FREE NOVEMBER 2018

Winner of The Readings Prize 2018

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CARLTON 309 LYGON ST 9347 6633 KIDS 315 LYGON ST 9341 7730 DONCASTER WESTFIELD DONCASTER, 619 DONCASTER RD 9810 0891 HAWTHORN 701 GLENFERRIE RD 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 GLENFERRIE RD 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 ACLAND ST 9525 3852 STATE LIBRARY 285-321 RUSSELL ST 8664 7540 | SEE SHOP OPENING HOURS, BROWSE AND BUY ONLINE AT WWW.READINGS.COM.AU $1295 NEWS November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 3

Summer Reading Guide & Readings’ Best face of adversity and poverty. The Hope Anna Burns wins The Man Booker Prize November of 2018 Prize also offers two Women’s Writing 2018 As in previous years, in lieu of publishing Career Development Scholarships worth Milkman by Anna Burns has been named a December–January edition of the $5,000 each, an initiative supported by the winner of this year’s Man Booker News Readings Monthly, we’re putting together The Readings Foundation. Hope Shines Prize for Fiction. Kwame Anthony Appiah, a guide to the best books, music and (Simon & Schuster) is an anthology of chair of the 2018 judges, says: ‘None of DVDs of 2018, as voted by all Readings stories entered into this year’s Hope us has ever read anything like this before. staff. This eight-page guide will be Prize. Uplifting, poignant, funny and Anna Burns’ utterly distinctive voice Readings Subscriber Shopping Day available in all Readings shops throughout affecting, these stories of strength and challenges conventional thinking and form Our annual Readings Subscriber Shopping December and January, and will be mailed grace will open your eyes and heart to the in surprising and immersive prose. It is a Day is on Thursday 15 November! to all Readings Monthly subscribers in experiences of so many of our invisible story of brutality, sexual encroachment We’re offering allReadings Monthly and the first week of December along with citizens. All royalties from the sale of this and resistance threaded with mordant Readings e-news subscribers 20% off full- the Summer Reading Guide. We hope you book will be donated to the Hope Prize. humour’. For more information visit priced books, CDs, vinyl, stationery and enjoy our recommendations! themanbookerprize.com/fiction calendars, and 10% off full-priced DVDs. If you subscribe to the Readings Monthly, simply bring this month’s cover sheet Jennifer Down wins The Readings Prize into any Readings shop to redeem this for New Australian Fiction 2018 offer. Otherwise, sign up to our e-news at We’re delighted to announce that Jennifer readings.com.au/sign-up before Monday Down is this year’s winner of The 12 November and we’ll send you an email Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. invitation which you can either print off or Our judges described her short story show at the counter on your phone. Please collection, Pulse Points (Text), as ‘subtle, note, offer applies in store only (not online) elegant and accomplished’. They noted on in stock items. This offer is not available that it ‘stood out to the judging panel for in conjunction with any other discounts its emotional maturity and complexity. or special offers and it is not valid on gift Down’s ability to make a reader feel what cards, lay-bys, special orders, special price her characters are feeling is remarkable’. items, cards or magazines. Down will receive prize money of $3,000. Pulse Points is available from all Readings shops and online for a special price of 12 Days of Christmas $26.99 (was $29.99). For more information Once again, we’ll be running our annual see page 6. 12 Days of Christmas promotion, offering a special deal every day for 12 days. The 12 Days of Christmas special offers will run Hope Shines anthology from Monday 19 November until Friday 30 The Hope Prize is the Brotherhood November. To receive information about of St Laurence’s national short story each day’s offer, sign up to our e-news at competition which encourages writers readings.com.au/sign-up to explore the theme of resilience in the

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EVENTS CURATOR Chris Gordon 4 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 EVENTS

November Monday 12 November, 6.30pm Monday 19 November, 6.30pm TIM FLANNERY ON EUROPE JESSIE COLE IN Events Come along to hear celebrated author Tim CONVERSATION WITH Flannery discuss his latest book, Europe: A ANNA KRIEN Natural History. This surprising ecological history is more than just the story of Europe Jessie Cole’s Staying is a searing memoir about Event times and locations are subject to change. and the Europeans. surviving the suicide of loved ones, and finding a For the most up-to-date information on place to heal. Come along to hear the acclaimed events, please check readings.com.au/events Readings Hawthorn, novelist discuss Staying with Anna Krien. 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn Readings St Kilda, Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Thursday 1 November, 6.30pm Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events

Thursday 8 November, 6.30pm–7.30pm TONI JORDAN IN Wednesday 14 November, 6.30pm CONVERSATION WITH Monday 19 November, 6.30pm CHRISTINE GORDON MARKUS ZUSAK IN MIKEY ROBINS IN CONVERSATION WITH Join us to hear Toni Jordan – the award- CONVERSATION WITH STORIES TO MAKE YOU MAGDA SZUBANSKI winning, bestselling author of Addition and HELEN RAZER SMILE WITH JOANNA Nine Days – discuss her new novel, The Join us to hear two of Australia’s most-loved Comedian and self-confessed food-lover NELL, TONI JORDAN & Fragments, with Readings’ Christine Gordon. authors in conversation. Markus Zusak Mikey Robins has written an irreverent romp (The Book Thief) and Magda Szubanski WILLIAM MCINNES through the history of food and culinary Readings Carlton, (Reckoning) will discuss Bridge of Clay, Escape a bruising year by enjoying a glass of 309 Lygon Street, Carlton craft, Seven Deadly Sins and One Very Zusak’s highly anticipated new novel. wine while three wonderful authors – Joanna Naughty Fruit. Guided by the truth of the Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Nell, Toni Jordan and William McInnes – ages that ‘where there is food there is folly’, Athenaeum, talk about their latest books and themes of 188 Collins Street, Melbourne Robins will discuss some of the most bizarre kindness, compassion and community. Tickets are $25 per person and bookings are stories of all time with Helen Razer. Prepare Thursday 1 November, 6.30-7.30pm essential. Please book at readings.com.au/events to be shocked, and to laugh out loud! Readings Hawthorn, 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn Readings St Kilda, THE UNCOLLECTED 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events PLAYS OF SHAUN Thursday 8 November, 6.30pm MICALLEF Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events We are thrilled to have Shaun Micallef joining THE HOPE PRIZE 2018 us to discuss his latest work, The Uncollected BOOK LAUNCH Plays of Shaun Micallef, a hilarious collection Thursday 15 November, 6.30pm of satirical plays and the stories of how he The Hope Prize is the Brotherhood of St came to write them. Laurence’s national short-story competition, KAREN FOXLEE IN judged by Cate Blanchett, Quentin Bryce and Church of all Nations, Kate Grenville. Supported by the generosity CONVERSATION WITH 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton of the late Prudence Myer, the Readings MIKE SHUTTLEWORTH Ticktets are $5 per person, or $35 per person Foundation, and publisher Simon & Schuster, Join award-winning author Karen Foxlee with a signed copy of the book. it encourages writers to explore resilience in as she discusses her latest children’s novel Bookings essential at readings.com.au/events the face of adversity. Join us for the launch of with Readings’ own Mike Shuttleworth. the wonderful 2018 short-story collection. A big-hearted story, Lenny’s Book of Everything is about loving and letting go. Readings Hawthorn, Thursday 1 November, 7pm for a 7.30pm 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn See our review on page 19! seating Free, no booking required. Readings Hawthorn, 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn A MEAL WITH THE BAR Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events LOURINHÃ DUO Thursday 8 November, 6.30pm Enjoy a delicious meal while you hear the fabulous Bar Lourinhã duo, Matt McConnell ANNABEL CRABB IN and Jo Gamvros, chat with Melbourne Editor and Food Critic for Australian Gourmet CONVERSATION WITH Michael Harden about their wonderful new SHARLEE GIBB Wednesday 21 November, 6.30pm–7.45pm cookbook. In Eat at the Bar: Recipes inspired Come along to hear the brilliant Annabel by travels in Spain, Portugal and Beyond, Crabb and Sharlee Gibb talk about Crabb’s McConnell and Gamvros share their love new cookbook, Special Guest, and how to DAVID MARR IN of Europe’s bar dining culture through host friends and family with easy, basic fare CONVERSATION WITH incredible, vibrant recipes from tapas in real homes without stress. GEORGE MEGALOGENIS to mezethes. They explore the amazing Come along to hear David Marr, one of flavours and relaxed hospitality that inspired Church of All Nations, Australia’s most unflinching reporters them to embrace and redefine bar dining 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton of political controversy and eloquent culture in Melbourne. Tickets are $40 per person and include a signed biographers, discuss My Country, the copy of Special Guest. definitive collection of his writing to date. Bar Lourinhã, Please book at readings.com.au/events 37 Little Collins Street, Melbourne Church of All Nations, Tickets are $110 per person and include a meal 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton and a signed copy of Eat at the Bar. Places are Sunday 18 November, 12pm Saturday 10 November, 10.30am Tickets are $40 and include a signed, first- strictly limited, book at readings.com.au/events edition hardback copy of My Country. Please A LUNCHTIME FOOD SAFARI book at readings.com.au/events A SPECIAL STORY TIME WITH MAEVE O’MEARA Wednesday 7 November, 6.30pm WITH MEM FOX AND JUDY HORACEK To celebrate the release of Maeve O’Meara’s new book, Food Safari Elements: Thursday 22 November, 6.30pm MARIA LEWIS ON FEMINIST KIDS Earth, Fire, Water, we are delighted to invite WITCHES & GHOSTS you to lunch and to hear from the star PIA’S TABLE TASTING Join Mem Fox and Judy Horacek for a special herself about the importance of celebrating Come along to hear fantasy writer Maria Join MasterChef’s Pia Gava for a little tasting story time as they read from their new our senses through food. Lewis talking about her new book, The and a drop of wine as we celebrate her book, Bonnie and Ben Rhyme Again. It’s a Witch Who Courted Death, and reinventing Rumi Restaurant, new book, Pia’s Table, and Italian history, companion to Good Night, Sleep Tight from witches and ghosts with a much-needed 116 Lygon Street, East Brunswick tradition, food and family. feminist twist. the team behind Where is the Green Sheep? Tickets are $95 per person and include a signed Readings Hawthorn, Readings Kids, first edition of Food Safari Elements: Earth, Fire, Readings Carlton, 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn 309 Lygon Street, Carlton 315 Lygon Street, Carlton Water, and a two-course meal. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events EVENTS + COLUMNS November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 5

Boone Shepard YA series, Boone Shepard: The Silhouette and the Sacrifice. Thursday 1 November, 6.30pm Mark’s Dear Readings Kids | Free, no booking required. Broad Plain Darkening by Clare Rhoden Say Reader Join Clare Rhoden for the launch of the second book in her dystopian sci-fi trilogy. Following on from book one, The Pale, Broad Plain Darkening sees the world of the Not many of you will have There are always far, far, Pale under threat again. heard of Patricia far too many new books to Monday 5 November, 6.30pm O’Donnell, who sadly talk about adequately in Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. passed away last month, this column, but seriously, and that’s the way she this month is out of Yes Yes Yes by Alex Greenwich and Shirleene Robinson liked it. However, she had a huge impact on control. But I want to use some words to say Join us to celebrate the release of Yes Yes Melbourne’s cultural and culinary life that something about Jennifer Down, whose Yes: Australia’s Journey to Marriage Equality needs to be recognised. My first recollection Pulse Points is the winner of this year’s Thursday 29 November, 6.30pm by advocates Alex Greenwich and Shirleene of meeting Trish was during the Queenscliff Readings Prize. I think Down is actually a Robinson. It reveals the untold story of how a Carnival of Words, which Trish initiated. I’d genius, and couldn’t agree more with judges HELEN GARNER IN grassroots movement won hearts and minds originally known Trish’s sister, Mietta, the about the quality of her writing: her ability to CONVERSATION WITH and transformed a country. proprietor of Mietta’s in the city, a place convey the emotional world is peerless. If you Sunday 11 November, 2pm where we held a very successful series of ever have a chance to hear her read her own CHLOE HOOPER Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. literary events in the early ’80s. Trish turned work, take it up – I won’t ever forget her To celebrate the new hardback release of the heritage-listed Queenscliff Hotel into delivery of ‘Dogs’ at the MWF panel I chaired Tokyo by Michelle Mackintosh and Steve Australian classics Monkey Grip and The Wide Mietta’s Queenscliff, and ran that until 2002. in 2017. You could have heard a pin drop. Children’s Bach, we are delighted to have Join Michelle Mackintosh and Steve Wide Trish was immediately welcoming and Congratulations, Jennifer, and welcome to Helen Garner joining us to talk about the for the launch of their book Tokyo, which instantly began connecting me with other the Readings Prize Winners’ Club! impact on her writing life of these two novels. explores the joys of visiting this great, people she felt I should meet – or, conversely, Let the felicitations continue for A.S. dynamic city – whether for the first, second with people she felt should meet me. That’s Church of All Nations, Patrić, our resident Miles Franklin Award- 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton or hundredth time. the thing she did all her life: connect people. winner on staff, whose collection, The Monday 12 November, 6.30pm When she moved from Queenscliff to Butcherbird Stories, is Fiction Book of the Tickets are $35 per person and include your Readings | Free, no choice of one of the two signed books. Please Melbourne, she took over the North Fitzroy Month. Our reviewer commends Alec’s way booking required. book at readings.com.au/events pub Lord Jim’s and, with the help of Six of writing below the surface of things, and Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Degrees architects, turned it into the North particularly his ‘profound understanding Identities by Petra Bueskens Fitzroy Star (Trish was always into good of the desperate, catastrophic way that Join Anne Manne as she launches Petra local design). The Star became a cultural we love’. If you are yet to read Patrić, this Bueskens’ provocative and original new centre of the north; Readings used to collection is a great place to begin (and we December book, Modern Motherhood and Women’s regularly hold events there. Trish helped can hook you up with a signed copy). Also . Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract to make things happen and if she thought out this month are new Australian novels Wednesday 14 November, 6.30pm something was important, there would be from Jane Harper, Toni Jordan, Jock Serong Events Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. no charge, so the Star became a regular and Tom Keneally (and some handsome Feel Great and Look Your Best by fundraising venue for the Indigenous editions of Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and Margaret Boyd-Squires Literacy Foundation, the Stella Prize (Trish The Children’s Bach). Join highly regarded naturopath Margaret was a significant financial supporter of International fiction is truly diverse this Boyd-Squires for a celebration of the Saturday 1 December, 11am til 11pm that Prize) and many other organisations. month, with writing from Greenland (Niviaq release of her book, Feel Great and Look For many years Trish also hosted a dinner Korneliussen’s Crimson), China-in-exile Your Best: Anti-Inflammatory Recipes. A MARATHON READING for the writers appearing at the Melbourne (Ma Jian’s China Dream), Japan (Yukiko Thursday 15 November, 6.30pm Writers Festival. Trish, as ever a force in the Motoya’s Picnic in the Storm), Japan-by- OF THE ODYSSEY Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. background, would only attend briefly to way-of-Australia (Kei Iwaki’s Farewell, My The Stork Theatre presents a Homeric The Great Cave Rescue by James Massola make sure everything was OK. Orange), Italy (Matteo Righetto’s Soul of the marathon: Emily Wilson’s new translation Join James Massola for the launch of In the upstairs rooms writers such as Border), and Norway (Matias Faldbakken’s of The Odyssey told in full over 12 hours his book, The Great Cave Rescue, the Carrie Tiffany were given cheap boltholes to The Waiter). There are also new releases by 30 different performers. Come along for extraordinary story of the 18-day ordeal to practice their craft. People were devastated from Barbara Kingsolver, Sarah Moss, your favourite chapter, bring a picnic, stay bring the young Thai soccer team and their for the whole 12-hour marathon or come when she decided not to renew her lease. Mohammad Hanif, Jonathan Coe, M.R. coach to safety. and go as you please. It was like losing your second home. When Carey, Laura Purcell, George R.R. Martin, Thursday 15 November, 6.30pm her sister Mietta passed away she set up J.K. Rowling, Eileen Myles, and a blistering M.Pavilion, Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. the Mietta Foundation to supports the arts, short-story debut, Friday Black, from St Kilda Road (in the Gardens, Night Walk by Alison Binks something Mietta was passionate about. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah whose name I opposite the Arts Centre on St Kilda Road) Join Alison Binks as Tim Cope launches her Trish, myself and Readings’ then events promise you will hear from now on. Lucia Free, no need to book. new picture book, Night Walk, a captivating manager, Pierre Sutcliffe, created a mini Berlin fans can get a double dose of this story about a little boy’s adventurous night literary festival at named amazing woman’s work in the form of a out while camping. after Mietta. Trish served on the Library collection of stories (Evening in Paradise) Sunday 18 November, 2pm Board from 1999–2008 and was chair of its and a memoir (Welcome Home). Tuesday 4 December, 6.30pm–7.30pm Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. collections committee. Trish was one of the I haven’t stopped thinking about Chloe Night Fishing by Anna Ryan-Punch most remarkable people I’ve met; I, and this Hooper’s The Arsonist since I read an CRAIG HORNE Join Anna Ryan-Punch for the launch of city, will miss her. advance copy a few months ago. It’s our In Daddy Who?, author and musician Craig her poetry collection Night Fishing, which It’s five years since we established the sensational and essential Nonfiction Book Horne gives an insider’s story of a band that tells stories of love and motherhood, of lost Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction; of the Month. You also need books from in eighteen months changed the course of faith and suburban rental houses, and of our first winner was Ceridwen Dovey for her Sarah Smarsh, Alice Pung, David Marr, Australian rock history. Join us for a night of improvising in adulthood. collection of stories, Only the Animals. This Marina Benjamin, Jill Lepore, David Grann, nostalgia, and a possible sing-along! Monday 19 November, 6pm year’s winner goes to another collection of Jonathan Franzen, Stephen Fry; Patrick Readings State Library Victoria | stories, Pulse Points, by Melbourne author Mullins’s groundbreaking biography of Cinema Nova, Free, no booking required. 380 Lygon Street, Carlton Jennifer Down. It’s Jennifer’s second Billy McMahon; memoirs from Ed Moreno, Lillian’s Eden by Cheryl Adam book and I’m particularly pleased because Anne Summers, Michelle Obama, Kerry Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Join Cheryl Adam for the launch of her debut Jennifer was one of the first recipients of O’Brien and Kiese Laymon; Brow Books’ novel, Lillian’s Eden. Adam takes the reader a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship latest offering, Going Postal; manifestos from to post-war Australia and the stark realities funded by the Readings Foundation. It’s Sohaila Abdulali, Gemma Hartley and Mary of rural life behind the rose-filled gardens. also a terrific book! Portas; and I cannot wait to get my hands Book Tuesday 20 November, 6.30pm Each Christmas season we have lots of on Beastie Boys Book, by and about popular Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. extra special offers that you can only find music’s most loveable ratbags. Missing Pieces by Caroline de Costa about by subscribing to our e-news – you And finally, dear reader, I can hardly Launches Join Caroline de Costa for the launch of the can ask at any of our shops or do it online – believe it’s time to bid you adieu for the year, second book in the Cass Diamond crime don’t miss out. as the Readings Monthly takes its annual series, Missing Pieces. This series brings As this is my last column for the year, hiatus until our February 2019 issue. But Boone Shepard: The Silhouette and the together thrilling plots and a wonderful may I thank you for your ongoing support you’ll hear from us one last time before the Sacrifice by Gabriel Bergmoser social conscience. for Readings and all the writers and artists end of the year, with our annual special Come along to celebrate the release of Thursday 29 November, 6.30pm who produce our wares and wish you a edition containing the year’s best books, as Gabriel Bergmoser’s latest book in the Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. merry Christmas and fulfilling New Year. voted by our staff. 6 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 NEW AUSTRALIAN WRITING

