a pack rape that with a rich tapestry of shared experience. It a painting is made, by addition and subtraction. began to circulate in the days that followed. acknowledges the diversity of feminist ideals as Humour It is both an accumulation of material gestures Something had taken place at a celebratory well as the common threads that bind us. and an excavation. Attuned to the invisible and party at a townhouse in Dorcas Street, South Destroying the Joint provides a fresh Let’s Explore Diabetes the unacknowledged, the successful portrait, Melbourne. Two Collingwood footballers were perspective on the female experience. It is With Owls Malcolm proves, is a paradox. It is both a linked to the incident, but in the end a young an engaging read, littered with clever quips, David Sedaris material presence and a type of space through man, also a footballer, though not with the fascinating political discussions, captivating which something revelatory and otherwise Abacus. PB. Was $29.99 AFL, was charged. Krien follows the vein of the life experiences and a good dose of humour. unseen shines through. Special price $24.95 case and its tributaries throughout, all the while Highly recommended. stepping further and further back to take a look Review: For his ninth book, Miles Allinson is from Readings St Kilda at the football industry as a whole: its treatment Felicity Ford is from Readings Carlton humorist David Sedaris has of men and of women, jock culture and media pooled together stories as HOW TO READ LITERATURE obsession, sexual power play and sexual assault. Women & Power: diverse and obscure as the Terry Eagleton The blurb aligns Night Games with Griffith Review 40 collection’s title: Let’s Explore Yale University Press. HB. $34.95 the first-person journalistic style of Helen Diabetes With Owls. In his Julianne Schultz (ed.) What makes a work of literature Garner. But where Garner’s persuasion lies signature conversational style, Text. PB. $27.99 good or bad? In a series of with her overwhelming empathy for characters Sedaris meanders quite literally all over the place brilliant analyses, critic Terry and their laments, Krien’s deftness is to be Review: Silencing and a – from dentists’ rooms in France (where he lived Eagleton tells us about the art of found in her ability to draw into focus a world disregard for the work women do for several years before moving to West Sussex) reading with unfailing authority of immeasurable complexity. Krien is balanced, is hardly a new topic. Women, to Hawaii, where serendipity causes him to lose and cheerfulness. He examines yes, but never do you feel that she lacks an after all, have been writing about his passport and thus his UK immigration status. formalistic elements such as tone opinion. Rather, she lets the facts speak for this discrimination seemingly Several essays written for luminaries such as The and syntax, as well as asking broader questions themselves. That the AFL still relies on a kind for decades. However, the New Yorker and are published about creative imagination and fictionality in the of masculine monoculture is evident. But a importance of doing so cannot again here, with no loss of their original appeal. work of Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling. deeper truth is at stake here, and it is this and should not be diminished. Without anger Sedaris’s reflections about the relevance of family challenge that Krien is intellectually concerned and passion by women, for women and about while watching a kookaburra eat in Laugh, with. For both genders, we lack utterly the women, we’re in danger of maintaining a status Kookaburra, and his revulsion of the offal he language with which to articulate the grey quo that is still, sadly, one sided. Step in, Edition encounters in China in ‘#2 to Go’, stir the digestive Biography area between sexual will and sexual consent. 40 of the Griffith REVIEW,Women & Power. With and emotional juices in all the right places. Culturally, legally and socially, we are mute, contributions by Mary Delahunty, Mischa Merz An amusing addition is a series of short Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life and confused. We don’t even know how to and Anne Summers among many others, this essays known as ‘Forensics’. A short note at Yashodhara Dalmia play the game that we’re in, and the rules are issue brings a wide-ranging and international the front of the book explains that they are short Penguin India. PB. $16.99 as good as a rigged roll of the dice. perspective to where we are now. Do we really monologues, written by high school students, to It is all this and more that makes have it all? Do we have equal coverage? Do we be recited at competitions. The majority of these Review: Amrita Sher-Gil was Night Games one of the most incredible works as a nation handle the rise of women in politics, pieces, penned by Sedaris, are from the point of born in Budapest in 1913. Her of investigative non-fiction that I have ever economics, home and schools with conviction? view of a person blinkered to their own world- mother was Hungarian and her read. Krien is nuanced and fiercely intelligent, If so, why do we care what Ms Gillard wears? view: an anti-Obama racist, a whining housewife. father was from a noble Sikh and every paragraph is addictive, leaving This excellent collection of essays brings Dropped in and around his other essays, they jar family. The family lived in you thirsting for more as if in a thriller. This is the passion of women to our attention. It asks, tonally, but despite this I found them amusing, Hungary, India and Italy at something that will switch your understanding what happens now? And in doing so, the Griffith especially ‘I Break For Traditional Marriage’, various points. From an early of football into awesome technicolour, as well as REVIEW once again refuses to take an easy road. from the perspective of a redneck against gay age, Amrita showed artistic promise and, at the strike it through with the deepest unease. Essential reading for each and every one of us. marriage. Sedaris won’t change your life, but he urgings of her teachers, the family moved from will make you snigger, especially as a school girl India to Paris when Amrita was 16. There, she Jessica Au is editor of the Readings Monthly Chris Gordon is Readings’ events obsessed with Jesus and ruling the world. enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts and threw coordinator herself into the artistic life of the city, experimenting Nicole Lee is a freelance writer Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 15 sexually with both men and women and developing her art. In 1932, her painting Young Food & Gardening Art & Design Popular Science Girls won the Gold Medal from the Grand Salon. with Christine Gordon, with Margaret Snowdon, with Kate O’Mara, Yet after six years in Paris, she decided Readings Carlton Readings Carlton Readings at the Brain Centre to return to India, feeling that her destiny as a painter lay there. Settling in Simla, she set about learning about her country. In 1937, she had her The Bookery Cook L. Bernard Hall: Dying for a Chat first major exhibition in Lahore, which attracted Jessica Thompson, Georgia The Man The Art Dr Ranjana Srivastava the attention and praise of numerous art critics. Thompson & Maxine Thompson World Forgot Penguin. PB. $9.99 She also met the nationalist leader Jawharlalal Murdoch. HB. $39.99 Gwen Rankin In the medical world, people are Nehru, with whom she developed a close Three Australian sisters who New South. HB. $69.99 increasingly unable to properly friendship. The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge comprehend the complex love entertaining their artist As director of the National was another of her lovers. In an attempt to gain treatment choices on offer, or friends and cooking have Gallery of Victoria from 1892 to some emotional stability, she decided to marry they are self-diagnosing and created the sweetest and 1935, L. Bernard Hall was one her cousin Victor Egan, returning to Hungary only demanding unnecessary or risky prettiest cookbook of the year, of our most influential art to journey back to India at the outbreak of World procedures. Doctors, in turn, The Bookery Cook. The administrators and teachers. War II. Life in India was mixed. Victor, a doctor, feel unable to deny the requests of patients and breakfast section has a recipe for homemade Yet his achievements have been struggled to find meaningful work and Amrita had their families. Narrow specialisation also means baked beans, and it’s worth buying the book just virtually written out of history. long unproductive spells. In 1942 they moved that no one is discussing the overall