Free May 2011 Readings Monthly

Special Mother ,s Day Edition Toni Jordan on T.E Lawrence • Anne Enright • Cate Kennedy ) image from cover of mandy sayer's Love in the Years of Lunac y (p4 image from cover of mandy sayer's

Delia Falconer interviews Mandy Sayer p 4 Highlights of May book, CD & DVD new releases. More inside.

DVD pop cd classical fiction fiction fiction aus fiction crime $39.95 $24.95 $19.95 2 CDs. $24.95. $33 $24.95 $29.95 $32.95 $27.95 $26.99 $30 $24.95 Blu-ray $49.95 (May only ) >> p19 HB $39.95 >> p7 >> p6 >> p10 Ebook $14.96 >> p16 >> p17 >> p5 >> p8

May event highlights: Jo Chandler with Michael Gawenda & Graeme Pearman ; ‘ The Face of the Book Industry, with Mark Rubbo, Michael Heyward and more.

All shops open 7 days, except State Library shop, which is open Monday - Saturday. Carlton 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 Hawthorn 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 Malvern 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952 Port Melbourne 253 Bay St 9681 9255 St Kilda 112 Acland St 9525 3852 Readings at the State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston St 8664 7540 email us at [email protected] Browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au and at ebooks.readings.com.au

What do you do when All he had to do was look The magic of Rome told The CSIRO team your mum, your dad carefully enough, ask the by Elizabeth Gilbert’s has joined up and sixteen camels are right questions, find the chaperone in Eat, Pray, with the Baker IDI in trouble and only you right people, keep sailing Love. From the hotspots Heart and Diabetes can save them? The on, and he would find her. and hidden corners to Institute to produce sometimes sad but mostly the most amazing art, a practical diet and funny story of a boy, a An unforgettable and food and traditions, this lifestyle plan with girl, a dog and four trillion breathtaking novel of is a very personal, zesty, expert guidance on dollars. A heartwarming heartbreak, courage and inspiring insight into the diabetes prevention new book from much-loved unwavering love. Eternal City. and control. author, Morris Gleitzman. penguin.com.au 2 Readings Monthly May 2011

Meet the bookseller

withJustine Douglas,… manager, Readings Port Melbourne ThisMiles Franklin Month’sInternational News IMPAC Collins, PB, $35), which Readings’ Justine What’s the best book you’ve shortlist & Dublin Literary Award Douglas mentions on this page as one of her read lately? competition It’s book awards season at the moment and favourite recent reads. The Poetry Prize went the latest shortlist to be announced is the to The Best of Itby Kay Ryan (Grove, PB, I have been working my On 19 April, the shortlist was announced $20.95), the Biography Prize went to Wash- way through the New for Australia’s original and most prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (aka the richest literary award in the world) – ington: A Life (Ron Chernow, Allen Lane, Yorker’s top 20 writers literary award, the Miles Franklin. From nine HB, $59.95) and the History Prize went to under 40 list. Yiyun Li’s longlisted authors, just three have made the the winner receives 100,000 euro. Australian writers have fared well with David Malouf, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Ameri- collection of stories Gold shortlist. (Last year, six authors were short- can Slavery (Norton, HB, $37.95). Boy and Emerald Girl listed; the last time the shortlist was this, Craig Silvey and UK-based Evie Wyld all is a haunting portrait of contemporary well, short was 17 years ago, in 1994, when being shortlisted. Here is the shortlist in full: Galore by Michael Crummey (Other Press, Vintage Classics China that I won’t forget for a long time. the contenders were Roger McDonald, for for Mum TheMs Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Water Man, David Malouf, for Remembering PB, $21.95), The Lacuna by Barbara King- Give your mum a lovely Shun-Lien Bynum is an enchanting ren- Bablyon, and Rodney Hall, who won for The solver (Faber, PB, $23.99), The Vagrants by Mother’s Day surprise this dering of a young teacher and although Grisly Wife.) Yiyun Li (Fourth Estate, PB, $24.99), Ran- year. Buy any book featured uneventful it is packed with charming som by David Malouf (Vintage, PB, $24.95), This year, the shortlisted authors and books in the May Readings Monthly observations. I do think that The Tigers Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann are Miles veterans Roger McDonald with and enter the draw to win a Wife by Téa Obreht is an absolutely sub- (Bloomsbury, PB, $22.99), Little Bird of When Colts Ran (Knopf, PB, $32.95) and Kim library of 60 Vintage Classics lime book – the best debut I have read Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates (Fourth Estate, Scott with That Deadman Dance (Picador, PB, of your Mum’s choice! To for many years. Not on the New Yorker PB, $24.99), Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey $32.95), and Miles newcomer Chris Womer- enter, complete the competi- list, but an extraordinarily interesting (A&U, $23.99), Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín sley, with his second novel, Bereft (Scribe, PB, tion entry form below and hand in at any book: The Emperor of Maladies: A Biogra- (Picador, PB, $22.99), Love and Summer by $32.95, ebook $14.95). It’s a huge compliment Readings shop with your receipt attached. phy of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. William Trevor (Penguin, PB, $24.95) and to Womersley to be singled out in this way After the Fire, a Still, Small Voice by Evie Wyld Entries must be received by 31 May. Entries What have you noticed people buying with these proven literary heavyweights, and (Vintage, PB, $24.95). The winner of the valid only for books purchased at Readings lately? surely bodes well for his future. Here’s hoping prize will be announced on 15 June. shops, not online. it will encourage anyone who hasn’t read Bereft I am pleased to see people buying – a terrific atmospheric suspense story set in gardening books again. The rain we have Pulitzer Prize Naxos Audio Books: rural Australia during the aftermath of World Winners 2011 Special Offer had over the last few months seems to War I – to hunt it out. This is also the second have reinvigorated people’s interest in all-male Miles shortlist in the past three years, The Pulitzer Prize winners have been Stock up on audio books at Readings gardening. I can highly recommend after the much-discussed ‘sausagefest’ of 2009. announced – and we’re delighted that throughout May. For every two Naxos audio A Taste of the Unexpected by Mark In a year already characterised by fervent dis- Readings favourite A Visit from the Goon books you buy, you will receive a third free. Diacono and Nigel Slater’s Tender cussion of the under-representation of women Squad by Jennifer Egan (Anchor, PB, $21.95) The free audio book must be of equal or lesser Volume I & II if you are looking to in literature, it will be interesting to watch the took out the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Egan value. Browse a wide selection of titles at all establish a parterre of your own. response. The Miles winner will be announced also won the US National Book Award for Readings shops (except State Library and on- at the award dinner on 22 June. Goon Squad earlier this year. The General line), from classics to contemporary fiction, What’s the best experience you’ve had in Non-Fiction Prize went to The Emperor of All poetry, drama, biography and much more. a bookshop? To celebrate the Miles Franklin Award, we are Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Harper- Offer ends 31 May. Many years ago I hosted an event with delighted to give away a pack of books which Robert Dessaix, who was touring with his includes a copy of each of the nine longlisted book Travels with Turgenev. Dessaix gave titles. To enter, email competitions@read- a beautifully erudite explanation of ings.com.au with the subject ‘Miles Franklin’ romantic love and it was a pivotal and tell us who you think will win, and why. moment for me that brought about Competition entry forms are also available enormous change in my life. At the end from all Readings shops. All entries must be of the session I called for questions from received by Friday 17 June and the com- the floor and a lone hand shot up, petition winner will be announced on the ‘Do you have a dog?’ the women asked. Readings blog on 22 June. We will publish a Dessaix replied with a delightful anecdote selection of commended entries on our Read- about his childhood dog and the secret ings blog. language that they shared. When I asked for further questions the same woman Orange shortlist raised her hand, ‘Do you have a wife?’ The Orange shortlist has been announced and the contenders are: The Tiger’s Wife by What was your favourite book as a kid? Téa Obreht (Orion, PB, Normally $29.99, The Australian Women’s Weekly Chil- Our special price $24.95), Room by Emma dren’s Birthday Cake Book was the most Donoghue (Picador, PB, $22.99), Great thumbed book in our household and House by Nicole Krauss (Viking, PB, I still find reading cookbooks the most $32.95), Grace Williams Says it Loud by relaxing pursuit. Unconventionally, Emma Henderson (Hodder, PB, $19.99), I keep my cookbooks in the bedroom, Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Jonathan because perusing Larousse Gastronomique Cape, HB, $32.95), The Memory of Love by is the best way to pass a sleepless night. Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury, PB, $22.99). The winner will be announced on 8 June. Oslo Davis www.oslodavis.com

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Visit the new Cinema Nova Bar Based on the chilling true story “Brilliant” of South Australian serial killer ABC Radio 891am From the director of the cult-hit MOON, Duncan Jones. John Bunting. A soldier must travel though time to discover the “Masterpiece” perpetrator of terrorist attack on a major US city. Jim Schembri, The Age 380 LYGON ST CARLTON “A triumph” www.cinemanova.com.au Screen Daily Online bookings available “An exciting, intellectually stimulating science-fiction thriller” WINNER: Audience Award Empire Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, COMMENCES MAY 5 National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. COMMENCES MAY 19 2011 Adelaide Film Festival

WIN A LIBRARY OF VINTAGE CLASSICS

Like something extra for Mother’s Day? Buy any book in the May edition of the Readings Monthly, attach your proof of purchase to this form , hand it in at any Readings shop counter, and you’ll go in the draw to WIN a library of sixty Vintage Classic books. Competition ends 31.05.11.

Name : ______Email : ______Vintage Classics are still only $12.95 at all Readings shops. See full list of titles available at www.readings.com.au. Readings Monthly May 2011 3

Angoulême live on stage at Readings. And 17 meet Brenton McKenna, whose kids’ graphic Jo Chandler novel, Ubby’s Underdogs: The Legend of the with Michael Gawenda Phoenix Dragon, (Magabala, PB, $24.95) is & Graeme Pearman set in Broome. Plus the kamishibai (Japanese EventsAll our Readings book and music eventsin are May ‘paper theatre’) and the classic Jean-Paul and Jo Chandler’s book, Feeling the Heat (MUP, entry by gold coin donation, unless other- 9 his comics. Monday 30 May, 8pm, Readings PB, $36.99), is a personal journey to climate Carlton. Free, no need to book. wise stated. Please note that bookings do not Poetry to Pages change frontiers, including Antarctica and the guarantee a seat, but rather indicate to us the This month acclaimed Australian poet Great Barrier Reef. Michael Gawenda, former number of people to expect. To see more events Alison Croggon, whose most recent collec- editor of The Age and Graeme Pearman, or for updates on new events, please visit the tion is Theatre (Salt, HB, $35), will be joined former chief of CSIRO atmospheric research, events page at www.readings.com.au. by Chloe Wilson, author of The Mermaid talk with her about her work. Tuesday 17 Book launches Problem (PB, $9.95) and Jessica Wilkinson, May, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, please Ruth Carson Readings and Ubud whose debut collection, Oneida, will be book on 9347 6633. An Unquiet State (SidHarta, PB, $24.95) fol- Readers & Writers’ released by Ahadada Books. Monday 9 May, lows the trials of a young woman living alone Festival 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no need to in a rural area. Wednesday 18 May, 6.30pm, Fire up your imagination on a holiday made book. 17 Readings Carlton. Free, no need to book. for literary lovers! Together with Intrepid Sarah Irving Travel, Readings is seeking expressions of with Raimond Gaita John Clare 9 Helen Garner will launch Take Me Higher interest for a special opportunity to enjoy Both authors have written on Gaza and both Ted Hopkins (Extempore, PB, $29.95), John Clare’s lat- the Ubud Readers and Writers’ Festival deplore the horror of it all. Sarah’s book, in conversation est collection of short stories. Thursday 19 in Bali from 5–9 October. Our package Gaza: Beneath the Bombs (with Sharyn Lock, May, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no includes the festival, accommodation, with John Harms Pluto, PB, $39.95) explores the reality of life need to book. opportunities to meet writers and explore Ted helped Carlton win the 1970 AFL in Gaza. Rai’s book Gaza Law, Morality and Bali. Please email expressions of interest to premiership flag by kicking four goals Politics (Text, PB, $29.95) brings together a Christopher Currie [email protected] by 21 May. against Collingwood. Recently, he started thought-provoking collection of essays on the Champion Data, a company that started the subject of conflict.Tuesday 17 May, 6.30pm, The Ottoman Motel(Text, PB, $32.95, footy statistics revolution (think Supercoach Readings St Kilda. Free, please book on ebook $14.96) is a moving and nuanced 4 and AFL Dream Team). It’s the basis of Ted’s 9525 3852. debut novel about childhood fear and loss. Susanna de Vries book, The Stats Revolution (Slattery, HB, Monday 23 May, 6.30pm Readings Carlton. Art historian Susanna De Vries has written $30). John Harms is a sports journalist. Free, no need to book. about great Australian women in her new Tuesday 10 May, 6.30pm, Readings Carl- 18 book, Trailblazers: Caroline Chisholm to ton. Please book on 9347 6633. The Face of the Iain McIntyre Quentin Bryce (Pirgos, PB, $39.95). Book Industry & Ian Marks Wednesday 4 May, 6.30pm, Readings 10 Together with Kill Your Darlings, we are de- Join us for a night of rock and roll as we Hawthorn. Free, but book on 9819 1917. lighted to bring together Mark Rubbo, man- celebrate the release of Wild About You! Fiona Cochrane aging director of Readings, Michael Heyward, (Verse Chorus Press, PB, $39.95). Thursday in conversation publisher at Text and Matthia Dempsey, 26 May, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, 5 with Paul Harris editor-in-chief of Bookseller+Publisher to no need to book. Kelly Doust Film director Fiona Cochrane will be discuss the future of the book industry and In this beautifully illustrated mix of memoir, quizzed by Paul Harris (who runs Film book-buying. Chaired by Rebecca Starford, Scott Jordan thoughts, fantasies and conversations with Buff Forecast and the St Kilda Short Film editor of Kill Your Darlings. Wednesday 18 Scott Jordan’s Upon the Sheep’s Back (SidHar- women, A Life in Frocks (Pier 9, PB, $29.95) Festival) about her debut film Four of a May, 6.30pm, Cinema Nova. Free, but please ta, PB, $24.95) is an A-grade Melbourne- is a book for those who find fashion beguil- Kind. They will also touch on Fiona’s award- book on 9347 6633. based thriller. Thursday 26 May, 6.30pm, ing, fickle and fabulous. Kelly is a joy to be winning documentary, Music of the Brain. Readings Hawthorn. Free, no need to book. with – you will head home with a warm glow. Tuesday 10 May, 6.30pm, Readings St Thursday 5 May, 6.30pm, Readings Haw- Kilda. Free, but please book on 9525 3852. 22 Cate Kennedy thorn. Free, but please book on 9819 1917. Melbourne’s The Taste of River Water: New and Selected Poems (Scribe, PB, $24.95, ebook $14.95) 10 Affordable Art Fair Visit the Readings stand. We will be sur- is disarming, warm and accessible. Cate 5 Our Australian Girl Kennedy’s poems make ordinary experiences Angela Di Sciascio rounded by art books! Thursday 19–Sunday Design Workshop 22 May. Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton. glow. Friday 27 May, 6.30pm, Readings in conversation with The makers of the Our Carlton. Free, no need to book. Jane O’Connor Australian Girl series (Puffin, Angela Di Sciascio discusses her book, PB, $14.95 each) celebrate 24 Lauren Rosewarne Finding Valentino (MUP, PB, $29.95). young readers and our history. Sonia Falerio Part-Time Perverts: Sex, Pop Culture and When Angela’s father gets Alzheimer’s, she Together, mothers and Beautiful Thing: Portrait of a Bombay Bar Kink Management is an interdisciplinary decides not to let his story fade, travelling daughters (6–12 year olds) Dancer (Black Inc., PB, $29.95, ebook exploration of sexual perversion in everyday the length and breadth of Italy, to absorb her will create a personal collage $13.56) is Sonia Faleiro’s story of her report life. Tuesday 31 May, 6.30pm, Readings father’s culture. Jane O’Connor is the editor to take home. Places limited. on Bombay’s bar dancers. Tuesday 24 May, Carlton. Free, no need to book. Tuesday 10 May, 4.30pm–5.30pm, of Italianicious magazine. Thursday 5 May, 6.30pm, Carlton shop. Bookings 9347 6633. 6.30pm, Conference Room, Museo Italiano, Readings Hawthorn. $20 per mother and Co.As.It., 199 Faraday Street, Carlton. daughter, includes art equipment and a copy Free, but please book on 9347 6633. of the latest Our Australian Girl book. Bring 25 two photos of yourself to the workshop. Cassandra Clare Coming in June Please book on 9819 1917. Craig Sherborne 6 With over one million books in print, in 19 in conversation My Friend the different languages, and appearances on best- with Luke May seller lists worldwide, the latest in Cassandra 12 The Amateur Science of Love (Text, PB, Chocolate Cake Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, City of Fall- Manfred Jurgensen $32.95), is the long-awaited debut novel Join us as Melbourne favourite chamber-pop en Angels (PB, $27.95) promises to bring the band, My Friend the Chocolate Cake launch in conversation with Wednes- from the author of Hoi Polloi and Muck. world of YA fantasy to a standstill. Thursday 2 June, 6.30pm, Readings St their brand new album Fiasco. Friday 6 May, Barry Jones day 25 May, 6.30pm, Westgarth Theatre. Kilda. Free, bookings: 9525 3852. 6pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no need to Barry Jones will talk with Manfred Jurgensen Free, but please book on 9347 6333. book. about his book Five Weeks at Humanitas (Hybrid, HB, $45). In this ‘bio-novel’ with Geraldine Brooks a difference, he has chosen to reveal his life 27 Australian-born Geraldine Brooks was 7 history – to a large extent dominated by Kristin Cashore awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006 Jane and Anna for March. Her new novel is Caleb’s Crossing World War II – in an original and unusual Chat about all things fantastical with the (Normally $33, Our special price $24.95, celebrate Mothers' day form. Thursday 12 May, 6.30pm, Readings author of Graceling and Fire (both Gollancz, HB $39.99). Saturday 4 June, 10.30am, Bring your 2–5 year olds to Carlton. Free, please book on 9347 6633. Friday 27 May, 5pm–6pm, PB, $22.99). Readings Hawthorn. hear Anna and Jane read their Readings State Library of Victoria. Tickets $5 per person, redeemable on purchase of the Caleb’s Cross- wonderful book All through Free, but please book on 8664 7540. the Year (Viking, HB, $24.95) 12 ing. Please book on 9819 1917 or at the and to make a special Jacqueline Lunn Hawthorn shop. Mother’s Day card, or a card in conversation 30 about your favourite season to with Kate Legge What it is? 2: The Town Malcolm Fraser Saturday 7 May, Our Say presents a special event with Malcom take home). Lunn’s debut novel, Under the Influence That Comics Built 2pm, Readings Port Melbourne. Fraser and Margaret Simons. Log on to www. (Vintage, PB, $32.95), tells the story of two Cost per mother and child: $25, includes a With Mike Shuttleworth, Bernard Caleo and oursay.org to create a question or vote for old school friends reunited for a funeral that take-home copy of All through the Year. Art Brenton McKenna. In January, the French a question. On the night, Malcolm Fraser forces them to face the past and a secret they equipment supplied. Bookings essential: 9681 town of Angoulême attracts writers, artists, will answer the top three. Tuesday 7 June, once shared. Kate Legge is a novelist and jour- publishers and readers of comics from across 6:30pm, Readings Hawthorn. Free, but 9255. Thursday 12 May, 6.30pm, Readings nalist. the world. This year, Mike Shuttleworth was please book on 9347 6633. Port Melbourne. Free, book on 9681 9255. among them and he and Bernard will build 4 Readings Monthly May 2011 New Australian Writing Feature