Pulse Points by Jennifer Down wins The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2018

Winner of The Readings Prize 2018

The winner of the Readings Prize for New shortlist was a hard task, and involved are set all around the world, with characters Australian Fiction in 2018 is Pulse Points by a lot of deliberation. Jamie Marina To read a story from all sorts of backgrounds, but every Jennifer Down. Lau’s Pink Mountain on Locust Island is from Pulse incident feels authentic – it’s clear that The Readings Prize for New Australian a dream-like, rapidly paced, pulpy novel she researched these places and situations Fiction, now in its fifth year, is awarded to that challenges concepts of language Points is to feel comprehensively. a work of fiction by an Australian author. in contemporary Australian fiction. Pulse Points is a subtle, elegant and Authors’ first and second works of fiction Moreno Giovannoni’s The Fireflies of it, too. accomplished short story collection. are eligible for the prize. The Prize for Autumn brings together lessons learnt It stood out to the judging panel for its New Australian Fiction is one of three and passed down through generations. emotional maturity and complexity. Down’s literary prizes that Readings awards each Robbie Arnott’s Flames is a fantastic, genre- ability to make a reader feel what her year, the other two being the Readings bending adventure. Tracy Sorensen’s The characters are feeling is remarkable. Young Adult Book Prize and the Readings Lucky Galah is historical fiction from a Jennifer Down said of her win that Children’s Book Prize. Each of these prizes wonderfully unexpected perspective. And ‘[i]t’s a profound honour to receive this exists to celebrate the work of early-career Shaun Prescott’s The Town is a brilliantly year’s Readings Prize for New Australian Australian writers, and over the past five written, surreal, and unique literary novel. Fiction – and it’s no less an honour to be years eleven authors have been awarded There are fourteen short stories in the company of five other writers whose prizes across the three categories of the in Pulse Points. These stories are all very skill and approach to storytelling I greatly Readings prizes. different to one another, but each deals in admire. Readings Carlton was where I used This year, almost ninety works of the moments of everyday life that sting. In to go between classes at uni; it’s where Australian fiction were considered. The the story from which this collection takes my first book was launched; and where judging panel, made up of four Readings its name (and the first in the collection) a I still feel so much at home, so this feels booksellers, was joined by award-winning couple travelling along a country road come extraordinarily special. I’m very grateful author Tony Birch as guest judge and across a lifeless body. In another, a woman to this year’s judges, and to Readings for Readings’ managing director Mark Rubbo travels to Yamanashi, Japan, to revisit the championing new Australian writing in the to decide upon a winner from a shortlist location of her brother’s suicide. In a third, way only an independent bookseller can.’ of six books. The judging criteria was a woman tangles herself in an illicit affair As this year’s winner, Down will receive focused on selecting books that were with a student as her partner attempts to $3,000 in prize money. Pulse Points joins highly original, and experimented with recover from addiction. These are the sorts a stellar line-up of previous winners of form or language. The six books the judges of stories that leave bruises behind. the Readings Prize for New Australian selected for the shortlist were the ones that All of the stories in this collection are Fiction, including three novels – Sam surprised us, kept us on our toes, and those examples of the extent to which empathy Carmody’s haunting The Windy Season; Zoë we felt to be the most innovative of all the can be employed in fiction – Down looks Morrison’s profound Music and Freedom; books considered. at human emotion under a microscope in and Stephanie Bishop’s wonderfully This year’s shortlist was incredibly each of these stories, but always does so crafted The Other Side of the World – and strong. The range of books represented with care and compassion. To read a story Ceridwen Dovey’s unforgettable short-story on this shortlist was broad – it included from Pulse Points is to feel it, too. As well collection, Only the Animals. books set in the country and city, books as being impressed by Down’s masterful Pulse Points that experimented with literary styles, use of emotion in her writing, the judging Jennifer Down Text. PB. Was $29.99 and books that showed great emotional panel also appreciated the great attention Ellen Cregan, chair of the judging panel 2018, depth. Choosing just one winner from this to detail throughout the book. These stories $26.99 and Readings marketing and events coordinator FICTION November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 7

ship set sail. What happened when the International walkers encountered Indigenous peoples New along the way? And did the party shrink by Fiction virtue of misfortune, or by design? Fiction Preservation is a skilful and, most importantly, very entertaining work of Evening in Paradise imagination, full of tension and menace, Lucia Berlin that keeps the reader sweating over what Picador. HB. $34.99 A.S. Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award in 2016 for his will become of the protagonists until I read Evening in debut novel, Black Rock White City. His latest book, The the very end. A more odious villain than BOOK OF THE Paradise in a single Butcherbird Stories, is a collection of twelve stories that the imposter tea merchant, Figge, could MONTH sitting, mesmerised by the confirm his craftsmanship as a writer. hardly be imagined: he and another places and characters, and Fiction unreliable survivor hinder attempts by Many of the stories peek behind the veil of dull suburbia what they revealed about officials in Sydney to understand exactly to reveal the vivid, yet oftentimes disturbing, lives being the cultures of the times. what happened. Serong uses all his crime- lived beneath the surface. A taxi driver, caught in the rain, Names recur but are writing tricks of the trade in this literary distractedly awaits the results of his hospitalised wife. A chef intermingled. A character novel, and it’s hugely effective. This is fantasises incessantly about a daydreaming backpacker. Two from one story will emerge in a different the kind of historical fiction writing young boys, destructive for the sake of it, unwittingly destroy story, but with a different name, in a that makes the reader wonder where the their friendship in a rampaging afternoon. different place. Yet as you traverse the ‘real’ past ends and invention begins – tapestry the book weaves, a single luminous which is just the way Serong wants it Patrić writes with a profound thread ducks and bobs brilliantly to be. Underpinning this story is an throughout, holding it all together; a understanding of the desperate, accomplished writer’s voice that queries vibrant, generous, female character, gentle, catastrophic way that we love what Western/settler histories of Australia strong and free, full of love, sorrow and are really made of, tells of the chaos and mirth: meet Lucia Berlin. Patrić has a manner of describing the way we live our devastation caused by colonisation, and Berlin’s life – or a version of it she lives that commands a sense of place. When painting the speaks in dialogue with the Indigenous The Butcherbird wanted to imagine and present – lies sweltering heat of summer in suburban Melbourne, Patrić, knowledges and histories that are at last Stories in the foundation of every story. Semi- writing as a migrant displaced from his homeland of Serbia, becoming widely acknowledged. A. S. Patrić autobiographical, her characters travel writes: ‘On long summer Sunday afternoons the local pool Alison Huber is the head book buyer for Transit Lounge. HB. through all the places Berlin did. We became a necessity, no longer the luxury it often seemed. The $29.99 Readings meet three husbands, four children, and grassy hills rolling away from the water to the cyclone fences a woman who writes while losing and were covered with thin towels, filled out by a community Two Old Men Dying finding herself in bottles of Jim Beam. It that, aside from these sweltering days, never saw itself whole.’ Tom Keneally becomes impossible to confidently draw There is a deep loneliness to the world Patrić weaves. Throughout his stories, Vintage. PB. Was $32.99 a line between fiction and autobiography. individuals float aimlessly, constantly aware of the fragility of things. Yet, deeper than $29.99 Did she turn herself into a modern artwork this, Patrić writes with a profound understanding of the desperate, catastrophic way Learned Man is the child for her first husband (he was a sculptor, that we love. of humankind as we know just like in the story)? Did she deal with a In ‘Butcherbird’, possibly the most poignant story in his collection, Patrić describes it; of those who are corpse off the coast of Mexico? the everyday struggles and fears of fatherhood, concluding with the image of a father thought to have travelled If characters Lucha, Laura, Maria, Maya, comfortingly singing his child to sleep, despite knowing he is just as inept, and frightened from the Rift Valley in Clare and Maggie are one and the same, the by the world, as her. Africa and to ancient book is almost as much a novel as it is short In some of Patrić’s stories, love is accompanied by great acts of violence or slow-burning Australia. Shelby Apple is stories – one with a fascinating structure. failures. Yet in others, like ‘Butcherbird’, it is shown in its purist, most affecting form. an acclaimed Lucia Berlin is dead and the structure is a Caitlin Cassidy is from Readings Hawthorn documentary-maker who, after making pastiche of somebody else’s construction, films about Learned Man’s discovery, but I’m not sure it matters (didn’t Roland turns his sights on Eritrea. In perhaps his Barthes explain the death of the author in boldest novel, Tom Keneally explores the the ’60s?). Or perhaps it is more a memoir. Australian Fiction Admirably, not only is this a delightful journeys of modern Australians alongside As it so happens, an official memoir is also novel, but Jordan’s story also illustrates the imagined story of ancient Learned due out this month. It might even demystify the impact and power an author’s work can Man, whose remains were discovered in some of this blurring between fact and have on its readers. How wonderful it is Western NSW decades ago. The Fragments fiction. It won’t reduce the resonance of when the world gathers in awe of published Berlin’s writing. Besotted as I am by the Toni Jordan work. If you love reading Jane Harper or Monkey Grip woman that is Lucha-Laura-Maria-Maya- Text. PB. $29.99 Holly Throsby or indeed Jordan’s other Helen Garner Clare-Maggie-Lucia, I can’t help but think it Toni Jordan’s latest novels, this is the perfect weekend read. Text. HB. Was $29.99 impossible you won’t be too. novel, The The Fragments is undoubtedly Jordan’s $24.95 Leanne Hermosilla is from Readings Carlton Fragments, holds within finest work to date. its pages a fable-like With an introduction by Christine Gordon is the events manager for Charlotte Wood, this is China Dream fervour for the written Readings word. Using parallel an elegant new hardback Ma Jian stories which both have edition of the novel that Chatto & Windus. HB. $32.99 the theme of loss at their Preservation launched Helen Garner’s It’s no coincidence core, Jordan has created a unique and Jock Serong career. Upon its that Ma Jian wonderful plot. One story centres on the Text. PB. $29.99 publication in 1977, dedicates this book to life of reclusive and world-famous New Available 19 November Monkey Grip divided the George Orwell. Named York author Inga Karlson, who becomes A little-known critics; today, it is regarded as a after Xi Jinping’s vision for victim to a terrible fire. Fragments of (though maybe masterpiece. The novel shines a light on a Chinese prosperity, China Karlson’s second novel are all that survive soon-to-be-well-known) time and a place and a way of living that Dream is a tale of the self, this heartbreaking disaster. The other tale, historical event forms the had never before been presented in broken over the rack of the set in Brisbane in the heat of summer, basis for Jock Serong’s Australian literature. state. As Director of the China Dream examines the life of bookseller and former latest novel, Preservation. Bureau, Ma Daode proposes a microchip academic Caddie Walker. Using the 1797 shipwreck The Children’s Bach that, when implemented, would delete an These stories are brought together of the Sydney Cove off the Helen Garner individual’s dreams and replace them with when Caddie makes it her mission to solve coast of Preservation Island in Bass Strait Text. HB. Was $29.99 Party propaganda. However, his violent the mystery surrounding the remains of as a starting point, Serong imagines what $24.95 past in Mao’s Red Guard threatens to rip the Karlson’s novel. In doing so, Caddie might have happened during the trek This is another beautiful his own mind in two. learns to trust her instinct and integrity. survivors made from what we now call new hardback edition of a Ma Jian has written an extraordinary Jordan depicts the nuances of bookselling Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria to the modern Australian classic depiction of a nation caught between the without ever resorting to romantic frontier town of Sydney. Seventeen men by Helen Garner. Ben tides of progress and history, of a people’s platitudes, and counterbalances that world began the walk; only three were found, Lerner describes The struggle beneath the state. Officials compose with the tragedies of hidden love that barely alive, just south of Sydney town. Children’s Bach as ‘a jewel’ aphorisms by day and drink in Red Guard- entwine both stories. The Fragments is a What happened to the other fourteen? The in the new introduction. themed sex clubs when the blinds are drawn; mystery that spans cities, class, people and group was made up of British merchant First published in 1984, the author casts a bleak shadow illuminated timezones, and it’s a page-turner with plot seamen set to make their fortune in the Garner portrays her characters with a clear by brief yet brilliant moments of wit. The developments transpiring right to the very infant colony, and Bengali lascars who had eye for their dreams, their insecurities and story eases in and out of its more surreal last pages. joined the journey in Calcutta, where the their deep humanity. moments as if the concept of deleting 8 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 FICTION