picture of a for this. There’s also a cake section and even a Now, Gwen Rankin has uncovered Hall’s to Lahore and Amrita prepared optimistically for patient’s health. Dr Ranjana Srivastava warns that section entitled ‘Banquets’ (I’m very taken with fascinating story. Not as conservative as another major exhibition, but she died suddenly people are suffering – even dying – as a result, the Japanese banquet). However, none of this sometimes suggested, Hall came to Australia for from peritonitis. Styled as India’s Frida Kahlo, and that the medical profession should be taking makes it the prettiest cookbook of the year. To the love of a woman and stayed for the love of a Amrita’s influence on modern Indian art has been responsibility. In a frank and clear-eyed accompany the recipes, the sisters approached gallery, establishing a record of service still disproportionate to her short yet full life. This assessment of an unacknowledged crisis, she more than 60 artists from across the world to unrivalled today. Based almost entirely on book is a fascinating study of her time and the makes an impassioned case for better healthcare produce works inspired by the food. The result is primary source material, this biography includes place of her work in Indian and European culture. training and communication skills. beautiful and Melbourne’s own Tai Snaith does a many of Hall’s own paintings and drawings, Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director meat pie that is an ode to our town. along with striking archival photographs. The Serpent’s Promise The Passage of Power Toscano’s Family Table Photorealism: 50 Steve Jones Robert Caro Joanne Toscano Years of Hyperrealistic Little, Brown. PB. $32.99 Vintage. PB. $26.95 Slattery. HB. $50 Painting The Bible was one of the first scientific textbooks, and it got The fourth volume of Robert Toscano’s Family Table is a book Otto Letze (ed.) that will be used not only for its some things right (and plenty Caro’s monumental work on Hatje Cantz. PB. $73.50 American President Lyndon excellent Italian recipes but also more wrong). Now, geneticist Photorealism involves a Johnson spans the years 1958 to for the wonderful glossary Steve Jones rewrites it in the complicated work process, in 1964. Arguably the most crucial included at the end. There are light of modern science. Are which technical aids are time in Johnson’s life, this era descriptions and histories of we all descended from a employed to create dazzling saw him battle John F. Kennedy literally hundreds of fruit, vegetables, herbs and single couple, a real-life Adam and Eve? Was painted illusions. This for the Democratic nomination for president and nuts, alongside advice on how to select the very the Bible’s great flood really a memory of the stunning publication presents losing, only to have the position thrust upon him best. The Toscano family, of Toscano’s fruit and end of the Ice Age? Will we ever get back to a series of impressive works by leading figures following Kennedy’s assassination. During this vegetable shop in Kew, Melbourne, is of course the longevity of Methuselah? This is a in the movement. Beginning in the 60s with time, Johnson grasped the presidential role with known for doing just that. Joanne’s grandfather groundbreaking work about shared mysteries, artists such as Richard Estes, Chuck Close and unprecedented skill, forcing previously abandoned opened the iconic grocer in 1950. The delicious, from the origins of life and humankind to sex, Don Eddy, the book moves through three bills on the budget and civil rights through an practical dishes include Pat’s zucchini flowers, age, death and the end of the universe. generations, concluding with the hyperrealistic uncooperative Congress. salami salad and, of course, recipes for pasta, roast pork and panna cotta. visuals of contemporary digital artists such as P aleofANTASy Yigal Ozeri, Raphaella Spence and Robert Marlene Zuk Neffson. As Chuck Close famously once said, Cooked Wiley. HB. $34.95 Travel Writing ‘Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.’ Michael Pollan Theories about how our All Good Things Allen Lane. PB. $29.99 The Purple Book ancestors lived – and why we Sarah Turnbull should emulate them – are often Michael Pollan is known and Angus Hyland & Angharad Lewis HarperCollins. PB. Was $30 loved by many for writing based on speculation rather Laurence King. HB. $70 Special price $24.95 logically and clearly about why than actual research. In The Purple Book is a luxurious Paleofantasy, Marlene Zuk For many, finding the love of the majority of humanity in compendium of contemporary shows how our visions of an your life and moving to Paris western cultures eat badly, illustration that explores fantasy, ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived and would come pretty close to behave badly and have little sensuality and the erotic reproduced as we were ‘meant to’ can lead us having it all. But for Sarah regard for the beauty and imagination. It highlights visual astray, distracting us from more interesting Turnbull, author of the bestselling welfare of our planet. In Cooked: A Natural art and the written word as considerations of how we differ from our forebears. Almost French, there was still History of Transformation he celebrates real media for representing human Along the way, she debunks the caveman diet, one more dream that she longed cooking, the kind that occurs within the family. desire’s relationship with the dream-state, discusses whether we’re really designed to run to come true. So, when an opportunity to embark Using the four elements of fire, water, earth and make-believe and symbolism. Many of the works barefoot, and considers modern-day courtship on another adventure arises, it’s a chance at a air as a basis for his discussion, he chats with featured here are from illustrators’ personal and child-rearing practices. new beginning. Leaving Paris behind was never chefs from across the world to learn the collections, appearing in print for the first time. going to be easy. But it helps when your intricacies of cooking everything, from an entire destination is known as paradise on earth... pig to sourdough bread. This is an intelligent Seven Elements That and often funny call to action. There are also Home Chic: Decorating Have Changed The World four recipes in the back, along with a wonderful With Style John Browne glossary of useful cookbooks. Music India Mahdavi W&N. PB. $29.99 Flammarion. PB. $39.95 Sweet Greek With carbon we access heat Gurrumul This indispensable style guide is Kathy Tsaples and light at the flick of a switch, Robert Hillman bursting with personal tips on while silicon enables us to Melbourne Books. HB. $39.99 HarperCollins. HB. Was $65 how to transform every room in communicate across the globe Special price $54.95 Known and admired by her your home with flair. Interior in an instant. Yet our use of the From concert halls to customers at the Prahran design icon India Mahdavi has earth’s mineral resources is not recording studios to the Market, Kathy Tsaples has solutions for all shortcomings, always for the benefit of Aboriginal heartlands, this is created a delicious cookbook from low ceilings to noisy humankind. Indeed, our relationship with the the story of Geoffrey Gurrumul based on the theme of neighbours. Her signature interiors incorporate elements is one of great ambivalence. Uranium is Yunupingu, one of the most traditional Greek holidays such bold accents of colour, texture and pattern. With both productive and destructive. Iron is the inspiring musicians of our as Lent and Easter. But these recipes can be pointers that include faux pas to avoid, dos and bloody weapon of war but also the economic tool generation. Part road trip, part biography, this used all year round – roast lamb, after all, is don’ts, classic versus luxury detail and ingenious of peace. Our desire for alluring gold is the book offers rare insight into his life, including delicious at any time! Kathy has managed to storage tips, Home Chic overflows with advice foundation of global trade, but it has also led to the interviews with family and friends and exclusive create a book that not only celebrates methods and inspiration. This edition includes a beautiful death of millions. Combining history, science and photographs, as well as a CD of remixed songs that have been used for generations but also ribbon page marker, original Mahdavi-print politics, Seven Elements takes you on a present- from Gurrumul and Rrakala. rejoices in family times. An absolute winner. endpapers and watercolour paper. day adventure of human ingenuity and discovery. 16 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