MusicDelia Falconer interviews Mandy in Sayer about the Love in the Yearsjungle of Lunacy (A&U, PB, Was $33, Our price $27.95)

travelled to America as a teenager – him by practising the jazz techniques he has drumming, her tapdancing – busking on taught her. Then, through a clever plot twist the streets. Her novel The Cross is a fictional I won’t give away, she sets out to find him. thriller based on Juanita Nielsen’s disappear- Sayer wrests the war in New Guinea entirely ance (the Sayers themselves lived on contested Victoria Street); while she has also co-written a play with husband Louis Nowra about Ro- saleen Norton, the ‘witch’ of the Cross. And, as if to keep the momentum of this chain of ‘I have always stories going, it turns out the club’s doorman, who greets Mandy warmly, played in one of thought of Mandy, her late father’s bands. with her … deep In fact, Sayer says, her ambition for some time has been to ‘do a bit of a [William] love of Sydney Faulkner’ in that all her characters are linked between different books and different eras, and its eccentrics, and family lines. It’s an interesting identifica- tion. I have always thought of Mandy, with and the unforced her versatility across genres, deep love of Sydney and its eccentrics, and the unforced warmth of her warmth of her writing, as the literary descen- dant of Ruth Park. writing, as the Pearl and James’s first date coincides with the bombing of Sydney Harbour by Japa- literary descendant nese midget subs. Abandoned by Luna Park attendants on the speeding ghost train as the of Ruth Park.’ sirens wail, they jump free, and crawl into another ride, the Love Bug. Here, in one of the tubs hanging from its revolving arms, not knowing how much of Sydney is being de- away from today’s macho fetishisation of the stroyed around them, they make love for the Kokoda Track as a kind of extreme marathon first time. Ironically, terror provides a private for second-rate TV celebrities and politicians. space for the couple, as James has been cau- ‘I was keen to avoid that because it’s been so tious about being physically demonstrative in overwritten in the public imagination,’ she public. It is a great set-piece, which launches a says. love on a legendary scale, but also establishes It is enough to say that there is music in the its tragic nature. When James asks his white Mandy Sayer is one of Pearl onto the stage to play jazz at the jungle – and it is Sayer’s sensitive descrip- commander for permission to marry – which Australia’s best known writers Booker T. Washington Club for Negroes in tions of her characters’ grit, discomfort, and is legal under Australian law, but banned in of fiction and memoir. Her Surry Hills, and she hears African-American the sense of what music can mean to men many US states – he is not only denied it, but many awards include the serviceman James Washington improvising far from home, that make the novel’s second summarily shipped to Queensland, en route Vogel for her first novel, bebop, she feels she can barely play at all. He half so engrossing. In its most moving scene, to New Guinea. For a while, under the care of Mood Indigo, the National follows her outside, and a great love begins. even Japanese enemy soldiers emerge from the ‘Master of Lunacy,’ Pearl goes quietly mad Biography Award for the trees to listen (true, Mandy says: in some (though we would view her affliction these Dreamtime Alice and The Mandy and I are not far into our conversa- instances enemy troops were so enthralled by days as depression). Age Book of the Year for Velocity. Writer and tion, on the terrace of our local club in Syd- the performance of music that they even gave ney’s Kings Cross, when she remembers an- literary critic Delia Falconer spoke to Mandy Strangely, Mandy says that she found this themselves away by clapping). for Readings’ New Australian Writing series other starting point, tied to a love story of her section of her novel the hardest to write, This novel’s representation of black Ameri- about her latest novel, Love in the Years of own. ‘Many years ago, when I was married to precisely because it was ‘so familiar’. Even the can troops’ treatment in the Pacific is also Lunacy (A&U, PB, Normally $33, Our my first husband [African American author music, which constitutes such a joyful and a revelation. Mandy was interested to learn special price $27.95). Yusef Komunyakaa], I came up with the idea of writing a novel in letters. What we would naturally integrated part of her book, was through her research that they were welcomed do would be pretend to be the character and difficult: while she can play by ear, studying by Australians, on the whole, as simply part post them to each other. So I wrote the first the theory and technique of bebop involved of the American forces ‘coming here to save one – his name was James Washington – in a great deal of research. In retrospect, she us’. But to the white Americans, they were realises she entered the project ‘quite naively’, still second-class citizens; not only banned by andy Sayer’s new novel, the voice of Pearl. And he never posted a let- knowing very little about the war in the Pa- their commanding officers from ‘white’ clubs, an epic love story set ter back. So that was the end of the marriage cific and nothing about the military, until she but also assigned menial tasks and separate during World War II, – for many other reasons – but that was the undertook a university course on the history quarters. ‘The biggest shock for me in my began with an image of kernel of the novel.’ of World War II. research,’ she says, ‘was that African American the revolving stage at Another plotline, she says, was inspired by an soldiers during the war in the Pacific weren’t Sydney’s famous palais de New Guinea was another challenge: while uncle who had cards printed identifying him allowed to arm themselves – that’s terrifying, danse, the Trocadero. ‘Having heard those she really wanted to travel there, it was too as a train or restaurant inspector, in order to especially when you have white sergeants, stories from my father, who played there in a dangerous. Yet this strengthened her imagina- arrest people or demand free meals. A concert CEOS, who are out to get you.’ Mmen’s band and described how the women’s pianist by trade, he faked his way into the tion. ‘I remember when I was studying with band would come on and play,’ Sayer says, ‘I army’s entertainment unit, and travelled with [American writer] Maxine Hong Kingston But it is the love story that drives Love in the China Men thought about the book for ten years. And them for a year, by perfectly mimicking the she was talking about her book , Years of Lunacy, which has the direct, slightly then it took ten years to write.’ actions of playing the trombone. and she said that she researched the Ameri- pared-down quality of fairytale. And, always, can West but she hadn’t actually been there. the music. The novel will be launched, From this image came her 19-year-old hero- The way these stories flow one into the other She wrote about it, and when she and her naturally, in Kings Cross – at an event featur- ine Pearl, who lives with her musician family will not surprise anyone who knows Sayer’s husband were subsequently driving through ing members of a Sydney big band that still in down-at-heel Potts Point, and plays alto fiction and non-fiction. Her books all seem it after the book had been published she said, preserves the Trocadero style and sound. saxophone in one of the Troc’s all-girl swing to stem in some way from her extraordinary ah, it’s just the way I imagined it. It’s funny bands. Her twin brother Martin plays tenor young life, most of it spent here in Sydney’s isn’t it?’ Delia Falconer is an acclaimed novelist and sax in another. She is a gifted musician – bohemian heartland, where she still lives. literary critic. Her latest book is Sydney (New true to life, says Sayer, as many of the men Dreamtime Alice, and its prequel Velocity, It is in this second half, set in New Guinea’s South, HB, $29.95), a history of her home- Love in the Years of Lunacy she spoke to remembered the all-girl bands recount the volatile love between her mother forests, that is town that describes a place beautiful, violent, as ‘bloody good’. But when Martin smuggles and musician father, with whom Mandy freshest and most involving. Pearl has con- half-wild, and at times deeply spiritual. nected body and soul with the absent James, Readings Monthly May 2011 5

Q&A with Book of the Month Geraldine Brooks Caleb’s Crossing Best Books Readings managing director Mark Rubbo Geraldine Brooks interviews Geraldine Brooks about Caleb’s HarperCollins. PB. Normally $33 Crossing. Our special price $24.95 for Mother,s Day HB. $39.99 Presenting our top 12 picks for Mother’s Day, as selected by Readings staff All of your novels are based Geraldine Brooks’ great – in no particular order. Enjoy! on historical events and skill is taking small explore big themes. historical moments and The Summer Notebooks In Caleb’s Crossing, it’s writing them large, using Without Men Betty Churcher the clash of cultures and them to create a bigger beliefs. Do you have an Siri Hustvedt MUP. HB. Normally $45 picture. In 1665, a young Our special price $39.95 idea of issues you want to man became the first Sceptre. PB. Normally $24.95 Our reviewer said of this explore and then find the Native American to Our special price $19.95 tour by a former director event to suit, or does the event inform the graduate from Harvard College. Very Our reviewer praised the of the National Gallery of exploration? little is known about this man and so ‘elegant, cerebral novels Australia: ‘The next-best Brooks has created a life and world for and darkly bewitching It’s always all about the story for me. thing to viewing a him: Caleb. storytelling’ of the author The themes just seep into the tale telling of What I Loved, counting masterpiece or two is without any conscious thought. But I do The story is told through the eyes of a this whip-smart battle-of- reading about it in a book think the stories from the past that attract strong-willed and intelligent woman, the-sexes comic romance this engaging’. me tend to be about people under stress, Bethia, the daughter of a preacher and (featuring an all-female during moments of crisis or decision. settler on the island now known as Mar- cast) as among her best work. Before I Go to Sleep In an interview you said that your jour- tha’s Vineyard. Bethia derives from the S.J. Watson nalistic training meant that you threw Hebrew and means ‘daughter of God’. The Tiger’s Wife Text. PB. $29.95. Ebook $19.95. words down on the page and then fixed The relationship between the indigenous Téa Obreht The most gripping them up later. The voice in this book, the people of Martha’s Vineyard and the Orion. PB. Normally $29.99 psychological thriller young woman Bethia who befriends the settlers, though largely peaceful, is not Our special price $24.95 you’ll read all year. young Indian, is perfect in expression and without tensions and suspicion. The set- This extraordinarily Readings’ Mark Rubbo tone and is as one would imagine a young tlers have attempted to act fairly in their sophisticated and inven- described this tale of an woman in the seventeenth century would acquisition of land, at least by English tive novel set in a war-torn amnesiac woman who write. This seems to belie the ‘throwing standards, but the concept of land Balkans has attracted must reconstruct her life down of words’. Can you tell us – how you ownership is different in Indian culture; worldwide accolades, every day as ‘something do find the voice? the evangelical Christianity also brings including from The New quite extraordinary’. its tensions. As a girl, Bethia meets and York Times. Our reviewer Some days the writing is fluid, some days befriends a young Indian man who she Martin Shaw has already The Gallows Bird not. Those days, you go back to the ma- names Caleb. Caleb teaches Bethia about called it ‘my book of the year’. Camilla Lackberg terial the next day, and revise and revise his world and in turn Bethia teaches HarperCollins. PB. Normally $32.99 until it feels right. The voice for Bethia him about hers. For these bright young Caleb’s Crossing Our special price $29.99 was more difficult than many because people, there is a willing and productive Val McDermid calls this ‘a there is little written by colonial women Geraldine Brooks transfer of knowledge that grows into a masterclass in Scandina- or girls before 1750 that has survived, Fourth Estate. PB. Normally $33 strong and lasting friendship. vian crime writing’. and my tale takes place 100 years earlier. Our special price $24.95. HB $39.99 Detective Patrik Hender- I had a few shards of verbatim court re- Brooks tackles big issues in this book The latest from the son is dealing with a serial cords, a few letters and so forth from the and gives them a universality that is not Pulitzer Prize-winning killer who hides behind period, but not a lot. I had to create her confined to the period it covers. Among author of March and Year ‘accidents’ and the filming voice from these scant raw materials. them are the issues of women’s rights, of Wonders takes a conflict between cultures, affirmative little-known shard of of a reality TV show. The impact of Europeans on the indigenous action and the nature of god and religion. history and brings it to society and culture seems peripheral to the Big stuff, but Brooks does it through the fictional life, looking at Mangia Mangia American story. Do you agree, and is this telling of a fascinating and rich story. Her the first Native American Teresa Oates & Angela Vil- something Caleb’s Crossing is trying to recreation of this seventeenth-century to graduate from Harvard College. lella redress? New World is so very believable; this is Lantern. HB. Normally $39.95 I would disagree with that. I think it is her great skill, and what makes the story Past the Shallows Our special price $34.95 integral to the story, which doesn’t mean so compelling and enjoyable. Although Favel Parrett ‘Teresa and Angela have there aren’t the same controversies, the ostensibly about Caleb, this story is es- Hachette. PB. $26.99 collected their own family same labelling as ‘black armband history’ sentially about Bethia and the way she This beautifully written, recipes for preparing and that we encounter in Australia when interacts with her world. We are fortu- sensitively evoked novel preserving food and have someone tries to probe first contact and nate that Brooks has made her such an tells the story of three illustrated them with the history of indigenous relations with engaged and astute observer. motherless brothers in family photographs, European colonists. Mark Rubbo is managing director a coastal fishing town. which capture the warmth of Readings Our reviewer called it and generosity these The book’s main setting is the island of ‘an extraordinary debut’ women exude,’ observed our enchanted Noepe, now known as Martha’s Vineyard. and it’s already a food columnist, Justine Douglas. Your descriptions of the natural surround- Readings favourite. ings are very vivid, but I imagine the area Bossypants as much-changed. How did you do your the Franklin & Eleanor Tina Fey research? festival Hazel Rowley Little Brown. PB. Normally $33 for Not as changed as you might think. A writers. MUP. PB. $36.99 Our special price $27.95 ‘Hazel Rowley excels at A memoir as smart, third of the vineyard is undeveloped, emergingwritersfestival.org.au which is one of the reasons I love it so. writing about influential funny and likeable as There’s a particular high point that I like life partnerships,’ said Fey herself. She riffs to hike to, and from there you can see melbourne our reviewer, ‘this is a effortlessly on working from one shore of the island to the other 26 may — deceptively easy read in the boys’ club of 5 June and a great introduction comedy, juggling work and not see a single man-made thing. It is 2011 true the woods are different now, as much to one of the most and motherhood, imper- of the land was cleared in the 1800s, so influential political sonating Sarah Palin, 15 Minutes of faMe partnerships of the twentieth century’. and her (platonic) love for Alec Baldwin. the forest is regrowth … but the beaches 48 Hour Play Generator and the salt marshes, lagoons and ponds Creative WritinG BootCaMP are little different to the way they would toWn Hall Writers’ ConferenCe Kitchen Gardens Five Bells have been in the seventeenth century. tHe PitCH of Australia Gail Jones PaGe Parlour Kate Herd Vintage. PB. Normally $29.95 I saw your unashamed lobbying of US dirty Words Lantern. HB. $49.95 Our special price $24.95 reviewer Ron Charles when you tried to livinG liBrary Join passionate Melbourne Fiona McGregor, writing get People of the Book considered for his tWitterfest & designer and green-gar- for Readings, said ‘long ten best books of 2010. Are you going to MuCH More! dener Kate Herd on her after finishing Five Bells, I try again? journey around Australia am still thinking about Absolutely! But I think I’ll have to up the to 18 diverse kitchen the lives of these four ante and threaten his kid next time. gardens, beautifully characters, the pasts that captured by photographer haunt them, and the different directions they Read Mark's review of Caleb’s Crossing Simon Griffiths. in the next column. embark on at the novel’s brilliant ending’. 6 Readings Monthly May 2011