dreams is as commonplace as sexting on claustrophobic world of Nuuk and social chapters set up the history and physicality their lives defined by continuing crises; by WeChat. If only Ma Daode’s memories were media. Stifled Fia leaves a long-term of the restaurant, and are followed by those multiple national tragedies that have as transient as his pleasures. relationship and moves in for a while with with a focus on daily routines and practices; triggered significant personal aftershocks. Even writing from Europe (Ma Arnuk, her brother’s best friend, who these are more reflective and almost In Stephen Markley’s bold debut is exiled from his homeland), China seems to have lost her job and spends her melancholic in nature. Once the characters novel, Ohio, characters carry the scars Dream is a rebellion, bringing to mind time moving from one party to another. are established, the action becomes that come with living in this state of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at his best and It’s spring in Nuuk and the nights are erratic and surprising as we move towards near-permanent post-traumatic stress. most belligerent. It’s a novel of anger never dark; people move from one party a chaotic finale. As the waiter himself Framed predominantly around one night and frustration but also a plea to his to another as the sense of the sun never comments, it is sometimes ‘not really in the summer of 2013, Ohio narrates the countrymen and women, who risk losing quite setting evokes both the far Northern possible to distinguish between genuine fateful return of four ex-classmates to their the right to think for themselves. What Ma setting and the existential state of youth, statements and parody’ but this is part of hometown in the northeast of the state warns in clear and gripping prose is that the unmoored in the world. the appeal of this quirky and surprisingly that gives the novel its name. Now in their individual may be expected to surrender Originally written in Greenlandic and thought-provoking novel. late twenties, Bill Ashcraft, Stacey Moore, to the state but the repercussions are their then rewritten in Danish by the author Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton Dan Eaton, and Tina Ross converge on the own, and if the only way to erase one’s guilt before beginning its journey into translation fictional town of New Canaan – far from the is to make others appear even guiltier then in French Canadian, English, etc., Unsheltered biblical Promised Land implied by this name the past will repeat itself forever. ‘“First it’s Korneliussen speaks of the need to rewrite it Barbara Kingsolver – seeking some form of redemption and fists,” says Ma Daode, “then it’s bricks, and in Danish to be accessible to everyone, as not resolution for their pain. Markley flashes Faber. PB. Was $32.99 before you know it, it will be guns.”’ Ma Jian all Greenlanders speak Greenlandic. back to their high-school years, to their $29.99 has thrown a short, sharp punch that lands Greenlandic is a polysynthetic language, various entanglements, and to that ‘defining Barbara Kingsolver is on the mind and heart. in which a whole sentence can be conveyed time’ when 9/11 and the subsequent invasion perhaps best known in one word, and Crimson is prefaced by a of Iraq drew a line through the heartland Paul Goodman is from Readings Hawthorn for her award-winning cast list whose names can simultaneously and through their lives. novels The Poisonwood mean many things. Beginning with a letter Across its 400-plus pages, Ohio takes Friday Black Bible (1998) and The to the reader and a cast of characters, names in social activism, sexual assault, the Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Lacuna (2009), though her explained, evokes the explanatory notes scourge of methamphetamines, and Riverrun. HB. $29.99 numerous other works will that often prefaced nineteenth-century the wounds of war to paint a portrait of We live in an era also be familiar to many. literature. This works beautifully in concert life in America now. But Markley’s isn’t where we get told to With her much-anticipated new novel with the use of text messaging and hashtags a clinical dissection. He writes with accept who we are and Unsheltered, Kingsolver brings her signature to meld what may be expected from a novel a fervent, emotional tone that places show it – but is that really use of metaphor to issues about which she is about modern Greenlanders with what is a human lives at the centre of this national true for people of colour? concerned, and with which she intends to novel of Greenlanders. breakdown. Markley takes risks, and I We ask them to whitewash concern her readers. Both the title of the The intersecting storylines double admire them, even if they don’t all quite themselves to appear novel and the fundamentally unsound back on each other, shifting the night from pay off. Sometimes characters function successful and to fit in. buildings that form the central settings for failure to triumph, and to connections too much like broad mouthpieces for big They have to learn how to make the two major plots function literally and made and lost. The isolated and connected ideas; sometimes events are pushed to themselves appear ‘less threatening’ to metaphorically, serving to underscore the world of Greenland’s capital and it’s the extreme. But Ohio is an ambitious keep themselves safe; they have to ‘turn fragility of modern American democracy inhabitants are beautifully evoked in a novel grappling quite intimately with down their Blackness’. and society. There is nothing subtle about story I never thought to hear. problems that have no simple solutions. Friday Black is Nana Kwame Adjei- this signposting; Kingsolver’s fiction is her As the author says, ‘I dreamed of being It’s also a vital reminder that in times of Brenyah’s fiction debut. The brutal honesty political activism. part of something bigger’. Crimson made me crisis, fiction doesn’t need to offer us all with which he writes shows how it is to be Kingsolver introduces two families feel part of something bigger. the answers, but should ask questions that young and black in America. The twelve living in different centuries in Vineland, shine a light in the darkness. short stories are intense and include Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton New Jersey who are struggling to keep a roof situations as varied as entertainment over their heads. In 2016, Willa Knox is a Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton simulations where violence is seen as The Waiter (recently, unwillingly) freelance journalist, justice, a stampede of Black Friday zombie Matias Faldbakken attempting to keep her world turning Red Birds shoppers who scrape the dead under Doubleday. HB. $29.99 despite family tragedy, career crises and Mohammed Hanif the shelves, and the joy that comes with Reading The Waiter a home that may crumble at any moment Bloomsbury. HB. $29.99 successfully communicating in a half- by Matias due to its inexplicable lack of foundations. Major Ellie crashes learned language. Adjei-Brenyah illustrates Faldbakken reminded me In 1871, Thatcher Greenwood is a newlywed his sixty-five-million the range of human complexities that come of one of my favourite science teacher who must also grapple with dollar jet in the desert near with a world that prizes pharmacological short stories: ‘The a complicated family and community, the refugee camp he was happiness but scorns emotions and human Luncheon’ by W. Somerset financial misfortune, and a structurally supposed to bomb. It’s not connection, being trapped in a time loop Maugham. Set in the Paris unsound home. really a high priority without consequences, and a shared restaurant Foyot’s (which Despite existing in different eras, the target, but Ellie was purgatory between a college shooter and sadly no longer exists), the story tells of the two families are linked not only by their thrown a bone by his victim who work to prevent more violence. quiet despair of a writer having to foot the similar plight and all that it portends, but commander to get a proper mission before Adjei-Brenyah has an explosive voice bill for a lunch he can’t afford. Translated also by a shared interest in the accomplished his job as a ‘zoomie’ is replaced by sticky- and has created authentic worlds that from Norwegian, The Waiter is also set in a naturalist Mary Treat, a central character in keyboarded drone pilots. Sixty-five-million make you feel like you’ve travelled far in a famous (in this case fictitious) European the novel and a real historical figure from the in hardware doesn’t leave much room to small range of pages. He really captures the restaurant, The Hills in Oslo. Like area, celebrated in her own right, but also for pay for a survival kit, however, and soon toll of consumerism, the idea of racism as Maugham, Faldbakken is witty and her collaboration with Charles Darwin. Ellie has nibbled down his last energy bar sport, the corrupt criminal justice system, observant, and writes about a protagonist Through her large but not unwieldy and is resisting the allure of oases and and cultural unrest. The stories are set out for whom the restaurant environment cast, Kingsolver explores the specific having nightmares about his wife. in an order that will chill you to the core induces anxiety and tension. anxieties of the present, as well as issues Dehydrated and hallucinating, Ellie with their unyielding realism, then fill you The nameless waiter of the novel’s title that have plagued enquiring, original minds is saved by Momo, a young refugee from with fire against the injustice of racism, serves all the regular customers at The throughout history. the camp. Well, actually, Ellie is saved by and end with the hope of redemption for Hills. There is the Pig, an elderly gentleman Unsheltered will appeal to existing Momo’s dog Mutt, who, along with Ellie humankind. who has lunch at the same table every Kingsolver readers, and those looking for and Momo, narrates the novel. Weird, huh? Cindy Morris is from Readings Carlton weekday; Tom Sellers, who has donated resonant historical fiction with political Anyway, Momo hates Westerners because many of the paintings that hang on the undercurrents. when his brother went to work for them he Crimson restaurant walls; and the friendly Edgar Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly disappeared and never came back. Mother Niviaq Korneliussen and his nine-year-old daughter Anna. In Dear and Father Dear have been no help at all, so it’s been Momo leading the search Hachette. PB. $27.99 addition to meeting the diners’ every need, Ohio to find Bro Ali. But despite his skills and Niviaq Korneliussen the waiter guarantees everything is perfect; Stephen Markley understanding of Western capitalism, begins her novel from his immaculate uniform and the S&S. PB. $24.99 Momo’s business plans are failing. Maybe Crimson with a letter to crumb-free tablecloths to ensuring each In the post-9/11 era, the young aid worker wanting to research the reader: ‘I began napkin has the correct number of creases. foreign wars, Momo for her thesis on the ‘teenage creating characters and One day, a young lady joins the Pig at his financial meltdowns, Muslim mind’ can be of use? Momo can’t stories on paper and table. Her unpredictability challenges the diminishing avoid seeing the irony of being bombed suddenly the whole world waiter’s ordered world and everything opportunities, and by a people who then seek to council him was available to me.’ starts to unravel. increasing alienation have about grief and loss. Crimson, originally titled Home Reading The Waiter is a bit like shaped the United States Red Birds is a darkly funny, irreverent Sapienne, is the story of five young, experiencing a degustation menu. We are of America. A generation story of a young life in a world ruled by queer Greenlanders negotiating their presented with small, sharp chapters which of young people have come of age in the war-for-war’s-sake and total bureaucracy, existence and relationships in the small, vary in flavour and texture. The initial shadow of the collapse of the Twin Towers – FICTION November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 9 and in which the insidious power of the Ghost Wall things we hate becomes the very thing that Sarah Moss drive us. Told with deadpan humour, you’ll Granta. HB. $27.99 find yourself stifling an audible giggle at Teenage Silvie and her the absurdity of contemporary conflict. parents are living in a hut Michael McLoughlin is from Readings Carlton in Northumberland as an exercise in experimental Cherry archaeology. Her father is Nico Walker a difficult man, obsessed with imagining and Bloomsbury. HB. $32.99 enacting the harshness of Cleveland, Ohio, 2003. The BRIDGE OF CLAY THE LOST MAN Iron Age life. Haunting Silvie’s narrative is MARKUS ZUSAK unnamed narrator, a JANE HARPER the story of a bog girl, a young woman The most anticipated novel of the decade college freshman, meets For readers who loved The Dry, Jane Harper from the author of the global phenomenon, sacrificed by those closest to her, and the has once again created a powerful story of Emily. They marry before The Book Thief. landscape both keeps and reveals the suspense, set against a dazzling landscape. he ships out to Iraq as an ‘Zusak is a writer of extraordinary ‘What an extraordinary novel: part family secrets of past violence and ritual as the empathy...a story so vibrant and so real that army medic. When he drama, part indelible ode to the Outback’ summer builds to its harrowing climax. the reader feels enveloped by it’ returns, his PTSD is A.J. Finn The Australian profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. They attempt a Someone Like Me normal life, but with their money drying M. R. Carey up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he Hachette. PB. $29.99 could be really good at – robbing banks. Available 13 November Hammered out on a prison typewriter, the Liz Kendall wouldn’t hurt semi-autobiographical Cherry marks the a fly. Even when times get arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and tough, she’s devoted to surprisingly poignant voice from the dark bringing up her kids in a heart of America. loving home. But there’s another side to Liz, one The Deal of a Lifetime that’s dark and malicious. Fredrik Backman An alter-ego that will do anything to get her way. And when this THE PM YEARS NINE PERFECT STRANGERS Michael Joseph. PB. $19.99 KEVIN RUDD LIANE MORIARTY other side of her takes control, the A father has a story he After years of silence, the 26th Prime From the no.1 New York Times bestselling consequences are devastating. Someone needs to share before it’s Minister of Australia is finally on the record author of Big Little Lies. Like Me is a modern take on the Jekyll and too late. As he tells his about his time in government. This is the ‘One of the few writers I’ll drop anything Hyde tale and an intoxicating new thriller memoir of a prime minister full of energy for. Her books are wise, honest, beautifully son about a courageous and ideals, while battling the greatest trials from the phenomenal M.R. Carey. observed’ Jojo Moyes little girl lying in a of the modern age. hospital bed a few miles away, he reveals his past Middle England regrets and his hopes for Jonathan Coe the future. Now, on Christmas Eve, before Viking. PB. $32.99 he can make the deal of a lifetime and Available 19 November change the destiny of the little girl he Set in the Midlands and hardly knows, he must find out what his London over the last eight own life has actually been worth, and only years, Jonathan Coe his son can reveal the answer. follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through Farewell, My Orange a time of immense change Kei Iwaki and disruption in Britain. Europa. PB. $22.99 It’s a story of modern Available 13 November England, of nostalgia and delusion, of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage. The new book Far from her native A witty and incisive state-of-the-nation Nigeria and living as a from one of Britain’s great satirists, Middle from the bestselling single mother of two, England follows in the footsteps of The Salimah works the night Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle; this author of shift at a supermarket in novel is a novel for our strange new times. small-town Australia. She Flesh Wounds. is shy but signs up for an ESL class. There Salimah The Kingfisher Secret meets Sayuri, who has come from Japan Anonymous with her husband, a research associate at Century. PB. $32.99 the local college. When Sayuri’s infant October, 2016. Journalist daughter dies in daycare and one of Grace Elliot has just landed Salimah’s boys leaves to live with his a scoop that she believes father, the two women look to one another will make her career. A for comfort and sustenance. porn-star is willing to talk about her affair with the The Corset man some hope and many Laura Purcell fear will become the next president of the United States. But no one Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 will touch it. Instead, Grace is sent to Europe Dorothea Truelove is where she discovers a story so explosive that young, wealthy and it could decide the American election and beautiful. Ruth Butterham launch a new Cold War – if she can stay alive is young, poor and long enough to tell it. awaiting trial for murder. When Dorothea’s charitable work leads her Picnic in the Storm to Oakgate Prison, she is Yukiko Motoya delighted by the chance to explore her Hachette. HB. $29.99 A housewife takes up fascination with phrenology. But when she The magical conclusion “I was like Icarus. meets teenage seamstress Ruth, she is bodybuilding and sees faced with another theory: Ruth attributes radical changes to her to the award-winning I flew too close her crimes to a supernatural power physique – which her Stella Montgomery series inherent in her stitches. The story Ruth workaholic husband fails to to the sun.” has to tell will shake Dorothea’s belief in notice. A newlywed notices rationality, and redemption. Is Ruth that her husband’s features trustworthy, mad, or a murderer? are beginning to slide 10 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 FICTION

around his face – to match her own. In new stories from Stephanie Bishop, Elliot his notebooks, featuring lyrics, prose these stories, individuals are confronted Perlman, Aoife Clifford, Michael pieces and illustrations, which he kept in in their orderly lives, by the bizarre, the Mohammed Ahmad and many others, this poetic form throughout his life, and grotesque, the fantastic, the alien – and, collection is filled with memorable tales offers an unprecedentedly intimate look through it, find a way to liberation. Picnic in that will stay with you long after reading. inside the life and mind of a singular the Storm is the English-language debut of Whether you’re by the pool, on the beach artist and thinker. The Flame showcases one of Japan’s most fearless young writers. or lazing in the park, spend your summer the full range of Leonard Cohen’s with Australia’s best writers. lyricism, from the exquisitely Soul of the Border transcendent to the darkly funny. Matteo Righetto Text. PB. $19.99 Poetry Jole is fifteen the first Science Fiction & time she accompanies her Fantasy father, Augusto, as he Collected Poems smuggles tobacco across Les Murray the Italian border into Black Inc. HB. $59.99 Austria. Life is hard, and Available 5 November Fire and Blood without the extra money Les Murray’s new and George R. R. Martin Augusto’s smuggling updated Collected Poems Voyager. HB. Was $45 brings in, the family would starve. When displays the full range of $39.99 Augusto disappears during one of his trips his poetic art. This Available 20 November across the treacherous mountains, Jole magnificent hardback Set three-hundred years must retrace the route he took, seeking a volume contains all the before the events in A buyer for her family’s tobacco and the poems he wants to Song of Ice and Fire, this truth behind her father’s disappearance. preserve, with the is the first volume of the Soul of the Border is an epic story of exception of the verse novel Fredy definitive history of the revenge and salvation. Neptune, from his first book The Ilex Tree Targaryens in Westeros, ‘The (1965) to Waiting for the Past (2015) and On and chronicles the The Sadness of Beautiful Bunyah (2016). In tracing Murray’s artistic conquest that united the Things development, it shows an ever-changing Seven Kingdoms under Targaryen rule Children’s Simon Van Booy power, grace and humour, as well as great through to the Dance of the Dragons: the Putnam. PB. $24.99 versatility and formal mastery. Targaryen civil war that nearly ended House Available 3 December their dynasty forever. This is a masterly Taking readers into the A Trillion Tiny Awakenings work by the author of A Song of Ice and innermost lives of Candy Royalle Fire, the basis for HBO’s Game of Thrones. is a beautiful, everyday people, Simon UWAP. PB. $22.99 Van Booy explores the Candy Royalle was a Red Moon strange ways that grief and spoken word poet par Kim Stanley Robinson hope-filled happiness can manifest excellence, presenting Orbit. PB. $32.99 themselves suddenly in the her words and ideas with Thirty years from now, novel about course of our daily lives, dynamism and passion. American Fred and the profound beauty found in memories. In her short thirty-seven- Fredericks is making his Occasionally, as with a man seeking a cure year life she made a first trip to the newly how we carve for middle-age depression or a couple profound impact on colonised moon to install grieving the loss of their daughter, Van readers and audiences. A Trillion Tiny a communications a place for Booy’s stories take a turn into the fantastic. Awakenings is uncompromisingly direct system for China’s Lunar The Sadness of Beautiful Things examines in its language and set of interests about Science Foundation. But how the echoes of personal tragedy can the world and the politics that impact hours after his arrival he witnesses a ourselves in shape us for the better. every aspect of our lives. This startling murder and is forced into hiding. collection, published widely too late for Celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu also the world.’ Royalle to enjoy, also reveals that her finds the moon a perilous place. Chan Qi Anthologies poems carry love, and invoke tenderness is the daughter of the Minister of and care. Finance, but when she attempts to return to China, in secret, the events that unfold Hope Shines Evolution will change everything – on the moon, Readings Brotherhood of St Laurence Eileen Myles and on Earth. S&S. PB. $19.99 Grove. HB. $29.99 Monthly Australia is a prosperous Evolution finds Eileen country, but there are Myles at the forefront of Plays & pockets of disadvantage American literature and everywhere. The Hope culture, crafting radically Screenwriting Prize encourages writing introspective work in the that transcends characteristically stereotypes of ‘the poor’, exuberant style that the Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes and these ten short stories New York Times called of Grindelwald, the Original reflect the tenacity and optimism that ‘one of the essential voices in American Screenplay people show in the face of poverty and poetry.’ Following the critically acclaimed J. K. Rowling testing times. Judged by three notable Afterglow (a dog memoir), the poet Hachette. HB. $39.99 Australians – Quentin Bryce, Cate continues their lifelong inquiry into the Available 16 November Blanchett and Kate Grenville – who are mystery and miracle of human life, in its At the end of Fantastic passionate about defeating disadvantage in mutability and temporality. With incisive Beasts and Where to Find our communities, Hope Shines is a moving humour and heartfelt honesty, these Them, Gellert collection and a celebration of hope and the poems reconcile the body’s brevity in light Grindelwald was enduring power of community. of time’s limitlessness. captured in New York with the help of Newt Best Summer Stories The Flame Scamander. But Aviva Tuffield (ed.) Leonard Cohen Grindelwald escapes and Black Inc. PB. $29.99 A&U. HB. $39.99 Albus Dumbledore enlists Newt’s help. Summer is the time for The Flame is a stunning Lines are drawn as love and loyalty are good stories. This lively collection of Leonard tested, even among the truest friends new collection draws Cohen’s last poems and and family, in an increasingly divided together new and writings, selected and wizarding world. This second original published short fiction ordered by him in the screenplay from J.K. Rowling, illustrated from some of our final months of his life. with stunning line art from MinaLima, country’s most talented The book contains an expands on earlier events that helped storytellers. Featuring extensive selection from shape the wizarding world. CRIME November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 11