Q&A with Anna Krien

In Night Games, Anna Krien takes a fearless and compelling look at the dark side of footy culture – in particular the disturbing incidents that took place in a South Melbourne townhouse after the 2010 grand final that culminated in the rape trial of a young footballer. Here, she talks to Jessica Au.

What drew you to explore this side of sporting culture? Did you feel that this was a book that needed to be written?

It was the unfortunate ‘St Kilda Schoolgirl’ saga that caught my (and many others’) attention back in 2010. It was a pretty trashy story, one that involved a teenage girl, footballers, a false allegation of pregnancy, viral emails, photos of naked players and a salivating media circus. (One tabloid journalist even helped the teenager at the centre of the story, Kimberley Duthie, set a ‘honey trap’ for a dodgy football manager.) But putting the trashy elements aside, there were serious issues at play. Duthie was never going to s Director of the National be a heroine for women’s rights, for taking on the big boys AGallery of Victoria from 1892 to at the AFL – but what was interesting was how much the 1935, L. Bernard Hall was Australian public wanted her to be. She became a weapon (albeit one that fell apart) for other people’s art’s most influential administrator misgivings about footballers. and teacher, yet his achievements And yes, I do feel like this was a book that needed to be written. Whether I’ve have been virtually written out of succeeded in filling or partially filling the gap on the bookshelves, I don’t know – but over the history. In this book Gwen Rankin past decade, the silence in and around the darker side of football, both Aussie Rules and Rugby uncovers Hall’s fascinating story. League, has begun to fray. This is, in part, due to the ‘intrusion’ of female sports journalists who have exposed a shadowy subculture of entitlement, callousness and humiliation, a scene that had been dutifully ignored by male journalists (or should I call them groupies?) for years.

You touch on the ethics of getting to know the family of the young footballer at the centre of the rape trial (who is called ‘Justin’ in the book), and objectivity when everyone, including the writer, has something at stake. As a journalist, how do you negotiate these challenges?

It’s really difficult to negotiate. The defendant, Justin Dyer, and his family were really suffering throughout the trial. They were under enormous pressure, and no amount of objectivity could blinker me from genuinely feeling for them. What was even more difficult was that I had no one to compare their suffering with – the complainant, who I call Sarah, gave her evidence in closed www.newsouthbooks.com.au court and was otherwise entirely absent from the trial. I was constantly having to shore up the Dyer family’s pain with speculation about Sarah’s own trauma. And that’s the tough thing about being a writer – you have to continually discern between the emotive and what’s right.

Tell us about the research process for Night Games. What was your reaction to some of the stories that you uncovered?

The start of any investigative process begins with getting the lay of the land. I read whatever I could get my hands on about football, power and sex. The explosive Four Corners’ ‘Code of Silence’ and a surprising early 90s study in the United States that revealed male athletes as featuring prominently in reported sexual assaults, despite constituting only a tiny percentile of the campus population, got the ball rolling. From here, I tried to speak to anyone who had an insight into the on-field and off-field culture of Australia’s two main footy codes, Rugby League and Australian Rules – from past and present players, coaches, staff, sexual assault counsellors, females working within the codes, journalists, ‘groupies’ and so forth. Alongside this, I was following the rape charges and subsequent trial of Justin Dyer. As for my reaction to some of the stories I heard in relation to the off-field antics of players and women, I hate to say it but I can’t say I was surprised. Sometimes this disturbed me – I felt like I ought to have been more shocked, more horrified, but unfortunately I thought it was all pretty predictable. It’s a sad thing to admit, but much of it felt grossly familiar. What did surprise me was the depth and breadth of yearning to be part of the team – what struck me as a sad schoolyard desire that had potential to be quite dangerous, particularly if the need to be ‘in’ with ‘the boys’ got in the way of doing proper police work, for example. Another thing that shocked me is that footy isn’t taxed. Football clubs and football leagues don’t pay income tax. Most sporting bodies don’t. They are not-for-profit, so to speak, their status much like that of a charity. I think this is a real clanger because it reveals that football is not ‘just’ a business and it’s not ‘just’ a game – its responsibilities are very real. The Emerging Writers’ Festival brings writers together – with new You write also about the ‘grey zone’ – the ‘glacial space between a man’s action and a audiences and each other – to woman’s reaction’ – and later ask whether there is any room for exploring disturbing sexual inspire, create and entertain, over encounters, that often don’t fit within stock stereotypes. Culturally, socially or legally, do you feel we have the language for this yet? an eleven day festival. I don’t think we do. I think it’s very difficult for someone to reflect on a disturbing sexual encounter Offering 50 events across without feeling pressured to conclude that there was a victim and a perpetrator, that it was rape or that they were to blame for bringing it on themselves. And, ultimately, this is what Night Games is Melbourne, the Emerging Writers’ about – that strange place between consent and rape, one that the slogan ‘No means No’ doesn’t Festival offers the most affordable allow for. professional development opportunities in Australia. Finally, tell us about your favourite works of literary journalism.