‘Sayer’s prose... has the immediacy New Fiction and power of a punch in the face.’ I Hate Martin Amis et al. is like nothing you’ll have read before – and I’m sure that Australian Book Review Australian Ficton it’s set to be one of the must-reads of 2011. Past the Shallows This book is so well constructed, so well Favel Parrett written and so interesting that it will ap- Headline. PB. $26.99 peal to anyone. If you’re after a great read This novel is cold. An ever – get this book. If you’re after a great gift – present dampness, ‘wet from again, get this book. Nathan Reid is from Readings Malvern the river and wet from the rain’, seeps underneath the door and somehow all the The Voyagers jumpers and blankets in the Mardi McConochie world won’t warm you Viking. PB. $29.95 through. Of course, it doesn’t Mardi McConchie decided help if you keep forgetting your gloves and to write this book after a there are no curtains in your bedroom. But conversation with her book no one is around to remind Harry, apart club about wishing for a from his older brother Miles – and he is good literary romance. And helping Dad on the boat most days now. that’s exactly what she There is no one to meet the boys after school delivers. At its heart, The and no one to make sure there is bread or Voyagers follows the milk. The brothers look after one another as divergent fates of two separated lovers – an best they can: an extra teaspoon of Milo for American sailor falls for Sydney woman Miles to stave off a cold; an impromptu Marina while on shore leave, drawn not sleepover at Stuart’s place for Harry when only to her physical charms, but to the Miles cops a blow from his father after two spell she casts with her music and the days of drinking. allure of her ‘questions and theories and ideas’. He’s also attracted to her vision of Folk help out as best they can and there are him as a sophisticated adventurer, and moments of reprieve from the bleakness: the begins ‘to wish that he could have been the simple pleasure of catching a fish and cook- person she wanted him to be’. So, though ing it on a hot plate over the fire and the Sydney, 1942. Pearl plays saxophone in the bars of Kings Cross, and set in World War II, this is a thoroughly delight of finding a 20 dollar note at the Re- contemporary romance – it’s about a embarks on a secret aff air with a black GI. As war moves them further gatta and spending most of it on lollies. But woman loved for her talent and her brains, and further apart, Pearl hatches a breathtaking plan against a backdrop these kindnesses cannot replace the missing by a man who wants to improve himself of segregation, fear and lunacy... parts of their childhood and the landscape according to her vision. underpins this loss: ‘When the forest was cleared it never looked right when it grew Marina and sailor Stead spend just three OUT NOW back. It was missing bits.’ It seems as though days together, and circumstances (includ- the town itself bears down on its youth and ing the outbreak of war) conspire to keep leaving is a matter of survival (‘I just gotta them apart. But when Stead arrives on get out of here’) rather than an opportunity. Marina’s doorstep five years after their first meeting and discovers she’s been missing Past the Shallows is an extraordinary debut. for much of that time, he resolves to find The directness and simplicity of Parrett’s her – and the action follows the pair’s sepa- writing belies an astonishing sensitivity to rate misadventures as they struggle along, the secret lives of these boys and the brutal longing for one another. environment that has shaped them. Justine Douglas is manager of Readings Port The Voyagers is characterised by elegant prose Melbourne and lovely word-pictures. For instance, passionate musician Marina reflects, ‘every I Hate Martin Amis morning I have to knit myself together at et al. the piano’. Career and creative endeavour Peter Barry constantly jostle for position with love and domesticity in this book, as Marina (and Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 other characters) struggle to reconcile the ‘I shall start by writing about two spheres. McConochie subtly explores my first victim,’ begins the the way war opened up the world for most interesting and women, even as it brought tragedy with it. engrossing book that I have This is intelligent popular fiction, perfect for read in well over a year. Set the thinking woman who wants to put her in the mid-nineties, I Hate feet up and be swept away. Martin Amis et al. is the story Lou Clausen is from Readings Carlton of Milan Zorec, a much- rejected unpublished novelist, recently also TOO CLOSE TO HOME rejected by his girlfriend, who’s determined to write a book that no publisher will be able Georgia Blain to turn away from. Trading his dead-end job Vintage. PB. $32.95 for the Yugoslavian war, Milan travels from Using an inheritance from England to Bosnia to volunteer for the Serb her recently deceased army and becomes a sniper in Sarajevo mother, Freya, an up-and- during the final months of the longest siege coming playwright, and in history. Here he hopes to come face-to- Matt, an architect, have face with the horrors of humanity so that moved with their young he’ll be able to write a book that no pub- daughter from the inner- lisher can dismiss with the words, ‘I feel like city to a nearby suburb on I’ve seen this before.’ the brink of gentrification. Freya is happily creating a comfortable nest for the three of An earlier draft of this book won the 2005 them, filling the house with tastefully Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpub- accumulated objects from their own and lished Manuscript. Simply put, this book her parents’ lives, and sampling the is brilliant. It’s written in such a way that it authenticity of her new suburb. Matt literally can’t be put down – I sat up until meanwhile is more ambivalent – restless in four in the morning reading it, even though their newly acquired respectability and the I had a seven o’clock start the next day. It is responsibilities inherent in family and dark and confronting, but at the same time home ownership. every sentence is powered by a strange kind of humour. I found myself jumping from A chance encounter with Shane, an old sentence to sentence and chapter to chapter, friend, unravels the certainty of their little constantly wanting more. I didn’t want to world. Shane, an Aboriginal activist, brings stop reading. home the messy reality of indigenous life. He also brings news of Matt’s ex-lover Lisa Readings Monthly May 2011 7 and the unsettling possibility of another tied proves to be Currie’s strong point. In child in Matt’s life. When the inevitable fact, they become the most interesting part crisis occurs, it is not the marginalised Shane of the book in a kind of adventure-thriller who succumbs to tragedy; Freya and Matt, sense. Because what soon becomes apparent with all their privilege, are the ones whose is a Blyton-like detective bent, where the Q&A with S. J. Watson lives are diminished. children outwit the adults. But the book Jo Case interviews S.J. Watson about his debut psychological thriller strives to be more than that. Freya and Matt’s dilemmas reflect those of Before I Go to Sleep (Text, PB, $29.95. Ebook $14.96) affluent Australia in the twenty-first century Lurking below the surface are powerful – there is a reluctance to sacrifice any advan- motifs of abandonment and loneliness, most her character are unchanged; that woman tage for the sake of change, despite recognis- clearly drawn in the disappearance of Ned’s still exists, even if she is buried deeply. In ing our own part in the problem. Like Freya wife two years before. This is reminiscent of some ways Before I Go to Sleep is the story and Matt, we are generally reluctant to put Chloe Hooper’s Child’s Book of True Crime, of Christine’s attempts to reclaim herself, our money where our mouth is. Too Close to and perhaps O’Brien’s In the Lake of the to take back some control, and to discover Home is just that. All my own white middle- Woods, but the tension in Currie’s first book who she is. never gets close to the fear and horror we see class, artsy, lefty pretensions were put under Christine is the ultimate unreliable nar- there. Regardless, it is an admirable debut a glaring spotlight – the self-indulgence of rator. She can never entirely trust her own from a writer who is already well known for ‘inner-city elites’ uncompromisingly laid ‘memories’ or assumptions – are they real or his short fiction. bare. Confronting us with our own world, imagined? What challenges and opportuni- Luke May is assistant manager Georgia Blain gives us no safe distance. ties did this present for you, as a writer? Susan Stevenson is from Readings Malvern of Readings St Kilda The biggest challenge was writing it in Letty Fox Watercolours the first person! It was technically very Christina Stead Adrienne Ferreira difficult to write the story of a woman MUP. PB. $24.99 Fourth Estate. PB. $29.99 who doesn’t remember what has happened Christina Stead is one of Novi is an 11-year-old boy previously. Yet writing it in the third per- those almost-forgotten growing up in the fictional son would have resulted in a very differ- Australian authors now being small town of Morus on the ent book and, once I’d found a structure devoured by a new genera- NSW north coast. As the that worked, the first-person narrative tion, thanks in no small part main character in Adrienne became one of the things I most enjoyed Your narrator, Christine, is about writing this book. It meant that, to Jonathan Franzen’s recent Ferreira’s debut novel, afflicted with a rare kind of rave review of The Man Who Watercolours, Novi’s perspec- throughout the story, the reader is always amnesia, in which her in the same place, mentally, as Christine. Loved Children. Opinion of tive sets the scene for the memory can only retain the Letty Fox was divided on first publication in story of a regional town full of people who The reader knows what she knows – no events of the day. Each time more and no less – and believes what she 1946. Some readers recognised it as a know too much about each other’s lives. she wakes, she starts her worldly, ribald and magnificent tale. For believes. I enjoyed taking the reader on Novi’s grandfather was drowned when the identity from scratch, not others it was trashy and obscene – a slur on exactly the same journey that Christine is river flooded five years ago, but Novi, a knowing how the years womanhood. The novel is a comic extrava- on. It also meant I could play around with talented and precocious artist for his young between childhood and middle age ganza, with a heroine obsessed by marriage the idea of ‘false memory’. It fascinates me age, believes that the river ‘murdered’ him. unfolded. How did you learn of this but living a complex, New York-based single that we can have very strong ‘memories’ of Dom Best, a young primary school teacher, neurological condition, and what was the life. Characters include her moping mother, something that never actually happened, new to rural life and to Morus, doesn’t impetus for building a character and absent father, and two impossible sisters. In or we can misremember events that did fully grasp the history and allegiance of the situation around it? the introduction to the 1974 edition, happen, and these false memories affect various townspeople he works with and Meghan Morris wrote: ‘Letty Fox had I was about to start my course at the us as strongly as if they were true. It leads befriends, but he is determined to assist offended because it presented a woman’s Faber Academy and I was looking for to the uncomfortable conclusion that the Novi in the development of his art. Eventu- account of her sexual and emotional life ideas for a new novel to be working on. idea of ‘truth’ is really quite nebulous. ally, Novi’s paintings and drawings of the without following the prescribed formula I came across an obituary of man called townspeople, the crows and the river itself, Before I Go to Sleep makes conscious the for females of modesty, passivity and simple Henry Molaison. He’d been 82 when lead to the unearthing of long-held suspi- way we assemble our lives from fragments of contentment. It described the way women he died, but, since an operation at the cions and guilt. experience and personality. Christine refers do live, not the way they are supposed age of 26, had been unable to form to ‘these trivialities ... these small hooks on to live.’ Thanks to this new edition, this Ferreira is clearly intimate with the work- new memories. The obituary described which a life is hung’. Were you consciously thoroughly modern classic is now ripe for ings of small towns; this shows in her story how every time he saw the doctor (with interested in exploring this everyday assembly rediscovery. of a boy grieving for his grandfather. With whom he’d worked for decades and who of the self? the Rotary Club, the bad coffee shops, the considered him to be a friend), he had Vogel Winner 2011 predominance of sport over art, and the con- to be introduced to her as if they’d never Yes. I think we rarely look at ourselves A&U. PB. $27.99 stant tension between locals and tourists, she met. He lived totally in the present. I was and think about the reasons why we act a For the first time, the winner of Australia’s creates the world of the Morus community immediately struck by a mental image certain way, or have a certain set of beliefs, leading prize for young debut writers (aged convincingly. There is much to like in this of a woman looking in the mirror, in a yet in some ways we are an accumulation 35 and under) is being kept secret until the first novel, and while the story itself doesn’t house she did not recognise, expecting of our memories. Sometimes there are big date of publication. So, all we can tell you quite lift off the page, it does pull the reader to see a young girl reflected there, but events that shape us, for better or worse, is that Cate Kennedy, Geordie Williamson along, much like the ever-present Lewis River, instead seeing a woman approaching 50 and sometimes our memory of those and Margo Lanagan have judged this the one of the main characters in Watercolours. years of age. events can be repressed. Eternal Sunshine best book, and that previous Vogel discover- Pip Newling is a writer and staff member at The character of Christine came to me al- of the Spotless Mind looked at that bril- ies have included Kate Grenville and Tim Readings Hawthorn most immediately, and I realised that hers liantly. Yet I’m also interested in how the Winton. was the story I wanted to be working on. smaller things, the trivialities can have I felt that through it I could explore some a cumulative effect, how they can shape The Ottoman Motel of the issues I’d been thinking about, our beliefs about the world and about Christopher Currie International to do with identity and love, and also ourselves us. Text. PB. $32.95. Ebook $14.96. power. I knew that to do that, I would This is such a gripping read – it seems there When a boy’s parents go Fiction need her to be able to retain memories are new revelations and questions raised on missing in a small hick-town Forgotten Waltz for a few hours at a time, so her condi- almost every page, and the reader is sucked on the isolated coast of NSW Anne Enright tion is not exactly the same as Molaison’s, deep into Christine’s quest to discover the while visiting his estranged Jonathan Cape. PB. Normally $32.95 but his story was the trigger. In fact, as I truth about her situation from the start. grandmother, you might Our special price $27.95 was writing Before I Go to Sleep I didn’t How hard did you have to work to get the assume that this is a deep In her Booker-winning novel think my character’s condition could pacing and the timing of the revelations just psychological tale of impend- The Gathering, Anne Enright exist at all, but since finishing I have read right? Was it a tricky book to work with, ing doom. Instead, what gained a raised profile and a of one case in the UK of a woman with structurally? follows is a finely plotted and well-paced new following. This, her first an almost identical condition, so it wasn’t mystery perfect for teens. novel since, again takes up the all artistic licence after all! Thank you! It was hard to find the right theme of family connections structure for the book. For a long time Eleven-year-old Simon wakes at the motel Christine is, as she reflects in the opening I struggled with how to tell the story to find his parents gone. Immediately he is and domestic secrets, in a pages, ‘vulnerable as a child’, uniquely story that centres on an affair. honestly, in Christine’s voice, without swept up in the claustrophobic kindness of a reliant on her husband and doctor to making it repetitive for the reader. But rural community and thrust into the care of Gina meets Sean, her sister’s neighbour, at her structure her days (and even her self). Yet niece’s birthday party – and again on a beach once I’d found a form that worked it came local Samaritan Ned Gale, who is also hous- she also proves uncannily resourceful. What relatively easily. At times it almost felt as ing Simon’s sick grandmother Iris. Alongside holiday. There are prickles of interest, but no interested you about that blend of helpless- real connection. When Gina’s employer needs if the story already existed, and I was just Ned are local policewoman Madaline and a ness and agency? discovering it. During the edit I had to cavalcade of burly fisherman and publicans, to hire a management consultant, she suggests Sean, and the wheels are in train for a I knew that it would have been terribly make sure it had the right pace, but at no all willing to help with the search. Add Ned’s point during the writing did I find myself children and the mysterious orphan boy, relationship that will break up two marriages, easy to make Christine a victim, and that divide sisters against each other, and set a didn’t interest me. I wanted the reader thinking ‘Oh, I’d better have a revelation Pony, into the mix and we can’t help but here.’ It all just came quite naturally! be suspicious of each character’s intentions, child, Sean’s daughter Evie, adrift between her to understand that she was a resource- forgetting about the missing couple as other separated parents. ful, confident woman, who had been See our website (www.readings.com.au) for stories and secrets leak out. How these dis- living a full life until something terrible the long version of this interview. Enright is a master of taut domestic realism happened to her. The fundamentals of parate plot strands are controlled and deftly – she has a forensic eye for the way people 8 Readings Monthly May 2011 interact, and the meaning that attaches to many and gone off with a one-night stand. DeWoskin, who has previously written a Binh, son of a poet ‘re-educated’ by the seemingly irrelevant things they say and do. When she stumbles into the bathroom, novel and a memoir of her life as a Chinese Communist party and his son Tu, and Cleaning up after another party at which the woman she sees reflected is not her, journalist and soap opera star, has done an American-raised Maggie, who arrives at they’ve collided, Gina reflects, ‘When the but a middle-aged woman – and the mir- amazing job at getting into the mindspace of Hung’s pho cart searching for a link to her last small guest was gone and the rubbish bin ror is surrounded by photographs of the teenagers: the distraction of all-encompassing artist father. ‘From the ancient Hung and full of packaging and uneaten lasagne the woman in the mirror and the man in the love; the forced friendships; the casual peer his village memories, to the modern Tu and thought of him – the fact of him – happened bed. Christine has a rare memory disorder pressure; the realities of reputations and his knock-off Nikes, this takes some beating in my chest, like a distant disaster. Something brought about by some traumatic accident; gossip. Judy is sometimes a bad friend, and as a whistle-stop tour of the history of snapped or was broken.’ This blend of ordi- she has vague memories of a distant past, occasionally lies and makes bad decisions, but Vietnam.’ – The Independent nary, even dull detail and epic event recurs but each morning she wakes remembering as that’s the whole point of being a teenager throughout the book, creating the sense that nothing of her recent past. It’s a fascinat- (and, well, human in general), you can hardly Bullfighting this is an ordinary, even clichéd happening, ing concept and raises questions of how fault her for it. And while some of her other Roddy Doyle yet also extraordinary for those it is hap- memory anchors the past and the future. schoolmates are a depressing indictment of Jonathan Cape. PB. $29.95 pening to. This self-awareness is mirrored in the current tech-obsession of Youth Today As a story it could present limitations, A new short-story collection Gina’s wry narration: ‘The office game was (including myself), there is kindness threaded as each day has more or less the same from one of Ireland’s most another game for us to play, after the subur- through Big Girl Small, from her adoring beginning and end. But Watson turns loved writers, the author of ban couples game, and before the game of average-sized family and from some more Christine’s life into a fascinating story that Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and hotel assignations and fabulous, illicit lust.’ unexpected places. builds into a startling crescendo. Admit- The Commitments. The men This is an anatomy of an affair – how and why tedly, you have to suspend belief at times, Big Girl Small doesn’t shy away from serious in Bullfighting are each it plays out. And all the while, as it constructs but overall it’s a compelling and convinc- issues, this book is not for the faint-hearted. concerned with loss in the clichéd players, it goes behind those clichés ing tale that I found immensely satisfying. It’s funny, thrilling, wise, heartbreaking and different ways – of their place and dissects their reality. With charismatic, Mark Rubbo is managing director of Readings honest. You may decide to home-school your in their world, of power, virility, love – of the flawed, beautifully realised characters and kids after reading it. boom days and the Celtic Tiger. ‘The stories, exquisite prose, this is a wonderful book. Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton his memories, were wearing out’ the narrator Big Girl Small of the title story thinks, ‘and there was Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly Rachel DeWoskin Embassytown nothing new replacing them.’ The stories Text. PB. $29.95. Ebook $19.95 China Mieville move from classrooms to graveyards, local Before I Go to Sleep Books that are written Tor. PB. Normally $33 pubs to bullrings, featuring an array of men S.J. Watson about teenagers but aimed at their working day and at rest, taking stock at adults are often a tricky Our special price $27.95 Text. PB. $29.95. Ebook $14.96 As the leading proponent of and reliving past glories. A few years ago the publisher sell, but to be honest, I’ve never read a book in the the re-imagined genre of Funeral for a Dog Faber & Faber established the ‘weird fiction’ (formerly Faber Academy to teach genre that wasn’t worth it. Thomas Pletzinger DeWoskin follows the sci-fi), China Mieville’s latest creative writing. S.J. Watson offering, Embassytown, WW Norton. PB. $19.95 was one of the first graduates trend. Judy Lohden, 16, This inventive and challeng- who’s just moved to a new arts school, is arrives hot on the heels of and his novel was picked up the brilliant The City and the ing novel was a smash hit by publishers all over the nervous about being accepted, and when first published in develops a crush on hopeful cinematogra- City, for which he won the world – and that’s not prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and Germany, and it’s now surprising. From its opening scene, Before I pher Jeff. But her story splits from the making waves in the US too, average tale of adolescent trauma, as Judy numerous other accolades, and Kraken, Go to Sleep reveals itself as something quite published in Australia late last year. drawing comparisons to extraordinary. Its opening passage is laden has achondroplasia: she is a Little Person. Murakami and Etgar Keret. with an edgy unease and suspense. And she’s recounting the tale of her high Appearing last year at Melbourne Writers’ Journalist Daniel Mandelk- school experience from a motel room, Festival and Aussiecon 4, Miéville spoke ern is plunged into a web of mystery after Christine wakes in a strange bed; lying next alone; hiding from her parents, her well, and proved very well read, carrying an interview with a reclusive children’s to her is a middle-aged man she can’t recall friends, and reporters, slowly unravelling with him great appreciation for yesteryear author, who lives alone with his three- seeing before. Her immediate thoughts are how she came to be there – to her sci-fi writers and pioneers of ‘urban fantasy’ legged dog. Rich with anthropological and that she’s been inappropriate, had one too agreeable neighbour Bill, and to us. like Philip K. Dick. As with Mieville’s literary allusion, set between Europe, Brazil earlier books, Embassytown continues his and New York, this book tells the parallel approach in ‘changing it up’, to use Wire- stories of two writers struggling with the speak, and the book is language-rich and burden of the past and the uncertainties of The China Garden densely populated with interesting charac- the future. ters. The setting is the distant outpost of by Kristina Olsson Embassytown on the planet Arieka, where Child Wonder Winner – 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award the human inhabitants co-exist with the Roy Jacobsen indigenous Ariekei. This balance is main- Maclehose. PB. $32.99 When a newborn baby is found abandoned, the RRP $24.95 tained by the intriguing Ambassadors, en- Norwegian writer Roy dramatic event pierces the lives of three very gineered doppels who possess the capability Jacobsen’s last novel, Burnt- different women. to communicate with the Ariekei through Out Town of Miracles, was a linguistic enhancement. A captivating story about betrayal and its echoes Readings favourite, and was shortlisted for the IMPAC across generations. Avice Benner Cho is an immerser (space- Award. His latest novel is set traveller) who moves in the privileged in the working-class Oslo of circles of the Ambassadors. Uniquely placed his childhood, in the days in society, at an important ritual between before the discovery of oil and the founding the two peoples, Avice bears witness to a of the social-democratic welfare state. It’s Just a Girl major diplomatic flap that tips the co- 1961, and Finn lives with his mother in a Been Looking For. Been Looking existence off-balance, threatening the future by Jane Caro nondescript apartment block, when one day of Embassytown. This is just a precis; there a mysterious half-sister arrives and turns his I am alive. I am awake and I am alive. is a lot more going on in this story, and life upside-down over one long summer. A I am awake and tomorrow I shall be crowned. Miéville deftly negotiates the myriad of poignant yet unsentimental coming-of-age Banished, imprisoned and forgotten; concepts and ideas. Embassytown is fairly story that shines with human detail. determined, passionate and headstrong. light on description of location and of char- acters and their traits, leaving the reader, to Mum’s Elizabeth the First shaped the destiny of a I’ll Never Get Out encounter and interpret as they progress. of this World Alive kingdom, all before she was 25. This is fantastic and intriguing read, but