help out his dying uncle. His childhood teacher who specialises in the writer R.M. memories happily sustain him until the Holland, whose home is now the school she Dead discovery of a human skull in the trunk of teaches in. As an expert in his work, it’s her an elm tree in the garden – and suddenly name that comes to the forefront when a Write the past doesn’t seem quite so rosy. colleague of hers is murdered and a line with Fiona Hardy from one of Holland’s stories is left near Heaven Sent the body. The interest in Clare is mired in Alan Carter suspicion, and she can only vent to her beloved and trusted journal, until one day Jane Harper won so many awards for her debut novel, The Fremantle Press. PB. $29.99 she finds someone else’s writing in the BOOK OF THE Dry, that I could use my entire word count just listing them. If you like your punchy pages: ‘Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me.’ MONTH But if I did that, I wouldn’t have the chance to tell you to police procedurals set west But who is writing these words – and who go and read this, her standalone third book, and another of the usual Australian Crime is killing off those around her? Too spooky powerful read that cements her as one of Australia’s crime, then Alan Carter is to be read by candlelight – and, possibly, premier authors. your man. Cato Kwong is in even by sunlight. The Lost Man will coat everything you know in a thin a place not often inhabited layer of red dust as you sit, immobilised by the story of by detectives – that is, Cameron Bright, the man found dead and burned from the happiness – and leaves his lovely wife and My Sister, the Serial Killer heat beside a lone grave in the middle of the desert, nine new child each morning feeling good Oyinkan Braithwaite kilometres from his well-stocked, air-conditioned – and before being confronted by the newest Atlantic. PB. $27.99 perfectly working – four-wheel-drive. horror on the beat: a serial killer who Available 28 November leaves a literal calling card on the victims. There are whispers in the This is raw, unadulterated rural crime; The aftermath of the most recent death is industry about this book: all that nothing becomes an intense witnessed by a local journo desperate to next-big-thing type of whispers. Korede is a nurse, something in Harper’s hands. prove his worth via unorthodox investigation methods, but he’s not the uncompromising, only person affected personally by the fastidious, and bitter about The Lost Man In a place like Balamara, neighbours live hundreds of murders. These deaths start to get under her sister. Ayoola is Jane Harper kilometres apart, roads lie empty for days and the isolation Cato’s skin, and his perfect life comes glorious, beautiful beyond compare, Macmillan. PB. Was $32.99 can make people do crazy things to escape the world, but under threat in more ways than one in this charms everyone who meets her, and has $27.99 Cam – who had plans to meet his younger brother that day, wry, rollicking thriller. killed three men. In self-defense, she says, and wasn’t that type of person – would surely have chosen but Korede is not entirely sure; all she a less brutal way out. At least, that’s what Cameron’s older The Feral Detective knows is that she has to clean up brother, Nathan, thinks, not that he’s seen much of Cam lately himself. Or anyone else Jonathon Lethem afterwards, and that it is becoming too for that matter, since the entire community hates him, and his immediate family lives common an occurrence with the men Atlantic. PB. $29.99 three hours away. But now, with his teenage son visiting him for the Christmas holidays, Ayoola dates. As Ayoola wafts through life, In the lead up to American and his brother’s funeral looming, Nathan can’t shake all the unanswered questions out determined not to take anything political leadership taking there in the vast expanse of Queensland outback. seriously – including death – she catches an unexpected turn for the This is raw, unadulterated rural crime; all that nothing becomes an intense something the eye of Tade, the doctor Korede yearns orange, Phoebe Siegler in Harper’s hands. Events unfold in a simmering slow burn that is impossible to tear your for. Now, Korede fears for both her heart travels from New York to the eyes from, and Harper hones her focus on a small fistful of characters that populate an and the life of the man she loves. A Californian desert to find area the size of entire European countries, making everything small and enormous at Nigerian-set, darkly humorous story of Arabella, the missing once. Christmas is coming – and you should buy this for everyone you know. family ties good, bad and dangerous. daughter of one of her friends. In order to navigate the chaos of both missing persons and the Inland Empire, Phoebe gets help Man at the Window Killing Eve: No Tomorrow Kingdom of the Blind from Charles Heist, a shambles of a man Robert Jeffreys Echo. PB. $29.99 Luke Jennings Louise Penny who is nevertheless very good at finding Available 3 December Hachette. PB. $29.99 Hachette. PB. $32.99 those who are missing – or who may not Echo Publishing has Killing Eve, the TV show Louise Penny’s bestselling want to be found. With locations as bright relaunched with the first based on Luke Jennings’ Chief Inspector Gamache as the sun and characters with personality book in Robert Jeffreys’ blisteringly fun Villanelle mysteries are popular for a to spare, this sparky tale will knock you Cardilini series, set in 1960s series, has sent many reason: they are set in a off-balance and work your brain in the Western Australia and Readings staff into a frenzy snow-blown small town in very best kind of way. following the mostly drunk, of binge-watching, and the Quebec, populated by not-particularly-admired books themselves are the interesting characters and Kill Shot detective as he is handed an easy case and same: rocket-fuelled cat-and-mouse curious happenings, along with bloodshed. Garry Disher takes it further than anyone expected – or thrillers that you’ll stop everything else in In the aftermath of a recent case that saw Text. PB. $29.99 wanted. In an exclusive boys’ school, a your life to read. In this second book, less success and more carnage – along with Available 3 December headmaster is shot, and it is deemed an assassin Villanelle remains on the tail of missing drugs – Gamache and his Garry Disher is winding up accident. But Cardilini, railing against the Eve Polastri, who is just as determined to colleagues wait with dwindling hope for his 2018 with both a fiery new upper classes, thinks there is more to it uncover who Villanelle truly is – and who name to be cleared. In the meantime, bestseller and the Ned Kelly than that, and drags himself off the floor to in MI5’s highest echelons is not to be Gamache has been named an executor for Lifetime Achievement unearth the school’s darkest, most trusted. Across Europe and deep into the the estate of a woman he never knew, along Award for all the literary appalling secrets – ones that many in past, Jennings’ newest tale is an adventure with two others who have no recollection of gifts he’s given grateful power are unwilling to hear. worth hunting down. her either. They accept out of curiosity, but readers over the years. In soon it becomes clear that this is no quirky Kill Shot, Wyatt is pottering The Spite Game side-project, but something much, much around Sydney, getting into minor Also out in November & Anna Snoekstra more deadly. criminal escapades. Nothing too bad, December HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 really, until word gets around that there’s We’ll have a new Michael Connelly with As we head towards the end The Wych Elm something not so minor in the works. 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But when it turns out he’s not the third Jack Reacher arrives with Lee Child’s how you think – until it French is back and has set only one who heard about this, it might be Past Tense (Bantam, PB, was $32.99, special wrecks your life entirely. aside her Dublin Murder more than money he’s fighting for. price $27.99); along with Sujata Massey’s Ava is an adult who has not forgotten the Squad series to release this The Widows of Malabar Hill (Random pain of her youth, nor the three women standalone tale of a golden The Stranger Diaries House, PB, $29.99); Anthony Horowitz’s who put her through that pain: Saanvi, boy whose life throws him Elly Griffiths The Sentence is Death (Random House, PB, Cass, and Mel. All this time later, as they lemons for the first time. Hachette. PB. $29.99 was $32.99, special price $29.99); Soren lead their new lives unaware of Ava’s Carefree Toby has cruised through life Elly Griffiths, typically Sveistrup’s The Chestnut Man (Penguin, simmering rage, revenge is now on its way. with his supportive family, good job, known for her Dr Ruth PB, $32.99); John Sandford’s Holy Ghost As Ava mercilessly ruins the lives of those loving girlfriend and raucous friends, and Galloway mysteries, this (S&S, PB, $32.99); Matthew Condon’s The who ruined hers, she realises that one of has little sympathy for those who aren’t month delivers a gothic Night Dragon (UQP, PB, $32.95); Hakan the women may be not quite as unaware as successful. But when a burglary goes thriller with a literary Nesser’s Root of Evil (Mantle, PB, $29.99); she thought. A suspenseful, Melbourne- violently wrong, Toby leaves for The Ivy bent – and a whole lot of Joanna Baker’s Slipping Place (Ventura, PB, based story of good gone very, very bad. House, his family home, to recuperate, and murder. Clare Cassidy is a $29.99) … and more! 12 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 NONFICTION

Becoming King of the Air: The Turbulent New Michelle Obama Life of Charles Kingsford Viking. HB. Was $49.99 Smith $39.99 Ann Blainey Nonfiction Available 14 November Black Inc. HB. $49.99 In a life filled with meaning Available 3 December and accomplishment, Charles Kingsford Smith Michelle Obama has was the most commanding In February 2009, the state of Victoria experienced extreme emerged as one of the most flyer of the golden age of BOOK OF THE weather events that provided the perfect conditions for compelling women of our aviation. He broke records MONTH the bushfire catastrophe that has come to be known as era. As First Lady of the with his daring voyages: Black Saturday. One hundred and seventy three people the first trans-Pacific flight Australian United States of America – died; hundreds more were injured; countless individuals the first African-American to serve in that from America to Australia, Studiess bear psychological wounds. The scale and enormity of the role – she established herself as a powerful the first flight across the Tasman, the first devastation to the natural world is hard to comprehend. More advocate for women and girls in the U.S. non-stop crossing of the Australian difficult to understand still is that some of the fires were and around the world. Warm, wise, and mainland. In November 1935, Kingford deliberately lit. In 2012, Brendan Sokaluk was convicted of revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal Smith’s plane crashed and he was lost at the crime of arson, and is currently serving a sentence of reckoning of a woman of soul and sea. This brilliant work from one of seventeen years and nine months for lighting the fire that substance who has defied expectations, Australia’s foremost biographers reveals burned around the area of Churchill in Gippsland and killed and whose story inspires us to do the same. the complicated, tumultuous life of a eleven people. What person could possibly want to cause such fascinating figure, who pursued his shocking damage to the environment and its inhabitants? You Are Always With Me: obsession to the greatest heights. Enter Chloe Hooper, who excavates ‘the mind on fire’, the Letters to Mama mind of this arsonist. Frida Kahlo Let Her Fly I don’t mind admitting that I wasn’t sure I’d be able Hachette. HB. $45 Ziauddin Yousafzai to read this book; I have a not unusual fear of bushfires Frida Kahlo is regarded W.H. Allen. PB. $27.99 that comes from living through Ash Wednesday as a child as one of Mexico’s Available 19 November growing up in the Dandenongs. Even now, every single time greatest painters. But For over twenty years, The Arsonist: I hear a siren, I am back in that time and feel anxious. But I beyond the familiar Ziauddin Yousafzai has A Mind on Fire could not put this amazing book down. images there is a private been fighting for equality. Chloe Hooper Hooper begins with a beautifully poetic, mournful story about a daughter Taught as a boy in Pakistan Penguin. HB. Was $39.99 account of the ruin wreaked by the fire – she writes the who confided in her to believe that he was $29.99 landscape so very well – before focusing on the police and beloved mama, Matilde Calderon Kahlo. inherently better than his the investigation that eventually results in the arrest of Until now, Frida’s handwritten letters to sisters, Ziauddin rebelled Sokaluk. We learn about a vulnerable man and his outsider her mother have only been available to against inequality from a young age. life growing up with what is found to be undiagnosed autism. We follow the work of the scholars. Funny, observant and honest, When he had a daughter, he vowed that team from Legal Aid tasked with defending him. We enter the courtroom; we hear the they chart Kahlo’s relationship with her Malala would have an education, evidence. All the while, though we know the facts and the outcome of the case, it is still mother, and reveal the marvellous, something usually only given to boys, hard to grasp what exactly took place on that day. Things burned and people died, that critical painter’s eye in her description of and he founded a school that she could much is certain. But the arsonist – as criminal archetype and as unique individual – people and places from Mexico, San attend. Personal in its detail and remains somehow unknowable, begging the question, what could ‘justice’ in and for Francisco and New York. universal in its themes, this landmark this situation possibly look like? book shows why we must all keep It’s a tough book to read in parts. I think I cried solidly for thirty pages near the Germaine: The Life of fighting for the rights of girls. beginning as Hooper describes some of the heartbreaking events with stunning, lyrical Germaine Greer clarity. But the care she has taken with this story and its people is also care for the Elizabeth Kleinhenz reader, who she accompanies on this journey like a close friend. The Arsonist is not just Unfettered and Alive Knopf Australia. HB. Was $39.99 our book of the month; it’s one of the books of the year. Absolutely not to be missed. Anne Summers $34.99 Alison Huber is the head book buyer for Readings A&U. HB. Was $39.99 As one of the first $34.99 researchers permitted to This is the compelling trawl through the story of Anne Summers’ Germaine Greer Archive career, and his doomed attempts to recast extraordinary life. She has housed at the University of Australian Studies views of his much-maligned time as travelled around the world Melbourne, Elizabeth Australia’s prime minister. Tiberius with a moving from job to job, Kleinhenz found evidence Telephone gathers deep archival research advised prime ministers, of a brilliant teacher, serious scholar, wag and extensive interviews with McMahon’s led feminist debates, and Australia – What Happened? and ratbag, mentor and icon. For contemporaries and colleagues, and is an much more. Whatever position she has Ben Pobjie Elizabeth, two things are certain: authoritative and colourful account of a held, she has expanded what’s possible Affirm. PB. $29.99 women’s lives today are very different unique politician and a vital period in and helped us to see things differently When our politicians are from how they were when Germaine Greer Australia’s history. – often at high personal cost. Unfettered busy playing musical chairs, and she left school; and much of the and Alive is a provocative and inspiring our cricketers acting change that has occurred over the past memoir from someone who broke suspiciously with half-century can be directly attributed to through many boundaries to show what sandpaper, and a murderous Biography the lifetime of scholarship, hard work and women can do. starfish with twenty-one influence of Germaine Greer. arms roams around the Great Barrier Reef we, as a nation, must ask Kerry O’Brien: A Memoir Heavy: An American Memoir Welcome Home: A Memoir a tough question: how did it come to this? In Kerry O’Brien Kiese Laymon with Selected Photographs Australia – What Happened? Ben Pobjie A&U. HB. Was $44.99 Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 and Letters turns an incredulous eye on the history of $39.99 Available 1 December Lucia Berlin Australia to bust open the national Picador. HB. $34.99 Available 14 November Kiese Laymon grew up a mythology, reveal the truth about what it Veteran journalist Kerry hard-headed black son to a Before Lucia Berlin died, she means to be an Australian and work out O’Brien’s life has spanned complicated and brilliant was working on a book of what happened to all our best-laid plans. the post-war era through the black mother in Jackson, autobiographical sketches maelstrom of the nuclear Mississippi. From his early with the working title Tiberius with a Telephone and digital age – a experiences of sexual ‘Welcome Home’. The work Patrick Mullins remarkable time of change violence, to his suspension consisted of more than Scribe. HB. Was $59.99 that has no match in human from college, to his career as a young twenty chapters that started $49.99 history. He has witnessed life changing college professor, Laymon charts his in 1936 in Alaska and ended (prematurely) Available 19 November events, and explained the intricacies of the complex relationship with his mother, in 1966 in southern Mexico. In this William McMahon was a world to millions of Australians as we sat grandmother, abuse, anorexia, obesity, publication of Welcome Home, her son, Jeff significant, if widely in the comfort of our lounge rooms. In this sex, writing and ultimately gambling. A Berlin, fills in the gaps with photos and derided and disliked, figure intimate, ground-breaking account, defiant yet vulnerable memoir that letters from her eventful, romantic, and in Australian politics in the O’Brien reflects on the big events, the Laymon started writing when he was tragic life. From Alaska to Argentina, second half of the twentieth lessons learned and lessons ignored, along eleven, Heavy is an insightful Kentucky to Mexico, New York City to Chile, century. This biography with the foibles and strengths of public exploration of weight, identity, art, Berlin’s world was wide. And the writing tells the story of his life, his figures who construct our world. friendship and family. here is, as we’ve come to expect, dazzling. NONFICTION November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 13