Locally, it’s the ladies that have my heart. Helen Garner’s The First Stone, Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Tickets are selling fast. Visit Man and ’s Stasiland are all incredible works of literary journalism, their brave voices emergingwritersfestival.org.au not too fragile to question themselves and yet strong enough to draw a line. Add to that the poetry to book now. of their writing. It’s like these writers play the piano on their typewriters. Offshore, it’s the usual suspects that have me enthralled – Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is hilarious, and there is always John Behrendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to curl up with. Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 17

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She argues that this the way, he corrects Bill Bryson’s ‘facts’ about 50 of Australia’s most unusual trees, from the event rescued mankind from squalor and words, challenges the rhetoric of Lynne Truss’s Richard Cornish elephantine boabs that dot the Kimberley region of deprivation by placing its material fate in its bestselling Eats, Shoots & Leaves and explains PB. Was $32.99 Western Australia to the prehistoric-looking bunya own hands. why speech is a lot like jazz. NOW $13.95 pines that once looked down on the dinosaurs Frank Camorra, chef of the renowned Spanish and are still growing in the remote north-east. restaurant MoVida, teams up with food writer New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at www.readings.com.au for more. 18 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

Picturing Gatsby

Nicki Greenberg looks back at adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 screenplay to Gatz. Picture Books

I first readThe Great Gatsby when I was 17 years old. I was captivated by it: by the beauty, the Amy’s Three Best Things melancholy, the grand yearnings and grown-up extravagance that hummed on a frequency Philippa Pearce & Helen Craig (illus.) outside the range of my experience. I had to stretch to touch that floating, tarnished world, and Walker. HB. $27.95 just as my fingertips grazed its edges, it would elude me again. I have since read the book many Review: During Amy’s first sleepover times, and I marvel at the way it yields something different with each reading. Gatsby at 17 is a at Gran’s house, she bravely battles different experience to Gatsby at 25, at 30, at 37. It is part of the book’s magic that it continues to night-time anxiety using her imagination offer new facets as the reader’s position shifts, and yet its mystery, its feeling of slipping through and some comforting belongings from our fingers, remains. home. Ten years after it was first This glimmering mystery poses a special challenge when adapting the text, whether for published, Amy’s Three Best Things gets the page, stage, screen or any other medium. If we try to pin the book down too forcefully, to fix it a gorgeous makeover from illustrator Helen Craig of Angelina with one particular vision, we run the risk of diminishing it. The task, I feel, is not to attempt to pluck Ballerina fame. The original story by Philippa Pearce (Tom’s out the mystery of the book, but to cradle it, to turn it gently in our hands and allow different lights Midnight Garden) unfolds at a gentle pace with plenty of wonder, to play on it so that a reader might see new gleams of meaning flash across it. making for a great read-aloud for ages 4 and up. Craig also For a number of people I have spoken with over the years, Francis Ford Coppola and complements the old-fashioned setting with classic pencil and Jack Clayton’s 1974 film adaptation ofThe Great Gatsby, with Robert Redford in the title role, is watercolour artwork. I loved this celebration of independence their principal, or only, vision of what the novel is all about. This saddens me, because the film not and the creative mind of a child. only failed to do justice to the novel but, in my view, did it an enormous disservice. A quick skim of reviews written at the time suggests that critics largely agreed. This month, there will be another Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton film version ofGatsby , and perhaps this new extravaganza – in 3D, no less – will become another Did you generation’s vision of the book, for better or for worse. On a Beam of Light I watched the Coppola/Clayton version some 20 years ago when studying the novel for my know... Jennifer Berne & Vladimir Radunksy (illus.) Year 12 literature class, but had never revisited it until very recently. This was mainly because I didn’t Chronicle. HB. $24.95 enjoy it the first time around, and then because I didn’t want it to skew or get in the way of my own ... that Maurice adaptation of the novel. Film images are incredibly potent, and they seem to burn a more powerful Review: I love picture books that teach impression into our minds than the more subtle ones conjured up by reading a piece of prose. This Sendak’s children about extraordinary human can happen whether we like the film or not. I feel fortunate that Fitzgerald’s novel was so moving and beings throughout history. Sometimes, important to me that it completely eclipsed any memory that I had of the film. Watching it 20 years Where the Wild however, they can be rather pedestrian later, it affronted me all over again. Things Are biographies. Not so for this fascinating Gatsby does pose some especially tough challenges to translation for the screen, partly book on Albert Einstein. It begins with his because of the contemplative, introspective nature of Nick Carraway’s narrative. The 1974 film was originally birth and unusual behaviour during couldn’t seem to make up its mind about this, muddying his voice and his particular point of view. childhood (he barely spoke and would often just look It lurched through the plot and charlestoned through the lavish party scenes, relying heavily on an called Where wonderingly at the world). We then learn about Einstein’s love of overblown recreation of the novel’s exterior surfaces – the costumes, the cars and the meticulously numbers, his contributions to our understanding of atoms, and constructed sets. As a result, the meaning and the mystery of this most subtle and supple novel, and the Wild Horses his theories about time and space. The story and its unusual the luminosity of the prose that made it, is lost. Are? His illustrations paint Einstein as a person who asked many Coppola also rewrote the story primarily as a grand romance between Gatsby and Daisy. questions, refused to conform, and, by being completely This is simply not what the novel is about, and the attempt to make it so – presumably because editor, Ursula himself, contributed more than any other to our knowledge and Hollywood loves a love story – makes a nonsense of it. Fortunately for Nick, he was not present understanding of the universe. Recommended for inquiring during the interminable soft-focus scenes of their affair to report clangers like these: Nordstrom, minds ages 5 and up. ‘Kiss me! Be my lover! Stay my lover!’ loved the first Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda ‘It was fine for you – breaking my heart with your impossible love!’ ‘Put on your uniform and let’s turn off all the lights except for a single candle, and I’ll let you title, but as Oscar Goes to the Moon tell me you love me.’ it turned out, Helen Tanner This was not the only startling departure from the book. Over and over again, Coppola Vivid Publishing. HB. $19.95 rejected the novel’s scenes of perfect delicacy, wit and irony – scenes that are a gift to a screenplay – Sendak couldn’t Review: I have been lucky enough to and replaced them with his own heavy-handed inventions. Adaptation is certainly a creative process, see Oscar Goes to the Moon develop but an adaptor’s impulses must be guided by the meaning, tone and form of the original text. This draw horses. from its early days to the finished book, demands subtlety, restraint and, most importantly, constant, sensitive listening to the book. Coppola’s She asked him, and because Helen Tanner has self- failure to really listen, while focusing obsessively on the visual, is where I think the film came unstuck. published, she has had full control in By contrast, in 2009 I saw the most astonishing and brilliant adaptation of Gatsby ‘Maurice, what maintaining its gentle integrity and – a production called Gatz, by New York theatre company Elevator Repair Service. The show innocent simplicity. Oscar is delightful. He is a rabbit who wants incorporated a verbatim recital – almost completely without notes – of the entire novel. It lasted seven can you draw?’ to go places and eventually settles on a trip to the moon. So, hours and was utterly captivating. In a dilapidated office, a bored clerk finds a copy ofThe Great after a bit of planning and a few preparations, his quest comes Gatsby in his desk and begins to read aloud. As he is drawn into the novel, the clerk imperceptibly He replied, to fruition. A really sweet story, suitable for sharing with young shifts to become the voice of Nick Carraway, while his co-workers and various passers-through ‘Things.’ children between the ages of 2 and 5, and also the perfect assume the roles of the other characters. present for babies and children called Oscar. This was adaptation at its finest: faithful to the novel and also thrillingly original. The play illuminated every word of the novel’s wonderful prose, while riffing on the wry humour of the Helen will be hosting a rocket-building craft workshop on 24 text with an incongruous setting and surprising cast of characters. Nick’s role as a semi-reluctant May at Readings Hawthorn. See our events page for details. witness, both ‘within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn variety of life’ was perfectly reflected by the clerk-narrator, drawn into the story by a force outside his control – the force of the story itself. Without a single sequin, without lavish sets or cars or costumes, Gatz evoked not only the Jazz Age ambiance of the novel but, more importantly, its Pula Thurlby’s Wildlife complex and mysterious heart. Paul Thurlby Gatz is a beautiful example of a group of artists pursuing a dream that for many years must Templar. HB. $19.99 have seemed crazy. A seven-hour play? Imagine the emotional and physical demands on an actor Review: Did you know green algae can who must memorise, and then recite, the entire novel. Imagine the leap of faith and the huge amount grow in a polar bear’s fur if they stay too hot of work by all involved in bringing this play into the world. Positively Gatsbyesque! for too long? I didn’t! Paul Thurlby offers Perhaps in order to make an adaptation of Gatsby that resonates, one needs something some tantalising animal truths: some well that is impossible to manufacture. Not a gigantic budget or eye-popping special effects or a known, others more obscure. Each page scriptwriting holiday on location in Long Island, but a very large dose of passion, ‘a romantic introduces an animal, a pithy idiom and a readiness’ and sensitivity as open and extravagant as Gatsby’s own. fun fact. The pictures are ingeniously simple and striking, and kids will have lots of fun with them. You’ve By Nicki Greenberg just got to love picture books! They offer so many different ways of looking at the world and so many stories and Nicki Greenberg's graphic adaptations of The Great Gatsby and Hamlet are published by Allen & Unwin. In between making love to the classics, she also writes and illustrates imaginings with a breathtaking array of styles and creativity. books for children. Explore the unique world of Paul Thurlby’s Wildlife with young ones from ages 3 and up. AD Readings MONTHLY maY 2013 19