RRP $19.95 RRP Steve Earle perhaps not the book to start with if a first- time Mieville reader. Houghton Mifflin. HB. $36.95 Julia Jackson is from Readings Carlton This ambitious debut novel Your from acclaimed musician The Sparrows of Edward Street Steve Earle (also a semi- by Elizabeth Stead The Beauty of Humanity Movement regular on The Wire) draws ‘Five-stars’ – Bookseller+Publisher Camilla Gibb on his experience and Sydney, 1948: Middle-class Hanora, Aria and interests, without ever Atlantic. PB. $27.99 treading the territory of Rosy Sparrow are facing a grim future in a A beautifully wrought novel memoir-as-novel. San Escape housing commission camp. that perceptively explores Antonio morphine addict Doc has lost his But Sparrows are resourceful, and they soon the recent history of licence, his home and any reason to live discover that resilience and good humour might Vietnam, from the birth of RRP $32.95 RRP beyond his daily fix. Ten years earlier, he

The just be their salvation. Communism and the long was the last to see his fishing buddy, country years of the American War, music star Hank Williams, alive – now he is to the growing Americanisa- both haunted and guarded by his former tion and tourist infusion of companion. Doc finds unlikely salvation the noughties. The action centres on a small from teenage Mexican immigrant Graciela, band of diverse characters: old man Hung, www.uqp.com.au find us on Facebook follow @UQPbooks who sticks around after he performs an whose pho restaurant was a gathering place illegal abortion on her, and seems possessed for underground intellectuals in the 1950s, of a miraculous healing power. Readings Monthly May 2011 9

Toploader slow to begin with, I was drawn in by the Ed O’Loughlin neatly drawn teenage protagonist, and the Quercus. PB. $27.95 subtle sense of foreboding that builds from ( Vintage ) Classic This razor-sharp satire on the page one. The novel blossoms slowly but absurdity of war, from a surely; Elwork’s language is understated and of the Month former Middle East corre- his characters mysterious yet confronting. A LIFE AND spondent for the Age and For those looking for a ghost story with more Seven Pillars Sydney Morning Herald, depth, for fans of Chekhov or Hitchcock, and of Wisdom follows his debut novel, Not readers of historical fiction, there is much to T.E. Lawrence LEGACY Untrue and Not Unkind, enjoy in this intriguing and impressive debut. Vintage. PB. $12.95 longlisted for the Man Steph Little is a freelance reviewer The last few nights I have Booker. Agent Cobra has been spying inside been dreaming of the the Iraqi Embargoed Zone – and now his desert. Maybe because of payment is due, all his spymaster can offer is Melbourne’s under- the mysterious Toploader device, which he Australian Poetry whelming summer (or quickly offloads. When senior military The Taste of maybe because I haven’t personnel learn the device is missing, a River Water had a holiday in a while), frantic operation is launched to retrieve it, Cate Kennedy my nights have been filled involving a plucky teenage orphan, a reporter Scribe. PB. $24.95. Ebook $14.95 with baking heat and blue sky and a flat with a penchant for the wrong end of the In an introduction to expanse of sand. I don’t often read stick, and a hapless drone pilot. American poet Robert Hass’s autobiographies, but chose Seven Pillars of poetry, Stanley Kunitz Wisdom from the new Vintage Classics The Picture of likened the effect of a Hass range because I thought it would suit my Dorian Gray poem to stepping into water mood. It did – but this remarkable book is Oscar Wilde from air that is almost the so much more than mere historical Bellknapp. HB. $49.95 same temperature, hardly travelogue. The Picture of Dorian Gray noticing one is at the will of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence heralded the end of repressive the sea, suddenly. Cate Kennedy – also of Arabia, spent much of World War I as Victorianism – but the regarded for her novel The World Beneath, and a British soldier working with rebel forces version Oscar Wilde handed her short fiction – is a different poet to Hass, during the Arab revolt against Turkey. The to his publisher was far more less an experimentalist or stylist, but she relies first 60-or-so pages are background to the daring than the version we on getting the reader comfortable before geo-political and tribal history of ‘Arabia’ know. His editor excised providing something like this change in the and detail Lawrence’s difficulties with Brit- material – especially homo- atmosphere by the time the poem is out. A ish Command: skip these if it slows you sexual content – that he thought would twist might be the appropriate word to down. The action really begins on page offend his readers’ sensibilities. This deluxe, describe this affect, too, as the poems in The 65 and it rockets along from here. This extensively illustrated, annotated edition Taste of River Water, Kennedy’s new and is a boys-own adventure filled with train finally presents the uncensored manuscript selected poems, favour narrative. sabotage, the basics of insurgency, camel- for the first time. In the longer poem ‘Last Man Standing’ back warfare and the constant battle for The Girl Who Would about a wounded and dying war veteran, water and food in one of the planet’s most Speak for the Dead she – with her novelist’s eye – pieces together inhospitable places. ‘A splendidly Paul Elwork a past, using photographs and his scribbled Seven Pillars was written from Lawrence’s energetic work, Pier 9. PB. $29.99. Ebook $14.99 death bed messages. Poetry enters when she diaries and it has that sense of immediacy. The Girl Who Would Speak for shifts things, quickly and with line breaks, for Above all else, Lawrence was a wonder- broad and deep. the Dead is a gothic mystery the benefit of surprise: ‘After they'd taken out ful writer. Some of his imagery will never set in the quiet summer of part of his jaw and cheekbone/he shuffled, leave me, like the army of Faisal I on It never fails 1925. It tells the story of face caved and disfigured, into the backyard,/ the march with ‘three banners of faded 13-year-old twins Emily and thinking to move the sprinklers.’ In a direct crimson silk with gilt spikes, behind in empathy, Michael Ward, who live in a and careful poem about the complicated feel- them the drummers playing a march, yet it crackles rambling house on the family ings of loss surrounding a still birth, Kennedy and behind them again the wild mass of estate by the banks of a river. turns suddenly and pithily at the end of the twelve hundred bouncing camels of the with acute Privileged, precocious and mostly bored, poem: ‘Soon I will rise/pen and paper/enve- bodyguard ... the men in every variety of Emily discovers a secret – she can manipulate lopes/spade/the unbearable sight/of turned coloured clothes and the camels nearly and unsparing the bones in her ankle to produce a cracking earth.’ In many poems the act of creation – as brilliant in their trappings.’ Through sound at will, a sound that appears as if from of writing – is never far from these everyday Lawrence’s eyes we see an intimate portrait insights.’ nowhere and reverberates around the stillness observations, offering deeper layers. of Bedouin life, the day-to-day as well as of the air. One night Emily uses her talents to the tribes at war. It’s a moving encounter helen garner The Taste of River Watercontains more with a way of life lost forever. successfully scare her brooding brother, densely lyrical poems, too, like the sensual, pretending to be a ghost contacting him unpunctuated ‘How to Eat Guava’: ‘that The book also gives us a fascinating from the other side. The twins then hatch a curved yellow moon surface/eat it’. Many insight into Lawrence himself. We can Manning Clark was a complex, plan to share the ‘spirit knockings’ with the of the poems, though, consider moments of only wonder what the Arabs thought of demanding and brilliant neighbourhood children and before long, the epiphany that pierce or – for a more appro- this soldier, part poet and part adventurer, man. An Eye For Eternity, news has spread to the adults and Emily is priate verb – seep through to the daily and gifted (or cursed) with the kind of courage Mark McKenna’s compelling more than happy to play along. But it’s a that comes from a lack of reverence for his are passed emotively over, in this process, to biography of this giant of game that quickly gets out of hand – the a sensitive reader. own life. Lawrence was plagued by moral doubts about his role in promising the Australia’s cultural landscape, adults are still reeling from World War I, and Luke Beesley’s latest poetry collection is Lemon Arabs self-government for their assistance the game begins to unearth family secrets and Shark (Paper Tiger, PB, $20.95). He runs a is informed by his reading of against Turkey, despite knowing ‘that the real ghosts in their family. series of poetry nights for Readings. Clark’s extensive private letters, if we won the war the promises to the journals and diaries—many While I found the pace of this novel a little Arabs were dead paper’. His depression and bitterness grows over the course of that have never been read the book and even his language changes: before. the Arabs become ‘we’ and the British, a An Eye For Eternity paints people apart from himself. A.C. GRAYLING’S a sweeping portrait of the As an insight into the historical basis for man who gave Australians the GROUND-BREAKING guerrilla war in the Middle East, this book SECULAR BIBLE is unparalleled. This Vintage edition also signature account of their own has a terrific introduction by Middle East history. correspondent Robert Fisk, who notes that Seven Pillars is currently on the ‘read- Drawing on 2500 years of writing AVAILABLE MAY and philosophy, here is the collective ing list of almost every senior US officer in secular wisdom of the world, Iraq’. But 20/20 hindsight can only help so much. Fisk helpfully points out that it distilled into chapters and verses might have been better had the Americans to replicate the form of the Bible. ‘read Lawrence before they invaded’. A.C. Grayling’s most ambitious work Toni Jordan is the bestselling author of to date, The Good Book examines Addition (Text, PB, $23.95) and Fall Girl all that it means to be human. (Text, PB, $32.95). Thanks to Random House, we have a library of 60 marvellous Vintage Classics to give away to one lucky OUT NOW customer this month. See page 2 for entry form and details. www.mup.com.au 10 Readings Monthly May 2011

New Crime Dead Write with Fiona Hardy Genre books have a sneaky little cheat where his precious hair doctor has gone missing. Merete Lyngard. Missing for five years, her When he helps a woman in a bar after her the writing doesn’t necessarily have to be of He’s trying to escape the trauma of his case is re-opened with the unexpected abusive boyfriend takes a swing at her, all award-winning quality; sometimes, the thrill military past, and keep his friends and sanity promotion of Homicide Detective Carl seems fine and heroic until he wakes up the of the story is so engaging it could rope you intact. While there are some honestly sad Mørck, who has lost his zing after a next morning to find he’s been duped, and in even if the words themselves were written moments, and gripping action-packed scenes seemingly benign case turned deadly for robbed – but when the boyfriend turns up in crayon by a five-year-old who is only half- that kept me riveted to the page (even batting two of his colleagues. While Mørck is strug- dead and the girl hunted, it’s even more way through learning the alphabet. There is people away with the book if they tried to gling to adjust back to life after the injury serious than he thought. Over in Baghdad, no danger of this happening in this month’s talk to me), it’s really a very funny book, he sustained, and the weight of guilt on journo Luca Terracini is tracing a spate of batch of books: all are exciting, all are unabashedly entertaining, and just on the him, the case everyone assumes is pointless bank robberies, ending up in London to action-packed, and all are perfectly crafted. right side of ridiculous. could very well be the one that brings him team up with Ruiz and figure out what the Here’s to some great writers! Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton back from the brink. FH hell is going on. FH Falling Glass Dark Anatomy The Hypnotist Adrian McKinty Robin Blake Lars Kepler Crime Book of Serpent’s Tail. PB. $29.99 Macmillan. PB. $32.99 HarperCollins. PB. Normally $30 Channelling one of the great crime authors, Back in 1740, forensic crime Our special price $24.95 the Month Raymond Chandler, is Adrian McKinty with investigation was a twinkle Lars Kepler is the new Plugged his newest title. Michael Forsythe, the star behind David Caruso’s CSI: Swedish sensation, not least Eoin Colfer of his previous novels, is now one of the side Miami sunglasses. Coroner because it’s the pseudonym Headline. PB. $29.99 characters, leaving the wonderfully named Titus Cragg is summoned to for writers and lovers Some voices in crime fiction Killian to take the lead. As a strict enforcer of the body of the local squire’s Alexander Ahndoril and are just so completely Irish law for those willing to pay him, Killian wife, in the woods near her Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, amicable that picking up the is on the wrong side of his savings account home of Garlick Hall, her who have hit on the right book every night is like when the perfect job comes up, offering throat cut. Using somewhat unexpected chemistry in this beautifully calling an old friend ... if your him half a million to find the ex-wife and methods for the time, Cragg enlists the written and engaging book. When a family friend was constantly being daughters of airline boss Richard Coulter. help of local doctor Luke Fidelis, and has to is murdered over two locations in Stock- chased by criminals and It’s not so easy, of course, and Killian must cut through the irrational fear those around holm, clues are almost nonexistent, but getting coshed over the head leave Northern Ireland and traverse the globe him have of any attempt at criminal investi- there is a surviving family member: 15-year with things, instead of calling to tell you to find them, without losing the deadpan gation. FH old Josef Ek, so badly injured that he is about getting a new roof installed or how humour that noir does so beautifully. FH barely alive. After Detective Inspector they made a great pie that was a bit burnt. The Wreckage Joona Linna discovers there is another And Colfer, mostly known as the author of Mercy Michael Robotham member of the family who wasn’t home the spectacular Artemis Fowl series for kids Jussi Adler-Olsen Sphere. PB. Normally $33 that day and may still be alive, the only way and the author taking the helm of the newest Michael Joseph. PB. $29.95 Our special price $27.95 to get through to Josef is through Erik Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has created a We’ve all joked at some point While I’d always encourage Maria Bark, a hypnotist retired in disgrace. great voice in Irish-American Daniel McEvoy, about getting rid of a everyone to help their fellow As he unwillingly takes this case, he realises affable to a fault, hiding his new hairplugs politician who bothers us, humans in a crisis, it doesn’t there is much more horror than even the under a hat, wishing fervently for a date with but when it actually happens, work out so well for ex-cop crime scene could prepare them for. FH one of the waitresses at the club he bounces it will be a hard-hearted Vincent Ruiz, who’s back in for, and about to find himself in the centre of reader who doesn’t feel local author Michael an alarming amount of drama, not least that anxious for Danish politician Robotham’s newest release. GREAT FICTION FROM TOP AUSTRALIAN AUTHORS A story about what happens when A revealing look inside who we an obsession takes over and there really are and the tenuous links is no one to hold you back. that build a life. SIDESHOW* Lindsay Tanner ‘Lindsay Tanner does us all a service … the relationship between politicians and the media degrades public life and diminishes our future.’ Malcolm Fraser

DEEP FUTURE* INDIGNEZ-VOUS!* Curt Stager Stéphane Hessel Like the bestselling Stéphane Hessel, Keep in touch with great book news www.randomhouse.com.au The World Without Resistance fighter Us, this book will and concentration- change the way we camp survivor, tells think about what the young of today we’re doing to our that their lives and planet. liberties are worth fighting for.