the essay where she explains how and why Business she had to take risks in writing about her father for her second memoir, Her Father’s Daughter, she speaks openly of the pitfalls Work Like a Woman of telling migrant stories: ‘If I placed the Mary Portas more shocking ‘killing fields’ chapters of Bantam Press. PB. $35 the book first, the book would inevitably Women today are working in and simply follow the migrant trajectory a man’s culture, and it’s of “success”, but my father would always holding us back. In Work Like be seen as an eternal “refugee” because a Woman, Mary Portas our current mainstream discourse about examines the world of “those who’ve come across the seas” is employment, how it works polarising and unsophisticated.’ against women and what Funny, tender and wholly charming, needs to change. This book is a manifesto Close to Home is certain to inspire thought for all: from young women entering the and compassion. workforce and older women trying to Bronte Coates is the digital content integrate professional and family coordinator and the Readings Prizes manager ambitions, to executives running businesses and creating best practices, and Heartland the businesses that employ them. Honest, Sarah Smarsh accessible and entertaining, it is a bold and Scribe. PB. Was $32.99 inspiring vision of the future world of work. $29.99 es Yes Yes, written by two advocates The product of Yintimately involved in the struggle for How to Own the Room: multiple generations of marriage equality, reveals the untold story Women and the Art of Brilliant teenage mothers, Sarah of how a grassroots movement won hearts Speaking Smarsh was just a child and and minds and transformed a country. Viv Groskop living below the poverty line From its tentative origins in 2004, through Random House. HB. $29.99 in rural Kansas when she to a groundswell of public support, everyday Most books about public first heard a voice from people contributed so much to see marriage speaking don’t tell you what within. This voice grew into a disembodied equality become law. The book captures to do when you open your internal power that was to help her to live a the passion that propelled the movement mouth and nothing comes different life from the rest of the women in forward, weaving together stories of out, or what to do in the her family. When she became a teenager heartbreak, hope and triumph. It is based moments when you are herself, she recognised the voice as that of on personal memories and more than forty made to feel small. They her unborn child. Without reliable adult interviews with key figures and everyday don’t tell you how to own the room. This guidance and a stable home, she had cause advocates from across Australia. book does. From the way Michelle Obama to wonder what advice she would give to a projects ‘happy high status’, and the power daughter of her own. Smarsh credits this of J.K. Rowling’s understated speaking internal relationship she developed as her style, what is it that our heroines do to way out of poverty and this book is her www.newsouthpublishing.com make us sit up and listen, and how can we attempt to honour this voice by articulating achieve that ourselves? what she wished someone had told her, ‘what it means to be a poor child in a rich country founded on the promise of equality’. Cultural Studies Throughout the book Smarsh directly addresses her unborn child and while this unique framing device might have seemed Discover Close to Home: Selected contrived were it handled by a lesser Writings writer, Smarsh’s prose is extraordinarily a new favourite Alice Pung beautiful, evocative and unsentimental, Black Inc. PB. $32.99 and framing the book in this way reveals unique insights into gender, the body Alice Pung arrived on Germaine and poverty. Like Matthew Desmond’s Elizabeth Kleinhenz the Australian literary 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted, As a student in Melbourne, scene with the 2006 Elizabeth Kleinhenz heard frequent which examines the connections between publication of her memoir, talk of this almost mythical figure, housing instability, profit and poverty, Germaine Greer. Arguably the Unpolished Gem. She has most significant and influential Smarsh also sees the transience her family since gone on to write a Australian woman of her time. experienced as a product of their class and second memoir, a series of an unequal economic system. Her mother New Jerusalem children’s books, a young adult novel, moved around so much that she attended Paul Ham various essays and short fiction, as well as five schools in five towns in one year. Award-winning historian edit two anthologies, earning herself a Paul Ham tells the story Smarsh herself had attended eight different reputation as a revitalising force in local of religious obsession and schools by ninth grade. Unlike J.D Vance’s persecution, of noble ideals literature. Close to Home brings together a trampled to dust, of slavish Hillbilly Elegy, another memoir about collection of her short non-fiction writing sexual surrender … all in the white working-class upbringing, Smarsh name of Christ. over the years and it is a book that will does not just see the American Dream as delight fans as much as newcomers. “...she will ultimately be recognised as being in crisis, but also as founded on false The essays collected here are divided one of the most influential and significant premises. In this way, Heartland is able to into loosely themed sections and while women in the Australian diaspora.” offer a more nuanced analysis of gender, many centre on ideas of home and GERMAINE BY ELIZABETH KLEINHENZ race, and class within the power structures homecoming, they cover a diverse range of of American politics and culture. Heroes themes – from the expansive (migration, Stephen Fry Kara Nicholson is from Readings online class, racism, and the power of literature), The dazzling companion to the specific (doll museums, birthing volume to the bestselling classes, and what people actually buy at Mythos. There are heroes - Mad, Bad, Dangerous to and then there are Kmart at 3am). In some pieces, she delves Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Greek heroes. into the hidden corners of Australian Yeats and Joyce society, and in others she unpacks her Colm Tóibín Super Natural Tobie Puttock family heritage and past, or shares Picador. PB. $29.99 A beautiful collection anecdotes and reflections from her travels. In his 2013 book New of 100 simple, flavour-filled What remains unchanged through Ways to Kill Your dishes that vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians will love. this sprawling collection of ideas is Pung’s Mother: Writers and Their distinctive voice – her humour, candour, Families, Colm Tóibín generosity and attentiveness shine exposed a roster of famous through, making it impossible to think of writers behaving badly. Pung in any kind of box but her own. In With Mad, Bad, Dangerous Read more at penguin.com.au 14 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 NONFICTION

to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and lives and works. Moreno queries whether it and triumph. Based on personal memories Joyce, he continues this project of drilling is even him or the virus writing the words. and more than forty interviews with History down into the intimate and domestic lives The style is intimate and highly personal, advocates from across Australia, it covers of his writer subjects. Thanks to his moving and sometimes confronting. It the movement’s origins in 2004 through to forensic interest, we readers get to enjoy delights in the poetic rhythms of language the unsuccessful High Court challenge, a The Nameless Names some gossipy material, but Tóibín is also while exposing the darker realities of what public vote in 2017 and the Parliamentary Scott Bennett intent on using his research to bring more it is to live with HIV. aftermath. It reminds us that social change Scribe. HB. $49.99 meaning to the already well-known lives ‘The virus makes the decisions in this is possible and that love is love. Few Australians realise that and works of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce. For union. I’m just along for the ride.’ of the 62,000 Anzac soldiers example, we learn that W.B. Yeats’ sisters, This is an important read and a Insomnia who died in World War I, over one-third are still Lily and Lolly (yep) never really got along, stunning introduction to some powerful Marina Benjamin listed as ‘missing’. The and we also find out that they are the writing – both Abreu’s and Moreno’s. Scribe. HB. $27.99 real-life models for ‘the weird sisters’ Nameless Names lays bare Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton Available 1 November the emotional toll inflicted referred to by Buck Mulligan in James With her new memoir Joyce’s Ulysses. upon families, describing those caught The End of the End of the Earth Insomnia, Marina Benjamin Tóibín gives the reader a strong sense between clinging to hope and letting go, Jonathan Franzen has produced an unsettling of the way that his own life is entwined those who felt compelled to journey to Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 account of a liminal condition with the physical and literary architecture distant battlefields for answers, and those Available 16 November that treats our inability to of Dublin. A city walk becomes thick with who shunned conventional religion and In The End of the End of the sleep not as a disorder, but as memory and association, zipping in a resorted to spiritualism for solace. This Earth, Jonathan Franzen an existential experience that heartbeat from his recall of chats with moving book delicately reveals the human returns with renewed vigour can electrify our understanding of ourselves, old mates to a Samuel Beckett anecdote. faces and the devastating stories behind to the themes that have long and of creativity and love. At once Similarly, the Wilde, Yeats and Joyce the names listed on the stone memorials. preoccupied him. Whether philosophical and poetical, the book ranges families cross-reference each other exploring his complex widely over history and culture, literature throughout this book, which is itself another The New Silk Roads relationship with his uncle, and art. Benjamin aims to light up the literary brick in a Dublin built of words. Peter Frankopan recounting his young adulthood in New workings of our inner minds, delivering a Scandal and dissolution haunt the fathers Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99 York, or offering an illuminating look at the startlingly fresh look at what it means to be of Wilde and Yeats, good salacious stuff, but Available 1 December global seabird crisis, these pieces contain wakeful in the dark. when Tóibín gets to James Joyce and his When The Silk Roads was all the wit and realism that we've come to dad, the book really flies. James’s brother published in 2015, it became expect from Franzen. These essays trace The Patch Stanislaus referred to their father as ‘a crazy an instant classic. A major the progress of a unique mind wrestling John McPhee drunkard’, and this appears to be a clear- reassessment of world with itself, with literature and with some of Text. PB. $29.99 sighted judgement of the man. But Tóibín history, it compelled us to the most important issues of our day. Available 19 November argues that, via his works, James Joyce look at the past from a John McPhee’s The Patch is performed a loving act of transubstantiation different perspective. The Fed Up just that: patches of work for the image of their father. And with this New Silk Roads brings this story up to date, Gemma Hartley across a writer’s lifetime observation, Tóibín creates a potent coda addressing a world that is changing Hachette. PB. $29.99 that come together to form a for a book which investigates the mutual dramatically. It provides a timely reminder Available 13 November quilt of essays, reflections transformations of life and art. that we live in a world that is and reminiscences. Gemma Hartley wrote an interconnected. This important – and Bernard Caleo is a member of the Readings Ranging across a variety of events team article in Harper’s Bazaar in ultimately hopeful – book asks us to re-read genres and styles, subjects and moods, his September 2017 called who we are, illuminating the themes on patches are collected from writings that ‘Women Aren't Nags – We’re which all our lives and livelihood depend. Through the Night: Dispatches Just Fed Up’, which instantly have not previously appeared in any book. from Uranus went viral. The piece, and Fit to be consumed all at once, or savoured Ed Moreno & Caio Fernando Abreu this book, address piecemeal, The Patch gives a full taste of Seashaken Houses: A PB. $24.95 ‘emotional labour’: the unpaid, often his impeccable power over language. Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastnet In 1990 Ed Moreno unnoticed work, done by women, that goes was given a death into keeping everyone comfortable and What We Talk About When We Tom Nancollas Particular Books. HB. $39.99 sentence: at just 25 years happy. Dubbed as the next feminist Talk About Rape of age he tested HIV frontier, emotional labour couldn’t be more Sohaila Abdulali Lighthouses are striking positive and doctors gave relevant to these times we’re living in. Fed Vintage. PB. $19.99 totems of our relationship to him five years to live, at Up is a must-read for those who want to Sohaila Abdulali was the sea. Today we still best. Almost thirty years harness the power of emotional labour and gang-raped as a teenager in depend upon their guiding later, with the help of create a more connected, equal world. Mumbai. Drawing on her lights for the safe passage of antiretroviral treatment, Moreno is no own experience, her work ships. Nowhere is this truer longer infectious and, thankfully, is still Going Postal: More than Yes or No with hundreds of survivors than in the rock lighthouses very much alive despite the virus. Quinn Eades as the head of a rape crisis of Great Britain and Ireland, constructed on desolate rock formations, and made of As a person living with HIV, Moreno Brow Books. PB. $32.99 centre in Boston, and her granite to withstand the power of the explores through his writing what it is In 2017 the queer and research in India and elsewhere, Abdulali ocean’s waves. Seashaken Houses is a to ‘live a life controlled by a microscopic gender-diverse community wants to change the conversation around lyrical exploration of these singular organism ... able to reproduce itself inside of Australia undertook an rape culture. Drawing on the fact that she towers, the people who built and inhabited the body. An alien.’ incredible campaign of is both victim and survivor, Abdulali their circular rooms, and the ways in Prolific Brazilian journalist and author everyday activism around doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, which we value emblems of our history in a Caio Fernando Abreu died of AIDS-related marriage equality. Many but she passionately believes that we must changing world. complications in 1996. He was one of the were shocked at the vitriol talk about rape and we must talk about most important voices of the AIDS epidemic that rose up. By the end, everyone was truly how we talk about rape. and one of the first writers to mention exhausted. This edited collection guides the These Truths: A History of the AIDS in a major work of fiction (Pela Noite/ reader through the highs and lows of the The White Darkness United States Through the Night) in 1982. His body of work marriage equality postal vote. Combining David Grann Jill Lepore is largely inaccessible to English-language serious scholarship, humour, manifestos, S&S. HB. $29.99 W.W. Norton. HB. $56.95 readers, as so little of it has been translated and simple tales from childhood, readers are Henry Worsley was a The American experiment to English. Moreno has made it his task to flung into the emotional melting pot that devoted husband and rests on three ideas: bring Abreu’s words to a broader readership constitutes a definitive turning point in father and a decorated political equality, natural through his translations. Australian queer histories. British special forces rights and the sovereignty The text here is an expanded version of officer who believed in of the people. Telling the a performance Moreno has been sharing Yes Yes Yes honour and sacrifice. In story of America, beginning with audiences (most recently performed Shirleene Robinson & Alex November 2015, aged in 1492, These Truths asks at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival) Greenwich fifty-five, Worsley bid farewell to his family whether the course of events has proven and offers a potent mix of Abreu’s original NewSouth. PB. $29.99 and embarked on his most perilous quest: to the nation’s founding truths or belied Portuguese writings, Moreno’s English Everyday people contributed walk across Antarctica alone. Here, David them. Finding meaning in contradiction, translations, cultural commentary, so much to see marriage Grann tells Worsley’s remarkable story with Lepore weaves American history into a memoir, letter, lament and chronos. equality become law. This intensity and power. Illustrated with more tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and This book is ‘a conversation across book captures the passion than fifty stunning photographs from prosperity, of technological progress and time and space’ between Moreno and that propelled the Worsley’s journey, The White Darkness is a moral anguish. This spellbinding chronicle Abreu, with the virus an all pervasive (and movement, weaving together story of courage, love and a man pushing offers an authoritative new history of a invasive) thread through both authors’ stories of heartbreak, hope himself to the extremes of human capacity. great, and greatly troubled, nation. NONFICTION November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 15