The Reluctant Assassin: Book of the Month W.A.R.P. Book 1 Navigating Early Eoin Colfer Clare Vanderpool Puffin. PB. Was $19.99 Random. HB. $24.95 Special price $16.99

Review: In 2011, Clare Vanderpool’s Moon Over Manifest was one of my favourite Review: Artemis Fowl fans – prepare to books. It went on to win one of children’s literature’s most prestigious awards, the Newbery immerse yourselves in a whole new Eoin Colfer Medal. With her latest novel, Vanderpool once again proves that she is a masterful storyteller. series. The Reluctant Assassin is the first book She weaves a wonderful tale of adventure, love, loyalty and belief, and the journey is memorable in the new W.A.R.P. series and introduces us to and moving. two capable new heroes: a Native American girl named Chevron Savano, who is the FBI’s Navigating Early transports the reader to the north-east of the US at the end of World War II. The sense of youngest agent, on assignment in current-day place is powerfully evoked, and before you know it, you are there on the Appalachian Trail, with two boys London, and a boy named Riley, who lives in on a quest that you are not overly confident will end well. After his mother’s death, Jack Baker is uprooted London in 1898 and is the unwilling apprentice to an evil assassin from his safe Kansas country world and sent to a boys’ boarding school while his father returns to his named Garrick. Some scientific and operational mishaps bring naval career. There, Jack meets Early Auden, an odd boy with exceptional knowledge and mathemati- Chevron, Riley and Garrick together in both modern-day and cal brilliance. He is a loner who befriends Jack, and eventually the two embark on a perilous journey Victorian-era London, which Colfer brings to life with vivid to find a legendary bear and a lost brother, two of Early’s obsessions. descriptions of the poverty, grime and stench of the time. In the present, Garrick is able to acquire knowledge from the FBI that he Jack just wants to escape the heartache and loneliness he has felt since his mother’s death, then incorporates into his arsenal of tools, making him a truly but despite her physical absence, she is with him every step of the way. Early and Jack terrifying and formidable opponent for Chevron and Riley. The are terrific characters, especially Early, and this is a richly rewarding novel for Reluctant Assassin contains action, time travel, a cast of readers aged 9 and up. I suspect it may be my favourite for 2013. interesting characters and lays the foundation for subsequent books in the series. For girls and boys ages 11 and up. Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Kate Campbell is from Readings Hawthorn