Caleb’s Crossing Watercolours THE LONGEVITY THE TASTE OF BY GERALDINE BY ADRIENNE PROJECT* RIVER WATER* BROOKS FERREIRA Howard S. Friedman Cate Kennedy 9780732289225 9780732292164 & Leslie R. Martin Disarming, warm, This fascinating, and always RRP $32.99 RRP $29.99 surprising book uses accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems one of the most A richly imagined new extensive studies in make ordinary A poignant debut novel psychology to explore experiences glow. novel from Pulitzer with a mystery at its heart, an unexpected the question of who Prize winner love story and a surprising twist. lives longest, and why. Geraldine Brooks. Most of all, it celebrates the clarity and colour a child’s-eye view brings to the adult world. www.scribepublications.com.au *Also available as eBooks Readings Monthly May 2011 11

other characters in this world. As a result, this is a wonderfully detailed account; the lyrical simplicity of the prose reveals an accom- Great new titles plished novelist. The dialogue is often intertwined with Hindi slang, which bril- from Hachette New Non-Fiction liantly conveys the individual personalities of highs and lows. Then, in the late 1930s, those she meets. It also had the interesting everything changed for Jewish families like (not unwelcome) effect of positioning me as his, and in 1938 his family fled their Australian Studies an outsider looking in, eavesdropping on a Sideshow luxurious life for a small Sydney flat, taking world that I could hardly begin to compre- Lindsay Tanner with them an impressive collection of art and hend. I continued to be surprised by the Scribe. PB. $32.95. Ebook $18.99 design. This engrossing and exceptionally dancers’ stories of violence, self-harm and When Lindsay Tanner written book has already garnered high praise rape. Every bar dancer Leela knows has either resigned in 2010 as the ALP’s from David Marr (‘wonderful’) and Patrick been sold by a blood relative or raped by one. federal minister for finance McCaughey (‘enthralling’). Set to be one of Leela herself ran away from her village at age and member for Melbourne, the local memoirs of the year. having had an 18-year career 13 after her father had sold her to the local as an MP, he notably Bossypants police for sex. managed to retire with his Tina Fey Bombay itself has a strong presence; Faleiro reputation for integrity Hachette. PB. $33 describes the city as an ‘open wound’ and PAST THE SHALLOWS intact. In Sideshow, he lays bare the Our special price $27.95 vividly evokes sound, smell and colour. Espe- relentless decline of political reporting and It’s obvious just from a glance cially memorable is a trip she takes with Leela Favel Parrett political behaviour that occurred during his at the cover (in which Fey’s and her friends to Haji Malang, a shrine that Hauntingly beautiful and told with an career. Part memoir, part analysis, and part has particular spiritual importance to Bom- elegant simplicity, this is the story of made-up face and blow- two brothers growing up in a fractured critique, Sideshow is a unique book that waved hair are teamed with bay’s hijars (men who dress as women). The tackles the rot which has set in at the heart family on the wild Tasmanian coast. The hairy man-hands) that steep climb to reach the shrine, the descrip- consequences of their parents’ choices of Australian public life. Bossypants is not your average tion of other pilgrims and the wild partying shape their lives and ultimately bring celebrity memoir. But then, afterwards, are unforgettable. I kept expecting tragedy to them all. Eye for Eternity: The Tina Fey is not your average broad conclusions about gender and poverty, Life of Manning Clark celebrity either. For one thing, she’s as well but Faleiro avoids this. Her total immersion Mark McKenna known for her writing as her performing in this world doesn’t lead to simplistic judg- MUP. HB. Normally $55 (as well as being the creator and star of 30 ment; the individuals speak for themselves. Our special price $49.95 Rock, she was head writer for Saturday Night The reader is ultimately left to their own de- This major biography of Live and wrote the screenplay for Mean Girls), vices, a refreshing quality in this type of study. Australia’s most famous and which promises an above-average reading Beautiful Thing is complex, confusing, funny controversial historian, by experience. and horrific – and often all of these together award winning historian within the space of one page. In what is more a linked series of personal Mark McKenna, has been Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton essays than a traditional narrative memoir, seven years in the making. Fey takes the reader on a tour of her child- It paints a portrait of a My Heart Wanders hood, her early days as a performer on the complex man: his friendships Chicago improv scene, landing her dream job Pia Jane Bijkerk with Patrick White and Sidney Nolan; his as an SNL writer, conceiving and launching Murdoch. HB. Normally $59.95 THE BUTTERFLY CABINET compromised marriage, riven by affairs; his 30 Rock and the weird and wonderful time Our special price $49.95 Bernie McGill attachment to narrative ahead of facts; and she spent impersonating Sarah Palin during Eat, Pray Love in Paris and Inspired by the true story of the tragic a public life marked by deeply held grudges the last US election. She also offers carefully Amsterdam? Like Elizabeth death of a daughter from an aristocratic and over-sensitivity to slights and criticism. edited glimpses into her personal life – her Gilbert, Pia Jane Bijkerk Irish family at the end of the nineteenth McKenna’s compelling biography of this relationship with her parents, husband and decided to leave her comfort- century, The Butterfly Cabinet explores giant of Australia's cultural landscape is motherhood, love, guilt, class and religion. child – while cannily managing not to reveal able home (in Sydney) and informed by his reading of Clark’s extensive too much about her loved ones. follow her heart on a personal private letters, journals and diaries – many journey of discovery. Her of them never before read. This is a terrifically entertaining book that instincts led her to a home in unsurprisingly reads much like a conversation Paris, then another on a houseboat in Making Trouble: with her 30 Rock alter-ego Liz Lemon. Amsterdam. This tender, reflective memoir is Essays Against the Unflattering childhood pictures combine with sumptuously illustrated, presented in a lavish New Australian embarrassing stories about her early self and hardback edition. It’s just perfect for Mother’s Complacency tongue-in-cheek self-reflection (her teenage Day, or for any woman who’d relish armchair Robert Manne gay friends liked her because, ‘I was so funny travel through a journey of letting go – and and so mean and mature for my age!’). Her embracing what you find along the way. Black Inc. PB. $34.95. Ebook $14.96 stories about working in a male-dominated Robert Manne, one of comedy world (‘only in comedy, by the way, No Regrets: Australia’s leading public does an obedient white girl from the suburbs A Biography intellectuals, takes the pulse count as diversity’) and the challenges and of Edith Piaf THE WRECKAGE of our nation – and reflects absurdities of her busy personal life (‘when on a range of different topics Carolyn Burke Michael Robotham Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have Bloomsbury. PB. $32.99 – in this major new essay overextended yourself, you need to examine Set in the turbulent aftermath of the A marvellous, definitive new Global Financial Crisis, The Wreckage collection. He takes aim at your fucking life’) are, Lemon-like, spiked the ‘new Australian compla- biography of one of the most pits Vincent Ruiz against powerful agents with wit and insight. If you like smart, funny beloved and romantic figures who will stop at nothing to keep their cency’, looks at our recent political leaders, women, you’ll love Bossypants. from Howard to Rudd to Gillard, delivers an of the twentieth century. secrets buried... Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly incisive analysis of the asylum seeker issue, From her youth singing in and exchanges letters with Tony Abbott. the streets to the glamour of The Fry Chronicles Paris music-halls; her lasting There are also essays on Wilfred Burchett, Stephen Fry Primo Levi and W.E.H. Stanner. friendships with figures like Penguin. PB. $24.95 Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau and Stephen Fry is one of those super-accom- Marlene Dietrich; her involvement in the plished people who not only has an enor- World War II Resistance, and her many mous brain and lashings of talent, but is illnesses, affairs and addictions – this is the Biography irresistibly likeable. So, no wonder The Fry story of a life richly lived, and a great talent Good Living Street: Chronicles (the follow-up to Moab is my passionately employed. The Fortunes of my Washpot, his memoir of his early years) was a Viennese Family smash hit in hardback. If you missed it, here’s Tim Bonyhady your chance to catch up with everyone’s A&U. PB. $35 favourite brilliant eccentric. THE BOOK OF BOOKS ICurrentndignez-Vous Affairs High society Vienna meets Beautiful Thing Melvyn Bragg harbourside Sydney in this Stephane Hessel The King James Bible is both the standard haunting, unconventional Sonia Faleiro Scribe. PB. $9.95 Black Inc. PB. $29.95. Ebook $13.56 scriptural text and, for centuries, the memoir of one migrant This extraordinary polemic bestselling book in the English-speaking family’s path to Australia. Sonia Faleiro’s background as has sold over a million copies world. Melvyn Bragg reveals the political, Cultural historian Tim both a novelist and a journal- in France, and is a bestseller linguistic, and religious influences the Bonyhady’s great grandpar- ist come together in this across Europe. Former Bible has had throughout the centuries. ents were leading patrons of remarkable story about resistance fighter and the arts in turn of the century Vienna – Gus- 19-year-old ‘Leela’, who lives concentration camp survivor tav Kilmt painted his great-grandmother’s and works in a Bombay Stephane Hessel, now 93 portrait. Here, he follows the lives of three suburb with a notorious years old, passionately argues generations of the women in his family, dance bar scene. Faleiro spent we must take back human rights that have through fraught relationships and business five years getting to know Leela and many steadily been lost over the last sixty years. 12 Readings Monthly May 2011 Origins of Orchid Thief. In an attempt to truly under- Political Order stand climate change, Chandler travels to Francis Fukuyama climate science frontiers Antarctica, the Great Philosophy Barrier Reef, the Wimmera and North The Good Book: Farrar Strauss Giroux. HB. $48.95 Queensland’s tropical rainforests, meeting A Secular Bible Francis Fukuyama is famous scientists and interrogating the science. As she A.C. Grayling for The End of History pieces together the climate puzzle, Chandler (published prior to Septem- Bloomsbury. PB. Normally $49.99 meets a cast of passionate and eccentric ber 11) in which he claimed Our special price $39.95

ISBN 9781742582900 $34.95 characters – and even learns a thing or two the collapse of the Soviet Popular philosopher A.C. about herself. Union ushered in the Grayling believes that unquestioned triumph of philosophy should be useful liberal democracy as the best Deep Future: The Next – and to that end, he’s basis for government. In this major new 100,000 Years of Life created a secular bible for our work – already being lauded worldwide for on Earth increasingly secular age. its scope and ambition – he goes back to our Curt Stager Designed to be read as political beginnings, with a sweeping Scribe. PB. $32.95. Ebook $18.99 narrative and dipped into for account of how today’s basic political This major new book has inspiration or comfort, it draws on 2500 institutions developed. The first of a major already been compared to the years of contemplative non-religious writing two-volume work, it begins with the politics magisterial, engrossing (and on all it means to be human, from the of our primate ancestors and follows the yes, frightening) scientific origins of the universe to matters of courtesy story through the emergence of tribal narratives of Jared Diamond. and kindness. This erudite and accessible societies, the growth of the first modern state Paleoclimatologist Curt book of wisdom fills a real gap, offering in China, the beginning of the rule of law in Stager looks far into the guidance and meaning without religion. India and the Middle East, and the develop- future, drawing on our ment of political accountability in Europe planet’s geological history and the effects of Hope

ISBN 9781742582757 $29.95 up until the eve of the French Revolution. our current environmental actions to predict Stan Van Hooft the world that lies ahead. If we continue to Acumen. PB. $24.95 Wikileaks and the pollute the planet, our descendants may see A fascinating and thought-provoking inves- Age of Transparency an ice-free Arctic, miles of submerged coasts, tigation into a fundamental human quality: Micah Sifry or an acidified ocean. But there is another hope. For Aristotle, being hopeful was part Scribe PB. $22.95. Ebook $13.99 alternative, if we change our ways in time. of a well-lived life, a virtue. For Aquinas, it Political analyst and writer was a fundamentally theological virtue and Micah Sifry argues that Merchants of Doubt for Kant, a basic moral motivation. Draw- WikiLeaks is a symptom of a Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway ing on everyday examples – as well as more generational and philosophi- Bloomsbury. PB. $24.95 detailed discussion of hope in the arenas of cal struggle between older, Over the past four decades, a medicine, politics, and religion – Stan van closed systems, and the new, loose-knit group of scientists Hooft shows how hopefulness is not the open culture of the internet. and scientific advisers (with same as hope and offers a convincing and Despite the arrest of Julian links to politics and industry) powerful defence of the need for realism. Assange, secret documents continue to be have run effective campaigns published around the world, and citizens are to mislead the public and demanding greater accountability from those deny well-established who wield power. As Sifry shows, this is scientific information. Some Cultural Studies part of a larger movement for greater of the same individuals who claim the Smashed: governmental and corporate transparency. science of global warming is ‘not settled’ also the many meanings denied studies linking smoking to lung of intoxication Power and Terror cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to and drunkeness Noam Chomsky the ozone hole. Peter Kelly New from Pluto. PB. $24.95 Monash University Press. PB. $34.95 Noam Chomsky looks at the last ten years Everyone knows what intoxication and of US foreign policy – characterised by war, drunkenness are, how to define and measure torture and rendition. He places these de- Psychology them and what their consequences are. At velopments in the context of America’s long Flourish least, that’s how these words are used by the history of aggression and imperialism, and Martin Seligman media, politicians and policy makers and by argues that the US is responsible for much Heinemann. PB. Normally $32.95 various experts. A variety of concerns about of the terror it claims to be fighting. Includes Our special price $27.95 young people, individual and public health, talks, Q&A sessions and unpublished essays. The author of the interna- road safety, sexual assault and violence are tional bestseller Authentic connected to these taken-for-granted under- Happiness (and founder of the standings. Smashed! presents an overview of Positive Psychology Move- these concerns. ment) offers a new theory on CaptainHistory Cook: what makes us flourish and Master of the Seas how we can truly get the most Frank McLynn out of life. Flourish refines what Positive Psychology is all about, with Yale UP. HB. $45 AFood Cook’s & G uideWine examples of the theory in action, including The ten years of US foreign policy since 9/11 This biography seeks to Donna Hay have been characterised by war, torture and schools that add resilience to their curriculum rescue Cook from his recent rendition. In Power and Terror, Noam Chomsky (with a case study of Victoria’s Geelong HarperCollins. PB. Normally $35 portrayal as a villain of places these developments in the context of Grammar), and evidence on how positive Our special price $29.95 America’s long history of aggression colonial exploitation. physical health can turn medicine on its head. Just in time for Mother’s Day, here comes and imperialism. Focusing instead on Cook’s another essential everyday cookbook from $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9780745331379 nautical skills, courage and Australia’s favourite kitchen whiz, Donna Pluto Born for Love: Why talent, Frank McLynn Hay. From perfect pav to crispy crackling recreates the voyages that Empathy is Essential to chocolate cake, this beautifully photo- took the famous captain from his native and Endangered graphed, practically packaged book is packed England to the outer reaches of the Pacific Bruce Perry & Maia Szalavitz with classic recipes and handy cooking tech- Ocean. Cook’s life was ultimately one of HarperCollins. PB. $21.95 niques. This one’s not just for show – it’ll be struggle as well as success – struggle with This fascinating book blends dog-eared with use in no time. himself, with institutions, with the environ- science and real-life stories ment, and with the desire to be remembered. to show how empathy works Livwise and why it’s important. It Olivia Newton-John examines threats to the Murdoch. HB. $39.99 development of empathy in This gorgeous book intro- the contemporary world duces ways of eating and FEnvironmenteeling the Heat (including recent changes to living that lead to good Jo Chandler technology, child-rearing practices and health and happiness – with lifestyles) – and explores how these threats MUP. PB. $36.99 wholesome, tasty recipes might be tackled. Practicing child psychia- Walkley Award-winning Age from Olivia’s own kitchen, Dreams imagines replacing Western Civilization trist Bruce Perry and renowned science journalist Jo Chandler puts a and others from friends and with epistemologies stemming from indigenous writer Maia Szalavitz present a powerful chefs at her Australian health cultures and the knowledge embedded in our human face on the climate and engaging case for empathy’s ongoing own dreams. change phenomenon in this retreat, Gaia. Includes salads, snacks, mains importance to human evolution, and its $39.95 Pb, ISBN 9781583229309 immensely readable book – a and guilt-free desserts. Let’s get physical, Seven Stories Press significance for children and our society. narrative non-fiction in the with one of Australia’s favourite stars. vein of Susan Orlean’s The Readings Monthly May 2011 13