Walls the law; striking accounts of leaders, David Frye moralists and scandalmongers; elegant Faber. HB. $39.99 ruminations on the arts and the lives of At the dawn of humanity's artists. And there are some memorable ascent, there was only bloody new pieces, including the remarkable story conflict. But then came the of David Marr’s wedding day. invention of the wall, dividing populations into Capitalism in America: A two opposing groups. On one History side were those who gained Alan Greenspan & Adrian enough of a respite from the clash of arms to Wooldridge think, create, preserve, trade. On the other Allen Lane. HB. $55 were the unwalled, warriors driven by the Where does innovation come search for plunder. With provocative insight, from, and how does it spread Walls charts the centuries-long uneasy through a society? In tension between the walled and unwalled, Capitalism in America, Alan showing how walls shape the human psyche. Greenspan unfolds a tale spanning vast landscapes, titanic figures and Music triumphant breakthroughs, as well as profound moral failings. This book argues that America's genius has been its ceaseless Beastie Boys Book churn of the old giving way to the new. At a Michael Diamond & Adam Horovitz time when productivity growth has again Faber. HB. Was $49.99 stalled, stirring up the populist furies, and $44.99 the continuation of American pre-eminence Formed in New York City as a seems increasingly uncertain, Capitalism in hardcore band in 1981, Beastie America makes for urgent reading. Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip-hop superstardom. Here is that Science story, told for the first time in the words of the band. This book includes wide-ranging contributions The Dinosaur Artist from famous writers and cultural figures like Paige Williams Colson Whitehead, Spike Jonze, Amy Scribe. PB. $32.99 Poehler, and Wes Anderson. Running Adapted and greatly throughout are a plethora of colour photos expanded from her and illustrations, as well as a graphic novel, a 2013 New Yorker article cookbook, mixtape playlists, a fake snobby ‘Bones of Contention’, Paige music magazine, and much more. Williams delves again, more deeply, into the heady and Mythology complex world of ‘commercial palaeontology’ and its implications regarding national cultural Gift Ideas-Readings AD-ol_FA.indd 1 9/10/18 5:30 pm heritage. The crux of this book (at its literal, Heroes paginated heart) is the case that resulted in Stephen Fry dinosaur enthusiast Eric Prokopi’s HEAVEN SENT Michael Joseph. PB. Was $35 conviction for illegally smuggling a (whole) ALAN CARTER $29.99 skeleton of the Tarbosaurus bataar (the Detective Sergeant Philip ‘Cato’ Kwong is light on sleep but There are heroes, and then Asian variant of T-Rex) into the United high on happiness with his new wife and their baby girl. there are Greek heroes. Few States from Mongolia, via the UK, having But contentment is not compatible with life in the Job, and mere mortals have ever falsified the customs declaration. Mongolia’s soon a series of murders of homeless people gets in the way embarked on such bold and constitution, as it happens, stipulates that of Cato’s newfound bliss. This is the fourth book in the Cato heartstirring adventures, dinosaur and other fossil finds are culturally Kwong series from Alan Carter, the winner of the 2018 overcome monstrous perils, significant and national property. Thus T. Ngaio Marsh Award. CRIME FICTION or outwitted vengeful gods, bataar was seized and repatriated. But quite as stylishly as Greek heroes. Join Jason before we even get to this juicy bit, Williams aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden unpacks the international socio-historical Fleece, witness Oedipus solve the riddle of context and legislative frameworks (or lack the Sphinx, and discover how Bellerophon thereof) that underpin the collection and captures the winged horse Pegasus to help distribution of palaeontological material. him slay the monster Chimera. Heroes is the Throughout the first half she introduces story of what we mortals are capable of at readers to key events and historical figures our worst and our very best. such as Mary Anning, Marsh and Cope, In 1906, Kathleen O’Connor left Australia for thrilling, and Roy Chapman Andrews (long touted as bohemian Paris. More than a century later, novelist the inspiration for the character of Indiana Amanda Curtin faces her own questions, of life and Politics Jones), as well as the contemporary shady of art, as she embarks on a journey in Kate’s footsteps. and legitimate collector-dealers who, even ‘Though O’Connor will always be part mystery, one with all good intentions to promote the thing is certain – through Curtin’s research we will now know much more about O’Connor and her work.’ ART/BIOGRAPHY My Country: Stories, Essays study of our planet’s former inhabitants, The Artist’s Chronicle and Speeches ignore cultural heritage frameworks in their David Marr quest for big dollars. Admittedly, the USA Black Inc. HB. Was $39.99 was perhaps a bit late to the party here: only $34.99 in 2009 did their government introduce David Marr is one of legislation to control this, by mandating Australia’s most permits and issuing them to scientists and unflinching, forensic museum affiliates. While the content of this In this spectacular volume, acclaimed landscape photographer reporters of political book is fascinating, the structure is layered Richard Woldendorp, AM, explores Australian trees of (think geological strata) and perhaps suffers controversy. In Marr’s all shapes and sizes. From abstract close-ups to aerials, from being too detailed and rambling. Not hands, those things we call Woldendorp’s images reveal their beauty and wonder. reportage and commentary for the faint-hearted, it is nevertheless an ‘A potent reminder that we need trees – and that they need us.’ ART/PHOTOGRAPHY are elevated to the most artful and ambitious and worthy addition to the natural Piers Verstegen, Australian Conservation Foundation illuminating chronicles of our time. My history and science-writing canon, and also Country anthologises Marr’s powerful to national cultural heritage literature. reflections on religion, sex, censorship and Julia Jackson is from Readings Carlton 16 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 NONFICTION

Cellar Bar a place to be fulfilled with glorious, simple Italian food. And the best Food & part? He starts the book with desserts! Each dish is beautifully photographed and Gardening the recipes are so easy that anyone could use them, whatever their level of comfort with Chris Gordon with cooking.

Special Guest: Recipes for the Fervor: A Journey Through Happily Imperfect Host Australian Native Food Annabel Crabb & Wendy Sharpe Paul Iskov, Robert Wood & Chris Murdoch. HB. $39.99 Gurney If, as I do, you love a Margaret River Press. HB. $39.99 good, solid cookbook Paul Iskov came up with with a sense of humour a truly inspired idea. He and exuberance, then harnesses locally Special Guest is the sourced native produce, pick of this month’s cooks it and shares it cookbook bunch. with diners at unique Annabel Crabb and locations across WA, Wendy Sharpe share recipes perfect for the including salt lakes and home cook who is juggling an enormous pristine beaches. Here is a more tangible range of activities but still wants to share a product of his concept. With a focus on home-cooked meal that caters to all needs. local and indigenous ingredients, he has Each dish comes from the heart and is recorded the finest recipes from his roving practical and delicious! dining experience with stories by Robert Wood and photographs by Chris Gurney. The Nordic Baking Book The combination is stunning. Magnus Nilsson Phaidon. HB. $59.99 Suqar: Desserts and Sweets World-acclaimed chef from the Modern Middle East Magnus Nilsson explores Greg Malouf & Lucy Malouf the rich baking tradition Hardie Grant. HB. $55 of the Nordic region with This is the sweetest of 450 tempting recipes for the cookbooks this home bakers. Nordic season. Greg and Lucy culture is renowned for Malouf have finally its love of baking and dedicated an entire baked goods; after all the oven is another cookbook to 100 dk.com.au much-needed heat source! This book takes wonderful dessert you on a journey across Denmark, the treats inspired by Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Middle Eastern flavours. The collection Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. It’s suitable ranges from puddings and pastries to ice for all those who have cold hands and a creams, cakes, confectionary, fruity warm heart, and of course for those who desserts and drinks. These dishes are not love to bake. difficult to prepare and have been created with Australian kitchens in mind, but Experience the elemental flavours Jamie’s Friday Night Feast retain the integrity of the original recipe. Jamie Oliver of the world with Food Safari. Penguin. PB. Was $39.99 Fruit: Recipes that Celebrate $34.99 Nature Did you know that Bernadette Worndl Jamie Oliver has sold Smith Street. HB. $55 more than 40 million Taking a harvest view of books and is the UK’s fruit, this book packs a bestselling nonfiction punch by illustrating author? This type of how wonderfully success is only possible versatile fruit can be in because his recipes, his cooking. Bernadette attitude and his philanthropic actions are Wordl shows us how to all incredibly good. His latest book use peach, pear and contains the greatest dishes from his TV plum in both sweet and savoury dishes, series Jamie & Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast. and how to ensure quinces, apples and It’s the type of food that you may prepare dried fruit give a lift to the simplest of for your kids eighteenth birthday, for a dishes. Think beyond the normal pairing games night with friends, or, simply, for a of chicken and lemon, or pork and apple, to night in with your nearest and dearest. a whole new rainbow of flavours. Every recipe is suitable for cooks at any level, and, without a doubt, this collection SuperNatural: 100 Easy Plant- is another winner. Based Recipes Tobie Puttock Cellar Bar Lantern. PB. $39.99 Guy Grossi Don’t think of this as Lantern. HB. $49.99 a vegan cookbook, Guy Grossi says that but rather as a book the aim of food is not that will give you to just leave you 100 fresh and feeling full, but it’s completely delicious also to have you recipes for all the feeling fulfilled. The meals and for all the Cellar Bar, a occasions in your life. There is no lecture Melbourne institution on being a part of the wellness revolution since the 1950s, has always been or about saving the planet one vegan synonymous with Italian dining. In his meal at a time – instead, you will be latest cookbook, Grossi shares eighty of doing all this, freshly and deliciously, his favourites dishes that have made the and you won’t even notice. YOUNG ADULT November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 17

with the conservative factions and her newfound allegiances (once she Young acclimatises to being dead), and, ultimately, following as she finds her An astounding Adult purpose in this chamber of comic misery: to provide a platform for revealing the long-kept secrets with which her and triumphant charming counterparts were buried. The first volume of this best-selling French quartet has now Timothy de Sousa is from Readings Kids BOOK OF THE been translated into English and is available locally. The memoir about a MONTH story is set in a world that is fractured into floating chunks, Neverworld Wake known as ‘arks ’, each overseen by an immortal being. The Young Adult Marisha Pessl arks are populated by families with distinct supernatural Scholastic. PB. $16.99 skill sets. Five former white girl coming Ophelia lives on Amina and, as a reader, her talent is high-school knowing the history of an object through touch. She is also friends gather for a able to travel through mirrors. Her life is suddenly disrupted reunion. The sixth of age in 1960’s when she is betrothed to an unknown man from the Pole. member, Jim, It’s a place of which she knows nothing except freezing mysteriously died over temperatures and giant beasts. Her fiancé, too, is cold and a year ago. Beatrice harsh. She travels with him to his home and is thrown Hartley (Bee for short) Mississippi. immediately into hostility from both climate and people. hasn’t spoken to her best friends since the mysterious death of This richly imagined, enthralling fantasy her boyfriend. She knows they weren’t is packed with intrigue and is a perfect where they claimed to be the night of his choice for readers of Philip Pullman. death. When the opportunity to see them A Winter’s again comes up, she can’t turn it down. Promise: The Their night together ends in a car accident In spite of confusion about her situation and the reasons Mirror Visitor, that thrusts the friends into the behind her marriage agreement, Ophelia is a bold and smart Book One Neverworld Wake – a lost dreamland character, navigating unknown environments and struggling Christelle Dabos between life and death where only one of to find allies and answers in an unfamiliar society of excess Text. PB. $22.99 them can survive. The friends must vote and cruelty. on who gets to live. Fantastic characters and superb world-building will take When you can’t trust what you know, hold of readers, allowing a plot revealed without hurry. This richly imagined, enthralling how can you expect to figure out who can fantasy is packed with intrigue and is a perfect choice for readers of Philip Pullman. A be trusted? In this version of purgatory, cliff-hanger ending will leave readers eagerly awaiting the next instalment of this epic secrets come out and, with them, a last series. For ages 12+. chance at answers. Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Neverworld Wake challenges reality and the idea of linear time in a thriller mystery. Marisha Pessl is the bestselling American author of Special Topics The Rift lovers of Laini Taylor and Sarah J. Maas. in Calamity Physics and Night Film. Rachael Craw For readers 14+. Never World Wake is her YA debut. It Walker. PB. $19.99 Clodagh Robinson-Watts is from Readings is an imaginative tale with twists and Returning to her Carlton turns leading up to the inevitable vote childhood home of for survival. Marisha Pessl makes us Black Water Island is as Open Mic Night at wonder – who would you choose? terrifying as it is Westminster Cemetery Fans of One of Us is Lying and 13 exciting for Meg Archer. Mary Amato Reasons Why will love this book! She has spent the past Candlewick. HB. $24.99 Cindy Morris is from Readings Carlton nine years living on the Edgar Allen Poe’s mainland with her cemetery is mother after the certainly the last place A Line in the Dark accident that left her and her friend Cal a newly deceased Malinda Lo scarred in more ways than one. person would like to be Penguin. PB. $19.99 Since Meg left, Cal has been doing his interred within, with Jess Wong is Angie best to prove he belongs on the island, ‘unbreakable rules’ Redmond’s best friend. but it's hard when the strange powers that, if broken, can And that’s the most thrust upon him in that same accident result in you being important thing, even if constantly set him apart from the nailed into a coffin all over again. Freshly Angie can’t see how Rangers, the protectors of the sacred deer. dead Lacy Brink is the first addition to Jess truly feels. But Not to mention the fact Meg still haunts the hallowed plots of Westminster when Angie falls for his dreams. Cemetery in over a century, bringing with Margot Adams, Jess can With the dreaded Cull about to begin, see it coming a mile A sparkly her a cosmopolitan dress sense, most tensions are high as the Rangers attempt to unholy vocabulary and thoroughly away. Suddenly her powers of observation save the herd whilst upholding a precarious modern outlook on the afterlife that are more a curse than a gift. A Line in the agreement with the Hunters from the Dark is a story of love, loyalty, and murder. homage to certainly couldn’t strike a more mainland. The Hunters are only interested controversial note with the cemetery’s in one thing: testing out a new drug on their long-established rulebook. A Very Large Expanse of Sea prey, with some nightmarish side-effects. imagination Mary Amato creates a poignant Mafi Tahereh In her journey of self-discovery, Meg's afterlife and stokes a visceral connection Hardie Grant. PB. $19.99 about to learn that the old myths and to characters with whom we haven’t It’s 2002, and Shirin has legends about the Island she was raised and previously been acquainted, while also just started at yet on are not only real, but deadly. If she and reanimating a few others that are quite another new high Cal are to escape with their lives and also recognisable (caw the raven, nevermore!). school. It’s a turbulent protect the ones they love, they'll have to creativity An impressive combination of a novel time politically, dig deeply into their memories to discover and a play, this book unravels the vast especially so for a what actually happened all those years ago. emotions we would all have in the wake sixteen-year-old Muslim gone wild! Although honourable mentions must of an untimely death, but with the added girl. But then she meets be given to the ‘mutant space dogs’, ‘zombie complications of being confined to a Ocean James. He’s the deer’, and ‘magnetic romance’; it is the graveyard society in which residents first person who really seems to want to get intelligent, self-aware narrative that knows simply cannot express emotion. Enter to know her. Shirin has had her guard up when to laugh at itself that will greatly Lacy’s ‘open mic’ initiative. against the world for so long – will she ever appeal to a vast array of readers, especially I loved reading about Lacy’s conflict be able to let it down? 18 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 KIDS