Darcy Burdock Laura Dockrill Corgi. PB. $14.95 New Ten-year-old Darcy Burdock learns that turning The Hueys in It Wasn’t Me into an angrosaurus-rex just gets her in trouble, running away from home with a reluctant lamb in Oliver Jeffers tow leads to sore kneebows, and, most HarperCollins. HB. $24.99 importantly, if she’s ever in a confusing situation, Award-winning author and illustrator Oliver Kids’ she should just write a story and the truth will be Jeffers brings us another story about the very brought out by her imagination. The first book in strange, and equally fabulous, Hueys. This a new series featuring a lovable new heroine. time a fight has broken out among them but, annoyingly, no one can remember what it is Verity Sparks: Lost and Found they′re fighting about. If only they could find Susan Green an interesting distraction ... Books Walker. PB. $16.95 Truly Tan: Jinxed! Melbourne, 1879. Verity Sparks has found her Junior Fiction father but has lost her ability to find lost things. Jen Storer & Claire Robertson (illus.) When Papa Savinov, eager for Verity to become The Lion Who Stole My Arm HarperCollins. PB. $16.99 a proper lady, ships her off to an exclusive boarding school, our young heroine becomes Nicola Davies Tan is back. She′s bolder. She′s brighter. But is she ... jinxed? In the second Truly Tan embroiled in the case of the missing Ecclethorpe Walker. PB. $11.95 adventure, there’s an old tram in the back heiress. Danger and intrigue deepen, and Verity Review: Part of a new series by English paddock that has ‘Follow Me Through the realises she needs her gift more than ever. author Nicola Davies, The Lion Who Stole My Shadow’ painted on it. Tan is convinced that Arm is a unique book within a crowded the tram is full of secrets. It could even be market. Rather than featuring western kids in haunted. The problem is, Tan isn’t allowed to exotic countries helping the animals, the go inside. Just as well she’s a super cunning heroes here are all locals. In The Lion Who spy. This could be her biggest case yet. Classic of the Month Stole My Arm, young Pedru gets his arm bitten off by a lion near his village in Mozambique. In The White Mountains revenge, he vows to kill the lion, as is traditional in his culture. Middle Fiction John Christopher Yet instead he learns from local conservationists about how Simon Pulse. PB. $9.95 humans and animals can work in better harmony and provide an Julius and the Watchmaker Review: As a kid I found reading a income for his village. These stories have great educational Tim Hehir struggle, but I can honestly say that a potential for schools and kids interested in conservation. For Text. PB. $19.99 trilogy turned that around for me. In 1983, ages 8 and up. Angela Crocombe as an eleven-year-old, I read the first book Review: This is a fast-paced time-slip story in the Tripods trilogy – The White Mountains about a boy, Julius Higgins, caught between a My Happy Life by John Christopher. It was written in 1967 revered member of the Guild of Watchmakers Rose Lagercrantz & Eva Eriksson but remains as fresh as any dystopian novel and the cunning but dastardly Jack Springheel. Gecko. PB. $15.99 for young adults today. In the future, In another time, Spingheel lived with the three-legged machines known simply as Review: My Happy Life is a gorgeous little Shelleys and borrowed from Mary Shelley’s ‘the Tripods’ have ruled Earth for so long book and the perfect next step for children ideas to create his own half-human clockmen. that no one knows of a time before they arrived. At 14, children ready to move on from the first readers at Or did Mary Shelley take his idea? Who knows? are ‘Capped’ in a ceremony that the Tripods disguise as a rite of school. Originally published in Swedish before The ideas here are complex and fascinating: time- passage into adulthood, but the Cap is really a mind control being translated into English, this irresistible slips and imagination can create other potential worlds and device that keeps the adults subdued. Thirteen-year-old Will hears chapter book explores Dani’s first year of there are rare timepieces that produce a vortex between them. of a place – the White Mountains – where the altitude is too high school, with all its challenges and The alternate parallels into which Julius is hurled are rich and for the Tripods to endure. So begins the journey as Will, his experiences. Children will easily identify with scary and strange. Some readers will relish the historical depth, cousin Henry and another boy nicknamed ‘Beanpole’ make their the anxiety of the unknown, the joy of a first real friendship (and while others will just gulp down the plot, but either way it’s a escape and the Tripods give chase. its inevitable conundrums) and the delight in sharing. Even loss compelling read. The sequels, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool and sadness in Dani’s world are worked through in a positive I can’t wait to hand-sell this to young readers: boys of Fire, are satisfying action-adventure instalments in their own way. Young readers will revel in the lovely line illustrations on especially, though lots of girls will enjoy it too. It has everything right, rounding out this world fantastically. Highly recommended every page, and Dani will without a doubt charm children and going for it and the author lives locally. I agree with the for kids aged 11 to 100. adults alike. Highly recommended for ages 5 and up. publisher’s claim: a classic in the making for ages 12 and up. Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton 20 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

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This documentary life, confronting a glorious past, a shaky reign in the great house. With new family focuses on a series of 11-year- present and an uncertain future. CALL THE MIDWIFE: members arriving and staff jostling for position, olds from 15 countries – no SERIES 2 the secure, serene and ordered world of longer children and not quite GOURMET FARMER: Downton is rocked by passions above and $39.95 adults, they are all preparing SERIES 3 below the stairs. And as a wave of financial to inherit a rapidly changing world. 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He can have more pigs, cows, to the harsh living conditions, where staff and incredible survival at sea against admissions officer in New York sheep and ducks, a dairy, a smoker, a hanging patients struggle with poverty, domestic abuse impossible odds. Stranded on a whose life hasn’t turned out room and an orchard all on the one plot of and the onset of TB. But she also discovers lifeboat in the middle of the the way he planned. Having land. But this time round, he’ll need to do the warm hearts and the bravery of the Pacific Ocean after a storm, Pi just been dumped by his some careful planning if he’s to achieve his mothers, each one a heroine in Jenny’s eyes. survives with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and girlfriend, he escapes from his ambitious vision.