Written with real imaginative air, heart and ByFood Justine Douglas, & managerWine ByArt Margaret & Snowdon, Design art & design buyer, Readings Port Melbourne Readings Carlton humour, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages will prove impossible to forget. This morning I am wedged between my Scripts: Elegant laptop on the kitchen table and a crowded Lettering From stove-top teetering with simmering pots of Design’s Golden Age poached quince, quince chutney, Ottoman Stephen Heller & Louise Fili quince preserve and quince-infused vinegar. Thames & Hudson. HB. $65 Quince may be the hardest (on your hands) This is the first compilation of all fruit to preserve, but their heady of popular, rare and forgot- perfume and ruby rose colour make them ten scripts from Britain, my absolute favourite. The arrival of quince Italy, France, Germany and signals the beginning of the colder months – the USA, from the nine- a perfect time to alternate your recipes. teenth to the mid-twentieth century. Filled with exam- Vegetables from an ples from a broad spectrum Italian Garden: Season of sources – advertising, street signs, by Season Recipes invitations, type-specimen books, personal Silver Spoon Kitchen letters – this collection from esteemed art Phaidon. HB. $49.95 director Steven Heller is a delightful trove This is the perfect volume to of long-overlooked material. inspire seasonal eating and augment your repertoire of Patricia Piccinini: recipes for unfairly maligned Once Upon A Time vegetables like turnips and Jane Messenger celeriac. Exquisitely designed AGSA. HB. $75 by Phaidon, each chapter A catalogue from the contains a selection of a exhibition at the Art Gallery dozen or so vegetables with growing of South Australia. Drawn information and recipes. The autumnal primarily from private selection includes celery, chestnut, pumpkin, collections, and including an beetroot and turnips. The recipes are for the exciting new work seen for most part traditional Italian sides such as the first time, the exhibition baby carrots in herb sauce and scorzonera with spans the artist’s 15-year anchovies, but also include more substantial oeuvre to date. This is sure to be a fascinat- supper dishes like pumpkin gnocchi with ing publication on an artist whose unique orange butter. An ideal reference if you grow hybrid vision of humanity, machines and your own vegetables and are looking for mutation has retained a sustained combina- inspiration for surfeit crops, or if you shop at tion of the familiar and an eerily possible the market and buy produce in season. imperfect future. Soup! Vava Berry Out of Australia: Pavilion. HB. $39.99 Prints and Drawings Autumn is also, traditionally speaking, the right time of from Sidney Nolan to year to start making soup. I Rover Thomas pay no heed to this particular Stephen Coppel tradition and make soup all BMP. PB. $59.95 year round, so am constantly This ground-breaking book searching for interesting soup follows the rise of a distinc- recipes. Vava Berry has tive school of Australian art collected an extraordinary selection in this that first emerged in the BOOKS THAT CHANGE YOUR MIND. volume. There are instant soups that can be 1940s. Beginning with the rustled up from the pantry like a tomato, artists of the Angry Penguins coconut and peanut soup that is made from movement, Arthur Boyd, bottled passata, coconut milk and peanut Albert Tucker, Joy Hester butter (surprisingly delicious) as well as more and Sidney Nolan, whose work exhibited a glamorous suggestions, such as a black beluga new strain of surrealism and expressionism, lentil soup with caper and dill sour cream. The the book continues with the rich variety of most intriguing recipes include extras like 1970s work by Jan Seberg, Robert Jacks For the first time in history, chunky tomato soup with baked polenta and George Baldessin, moving through to Australia will be uncomfortably dumplings and borscht with cabbage pirojkis contemporary artists such as Rover Thomas close to the designs and and will undoubtedly make one reconsider and Judy Watson. Includes a substantial demarches of competing great the humble bowl of soup. essay outlining the major developments in powers. In the years ahead, Australian art since the 1940s, the recep- we will no longer be too small Gran’s Family Table tion of Australian art in Britain and the to make a difference. In his Natalie Oldfield recent rise of Aboriginal printmaking and book, Michael Wesley of The Harper Collins. HB. $49.95 features 127 works by 61 artists. Lowy Institute points to the There is no escaping the food How Aborigines key economic and political of one’s childhood – and issues that we need to be while some people might invented the idea considering right now, as a have heart palpitations at the of contemporary art western country geographically mere suggestion of rice Ian McLean and economically tied to pudding, I am somewhat (editor & contributor) Asia, and urgently calls for a partial to the ‘supper Power Institute of Fine Art renewed public engagement savouries’ and ‘novelty cakes’ This is the first anthology to of my New Zealand upbringing. So, it would chronicle the global critical and debate. seem, is Natalie Oldfield, who has created a reception of Aboriginal art successful business inspired by her Gran’s since the early 1980s, when ‘This book is shock therapy. cooking. There is something deeply restor- the art world began to It strikes at Australia’s dull ative about these simple, economical recipes understand it as contempo- complacency before the for sardines on toast and cauliflower cheese and rary art. Featuring 96 challenges from a bigger, this cookbook also contains some excellent authors, it conveys a more dynamic Asia.’ family dishes like roast leek and lemon chicken diversity of thinking and approaches. The – Paul Kelly thighs and kumara with ginger, orange and anthology argues for a re-evaluation of chives. This is the second collection of recipes Aboriginal art’s critical intervention into inspired by Natalie’s grandmother, Dulcie contemporary art since its seduction of the May Booker. The first, Gran’s Kitchen, has the art world a quarter-century ago. best apple cake recipe I have ever tried and I feel certain the ‘Pudding’ chapter in Gran’s www.unswpress.com.au Family Table will contain many more gems. 14 Readings Monthly May 2011 too small to fail Ballad Morris Gleitzman Maggie Stiefvater Penguin. PB. $16.95 Scholastic. PB. $19.99 A boy, a dog, a girl and a With a backdrop rooted in Celtic myth, Kids’ Books camel. Throw in a kidnap- Ballad is the compelling sequel to Lament. Book of the Month That’s Not a Daffodil ping, bribery, and some The central character, James Morgan, has an Our Australian Girl Elizabeth Honey (boring-sounding but exceptional gift for music. This attracts Nuala, Series two A&U. HB. $24.99 actually hilarious) asset- a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and One day Mr Yilmaz from backed derivatives and you feeds on the creative energies of humans. As Penguin. PB. $14.95 each next door gives Tom a have the latest novel by their relationship intensifies, James battles to A Friend for Grace daffodil bulb. ‘That’s not a Morris Gleitzman. Glei- save Nuala’s life and his own soul. An intoxi- Sofie Laguna daffodil,’ says Tom. ‘That’s tzman has a well-deserved reputation for cating read, featuring marvellously complex an onion.’ So they plant it tackling difficult subjects with a light characters who face impossible obstacles. Poppy at Summerhill together and wait to see touch, this time he deftly handles the Gabrielle Wang what happens. Satisfying pictures to pore impact of the global financial crisis on a My Sister Lives on Rose on Wheels over tell a story with neighbourliness, the boy whose parents own a bank and the the Mantelpiece Sherryl Clark love of growing things, and a fresh and people who lose their money when trouble Annabel Pitcher quirky imagination at its heart. Even the end- hits. One unfortunate investor is one of the Hachette. HB. $24.99 papers celebrate simple outdoor play. boy’s ex-nannies and when she hatches a Letty And The Our special price $19.95 Recommended for 2–5 year olds. half-baked plan to get her money back, it Stranger’s Lace Oh, how your heart aches for Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton sets off a chain of events that lead our hero Alison Lloyd young Jamie. He has lost a on some dangerous, amusing and ultimate- What an exciting publishing sister to a bombing, his Aunties Three ly rewarding escapades. For readers aged endeavour! The first Our mother has abandoned her nine and up. Australian Girl books were Nick Bland living children and his father Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda published in February 2011 Scholastic. HB. $24.99 is lost in alcoholic grief. His and we were introduced to Knock! Knock! Knock! Uh-oh, there are visi- remaining sister has developed Grace, Letty, Poppy and tors at the door, and who would it be but the Young Adult a rebellious disdain for the Rose, who faced challenging aunties three? Things must be neat and tidy Pocketful of Eyes adults in her life, as she has been the one most situations in the 1800s to for stuffy Aunt Millicent, Aunt Alma and Lili Wilkinson affected; it is her twin who died. Ultimately 1900. Now in the second set of books we Aunt Ingrid. Only your best clothes are to be A&U. PB. $17.99 she is the strong, understanding one when the follow Grace, the convict girl, as she and her worn, your manners must be remembered, Working in the taxidermy adults fail Jamie. Jamie’s cat is the only other new friend Hannah make the scary ocean and only speak when you are spoken to! But department of the Mel- being that offers solace and stability as they crossing from England to Australia; Letty, will the aunties stick around when things bourne Natural History move to a village where everything is new, but the accidental stowaway, as she and her older start to go wrong? Young readers will love Museum over the summer the family has just relocated their sadness; sister face a precarious existence in a new this delightful picture book from Nick Bland, holidays, Bee does not there is no escaping a daughter’s/sister’s ashes land; Poppy’s brave quest to join her brother author of The Runaway Hug and The Very expect to be thrust into on the mantelpiece. Jamie was five when his at the goldfield; Rose’s continuing battle Cranky Bear. The aunties look fabulous with mystery and romance. sister died and cannot grasp the grief his with her mother for more freedom and the their monocles, fur hats and alligator purses, However, the arrival of a family is immersed in – he just wants his opportunity to go to school. Each book and the short, rhyming text makes for a great good-looking but know-it-all university mother back and for his father to stop offers well-developed personalities who the read-aloud that will have everyone guessing student and the death by apparent suicide drinking. Eventually he experiences first-hand reader will sympathise with, marvelling at what will go wrong next! HH of the head taxidermist put an end to her a loss that sends him reeling. This heart their strength of character as they face events uneventful summer internship. Bee’s wrenching young adult novel champions a that today’s average Australian child will Middle Fiction resulting investigation with the assistance of young boy with a very funny take on life. never be confronted with. The reader will Troubletwisters the annoying and attractive Toby is a There’s no doubt you will laugh and cry. For also learn about a time in history where Garth Nix & Sean Williams delight for any of us who started out ages 15 and up. AD harsh conditions made survival a day-to-day A&U. PB. $15.99 reading girl super-sleuths Nancy Drew or battle. That said, these are not grim books When Jack and Jaide’s house Trixie Belden. It takes a classic genre and Marcelo in the and each girl’s endurance and tenacity makes is destroyed in a freak storm, weaves in a contemporary sensibility, Real World for fulfilling reading. The authors have not the twins are shipped off to resulting in a fun read – with a dash of Francisco X only brought alive each of the girls, but the romance. stay with their grandmother. Scholastic. PB. $16.99 books combine to make a symbiotic whole. I Marie Matteson is from Readings Port Melbourne Eccentric Grandma X isn’t What a fascinating read. I loved it. Told was captivated by the series and I’m sure girls exactly your normal variety of through the eyes of Marcelo, a 16-year- aged 7–12 will be as well. granny who bakes cakes and Ministry of old with Asperger’s Syndrome, it is a novel Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn makes tea cosies: when Pandemonium that inevitably will be compared to Mark swarms of rats and cockroaches overrun the Chris Westwood Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in house, the twins suspect Grandma X might Walker. PB. $16.95 the Night-Time. And it is as good, but quite Picture Books be controlling them with her mysterious When Ben Harvester needs to get away different. Marcelo’s father insists that his son Let’s Play Games! powers. On top of that, Jaide and Jack seem from it all, he goes to the cemetery to take summer employment in the mailroom to be developing powers of their own. Can think. There he meets the mysterious Mr of his highly successful corporate law firm, Collection the two troubletwisters master their abilities Hervé Tullet October, who warns Ben that his aunt is instead of in a protected environment with in time to halt the sinister forces at work? about to die. At first Ben doesn’t think Phaidon. Board. $9.95 each the ponies the boy so loves. The idea is that Garth Nix and Sean Williams have created a much of it, but when the premonition In France, Hervé Tullet is known as the prince he will learn to cope and prove himself in ‘the cracking, fast-paced start to a highly original comes true he must admit that there are of pre-school books and you only have to look real world’. How does a gentle, highly logical, series that will really appeal to fantasy fans things in this world he can’t explain. And at his latest offerings to see why. The six board spiritual young man cope with this frenetic aged nine and up. HH now Mr October has an offer for him: join books in his Let’s Play Games! collection are world with its corporate ethics? How does he the Ministry of Pandemonium and become all about interaction. The Game of Light is relate to Jasmine in the mailroom, or Wendel, Big Nate a guide to spirits who have recently died. designed to be read with the lights turned off the other boss’s son, when he thinks so differ- Boredom Buster The problem for Ben, however, is that and a handy torch to shine through the die-cut ently? For ages 13 and up, though I suspect joining will anger an ancient evil. This is shapes of fish and flowers. Draw a face on your Lincoln Peirce older readers will enjoy it most, both for its a thrilling gothic read, and will have Neil finger and it will be the main character in The Harper. PB. $14.99 ideas and its story. KK Gaiman fans hooked from page one. Mys- Game of Finger Worms. Each book is a magical Fans of Big Nate (the boy with the biggest teries abound in this chilling world, and adventure of flaps, cut-outs and bright shapes, head in the world) include Diary of a Wimpy Mother’s Day you’ll race through it in order to uncover all and each will stimulate young imaginations in Kid’s Jeff Kinney – and the books share a and Colouring of its secrets. HH different ways. Be sure to also check out Mix similar quirky-but-everyday sense of humour. Competition and Match, Let’s Go, Patterns and Mix-up Art. This activity book is jam-packed with tasks Sunday 8 May is Mother’s Day, a time to let Holly Harper is from Readings Malvern for Nate fans of all ages: you can create your Divergent mums everywhere know just how much we own comics, do word searches, crosswords, Veronica Roth love them, and what better way to do it than Where’s Walrus puzzles, sudoku, How-to-Draw-Nate and Harper. PB. $24.99 with a story? There’s a crop of lovely picture Stephen Savage more. For ages 9 and up. This suspenseful, dystopian books out this year for you to read with thriller is the debut from Scholastic. HB. $26.99 mum, like My Mum’s the Best by Rosie Smith Kane Chronicles 2: 22-year-old Chicago-based While Zookeeper is taking a nap, Walrus and Bruce Whatley (Scholastic, HB, $16.99), Veronica Roth. The book escapes from the zoo and takes the oppor- Throne of Fire Me and My Mum by Alison Ritchie and centres around 16-year-old tunity to explore the city. With Zookeeper Rick Riordan Alison Edgson (Koala, PB, $14.99), and Beatrice, who lives in a hot on his heels, Walrus comes up with Penguin. PB. $19.95 I Love My Mum by Anna Walker (Scholastic, futuristic society divided into a series of clever disguises to keep hid- In the second instalment of this trilogy, Cart- PB, $14.99). Plus we have some very special five factions, dedicated to the den. Is there something strange about that er and Sadie, offspring of the brilliant Egyp- friends to be won. Hugless Douglas is a bear cultivation of virtues: Candor (the honest), mermaid in the fountain? And how about tologist Dr. Julius Kane, set out on a search in need of a hug, and he’s hoping to get one Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the that last builder on the end – could that be for the Book of Ra, but the House of Life from you. Readings has five Douglas toys brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the Walrus? This wordless picture book is a lot and the gods of chaos are determined to stop to be won, and at over 60cm tall, that’s one intelligent). Beatrice has to choose between of fun with its colourful, retro illustrations them. Narrated in two different wisecracking big hug! Each Douglas also comes with two staying with her family and being true to and the antics of the cheeky aquatic hero. voices, featuring a plethora of unforgettable books: Don’t Worry Douglas, and Hugless herself. This spine-tingling story follows her You wouldn’t believe how many places there characters, and with adventures spanning the Douglas.To enter, pick up a colouring-in sheet whirlwind decision and the ensuing journey are to hide a walrus in the city! HH globe, Throne of Fire is a thrilling ride. from your local Readings or download one that changes her life forever. from our website. HH Readings Monthly May 2011 15

ReadingsBargains on the web: New books are Bargai regularly added to our nwebsite. Table Click on the Bargains tab at www.readings.com.au.