My Sunbeam Baby Rosalie’s father is a soldier away at war and she barely Emma Quay knows him except for the letters he sends home. Children’s Letters that draw her mother away, enveloping her in HarperCollins. HB. $24.99 See my bouncing baby, jigging on wistful musings and distant longing. Books my knee. Then snuggling for a A quiet, unspoken rebellion builds and Rosalie story, just baby, book and me. seems intent on a purpose that she holds secret. My Sunbeam Baby is a gorgeous, Rosalie’s mother drops her each morning at the school brightly illustrated new picture gate on her way to the weapons factory where she book about how much we love our works long hours until nightfall. At school, Rosalie is babies, from Emma Quay, creator of the bestselling too young to join the class so is set up at the back of and award-winning Rudie Nudie. the classroom where she sits quietly with paper and pencils. But Rosalie has a plan, and no-one will doubt Animalphabet her bravery and fortitude when life is irrevocably Julia Donaldson & Sharon King-Chai changed by the arrival of a black-edged letter. Pan Mac. HB. $29.99 Beautifully told and sensitively brought to life through the illustrations, this story is full of heart. Picture Books Animalphabet invites children to compare all kinds of animals. Clever Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster hints and peep-through holes Noni the Pony Rescues a Joey within the artwork, as well as Julia The Dog Who Lost His Bark Alison Lester Donaldson’s rhythmic text make Eoin Colfer A&U. HB. $24.99 this a hugely entertaining guessing Walker. HB. $19.99 Alison Lester is truly a game as well as a gorgeous book to Patrick has been desperate for a legend; time and time treasure. All kinds of children will dog forever, and this summer, again she delivers perfect love embarking on this journey of discovery through with his father away, he longs for picture books. Her illustrations the natural world, from one animal to another. a buddy more than ever. Oz’s are delightful, her text rhymes short, doggy life has been tough. seamlessly and her word choices Dave the Lonely Monster But he believes that somewhere never feel forced. Noni the Pony’s third adventure is no Anna Kemp & Sara Ogilvie out there is an awesome child exception. While out and about, Noni, along with Coco Simon & Schuster. PB. $16.99 who will look after him. This is a the cat and Dave the dog, meet a lost baby wallaby. As Monstrous beasts have feelings warm, uplifting story for young they try to re-unite little joey and family they meet many too! This lively story of a lonely readers about a boy and his dog. Australian critters along the way. It’s a wonderful picture monster called Dave, who lives all book that is great for reading aloud. Children will be alone in a retirement cave, is a delighted by all the featured animals and everyone will light hearted reminder that we Middle Fiction have fun joining the ladies (cows) next door in a should treat others as we would celebratory dance when all ends well! It’s also a great want to be treated ourselves – and introduction to some of Australia’s wildlife so will make that we could all do with a bit more monster in our lives! The Afterwards a really nice gift for little ones overseas. A.F. Harrold & Emily Gravett (illus.) Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Bloomsbury. HB. $24.99 Junior Fiction A.F. Harrold’s books always Clever Crow explore a parallel, often Nina Lawrence & Bronwyn Bancroft (illus.) creepy world that looks at love, Magabala. HB. $24.99 Tales of Mr Walker loyalty and loss. The Afterwards Crow searches the bush for food is no exception, portraying a Jess Black but he can find none. When he tight friendship between Penguin. HB. $24.99 comes across people preparing for Happiness (Ness) and December I fell in love with Mr Walker a ceremony, his luck changes. (Ember). They share a joyous when he came to a Crow spots a turtle egg waiting to closeness and then, one day, booksellers’ function. He had the be cooked, but it is not an easy Ness is gone after a simple but disastrous playground insouciant manner of a well bred task stealing a turtle egg – even mishap, and Ember struggles to understand a life dog; he was a golden boy. for a clever crow. Crow must be cleverer than he has ever without her best buddy. One day she becomes aware been before! Children will love Bronwyn Bancrofts’s Trained as a guide dog for of an in-between world where the dead appear to be distinctive illustrations, and how the Djambarrpuyngu the visually impaired, he is now waiting. She finds a way to enter this world and plans language translation – Yolngu language from North a canine ambassador at the Park to bring her friend back; but if that fails maybe she East Arnhem Land – is woven into the design. Hyatt in Melbourne. He is also will have to join her. Naturally, such monumental the star of his own book about his adventures and predicaments are never simple and as she comes to The Ink House mishaps, and it is as endearing and pleasing as Mr understand this netherworld the tussle between her Walker himself. As the machinations of a hotel are Rory Dobner love for her friend and those she will leave behind revealed through the eyes, ears and, particularly, Thames & Hudson. HB. $24.99 becomes an unbearable dilemma. the nose of this charmingly affable dog, we meet a Welcome to The Ink House, an The Afterwards is a gorgeously presented hardback host of guests and staff. We enjoy his triumphs and artist’s mysterious mansion, built on with atmospheric illustrations by Emily Gravett and good-natured perspectives as he sniffs out a delicious a magical pool of ink that inspires will suit readers who enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s The pastry or greets a world-renowned musician with a creativity in anyone who lives there. Graveyard Book and its ilk. For ages 9–12. wag of his tail. When the artist goes adventuring, Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Jess Black understands dogs and as you read you animals great and small arrive for feel you could reach down and pat Mr Walker. the Annual Ink House Extravaganza! I have had huge pleasure in selling the equally The Slightly Alarming Tale of the This exquisitely inked picture book charming Plumdog and this summer I am going to have Whispering Wars by acclaimed artist Rory Dobner will as much fun with The Tales of Mr Walker. For ages 6+. Jaclyn Moriarty surprise and delight readers of all ages. A&U. HB. $22.99 Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Not since Jaclyn Moriarty’s Night Walk last book have I been so Alison Binks Captain Rosalie immersed in a wickedly Berbay. HB. $26.95 Timothee DeFombelle adventurous story brimming with Night Walk is a captivating, Walker. HB. $19.99 quirky characters, bravado and dreamily illustrated story about a This is a story about a brave irreverent humour. little boy’s adventurous night out and determined young girl The Slightly Alarming Tale of while camping. Full of wonder, named Rosalie, aka Captain the Whispering Wars is set in the this story not only honours our Rosalie, who’s on a secret busy harbour town of Spindrift, natural and beautiful landscape mission. Set against the backdrop a wonderful ‘stir fry’ of fascinating characters from but also reminds us of the of World War I, we meet five-year- surrounding kingdoms and empires – including commonalities that bind us old Rosalie living a simple life of witches, gnomes and sirens who’ve agreed to stop together regardless of where we are. small pleasures with her mother. using magic in order to live harmoniously among the KIDS November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 19

regular townsfolk. Clownfish with the planet and some tips for reducing our The story is narrated by the irreverent Finlay Alan Durant impact. The text is clear and easy to comprehend, (from the orphanage school) and the rather shy Honey Walker. PB. $16.99 complemented by an excellent glossary and index. Bee (from the posh and somewhat pompous boarding Dak’s father has died, and his This highly informative yet uniquely beautiful book school). Furious competition between their schools mother is falling apart. Desperate to on ecosystems will be a delightful reference for produces an outcome that has each concocting escape the atmosphere at home, anyone interested in learning more about our natural outlandish schemes to punish the other. Dak goes to his dad’s favourite place environment. For ages 8+. But when malevolent characters secretly invade – the local aquarium. And there, to Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids the town, a deadly magical flu infects the population, his amazement, is Dad, who it and children are stolen, war between the kingdoms seems is alive and well as a Endangered Animals is imminent. Fiercely determined to find their clownfish! But when the aquarium Martin Jenkins & Tom Frost kidnapped friends, an unlikely alliance between the is threatened with closure, Dak and Walker. HB. $29.99 schools is forged. Finlay, Honey Bee and their friends Violet, the owner’s niece, must work together to save it. From the mighty Asian elephant to hatch a plan to outwit the sinister invaders. the tiny rosalia longicorn beetle, Set fifteen years before The Extremely Inconvenient Wakestone Hall creatures all over the world are Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, this stand-alone tale Judith Rossell under threat like never before in of whimsy and irony is a pure delight, and a solid read Harper Collins. HB. $24.99 human history. In this timely and perfect for voracious readers. Stella Montgomery is in disgrace. beautiful book, conservation Highly recommended for ages 10+. The Aunts have sent her to biologist and award-winning Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Wakestone Hall, a grim boarding author Martin Jenkins introduces school where the disobedient are just a few of the species under threat, exploring why tamed. But when a friend they are in danger and how we can help them. disappears, Stella must find her. BOOK OF THE Soon Stella is thrown deeper into A World of Discovery MONTH the mysteries of Wakestone. Will Richard Platt Stella save her friend in time? And Middle Fiction Walker. HB. $29.99 will she discover – at long last – where she truly Discover fascinating facts and belongs? This is the thrilling conclusion to the Stella figures about space travel, the Montgomery trilogy! human body, time, the computer and much more. Each of James Brown’s colourful illustrations is Novelty presented alongside an engaging fact-filled explanation by celebrated author Richard Platt. Inside the Villains Covering more than 30 diverse and fascinating topics, this is the perfect book for the Clotilde Perrin Lenny’s Book of whole family to enjoy. Everything Gecko. HB. $29.99 Karen Foxlee Inside the Villains is a A&U. PB. $19.99 magnificent example of or HB. $27.99 children’s book design at its most Classic creative and innovative. The very size and format of this work looms of the Month Lenny’s Book of Everything is a book with a large and the child reader may stellar cast. There is Cynthia Spink, the proud, wonder if life-sized villains lie in hard-working, worn-down, single mother of two; Mrs wait, poised to step from the book Mortal Engines Gaspar, the eccentric old Hungarian lady who lives as the first pages are turned. Phillip Reeve in their apartment block and looks after Cynthia’s Within, we meet the villains: wolf, giant, and witch; Scholastic. PB. $18.99 two children while she works; Mr King, the and learn all about their dreadful peculiarities and It is eighteen years since Philip unpleasant fruit store owner; and CJ, Lenny’s best foibles, before being taken through a story where the Reeve’s debut science-fiction friend and a future drummer in a rock band. But reader may revel in a sense of justice as each villain is novel, Mortal Engines, the first in a most importantly, there is Lenny herself, the young thwarted by their own mischief-making. But this work quartet, was published. It is girl who tells the story of her childhood, and Davey, offers even more. Interactive pull-tabs with strings and imminently due for global fame with her good-natured younger brother who happens to levers, lift-the-flaps and gate-folds are craftily done a film adaptation by Peter Jackson have gigantism. and will attract curious minds (young and old alike) to on the way, so now is the time to share and explore this remarkable book. immerse yourself in this classic. Lenny’s Book of Everything is Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster Reeve is a masterful creator of imaginative universes and in this alternate future the a wonderful read for kids 10+, world has been partially destroyed by a global ‘Sixty but it’s not just for kids; this is Nonfiction Minute War’. Cities are now on wheels and to survive a book I know I will see being they chase and devour smaller towns, taking their valuable metals and their populations as slaves. This read by teary-eyed, sniffling is known as ‘Municipal Darwinism’. adults on the bus to work. The Wondrous Workings of Planet The main narrator is Tom, an orphaned Earth apprentice in London. Down in the guts of the city This story is just … magical. It’s hard to say Rachel Ignotofsky he meets the hero, Thaddeus Valentine, and his Ten Speed Press. HB. $29.99 exactly why because Lenny lives such an ordinary daughter, Katherine. An assassination attempt life. It might be the excitement of the arrival of This is a highly illustrated, is made on Valentine and Tom chases the young the latest issue of the encyclopaedia set that their fascinating guidebook to assassin, Hester Shaw, but ends up befriending her as mother’s sharp letter-writing skills won them that ecosystems, featuring key the two are hunted down, meeting with misadventure makes it magic – the way each book allows the animals and plants. Rachel and new friends on the way. children to see the world outside of their small Ignotofsky, bestselling author Meanwhile, Katherine becomes suspicious of her town. Or it might be Davey himself – giant, always- and illustrator of Women in father and realises he stole an ancient technology wanting-to-do-what’s-right, imaginary-Falcon- Science, delightfully displays called MEDUSA, which has been used to create a owning Davey. Even if you weren’t seeing him from both her love of natural bomb. These two narrative strands come together in a his sister’s perspective, you could not help but adore environments and beautiful illustrative techniques. nail-biting climax that is not without bloodshed. him. Lenny’s Book of Everything is a wonderful read The contents traverse the seven continents The futuristic world Reeve creates in the Mortal for kids 10+, but it’s not just for kids; this is a book I exploring unique landscapes. There are three Engines quartet is thrillingly believable while his know I will see being read by teary-eyed, sniffling Australian ecosystems featured, including the Great characters and storytelling are full of warmth and adults on the bus to work. Barrier Reef and the Tasmanian rainforests. Detailed humanity. This is a riveting, action-packed adventure diagrams clearly depict the carbon, nitrogen and Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids for ages 11 through to adult. water cycles, as well as explain aquatic ecosystems. Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids There is a chapter on the human relationship 20 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 BARGAINS

views – to deeply unflattering effect – Ostro Swearing is Good For You through the prism of the lives of the Julia Busuttil Nishimura Emma Byrne November women he horribly damaged. PB. Was $44.99 Now $29.99 PB. Was $29.99 Now $12.95 Julia Busuttil Not only has swearing Bargains Elizabeth The Forgotten Years Nishimura deftly brings existed since the John Guy together a broad range earliest human PB. Was $24.99 Now $10.00 of cuisines and culinary communication, but it influences using the has been shown to How to Build a Universe History has pictured Elizabeth I as an icon of very best produce on reduce pain, help Brian Cox & Robin Ince strength. But in 1583, offer. This truly is good stroke victims recover HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 when Elizabeth is fifty, food, and made by their language, and In this irreverent there is relentless hand. 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The Son The Americans Film & TV Season 1 Season 6 $39.95 $39.95 In this multigenerational saga, Available 7 November family patriarch Eli McCullough ‘Even at its less-well-loved ‘Flame Trees’ is my favourite Cold Chisel song. I love its struggles to maintain the oil dynasty and moments, The Americans is still better than DVD OF THE yearning; the way it coils into a melancholy, regretful ranch he has built in the turbulent days of practically anything else around … Much has MONTH tone. But for its vocalist, it’s not an easy song to sing. In early 20th Century America. Interweaving been written about how The Americans is a the story of Eli as a young man and the story of marriage. There’s less about what Documentary Working Class Boy, Jimmy Barnes divulges that every time he performs ‘Flame Trees’ he feels physically ill because it hardships that shaped him, The Son shows may be its final form: A tragedy.’ – Time reminds him of home. 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FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES THE CHILDREN ACT Opens November 22 (M) CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? December 6 (CTC) OF GRINDELWALD November 15 (CTC) Adapted by Ian McEwan from his own novel, and directed by Richard Melissa McCarthy stars in CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?, the true Whether or not your Hogwarts letter came through the mail, get ready Eyre (Notes on a Scandal, Iris), THE CHILDREN ACT stars Emma story of best-selling celebrity biographer (and friend to cats) Lee to apparate right back into the Wizarding World you know and love and Thompson as High Court Justice Fiona Maye. Presiding over cases Israel, who turned to forgery when her style of writing fell out of plunge into the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling with the exciting new where her decisions irrevocably effect people’s lives, Fiona is troubled fashion. Abetted by her loyal friend Jack (Richard E. Grant), Lee instalment of the FANTASTIC BEASTS series. After dark wizard by a case involving gravely ill 17-year-old Adam (Fionn Whitehead) soon finds herself raking in money – and quickly sinking into a Grindelwald’s (Johnny Depp) dramatic escape, magizoologist Newt that puts her in a unique quandry. Adam and his family are Jehovah’s scheme that is far more than she can handle. Lead by impressive Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) joins forces with a man who once called Witnesses, and are refusing a blood transfusion that could save his talent behind the scenes with director Marielle Heller(The Diary of Grindelwald a friend - young Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law). With an life. Taking an unorthodox tack, Fiona visits Adam in hospital, and an a Teenage Girl), CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? is a typewriter thriller extended cast including Ezra Miller and Zoë Kravitz, the latest magical unlikely bond forms between them. A deeply humane film, THE that should see McCarthy garner acclaim come awards season. tale from the Harry Potter universe is a thrilling adventure where the CHILDREN ACT is a drama of a child’s life hanging in the balance. HHHH battle between good and evil escalates to the point of no return. "Emma Thompson gives one of the most moving performances “McCarthy's best performance to date, revealing haunting insights of her entire career” The Hollywood Reporter into friendship, loneliness, and creative insecurity.” Variety

Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema 22 READINGS MONTHLY November 2018 MUSIC

self-titled, very limited-edition, self- C’est La Vie released EP), and B-sides & Rarities. In Phosphorescent Popular addition to its musical offerings, this $19.95 | Also on vinyl collection features a 32-page booklet With dreamy, soaring Music including show flyers, lyrics and artwork melodies, C’est La Vie from the band’s early history. marks the first new music from the critically More Blood, More Tracks: The acclaimed artist in five Paddy Mann’s seventh as Grand Salvo, and – the first Bootleg Series, Vol. 14 years. This album covers a life-altering ALBUM OF in six years – follows his full-hearted embrace of a theme for Bob Dylan period that saw the band’s Matthew THE MONTH each record he creates. The opening track, ‘A Flux of Moments’, $19.95 | Also on vinyl Houck fall in love, start a family, leave Pop/Rock/Alt swells with the ocean crashing against the shore, and each Deluxe 6CD with book $219.95 New York for Nashville and build a studio song cleaves to the sea, and to memories. The sea is rough with Available 2 November from the ground up. the rain, he sings in ‘All Those Stars’, a track resplendent with Bob Dylan – More Blood, small, plucked notes and big, full sounds. It’s an ever-changing More Tracks – The Bootleg song, much like many on the album; many of the recordings Series Vol. 14 is the latest Country feel like they contain a multitude of smaller songs inside them, chapter in Columbia/ creating a vastness of sound in five minutes. Legacy’s highly acclaimed Mann’s voice, night-time smooth, brings to earth the bright, Bob Dylan Bootleg Series. This album Songs of the Plains alive notes that open ‘In the Shade’. Vocals are a significant makes available the pivotal studio Colter Wall instrument in Sea Glass, soft or strong, lending the album an recordings made by Bob Dylan during six $19.95 | Also on vinyl Australian edge, or one so whimsical – as in the near ten-minute extraordinary sessions in 1974 – four in Acclaimed singer, long experience that is ‘In the Water’ – that the voices almost New York, and two in Minneapolis – that Sea Glass songwriter and performer feel more like a dream than an instrument. resulted in the artist’s 1975 masterpiece, Grand Salvo Colter Wall releases his It’s hard to categorise someone like Mann, a composer Blood On The Tracks. $19.95 | Also on vinyl highly anticipated new who tilts indie folk/pop with an orchestra of instruments Available 16 November album, Songs of the Plains. from all over the world, adding a beautiful, expansive Negative Capability In addition to seven original songs written atmosphere to his music. Memories pull at you with every Marianne Faithfull by Wall, the album also includes versions song; ‘The Unquiet Tide’ is an understated masterpiece, Mann’s voice rolling in and $19.95 | Also on vinyl of Billy Don Burns’ ‘Wild Dogs’, Wilf out like waves; ‘Strange Days’ would be hardly out of place in a mid-century musical, Available 2 November Carter’s ‘Calgary Round-Up’ and two ranging from the jaunty to the melancholy; and the quiet devastation of ‘Field of Flowers’, Negative Capability is the cowboy traditionals ‘Night Herding Song’ a heartbreak of a song that opens old wounds of friendship. The warmer months ahead most emotionally powerful and ‘Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail’. are conducive to listening to this album as you walk along the sand, look out over the album of Marianne darkness of the sea and think about long-lost childhoods, and new-found . Faithfull’s 54-year She Remembers Everything Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton recording career. Facing Roseanne Cash down arthritis and bolstered by $21.95 collaborators including Warren Ellis, Nick Available 2 November Cave, Rob Ellis, Ed Harcourt and Mark ‘With She Remembers celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Lanegan, Faithfull’s performance in this Pop/Rock/Alt Everything…Cash crafts release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience album is charged with brutal honesty and uniquely textured stories masterpiece. Available as a 3CD/1 Blu-ray set, autobiographical reflection as she from a feminine it includes the original album, newly addresses losing old friends, her loneliness Dionysus perspective. Strikingly remastered from the original analogue tapes. living in her adopted city of Paris, and love. Dead Can Dance personal and expressive, the new music finds the artist working from a perspective $19.95 | Also on vinyl The White Album: 50th Songs of Love and Horror she notes has been previously unavailable to Available 2 November Anniversary Edition Will Oldham her. “There is a woman’s real life, complex From their inception in The Beatles $24.95 | Also on vinyl experiences and layered understanding in 1981, Australian duo Dead 3CD $39.95 | Also on vinyl In Songs of Love and Horror, these songs,” Cash says.’ – Can Dance have been Available 9 November songwriter Will Oldham intrigued by European folk For 50 years, The White revisits songs that made traditions, not solely in Album has invited its him (that he made) and musical terms but also by secular, religious Folk / World listeners to venture forth others in new versions that and spiritual practises. With Dionysus, the and explore the breadth and quiver like fresh young things in the air of aim is to not just invoke the atmosphere ambition of its music, today. In each of the twelve tracks that make and symbolic reference points, but to Sometimes I Fly delighting and inspiring each new up this album, Oldham’s guitar and voice highlight that music can be found Luka Bloom generation in turn. In this lavishly presented operate in quiet tension and ultimate accord. everywhere in some form or other. $29.95 reissue, the album’s 30 tracks are newly Every tune in this album is mixed in stereo and 5.1 surround audio. Bottle It In catchy, with an easily Kurt Vile visualized and felt story Deluxe CD $24.95 | Also on vinyl Suspiria $21.95 | Also on vinyl based on deeply reflective Recorded in Hollywood, Thom Yorke Travel can inspire in lyrics using a seemingly | New York City and $26.95 Also on vinyl surprising ways: Kurt Vile limitless musical vocabulary. Luka Vancouver, British Suspiria consists of 25 discovered as much making Bloom’s been doing it for 40 years now, but Columbia, Look Now is original compositions his first record in three less than 40 seconds into Sometimes I Fly beautiful in its simplicity, written by Thom Yorke years, the eclectic and he’s doing it again: sending shivers and reflective in its lyrical vision, surrounded specifically for Luca electrifying Bottle It In, which he recorded goose bumps up the back of your neck. by melodies that are nothing short of Guadagnino’s reimagining at various studios over two very busy years. heavenly. It’s the first album Costello has of the 1977 Dario Argento horror classic of Every song, whether it’s a concise and made with The Imposters since the same name. Scoring a horror film catchy pop composition or a sprawling Jazz / Blues Momofuku (2008) and his first new album presented Yorke with altogether new guitar epic, becomes a journey unto itself, since the acclaimed 2013 Roots challenges and opportunities, but here he taking unexpected detours, circuitous collaboration, Wise Up Ghost. manages to perfectly combine terror, melodic avenues, or open-highway solos. La Fenice longing and melancholy, creating a chaotic Keith Jarrett yet cohesive musical spell. Electric Ladyland: 50th Broken Politics 2CD $29.95 Anniversary Limited Deluxe Neneh Cherry This recording of Keith Edition First Collection: 2006–2009 $19.95 | Also on vinyl Jarrett’s extraordinary solo Jimi Hendrix Fleet Foxes ‘As Cherry explains, themes performance at Gran Teatro 3CD $94.95 4CD $39.95 | Also on vinyl of political protest La Fenice in Venice in July Available 9 November Available 9 November proliferate on Broken 2006 finds Jarrett entering Jimi Hendrix’s ground First Collection 2006–2009 Politics: “Maybe politics one of Italy’s most famous classical venues breaking album Electric spans the early days of starts in your bedroom, or and channelling the flow of inspiration to Ladyland was one of the Fleet Foxes’ career, your house — a form of activism, and a shape something new. In this case, a suite most influential rock albums including the self-titled responsibility. The album is about all of of eight spontaneously created pieces of the 20th century. This debut album, plus the Sun those things … It’s a fight against the referencing everything from the blues, to special deluxe box set is being released in Giant EP, The Fleet Foxes EP (formerly a extinction of free thought and spirit.”’ – Fact atonality, to heart-touching ballads. MUSIC November 2018 READINGS MONTHLY 23

À Portuguesa: Iberian hovering between grief and despair, Concertos and Sonatas resignation and solace. From J.S. Bach to Classical Andreas Staier & Orquestra Frederic Rzewski, Life effortlessly crosses Barocca Casa borders between eras, styles, and genres, Music Harmonia Mundi. HMM902337. $29.95 offering a multitude of new discoveries. À Portuguesa offers Iberian exoticism J.S. Bach: Six Suites for Viola with a difference. In Solo Relatively little is known about Austrian composer Johann the Age of Kim Kashkashian ALBUM OF Heinrich Schmelzer (1623–1680), despite being described during Enlightenment, ECM. 02894817176. $32.95 THE MONTH his lifetime as ‘the famous and just about foremost violinist of Portuguese music On this recording, Classical all Europe’. Indeed, his six sonatas for violin and continuo–the shared the favours of Bach’s six cello suites sonatæ unarum fidium–are among the earliest examples of certain English publishers with its Spanish are played on the viola this genre. The sonatas consist largely of variations, allowing neighbour and drank at the inexhaustible by one of the the violinist displays of virtuosity alongside passages of great source of the Scarlatti sonatas. This instrument’s greatest restraint. For the Obsidian label, Melbourne-based baroque constant exchange between Iberian exponents, Kim violinist and scholar David Irving has newly recorded the chamber music and the eighteenth-century Kashkashian. For sonatas on a Jacob Stainer replica violin, an original of which orchestra culminates in an orchestral Kashkashian, Bach’s music is both a ‘true and was likely played by Schmelzer himself. arrangement of Boccherini’s famous Musica faithful companion’ and a reference point notturna, presented by Andreas Staier in against which all creative endeavour may be Recorded in the natural acoustic of St total complicity with the Baroque orchestra measured. The poetry and radiance of Bach’s Fidelis Parish Church, West Coburg, of the Casa da Música de Porto. Cello Suites (BWV 1007-1012) are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations. Schmelzer: Irving and his colleagues produce a The Emperor’s Berlioz: Grande Messe des sound that is both warm and clear, with Fiddler Morts, Op. 5 (Requiem) Bach Inspirations David Irving the spontaneity of a live recording and Edward Gardner & Bergen Thibaut Garcia Obsidian. OBSCD718. the precision of a studio one. Philharmonic Orchestra Erato. 9029560526. $19.95 $29.95 Chandos. CHSA5219. $29.95 Guitarist Thibaut Along with harpist Hannah Lane, gambist Laura Edward Gardner and Garcia releases his Vaughan, theorbist Tommie Anderson and keyboard the Bergen second album, a player John O’Donnell, Irving has set out to recreate Schmelzer’s music as it might have Philharmonic recital of works been heard at the time of composition. This is quite the exercise, explained in detail Orchestra tackle the composed and in the sleeve notes, in which Irving describes fascinating particulars of elements of infinite and the inspired by Johann performance practice employed: tuning, stringing, and style of basso continuo. Of course, immeasurable in the Sebastian Bach. this may be quite a dry exercise if the music itself were not so beautiful, or so beautifully form of Berlioz’s Taking Bach’s mighty Chaconne as his played. Recorded in the natural acoustic of St Fidelis Parish Church, West Coburg, Irving Requiem. All the grandiose, striking centrepiece, he ranges wide: from Charles and his colleagues produce a sound that is both warm and clear, with the spontaneity beauty of the Requiem’s large-scale Gounod’s much-loved ‘Ave Maria’ and of a live recording and the precision of a studio one. Irving’s own performance is both ceremonial is encapsulated by first-class Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras intelligent and musical, and he plays the many technically demanding passages with vocal and orchestral forces. The music is No. 5 to music by Agustín Barrios skill, accuracy and–importantly–flair. not that of an orthodox believer but of a Mangoré, Alexandre Tansman and the Slightly incongruous is the inclusion of Johann Caspar Kerll’s passacaglia in D minor, visionary, inspired by the dramatic contemporary Serbian-American performed on organ by John O’Donnell. While well played, the slightly gloomy sound of the implications of death and judgement. composer Dušan Bogdanović. organ interrupts the meditative atmosphere of Schmelzer’s sonatas. That said, there’s little else to complain about on this impressively researched and divinely performed recording. Chopin: Nocturnes Celtic Lute Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton Ingrid Fliter Ronn McFarlane Linn. CKD565. $36.95 Dorian Sono Luminus. DSL92225. $26.95 A graceful and On his new recording, charismatic American Lutenist Arvo Pärt Himmelsmusik performer, Ingrid Ronn McFarlane Viktoria Mullova, Paavo Järvi & Christina Pluhar & Fliter is known for continues his love Estonian National Symphony L’Arpeggiata her effortless affair with Celtic Orchestra Erato. 9029563400. $29.95 technique and music on a journey Onyx. ONYX4201. $29.95 The celebrated thoughtful, sensitive through Ireland and When I worked Baroque harpist music-making. On this new recital, Fliter Scotland. Included on this recording are Sunday and theorbo player (a delights us with characteristically traditional pieces and music by the blind evenings at Readings type of lute) Christina insightful interpretations which showcase Irish harpist Turlough O’Carolan. This is a in Carlton (some few Pluhar has featured both the sensitivity of her playing and the beautiful recording performed by a musician years ago now) one of many a time in the poetry of the composer’s music. at the top of his craft. Highly recommended. my favourite albums Readings Monthly. She to put on in the shop has consistently released superb albums Steve Reich: Drumming to bring the vibe down and yet give it a bringing a new life to early European music. Kuniko Classical Special of frisson of emotion was Arvo Pärt’s Speigel With her ensemble, L’Arpeggiata, she has Linn. CKD582. $29.95 the Month im Speigel. His simplicity of style, named released another peek into the musical world Kuniko’s latest ‘tintinnabuli’, or translated from the Latin, of the seventeenth century. In their recording sees the ‘bell-like’ was pioneered by Pärt in the Himmelsmusik, or ‘Heavenly Music’, they are hugely talented Schubert: The Complete 1970s and has inspired and been imitated featuring sacred works exclusively from percussionist return Matthias Goerne Lieder Edition by composers world-wide. Most people Germany, including a piece by the great to the music of Steve Matthias Goerne wouldn’t realise that, although most of this uncle of the famous J.S. Bach himself. It is Reich. In Drumming Harmonia Mundi. HMX290875061. 12CDs. music has such simple soaring melodies, said that Johann Christoph Bach, as the she delivers a Was $79.95 $49.95 the performance can make a huge superior composer in the family, would have tour-de-force performance of the work, Please note: very limited stock at this price. difference in the emotional impact. The been given custody of young Johann performing all thirteen parts herself and Matthias Goerne’s musicians can really make or break a piece Sebastian if only he hadn’t been so terrible once again displaying the technical Schubert survey has with their interpretation, as there’s not with money! What is particularly interesting virtuosity and flawless musicianship for established him as much written on the page and it must about this album though is that a plethora of which she is renowned. one of the most simply come from the soul. This latest lesser-known composers from the period are gifted exponents of rendition of some of Pärt’s most popular featured. As I listened to the album, I Life the song repertoire. works are beautifully performed by violinist couldn’t understand why they had been Igor Levit Goerne does not Viktoria Mullova and fellow Estonians allowed to languish unknown for all this Sony Classical. 88985424452. 2CDs. $21.95 merely ‘interpret’ Schubert: he ‘lives’ each Paavo Järvi and the Estonian National time. Each piece was interesting in its own Igor Levit presents a song and invites the listener to share this Symphony Orchestra. Their ease and grace right, and it’s easy to see why Pluhar and new and highly poetry and musical intimacy. Matthias within Pärt’s particular style will stop you L’Arpeggiata chose these pieces to perform. personal album that Goerne made his personal selection from the in your tracks and have you straining your Their assured performances and superstar has been sparked by songs, in which the three great cycles sit ears to hear every nuance in their countertenor Phillippe Jaroussky and the tragic death of a alongside many masterpieces like ‘Des translation of his black dots into (mostly) soprano Celine Scheen are both musical in close friend. Levit Fischers Liebesglück’, an interpretation delicate and (definitely) deliberate sounds. their commitment to each phrase. reflects at the which in itself would be enough to justify Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings keyboard on the experience of loss, this magnificent undertaking. Signed Copies at Readings The Uncollected Plays of Shaun Micallef

‘Shaun is a genius. In fact the worst written part of the whole book is this quote.’ Wil Anderson

You already know Shaun as Australia’s premier comedian, writer, actor, bon vivant, acrobat and lion tamer. But did you know he’s also an internationally renowned playwright? No? That’s so Australian. From Broadway to the West End he is worshipped as a god. Black Snake – His plays, uncollected until now, are irrefutable proof of his genius. The Real Story of Ned Kelly The Uncollected Plays of Shaun Micallef is an hilarious and absorbing The story of Ned Kelly is also the showcase of one of Australia’s most untold story of Sergeant Michael uniquely inventive comedic minds Kennedy, who was slain and robbed reflecting on a vast and frankly by the outlaw at Stringybark Creek. unbelievable contribution to world When their paths crossed 140 years theatre, alongside essays on the ago it triggered the end for one and the subtleties of his craft such as ‘How beginning of an incredible myth about to Write’ and ‘How to Avoid being the other. This is the most compelling Ruined by the #metoo Movement’. rebuttal of the Ned Kelly legend ever, This is Australia’s greatest comic at his written by the great grandson of one of gloriously absurd best. his victims.

GREAT AUSTRALIAN STORIES FOR SUMMER

Australia, What The Nowhere Child Tricky’s Bad Day Happened? One of the breakout books of the year, The Australia’s favourite picture-book creator, When our politicians are playing musical Nowhere Child is soon set for the screen. Alison Lester, taps into the chaotic and funny chairs, our cricketers are doing suspicious world of young families with Tricky’s Bad things with sandpaper, and a murderous What would you do if you were told your Day, a delightful rhyming picture book about starfish threatens the Great Barrier Reef it whole life had been built on a lie? This one of those days when nothing seems to seems about time we ask a tough question: question takes Melbourne woman Kim go right – until an outdoor adventure saves HOW THE HECK DID IT COME TO THIS? Leamy to Kentucky, and into a dark past. the day. As the mystery of a little girl’s abduction Comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie turns unravels and a town’s secrets are revealed, an incredulous eye on our history to bust this superb novel builds towards an open the mythology, reveal the truth about electrifying climax. what it means to be an Australian and work out what happened to our best-laid plans.

Christmas AD FA.indd 1 12/10/18 2:53 pm