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on the way. It has been lovingly produced cd by Kerryn Tolhurst, who also provides lap steel, slide guitar and mandolin. Fans of the Pigram Brothers’ albums will find much to like here, with of the the country-folk feel still intact. A couple of the is not afraid to add layers and instrumentation. It slower tracks, ‘World is Turning’, ‘Long Long month is almost hard to imagine it is the same artist COUNTRY Way’ and the reflective ‘Being’ have some very behind both. Definitely worth checking out. fine fingerpicking. Other more up-tempo tunes feature fiddle accordion and harmonica from Brod She & Him: Volume 3 Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton The Low Highway She & Him Smith and Jim Conway, providing the perfect Steve Earle & The Dukes accompaniment to Pigram’s guitar. Was $26.95 OLD SOCK Was $26.95 Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton Special price $21.95 Eric Clapton Special price $21.95 Vinyl $34.95 Was $26.95 Deluxe CD/DVD edition $26.95 Review: She & Him skip their way back into Special price $21.95 Vinyl $34.95 PROUD stores with their third (non-Christmas) release The Bart Willoughby Band Review: Unbelievably, Review: He’s such a busy and the band continue to be as cute as otters $27.95 this is Eric Clapton’s 21st guy these days, what with his in a pie shop. It’s impossible to feel sad while studio album and on it he acting and writing careers, Review: Bart Willoughby listening to this chirpy style of indie pop – revisits some of his favourite that it’s possible some has been one of the prime occasional bittersweet tales of love infused with songs with some help from younger folk might not realise movers in Indigenous music a dollop of Zooey Deschanel’s coarse-honey old friends, including J.J. Cale, Taj Mahal, that Steve Earle is one of the finest songwriters ever since the reggae-tinged voice and M. Ward’s musical hooks. Fourteen Steve Winwood and Paul McCartney. Old Sock of his generation. The Low Highway leaves no No Fixed Address burst onto tracks – including a Blondie cover – make up has a comfortable feel and is certainly a doubt, however, that Earle is clearly focused on the scene back in the 1980s. Since then, he’s lent an album as catchy as hell and the aural laidback listen. Those looking for Clapton to his music. Whereas his originals over the past his talents to outfits like and The equivalent of finding your nan’s old sweater at let loose on his guitar should look elsewhere, decade sometimes had an unrelenting political Black Arm Band, as well as being an inspiration to the op shop. but if you’re after some classy, easy blues- bent that threatened to overwhelm the craft many young musicians. Proud deals with human Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton pop, this is for you. DC behind it, he has found a way to deliver a much rights, connection with the land and Indigenous more balanced album this time around. The Low spirituality. Willoughby’s vocals are rough and OVERGROWN Highway is probably his best in this regard since ready, frequently half-spoken but effective. The 2000’s excellent Transcendental Blues. DC album opens with two prime slices of local reggae, James Blake and towards the end, things get noisier and more Was $26.95 exciting. The closing track ‘Aboriginal Kurdish’ is a Pop/Rock Special price $21.95 JAZZ/BLUES/SOUL universal cry for freedom and a stunning piece of Weekend Review: Musically and music, featuring some superbly played dub emotionally, Overgrown is a Barnswallow reggae, overlaid with spoken word and sax Underground Lovers big advance in James Blake’s playing from Fadi Suna. PB $21.95 career, reflecting just how Charlie Parr $24.95 Review: After a hiatus much the 24-year-old BEAUTIFUL AFRICA from performing and Londoner’s life has changed in the past two Review: The release of Rokia Traoré recording, Melbourne group years. His self-titled debut sold over 400 000 the album 1922 really put $21.95 Underground Lovers have copies – quite something for a record that was Charlie Parr on the map Review: Rokia Traoré released an album of new so uncompromisingly introspective and globally as a fine purveyor of grew up in Bamako, Mali, and material. Their highly acclaimed previous experimental. It also picked up album of the the authentic blues. Parr’s now travels all over the world. albums include Leaves Me Blind and Dream It year shout-outs and nominations for the musical influences include Charlie Patton and Her new album, Beautiful Down, as well as retrospective album , as well as the BRIT and Ivor Mississippi John Hurt, and he plays a National Africa, shows her pushing Wonderful Things + Everybody’s Favourite. Novello awards. Overgrown is an incredible resonator and a 12-string guitar. Touring forward and should extend her fan-base even Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 60s cinema album that sees Blake growing as a singer and regularly, he has been a popular visitor to wider. This time round, Traoré relocated to masterpiece, Weekend features the original a songwriter, while at the same time returning Australia. The new record Barnswallow contains Brixton to work with P.J. Harvey collaborator lineup of founders, singer Vincent Giarusso to the brain-melting electronic perfection of his mostly originals and will no doubt swell his ever John Parish. It’s no surprises then that the and guitarist Glenn Bennie, bass player early releases. DC increasing fan base. MAS album has a stronger electric guitar feel, Maurice Argiro, drummer Richard Andrew and although traditional acoustic instruments and guitarist/vocalist Phillipa Nihill, along with LITTLE FRENCH SONGS VICTIM OF LOVE Malian backing vocals still feature. Some of Emma Bortignon on second bass. Carla Bruni Charles Bradley these songs really rock, and the overall sound Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda $21.95 $21.95 suits Traoré’s themes of her home country, The former first lady of Vinyl $29.95 artistic censorship, being a woman in Africa and Bankrupt! France is back and slips into At 62, Charles Bradley was the joys and pains of love. PB Phoenix chanteuse mode very working as a handyman and comfortably with Little Was $26.95 part of a James Brown tribute A Toss of the Coin French Songs. This Special price $21.95 act in Brooklyn. Famously Eric Bogle with John Munro charming new collection is perfect for the discovered by Daptone’s Deluxe edition $29.95 $24.95 daydreamer in all of us, as Carla Bruni Gabe Roth, he went on to record his seminal Vinyl $29.95 Review: It’s been a while continues to sing about love and all the debut, No Time For Dreaming, which won him since we’ve had a batch of Review: Four years after emotions rendered from it. The intimate immense critical and popular acclaim. Victim of new songs from Eric Bogle, the acclaimed Wolfgang production features all acoustic instruments, Love sees him expanding his musical scope, but at long last here it is. A Amadeus Phoenix, French with guitar by Bruni, and is sure to transport drawing from the psychedelic soul that The Toss of the Coin is a alt-rock band Phoenix have you to the always alluring Paris. Temptations explored in the early 70s, as well as collection of intelligent and dignified songs released album number five, a deep gospel groove. Bankrupt! The driving pop-funk of previous SWING about everyday heroes delivered by a small acoustic ensemble, including longtime records has given way to a more experimental Renée Geyer style, which should intrigue fans and accompanist John Munro on guitar and Was $26.95 FOLK/WORLD newcomers alike. mandolin. There’s also some fine fiddle and Special Price $21.95 cello playing from Emma Luker. The first track, Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from Renée Geyer’s powerful and WANDERER ‘Ashes’, is certain to become part of the Bogle Readings Carlton expansive voice has graced Stephen Pigram canon and deals sensitively with Black Australian stages for over $29.95 Saturday, while ‘By the Arafura Sea’ shows a Junip four decades now. In that lighter, more romantic side as well. PB Review: Broome-based time, she’s delivered Junip singer-songwriter Stephen stunning performances, exploring blues, jazz, $16.95 Pigram has been busy of late, Coming Soon R’n’B and soul. Her 23rd album, Swing, Review: While the world touring with his brother’s band, openly pays homage to the great swing Modern Vampires of the City / Vampire waits for another solo album The Black Arm Band, and bands of the 30s and 40s, and includes Weekend, 10 May (it’s been six years), Readings appearing on the excellent Mad Bastards covers of wonderful classics such as Sinatra’s Steal the Light / The Cat Empire, 17 May favourite José Gonzàlez has soundtrack. But the good news for us is that he ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, Chet Baker’s ‘My Funny Once I Was An Eagle / , released a second album with has finally got around to doing that solo album. Valentine’ and James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s 27 May his band, Junip. While his solo work is generally a Wanderer features songs about Pigram’s life in Man’s World’. False Idols / Tricky, 27 May gentle, sparse acoustic affair, with Junip Gonzàlez Broome, outback travels and the people he meets 22 Readings MONTHLY maY 2013