Our Kind of Traitor Under the Sun: In A Strange Room John Le Carré The Letters of Damon Galgut Viking. PB. Was $35. Now $9.95 Bruce Chatwin Faber. PB. Was $30. Now $14.95 The master of spy fiction Bruce Chatwin In this newest novel from returns with a suspenseful Cape. HB. Was $55. Now $24.95 South African writer Damon novel of dirty money and As the celebrated author of Galgut, a young loner travels dirtier politics. Perry and In Patagonia and The across eastern Africa, Europe, Gail are idealistic and in love, Songlines, Chatwin’s desire and India. Unsure what he’s when a Russian money for adventure and enlighten- after, and reluctant to return launderer enlists their help ment was made evident by home, he follows the paths of to defect. his writing. These letters travellers he meets along the reveal a passionate man and way. Traversing the quiet of wilderness and Revolt of the a storyteller par excellence. the frenzy of border crossings, every new Pendulum Essays direction is tinged with mourning, as he is 2005-2008 World On Fire: propelled toward a tragic conclusion. Clive James An Epic History of Cartographia: Picador. HB. Was $50. Now $12.95 Two Nations Divided Mapping Civilizations From the culture of fandom Amanda Forman Vincent Virga to the cult of the critic, James Allen Lane. PB. Was $35. Now $14.95 Little Brown. HB. Was $85. Now $29.95 displays his ear for language, The bestselling author of Drawing on the Library of his eye for detail and his Georgina, Duchess of Devon- Congress’s 4.8 million maps ability to focus on the finer shire delves into the fascinat- and 60,000 atlases, this is an points and the bigger picture ing story of the American overview of cartography in simultaneously. Civil War, told through different times and cultures. the dramatic and poignant Veteran picture editor Virga first-hand accounts of up-ends our notion of maps Trotsky: A Biography some of the colourful as two-dimensional represen- Robert Service Englishmen and women who volunteered tations of physical spaces by presenting Picador. HB. Was $75. Now $15.95 to join the conflict. depictions of imaginative or spiritual This illuminating portrait of territory. Trotsky sets the record From Seeds to Leave straight on common miscon- Doug & Robin Stewart Sidney Nolan: ceptions about the man and CSIRO. PB. Was $27.95. Now $9.95 Retrospective his legacy, completing A comprehensive guide to Barry Pearce Service’s masterful trilogy on planting Australian native Art Gallery of NSW. HB. the founding figures of the trees and shrubs, on a small or Was $85. Now $29.95 Soviet Union. large scale. The book describes Published to accompany the how to collect your own fruits Sidney Nolan Retrospective The Turning: Stories and nuts; extract, store and exhibition, this handsome Tim Winton germinate seed in the right book reproduces approxi- Picador. PB. Was $32. Now $9.95 way and in the best season; mately 116 paintings. It is ‘Winton writes with rare use smoke to germinate seed normally presented in chronological BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE! sympathy … in The Turning, difficult to grow; and plant out, water, mulch, order, underlining the Naxos AudioBooks on sale in May … the small towns and a protect, fertilise and prune your plants. evolution of Nolan’s vision stunning and unyielding from its genesis in St Kilda during the 1930s landscape, offer him a Paris: to the United Kingdom half a century later. enduring drama. A writer The Secret History of supreme integrity and Andrew Hussey Private Life honesty.’ – Colm Toibin Bloomsbury. HB. Was $45.95. Now $16.95 Jane Smiley ‘In his outrageously readable, Faber. PB. Was $33. Now $12.95 The Box: Tales from impressively researched, From the Pulitzer Prize-win- the Dark Room shockingly violent alternative ning author of A Thousand Gunter Grass history of Paris, Hussey Acres comes the powerful, Harvill. HB. Was $45. Now $16.95 illuminates the city’s gutters, deeply affecting story of one In an audacious literary stews, slaughters, riots, woman’s life, from post underbellies and crimes in the Buy any two titles from the award-winning experiment, Grass writes in Civil-War Missouri to Naxos AudioBooks range and choose a third the voices of his eight children shadowy corners that Balzac California in the midst for FREE as they record memories of relished. The result is a fascinating riot of a of World War II. ‘Smiley's Over 500 titles available book.’ – Simon Sebag Montefiore Classic Literature, non-fi ction, growing up, and of their best novel yet...’ – The Atlantic Monthly children’s favourites, poetry and more father – who was always at Read by Britain’s fi nest actors including work on a book, always at the The Ninth: Beethoven David Tennant, Dame Judy Dench margins of their lives. and the World in 1824 Amulet and Ewan McGregor Harvey Sachs Beautifully packaged boxed sets available Solar Nazi Literarature that would make a great gift for Mum Faber. HB. Was $12.95. Now $15.95 this Mother’s Day Ian McEwan ‘This book is a great read for In the Americas Cape. PB. Was $32.95. Now $15.95 expert musicians and for Roberto Bolano Can a man who has made a people who can’t read a note PB. Were $32.95 ea. Now $9.95 ea. mess of his life clean up the of music. It is a very per- messes of humanity? A sonal, loving view of complex novel that brilliantly Beethoven and his last traces the arc of one man’s symphony, but it also ambitions and deceptions. presents a fascinating historic A startling, witty new work panorama.’ – Placido Domingo from the author of Atonement. Flavours of Vietnam Granta: Sex Meera Freeman John Freeman (ed.) Black Inc. HB. Was $34.95. Now $12.95 Amulet is a highly charged first-person, HB. $28. Now $10.95 Fragrant broths, rice paper semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies the Sex is our oldest obsession. rolls, stir-fries, noodles ... melancholy and violent history of Latin Catalogues and samplers available in-store For as long as we’ve been Vietnamese cuisine is light America. “Bringing Literature to Life” doing it, it has been used as a and delicious. Meera Nazi Literature in the Americas mark of decline and a Freeman and Le Van Nhan is a triumph measure of progress. A range invite you to enjoy the of black humour and imaginary erudition— of top-notch writers tackle countless delights of cooking a biographical dictionary of writers who the topic in this edition of espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in Free item must be of equal or lesser value than the cheapest and eating authentic of the two purchased the iconic literary journal. Vietnamese food. the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 16 Readings Monthly May 2011 BETTY BLUE Released 5 May $24.95 Bluray $34.95 Zorg lives a peaceful life, working diligently and New Release DVDs writing in his spare time. That is until the beautiful, wild and unpredictable Betty DVD OF THE MONTH DESERT FLOWER RUBBER walks into his life. As Betty's THE KING’S SPEECH Released 4 May. $34.95 Released 4 May. $29.95 behaviour starts to get out $39.95 Bluray $49.95 Desert Flower tells how an Rubber is the story of of control, Zorg watches the After the death of his father African nomad overcame Robert, an inanimate tyre, woman he loves go slowly insane. Features and the scandalous abdication considerable odds and abandoned in the desert, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Béatrice Dalle. of his brother, Bertie – who unspeakable traumas to that suddenly and inexplica- THE DOUBLE HOUR has suffered from a debilitat- become an international bly comes to life. As Robert Released 11 May. $29.95 ing speech impediment all his modelling sensation. The roams the bleak landscape, Sonia and Guido meet on a life – is suddenly crowned inspiring tale of an extraordi- he discovers that he pos- speed date. They don’t say King George VI. With his nary, proud and brave sesses terrifying telepathic much: the attraction is country on the brink of war woman, Desert Flower offers a gripping plea to powers that give him the ability to destroy instinctive. But as they’re on and in desperate need of a leader, his wife stop the terrible and inhuman tradition of anything he wishes. At first content to prey the point of falling in love, arranges for him to see an eccentric speech female genital mutilation. on small desert creatures and discarded Guido dies. Sonia finds therapist, Lionel Logue. After a rough start, objects, his attention soon turns to humans. herself alone again, coping the two delve into an unorthodox course of CLUBLAND Leaving a swathe of destruction across the with a death for which she treatment, forming an unbreakable bond. Released 4 May. $24.95 desert landscape, Robert becomes a chaotic Shy Tim Maitland’s mother is force to be reckoned with. can find no sense. While Sonia’s past comes a waitress by day, and is a back to her, the reality around her starts to stand-up comedian by night. LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS break down. Who is Sonia really? SARAH’S KEY Released 4 May. $39.95. Blu-ray $44.95 When the beautiful Jill walks Released 4 May. $34.95. Blu-ray $39.95 into Tim’s life, things start to Maggie (Anne Hathaway) is JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX Paris, 1942. The Starzynski look up. Unfortunately, his an alluring free spirit who FEATURES family’s life is up-ended when mother is happy to stand won’t let anyone – or Released 5 May. French police burst into their between him and romance. anything – tie her down. $29.95 ea. (except Diva: $24.95 ea) apartment in the Jewish But she meets her match in Presenting six films from cult quarter to take them away. MADE IN DAGENHAM Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal), auteur Jean-Jacques Beineix: Paris, present day. Journalist $39.95 whose relentless charm Ip5 is a meditation about Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Rita O’Grady finds herself serves him well with the nature and friendship; Moon Thomas) lives in Paris with thrust into the limelight when ladies and in the cut-throat world of in the Gutter is a drama; her husband Bertrand and their daughter. she becomes the leader of a pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie’s Roselyne and the Lions is a While Bertrand prepares to renovate their strike by the women who sew evolving relationship takes them both by romantic journey across apartment, Julia researches a story on the upholstery at a Ford factory surprise, as they find themselves under the France; Locked-In Syndrome notorious Vel d’Hiv round ups of 1942. After in Dagenham, England – influence of the ultimate drug: love. tells the story of a stroke victim’s life struggle; learning that Bertrand’s family acquired the a strike that, thanks to the Mortal Transfer is a mix of psycho-thriller and apartment during the war, Julia’s curiosity efforts of management and THE CITY OF YOUR black comedy; and it’s the twentieth anniver- forces her to uncover the truth. unions to dismiss it, turns into a struggle over FINAL DESTINATION sary of the thriller Diva.

SOMEWHERE equal pay for women. Released 4 May. $39.95 Latin American writer Jules PIER PAOLO PASOLINI $39.95. Blu-ray. $44.95 INSPECTOR Gund only wrote one novel FEATURES Stephen Dorff and Elle MONTALBANO: over the course of his life, Released 11 May. $19.95 Fanning star in Sofia Coppola’s but it was one of those first witty and moving story about VOLUME 5 From the director of Salo Released 11 May. $49.95 novels so good that a second comes the final two films the bond between a father and wasn’t required for him to be his daughter. Actor Johnny Salvo Montalbano resides in a in the Trilogy of Life series fictional seaside town called regarded as one of the greats. (The Decameron, The Can- Marco is leading the fast-paced He passed away recently, lifestyle of a tabloid celebrity. Vigata and works with a team terbury Tales and Arabian of mixed abilities. Not only is and aspiring writer Omar Razaghi hopes to Nights). Canterbury Tales He’s comfortably numb with write an authorised autobiography of the his life of women and pills when his 11-year- he distracted by his staff, but tells bawdy stories which exotic visitors from other man. Alas, Jules’s closest family members celebrate every conceivable old daughter Cleo unexpectedly arrives at his have denied the request, after much debate. room at the legendary Chateau Marmont parts of Italy keep getting in form of sexual act with rich, earthy humour. the way of solving crime. He’s Features Laura Linney, Anthony Hopkins Arabian Nights tells of slaves and kings, hotel. Their time together encourages Johnny and Charlotte Gainsbourg. to re-question his life in ways he never impatient, he’s meticulous, and he’s totally potions, betrayals, demons and lovemaking expected. unique. Montalbano is back for a fifth season. in its myriad forms. DOUGLAS SIRK In celebration of the ‘Magnificent Obsessions’ season at ACMI Get these & other Douglas ON DVD 18 MAY Sirk classics on DVD today $34.95 for only $19.95 Offer ends 31 May 2011

“Entirely delightful” TIME OUT Influential Cinema from Around the Globe

DIRECTORSSUITE.COm.aU Readings Monthly May 2011 17 THE LAST OUTLAW Released 5 May. $29.95 This ground-breaking four-part miniseries details the life story of arguably one New Release CDs of Australia’s most infamous folk heroes – family man, larrikin, gentleman, horseman LAST OF THE COUNTRY and bushranger, Ned Kelly. GENTLEMEN Stars John Jarratt, Sigrid CD of the Month HELPLESSNESS BLUES Josh Pearson Thornton, Steve Bisley and Gerard Kennedy. Normally $26.95 Fleet Foxes Our special price for May $21.95 SPIRITED: SEASON 1 Normally $24.95 New ebooks Josh Pearson’s previous $34.95 Our special price for May $19.95 band, Lift to Experience, * Love at special prices From the producers of Vinyl also available $24.95 released one critically My Way Spirited comes , a Has anyone heard a band of acclaimed album, The romantic look at life and love such unique aural beauty? Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, after death with a rock and When introduced to their ten years ago. Pearson roll twist. This blackly funny 2008 self-titled debut, I felt finally returns with an album of gently- series stars Claudia Karvan, like I’d been washed in the picked country guitars and nearly-whispered Roger Corser and Matt King. river and reborn with a lyrics of love and loss. It’s chillingly fragile newfound faith in music. Finally, a sound of throughout, and a more heartbreaking listen THE BIG C complete originality. Sure you can hear you won’t find this year. It’s steeped in Released 4 May. $49.95 certain influences like The Band or Neil religious imagery; God and the Devil do Young, but one listen and you walk away with A woman who is told she has battle for the soul. Pearson is now a label- Before I Go To Sleep a sense of purity for a world that only their Stage 4 malignant melanoma mate of Nick Cave, The Dirty Three and S. J. Watson eyes see. The luscious, sometimes awkward decides to not tell anyone; Richard Hawley, and a more suitable label Paperback $29.95 instead she pursues an harmonies continue to sweep across this than Mute I can’t imagine. These are artists outrageous lifestyle at odds album, which opens with the introspective with a similar knack for evoking a powerful ebook $14.96 with her obsessive-compulsive Montezuma, raising questions of loneliness sadness without ever being sappy. teacher personality. Features and self that they then attempt to answer on Laura Linney and Oliver the following tracks, all the while raising more Apocalypse Platt. questions. Play this album from start to Bill Callahan finish, but take note of Helplessness Blues, Normally $24.95 THE SNOWMAN Lorelai and the eight-minute genius that is Our special price for May $19.95 Released 13 May. $34.95 The Shrine/An Argument. Album of the Though often unfairly In 1978 Jimmy Graham went Month ... Album of the Year! The Girl Who Would to Antarctica to teach Lou Fulco is from Readings Carlton miscast as a depressive, Speak for the Dead Texan troubadour Bill scientists survival skills on the Paul Elwork Callahan’s fourteenth ice. Three months later he Paperback $29.99 returned, agitated and studio album, Apocalypse, is paranoid, saying he stumbled not a vision of the end of ebook $14.99 across an illegal American days so much as a revelation of new fron- nuclear site and that the CIA Pop/Rock tiers. The spare poetry and seemingly had given him a chemical lobotomy. He WASTING LIGHT simplistic motifs that characterise his sound descended into madness. Unable to cope with Foo Fighters will be familiar to fans, but this latest song Making Trouble Robert Manne his behaviour, his wife fled with her two Normally $26.95 cycle – apparently recorded live – is packed Paperback $34.95 children. Thirty years later his daughter Juliet Our special price for May $21.95 with surprises: high lonesome surf guitar, woolly fuzz, cinematic funk and meandering tries to uncover the truth and reconnect with It’s true to say that I don’t ebook $14.96 what’s left of the man she called her father. often review such main- free jazz forms, arcadian flute solos, volumes stream releases for this of stormy distortion – and much more to be AMERICAN: newsletter. I often get my discovered here, I’m sure! THE BILL HICKS STORY pick of new Americana or Ryan McCarthy is from Readings Hawthorn $29.95 folk recordings, as is my Much more than a comedian, wish. The truth of the matter is that I do FIASCO Bill Hicks was and still is an love a chunky guitar sound and this, the My Friend the Chocolate Cake inspiration to millions. Foo Fighters’ seventh album of original $24.95 I Am Melba His timeless comedy tackled material, is a return to form for a band that Having begun playing Ann Blainey the contradictions of America wrote the book on melodic, guitar-driven together in 1989, My Paperback $27.95 and modern life; teasing rock. At first listen, the usual pop sensibili- Friend the Chocolate Cake apart the essence of religion, ties and instant single seem to be lacking, released their wonderful ebook $9.99 the dangers of unbridled but just persevere. What is on show here is self-titled debut 20 years government power and the double standards a foot-stomping, heart-pounding, fist- ago. Here they return with inherent in modern society. thumping, sing-it-loud-out-the-window-of- a tremendous new album, Fiasco. The your-car bunch of ball-busting songs that unlikely union of kitchen-sink piano tales, The Ottoman Motel TANGLED are as good as any Grohl has written. The vivid chamber orchestration and hell-raising Christopher Currie

Released 11 May. $39.95. Blu-ray $49.95 first single, Rope, is as great a guitar song as instrumental shenanigans is well known by Paperback $32.95 Disney presents a new twist you will hear. As the cover note states … now. Join us at our Carlton store on Friday on one of the most hilarious PLAY IT LOUD! LF May 6 at 6pm when My Friend the Choco- ebook $14.96 and hair-raising tales ever. late Cake launch this new album with a When the kingdom’s most I WANT THAT YOU ARE performance and signing afterwards. wanted bandit Flynn Rider ALWAYS HAPPY Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton hides in a mysterious tower, The Middle East the last thing he expects to Normally $26.95 DIRECTORS CUT find is Rapunzel, a spirited Kate Bush teen with 70 feet of magical golden hair! Our special price for May $21.95 Beautiful Thing Following this youthful Released 13 May. Price TBC. Available as a Sonia Faleiro Together, the duo sets off on a fantastic standard CD. Deluxe 3CD edition & vinyl. journey filled with laughter and suspense. Townsville band’s impres- Paperback $29.95 sive 2009 EP, Recordings of Six years ago, Kate Bush the Middle East, comes returned from her self- ebook $13.56 BLU-RAYS their first, long anticipated inflicted wilderness with a A host of great titles at cheap prices. Get in full-length album. This is a new album in Aerial, and on the action and light up that big screen TV! really gorgeous album from a group who now a follow-up is on the have, with the strength of their previous EP cards. The mysterious COMING SOON release, already established a reputation for songstress is to release Director’s Cut in May 18: True Blood: Season 3 their refined, lush, atmospheric indie folk mid-May. There is a twist, of course, as May 26: The Fighter sound, similar to that of the Fleet Foxes Director’s Cut is not actually an album of June 1: Black Swan and Bon Iver. The album is rather melan- new material. Instead, Kate revisits a June 8: Unstoppable, Alice choly and sparse in places (in a beautiful selection of tracks from her albums in Wonderland: Sixtieth way), containing an engaging concoction of The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, Anniversary harmonious folk, minimal instrumental a process that presents a fascinating portrait ebooks.readings.com.au June 15: 127 Hours ‘interludes’, jazzy snippets, subtle samples of an artist in a constant state of evolution. These special ebook prices only until 31.05.11 June 29: Gnomeo and Juliet from the Australian landscape and She has re-recorded some elements, while * And September is Star Wars month! cityscape, and billowing orchestral tracks. keeping the best musical performances of The Complete Saga is available on Blu-ray Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda each song. for the first time. 18 Readings Monthly May 2011

Last Night on Earth strong improvisational element. The brothers melBouRne Noah and the Whale Grigoryan get to strap turbo-chargers onto $21.95 Jazz their acoustics and trade licks with oud inteRnational This band is named after Gladwell master Joseph on some exciting world music jazz FeStival Noah Baumbach’s 2005 Julian Lage jams, as well as some jazz peices and the odd movie, The Squid and the $24.95 classically influenced Beatles cover. PB june 4-13 Whale. After two solid For those unfamiliar with 2011 indie folk albums, the Julian Lage, he was a bit of band are maturing with a child prodigy. Given his ROAD TO DAMASCUS their new release. The sound is reminiscent first guitar at age five (a Syriana Featuring of Belle and Sebastian and Arcade Fire, Fender Stratocaster no less), $26.95 especially apparent on the tracks Just Me he quickly developed so This is a curious but Sonny Before We Met and Life is Life, respectively. much so that by the age of eight he had extremely satisfying slice of The new record encapsulates the creative played with Carlos Santana. This is his world music fusion that RollinS (USA) growth of a band in their prime. second album and it’s dazzling from start to comes across very convinc- Michael Awasoga-Samuel is from Readings finish. The mixture of group and solo pieces ingly as a soundtrack to an Carlton really displays his formidable technique and, Arabic road movie. English coupled with his wonderful imagination, fusionists Jah Wobble and Nick Page mix it Sun Ra make this one of the jazz releases of the year. up with slide and surf guitars among the Whatever you do, don’t miss this one. aRkeStRa (USA) authentic Arabic strings percussion and Country Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton. occasional vocals. PB PAPER AIRPLANE Alison Krauss & Union Station ASHORE noRma Normally $26.95 June Tabor (UK) Our special price for May $21.95 Blues $24.95 WinStone Dust Bowl Tabor has been one of the In her first outing with Joe Bonamassa Union Station in seven leading lights on the $24.95 years, Alison Krauss leaves English folk scene and, like Solo album number 12 for the Raah behind her high profile Maddy Prior, has been a Joe has his fans all in a collaborations and returns huge influence on a lot of (AUS) flurry of praise: it’s his best PRoject to her bluegrass (albeit the current crop of female album to date. Many will twenty-first century bluegrass) roots. Union singers. Tabor and Prior even collaborated know his style of heavily Station are, as musicians, unparalleled and on the very enjoyable Silly Sisters album British-influenced blues the music on offer here transcends musical back in the mid 70s. Every couple of years, Play School’S rock and wailing guitar solos. Featuring boundaries. Songs by artists such as Jackson June Tabor re-emerges with a new set of guests John Hiatt, Vince Gill, and Glenn Big jazz Browne, Richard Thompson, Tim O’Brien dramatically performed and extremely well Hughes, the album is half covers and half and Peter Rowan are given the Krauss chosen and arranged songs from contempo- adventuRe originals. Joe will be hitting our shores in treatment and the acoustic Lay My Burden rary songwriters. This time round, she has May for an Australian tour. MW and much more ... Down will surely break your heart. Wel- collected songs thematically linked to the sea come back! LF and has beautifully reprised The Grey Funnel Line from the Silly Sisters era. PB FoR ticketS & Full PRogRam viSit melBouRnejazz.com I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive Folk & World Steve Earle RRAKALA Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu Standard edition $24.95. Also Out Deluxe 2CD edition $29.95. Normally $29.95 Vinyl $39.95 Our special price for May $24.95 This Month This highly anticipated new This new release from Moment Bends (Architecture in Helsinki), album from Grammy Gurrumul is by far the Modern Glitch (Wombats), Gathering Mer- award-winning country star most anticipated Australian cury (Colin Hay), Singers (Nouvelle Vague) Earle is his first album of release of the year. Rrakala Take The High Road(Blind Boys of Alabama) original material since will cement Gurrumul’s Neptune (Eliza Carthy), Oddities (Kate & 2007. While lyrically, it’s reputation and the Anna McGarrigle), Kosciuszko (Jebediah), not the most cheerful record you’ll ever hear, extraordinary acheivement generated by the Take Care Take Care Take Care (Explosions Earle’s songwriting continues to impress and overwhelming reception that greeted his in the Sky), Celebration Florida (Felice there are some beautiful tracks here. groundbreaking 2008 release, after making Brothers), Sketches from the Book of the Dead Production is handled by the equally the cover of Australian Rolling Stone and (Mick Harvey), Sign of Life (Bill Frisell), legendary T Bone Burnett. It also features bringing a truly independent recording Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (Beastie Boys). This Town, which he wrote for David (featuring songs in traditional language) to Simon’s fantastic HBO series Treme. And platinum status. Gurrumul has been able to Released May 6 keep an eye out for Earle’s debut novel move vast amounts of listeners worldwide Roses at the End of Time (Eliza Gilkyson), Melissa Whebell is from Readings Hawthorn and remain true to his artistic soul. Once Let Love In, The Boatman’s Call, Murder again, that incredibly moving voice wraps Ballads, No More Shall We Part (Nick Cave): HARD BARGAIN itself around some deeply felt lyrics con- All collectors’ editions with extra tracks. cerned with community and the natural Emmylou Harris world and spirit world. On Rrakala, Normally $26.95 Released May 16 Gurrumul has cast his net a little wider to Rome (Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi) Our special price for May $21.95 take in some extra stylistic instrumental SEW Deluxe Edition with DVD $29.95 Till It’s Gone (Ben Harper) textures, with his multi-instrumental talents There is so much to like Tell My Sister (Kate & Anna McGarrigle) adding drums and piano and overdubbing Rocket Science (Bela Fleck) about this new album harmonies. from Emmylou, starting Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton with just three musicians Released May 23 BAGS (including herself) coming Born This Way (Lady Gaga) Need a new tote bag? BAND OF BROTHERS Readings has a new range together to record a simple, unfussy bunch of lovely songs. So Slava & Leonard Grigoryan; Released May 27 of superior quality SEW all you have is guitar, bass, drums and Joseph & James Tawadros Codes & Keys (Death Cab for Cutie) $25.95 bags, handmade in occasional keyboard and banjo – and of course the unmistakable voice of Emmylou. This is an inspired pairing Coming 3 June Tanzania from recycled It all works so well, especially the title track of the two sets of brothers Suck It & See (Arctic Monkeys) materials, each one Hard Bargain, written by Ron Sexsmith, a (whose paths have crossed sadly neglected talent. A tribute to Gram many times before), all at Coming 10 June unique! Only $29.95 ea. Parsons and a farewell ballad to Kate the top of their game in Title TBC (Bon Iver) McGarrigle are both very touching; there’s their respective musical SEW is a development project genres. Joseph Tawadros is still riding high Need a new tote bag? Get a SEW bag, handmade in just a wealth of enjoyment here. Coming 17 June that employsTanzania HIV+ from women recycled materials, in each one unique! Only $19.95 on his The Hour of Separation, with its very Arusha, Tanzania. Alice Bisits is from Readings Malvern In Your Dreams (Stevie Nicks).

SEW is a development project that employs HIV+ women in Arusha, Tanzania. Miles Davis, Tom Waits, AT CARLTON, The Velvet Underground, HAWTHORN & The Rolling Stones, and more ! VINYL ST KILDA. Readings Monthly May 2011 19

drink or a shrink’. Well, I’m leaning more The Romantic Piano towards the drink after listening to their Concerto Vol. 53: release of Mahler Symphony No 10, and raise Reger & Strauss my glass to another stunning recording. The Marc-André Hamelin Classical CDs MSO perform Mahler exceptionally well; the depth of tone, the time taken over harmonic Hyperion. CDA67635. $33.95 century, a reconstruction of a votive Mass to changes and melodic lines that are allowed to Hyperion’s Romantic Piano the Virgin Mary, based on manuscripts and naturally unfold are all sublime. KR Concerto series has Classical CD fragments originating in an English Benedic- unearthed many rarely tine Abbey. The original manuscripts were Handel: performed works – some of the Month missing a Credo and a Benedicamus Domino, Music for the Royal more rewarding than Pages from a Secret so the trio invited English composer Gavin others. Reger’s Piano Fireworks/Water Concerto in F Minor, the highlight of this Journal: Orchestral Bryars to compose the appropriate settings, Music suites 1 & 2 Works by Richard Mills which sit very well with the mediaeval disc, deserves the attention it gets here. originals. This is a stunningly beautiful Graham Abbot & Tasmanian Marc-André Hamelin is among the most Richard Mills & MSO performance from this brilliant trio. PR Symphony Orchestra technically brilliant pianists alive, and a ABC Classics. 4764217. 2 CDs. $24.95 ABC Classics. 4764300. $26.95 perfect choice for this concerto, whose piano The latest recording from Bonjour Paris The first question that may part is complex and demanding. There is ABC Classics is a celebra- Albrecht Mayer be asked here is ‘does the much, including the dazzling piano work, to tion of our local interna- & Mathias Monius world need another remind one of Reger’s contemporary, tionally renowned com- Rachmaninov. Reger’s melodies are not quite Decca. 4782564. Normally $26.95 recording of Handel’s poser, the extraordinary Fireworks and the Water as hummable as Rachmaninov’s (not Our special price $21.95. Richard Mills. Featuring the Music necessarily a bad thing), but the themes are Limited stock at this price ?’ Probably not, but Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted the world certainly does need and appreciate strong and completely engaging. EM The mellow tone of by Mills, two CDs of orchestral works are music played with passion and that is what Albrecht Mayer has again given pride of place. Quirky in spots, lyrical you get here. I for one never tire of hearing Delius: come to serenade us. in others, it is a terrific example of what’s this music, and under the astute baton of Appalachia, The Song Principal oboist in the happening in Australian contemporary music Graham Abbot, the Tasmanian Symphony of the High Hills Berliner Philharmoniker today. And if those words scare you, don’t be Orchestra have delivered a recording that is a since 1992, this new solo BBC Symphony Orchestra and scared – it’s not just listenable, it’s engaging beautifully played homage to Handel. PR recording is completely French in its Chorus & Sir Andrew Davis and although modern, tuneful, with strong Chandos. CHSA5088. Normally $34.95 harmonic movement and the full gambit of repertoire. Favourite well-known works, Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Faure Sicilienne, are Rachmaninoff: Our special price $19.95. orchestral colours engaged. I’m biased and Symphony No. 2 Limited stock at this price think the MSO are awesome; so I will just say interspersed with lesser known ones by Francaix, Odermatt and D’Indy. Often it is / Lyadov: The This sort of music always that they continue to be fabulous here. seems to evoke vast, Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton said that German musicians cannot play Enchanted Lake French repertoire with the delicacy it Antonio Pappano sublime landscapes. The requires, but Mayer proves he’s up the EMI. 9494622. $19.95 titles of these works are challenge and with the Academy of St Martin Antonio Pappano continues what has been suggestive; but there is in the Fields, he presents a highly enjoyable an impressive career so far with this new something about the way Classical Special recording. KR recording. Beginning with Lyadov’s The melodies are subsumed into something Enchanted Lake, Pappano delivers a delicate grander and less focused that drives this asso- of the Month Romantic Violinist reading of this haunting minature. He moves ciation. The BBC Symphony, under Sir J.S. Bach: Daniel Hope effortlessly into a beautiful performance of Andrew Davis, seems to understand this 4779301. Normally $26.95 the second symphony of Rachmaninoff. The music well. These performances are very St Matthew Passion much about shimmering textures; through Rudolf & Erhard Mauersberger Our special price $21.95. nature of this piece can lead to an over-sen- Limited stock at this price timental Hollywood type performance, but which the warmth and tactility of various Berlin Classics. 0183902BC. Normally $65.95 instrumental timbres is allowed to speak, but Daniel Hope presents us Pappano never lets this happen. He delivers Our special price $29.95. without breaking the vast unity of the big with a new recording after magnificently. PR Limited stock at this price orchestral sound. EM the success of his Baroque This recording, under the Air, a homage to violin Górecki: The Three musical direction of Rudolf master and guru, Joseph & Erhard Mauersberger, is String Quartets Joachim (1831-1907). All masterful. As a result, the Royal String Quartet of the works featured are connected with listener is treated to a Hyperion. CDA67812. $33.95 him. The playing is superbly gentle, with beautiful, warm and Górecki’s fame owes almost great use of colour and dynamics. The powerful performance by the Dresden entirely to the enormous DVD Opera Sale everlasting favourite, the Bruch Violin Kreuzchor, the Thomanerchor Leipzig, popularity of his Symphony Concerto opens the recording, and Brahms, Readings is celebrating the new Gwandhausorchester Leipzig and soloists No 3. These string quartets, Dvorak, Schubert are featured, as well as two Opera Australia season by offering such as Peter Schreier, Theo Adam, Siegfried written originally for the works by Joachim himself. KR Vogel and Johannes Kunzel. Considered by Kronos Quartet, depart a large selection of opera DVDs on many to be among the best performances of dramatically from the tenderness and sale—at up to 50% off regular prices. Mahler: harmonic simplicity of the famous sympho- one of Bach’s true masterpieces, it will sit Symphony No. 10 Plus, purchase any opera-related proudly in any music lover’s collection. ny. While not a return to his early atonal DVD and you’ll go into the draw Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton Mark Wigglesworth & MSO works, these quartets are a retreat into ABC Classics. 4764336. Normally $26.95 something darker and less transparent. The to win a double pass to any opera A Worcester Ladymass Our special price $21.95. playing by the Royal String Quartet is during the season or a selection of Trio Mediaeval Limited stock at this price compelling, severe and full of conviction, DVDs from Opera Australia. ECM New Series. ECM 2166. $29.95 I saw the MSO perform and I would describe the music, which often On their fifth release on Mahler Symphony No 7 has a relentless, pulsing quality, in those ECM New Series, and their under Mark Wigglesworth same terms. There is much beauty here – first in four years, Oslo’s recently and heard it said particularly in the slower and more drawn- Trio Mediaeval have chosen after the concert, that ‘after out String Quartet No 3 – but it is beauty of a work from the thirteenth Mahler you either need a a more challenging kind. Evan Meagher is from Readings Hawthorn

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BEREFT Chris Womersley The Taste of River Water Winner of the Indie Award for Fiction 2011 cate kennedy Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2011 ‘Womersley writes with such Disarming, warm and always accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems compelling power it is barely make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses possible to put the book down.’ her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical — Debra Adelaide precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and interconnections between legacy, memory, motherhood and the LITTLE PEOPLE natural world, the poems in this exhilarating collection begin Jane Sullivan on the surface and then take us, gracefully and effortlessly, to a ‘A pure delight — I fell in love with far more thought-provoking place. Grounded in lived experience, this glorious novel from the very with all its mysteries and consolations, they resonate with a first page. Little People is vibrant storytelling at its charismatic best.’ passionate, sensuous honesty. — Toni Jordan

While stocks last, you’ll also get a copy of Cate THE PAPER GARDEN Molly Peacock Kennedy’s award-winning novel The World A beautifully illustrated biography Beneath free when you buy The Taste of River of an extraordinary eighteenth- century woman, and a fascinating Water — that’s one for Mum, and one for you! meditation on late-life creativity, The Paper Garden is ‘a blessed relief from the humdrum, a bright feather in a peacock’s tail.‘ — SMH

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