Specials classical of the cd of the Schubert Alleluia month month Maria João Pires Julia Lezhneva Beethoven: String DG. 4778107. $24.95 Decca. 4785242. Was $26.95 Shostakovich: Cello (for a limited time only) Quartets Op. 18 Nos. 2 & 3 Review: Maria João Special price $21.95 Concerto No. 1, Sonata Quatuor Mosaïques Pires is one of the most Review: Julia Lezhneva’s for cello & piano op. 40 internationally renowned Vivaldi album was a massive Naïve. E8902. Was $34.95 Emmanuelle Bertrand pianists working today. With hit when it was first released, Special price $9.95 (while stocks last) Harmonia Mundi. HMC902142. $29.95 a catalogue spanning more with her soaring voice Giuseppi Valentini: than 20 years (she began piano at age five), captivating all who heard it. Review: Shostakovich’s music always sends Concerti Grossi e a she has a deft touch that makes any work she She is now an exclusive Decca artist. Her new shivers down my spine and this cello concerto is Quattro Violini, Op. VII chooses an instant classic. The only problem recording Alleluia is a nod to sacred music of fraught with unexpressed emotions. The work with her most recent recording of Schubert the eighteenth century and features motets or signalled a return for Shostakovich after a horrible Chiara Banchini & Ensemble 415 Piano Sonatas No. 16 & 21 is that she makes it ‘concertos for voice’ by Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart period of creative torpor, and it’s clear that he did ZigZag. ZZT2020801. Was $29.95 all sound too easy! The allegro movements are and Nicola Porpora. These are all fantastic not lose his voice and style. Expansive and Special price $9.95 (while stocks last) fast-paced, with exacting finger work. KR choices that show off the purity of this young unique, it moves from jerky syncopated rhythms Buy both CDs together and pay only $15 Russian soprano’s voice. KR to slow laments. The second work on this (while stocks last) Chopin: Piano recording is a sonata for cello and piano, which This month we have specials on two great Concertos 1 & 2 Va’, pensiero: was written 25 years earlier. Musically, it sounds like a completely different composer, until you CDs. The first is a fantastic recording by Maria João Pires, Great Opera one of the great string quartets, the Quatuor listen between the notes. A wonderful Royal Philharmonic Choruses Mosaïques. Their version of Beethoven’s combination of works and a must for fans of magnificent Op. 18 ranks among the finest Orchestra & André Previn Various Shostakovich, or indeed anyone interested in performances of these works. If you are not DG. 4791112. $16.95 ABC Classics. 4807518. $24.95 emotion and how it makes or breaks the man. familiar with this ensemble, they play on Rodrigo: Nessun Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton period instruments, which only adds to the Concierto de Dorma: Great listening experience. The second is of a little- known Italian Baroque composer, Giuseppi Aranjuez Opera Arias Valentini, a contemporary of Vivaldi (they Göran Söllscher & Various Bach JS: Flute Sonatas were born three years apart). These pieces Orpheus Chamber Orchestra ABC Classics. 4807180. $24.95 Andrea Oliva & Angela Hewitt are beautifully played by Ensemble 415: the Hyperion. CDA67897. $24.95 DG. 4791118. $16.95 Review: ABC Classics are great at fast movements are wonderfully vibrant and producing albums that give you a taste of good Review: Angela Hewitt the slow movements are played with great Mahler: Das classical music, and this month they’ve turned and Andrea Oliva breathe new tenderness. Highly recommended. Lied von der their eye to opera. Each album is a 2CD set life into these sonatas of lyrical Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton Erde that features many of the finest local and beauty, and it’s at times like Francisco Araiza, international singers covering arias from operas these that I remember that the Brigitte Fassbaender, Berliner such as Mozart’s The Barber of Seville though Bachs, both J.S. & C.P.E., were geniuses. A few Philharmoniker & Carlo to choruses from the lesser-known Mefistofele years ago, one of my favourite albums of the year Beethoven: was the performed by Ashkenazy, and Maria Giulini by Boito. KR Bach Suites Symphonies No. 4 & 7 if you’ve got that, then you’ll love this one. KR DG. 4791117. $16.95 Joshua Bell & Academy of St Stravinsky: The Rite Martin in the Fields Review: Deutsche Grammophon have of Spring Nureyev’s Don Quixote Sony. 88765448812. $19.95 some of the best recordings in the world sitting Rudolf Nureyev & The Australian in their vaults, and I've been listening to three in Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Ballet Review: When I first particular from their new First Choice series. Apollon Musagéte, Simon Rattle & ABC Classics. 0762853. $24.95 listened to this album, I was Not only are these seminal works, but they also Berliner Philharmoniker reminded how difficult come with extra digital content so that you can EMI. EMC236112.2. $24.95 Review: In 1970, Rudolf Beethoven is to perform. truly immerse yourself in the experience. Nureyev created one of his most Although he is one of the Review: When Igor There's Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with famous roles, that of Basilio, most popular composers to date, this does not Stravinsky’s The Rite of Brigitte Fassbaender, Francisco Araiza and the barber and sweetheart to Kitri in make his music any easier. Every note must be Spring (Le Sacre du always elegant Berliner Philharmoniker under Don Quixote. This version was crafted, both on its own and within the context of printemps) premiered in the baton of Carlo Maria Giulini. Also included filmed in 1973 in one of the back the phrase. Joshua Bell’s inaugural recording as Paris in 1913, a near riot in the series is Maria João Pires’s interpretation lots of Essendon Airport during the music director of the Academy of St Martin ensued. Eventually it would be recognised as of the Chopin Piano Concertos, originally the height of summer, not that you can tell. Each in the Fields does exactly this. Every note has its one of the most influential musical works of recorded in 1994 and 1998. However, it was the cast member brings energy and enthusiasm to place within the scheme of each symphony. The the twentieth century. Simon Rattle, who has Concierto de Aranjuez, with Göran Söllscher as this humorous ballet, not just as terrific dancers sound of the Academy is always inspiring, but I long championed the music of Stravinsky, the soloist that had me hooked. It was exciting but as fantastic actors as well. If you missed the feel that this new partnership with Bell will bring delivers a stunning performance with the yet strangely relaxing, and I found myself recent Australian Ballet production of Don Quixote, them to great heights. Berliner Philharmoniker that is utterly putting this recording on at various moments, I highly recommend this beautifully restored DVD, mesmerising. This is Rattle and Stravinsky at just to revel in the sound. KR which also stars Lucette Aldous, Robert Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton their best. PR Helpmann, Ray Powell and Colin Peasley. KR

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