FREE MARCH 2014

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

THE LOST CHILD

Romy Ash on Suzanne McCourt’s debut Australian novel page 4

BIRDS OF AMERICA

Laura Jean McKay returns to Lorrie Moore’s early short-story collection

page 6

CHILDREN’S BOOK FESTIVAL page 2

NEW IN MARCH

SIRI SALLY VIKRAM THE BECK HUSTVEDT GREEN CHANDRA TURNING $21.95

$29.99 $16.99 $27.99 $34.95 page 18 $24.95 page 11 page 12 page 17 page 5

CARLTON 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 HAWTHORN 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 Acland St 9525 3852 READINGS AT THE STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA 328 Swanston St 8664 7540 See shop opening hours, browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au 2 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

News

CHILDREN’S BOOK FESTIVAL a chance to show off your expansive Find your way through the sticky maze general knowledge. The ILF Trivia Night and onto the lawn of the State Library of will be held on Thursday 3 April at the Victoria on Sunday 23 March, from 10am Preston City Hall, 284 Gower Street, to 4pm, for this year’s Children’s Book Preston. Tickets are $30 and bookings can Festival! There will be characters springing be made at trybooking.com/EIJC. Visit to life from the pages of famous books, indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au for giant word games, comic workshops and further information. loads more. A ton of your favourite writers and illustrators are going to be there too, THE STELLA PRIZE including John Marsden, Jackie French LONGLIST 2014 and Sally Rippin. The Festival is free, and The Stella Prize longlist for 2014 has everyone is welcome. Come down and join been announced. Celebrating Australian us for the book party. women’s contribution to literature, the $50,000 prize was awarded for the 25% OFF LONELY PLANET first time last year to Carrie Tiffany Back from summer holidays and already for Mateship with Birds. The 2014 planning your next trip? Luckily, the Stella Prize longlist is: Letter to George Readings’ Lonely Planet sale is on once Clooney, Debra Adelaide; Moving Among more, with 25% off all titles from 1 to 31 Strangers, Gabrielle Carey; Burial Rites, March. This fantastic offer includes travel Hannah Kent; Night Games, Anna Krien; guides, phrase books, activity guides and Mullumbimby, Melissa Lucashenko; The an array of pictorial inspiration. The sale Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane; Boy, Lost, is on at all Readings shops and online at Kristina Olsson; The Misogyny Factor, readings.com.au. Anne Summers; Madeleine: A Life of Madeleine St John, Helen Trinca; The Swan Book, Alexis Wright; The Forgotten Rebels THE SATURDAY PAPER of Eureka, Clare Wright; and All the Birds, The Saturday Paper is a new weekly Singing, Evie Wyld. The 2014 Stella Prize publication from the publisher of The will be awarded in Sydney on the evening Monthly and Quarterly Essay. Edited by of Tuesday 29 April. former Sydney Morning Herald journalist Erik Jensen, the paper will focus on news CLASSICAL SPECIAL and long-form journalism. The Saturday OF THE MONTH Paper will be stocked at all Readings shops from Saturday 1 March. For the entire month of March, Readings will offer a special price of $9.95 (reduced from $14.95) on all recordings from INDIGENOUS LITERACY the Helios label, the budget line of the FOUNDATION TRIVIA NIGHT prestigious Hyperion label. With over The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) 400 titles in this range, classical music Readings Monthly Trivia Night helps raise funds for vital lovers will be delighted with the fantastic Free independent monthly newspaper published by Readings Books, Music & Film literacy resources for remote Indigenous selection of music on offer, from the communities, aiming to increase symphonic, orchestral, baroque, chamber, Editor literacy levels and improve the lives and solo instrumental and vocal genres. This Belle Place opportunities of Indigenous children offer is only available in-store at our [email protected] living in isolated regions. Join RocKwiz’s Carlton, Hawthorn and Malvern shops, Brian Nankervis for a night of fun and and only while stocks last. Editorial Assistant Bronte Coates [email protected]

Advertising Ingrid Josephine [email protected] (03) 9341 7739

Graphic Design The Art Department Collective www.theartdepartmentau.com

Front Cover Cover illustration from Max by Marc Martin, published by Penguin this month

Contributors Romy Ash Laura Jean McKay

Readings donates 10% of its profits each year to The Readings Foundation: readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation Oslo Davis oslodavis.com

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS The final masterpiece from filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, Visit the Cinema Nova Bar Based on the incredible true story of Australian adventurer Robyn Davidson director of Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro Mia Wasikowska Adam Driver THE WIND RISES TRACKS ★★★★ 380 LYGON ST CARLTON www.cinemanova.com.au “evocatively rendered… “a vivid, at times fantastical view of a journey of“An incalculable ambitious thriller assisted Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, New York Post Japan between the wars” FEBRUARY 27 National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. spiritual rewards”by excellentHollywood performances” Reporter EmpireMARCH 6 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 3

March Events

REGINA LANE ON CHILDREN’S BOOK KEVIN 13 SAVING ST 23 FESTIVAL 2731 BURGEMEESTRE’S BRIGID’S Come along and enjoy an action-packed day TEEN DRAWING Through the lens of her Irish heritage and of huge fun for all those who love to read WORKSHOP and share stories. This festival is brought that of the local Indigenous people, Regina If you love to draw, or want to build your to you by the Wheeler Centre and the State Lane weaves together a lyrical narrative of skills, then this workshop is perfect. Kevin 26 Library of Victoria. song and story in Saving St Brigid’s. Burgemeestre illustrates and writes his own works using a variety of techniques such as Free, no booking required. Free, no booking required. Launch pen and ink, watercolour, acrylic, collage and Thursday 13 March, 6.30pm Sunday 23 March, 9am–4pm found-object sculpture. Readings Carlton State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne Entry is $25 per person (ages 11–17 only) and POETRY WITH includes a signed copy of Kevin’s novel, Kate. Please book on 9819 1917. 13 TOM PETSINIS COMEDIAN ROBYN DAVIDSON 26 XAVIER TOBY ON Monday 31 March, 4.30pm–5.30pm 2 ON TRACKS We’re delighted to launch a stunning new Readings Hawthorn collection of poetry, Breadth for a Dying MINING MY OWN Cinema Nova presents the acclaimed Word, from poet, novelist and playwright BUSINESS Australian author Robyn Davidson THE SATURDAY Tom Petsinis. In Mining my Own Business, Xavier Toby who will discuss the film adaptation of 31 PAPER takes you on a roller-coaster, laugh- her book Tracks, following a preview Free, no booking required. Launch out-loud ride through his time working Morry Schwartz’s new independent screening. Robyn will be joined at the Thursday 13 March, 6.30pm in admin as a ‘pretend’ engineer for an newspaper The Saturday Paper was launched event by photographer Rick Smolan. Readings Hawthorn Australian mining site. this month. Together with a selection of Entry is $25, or $23 concession. Please book contributors, editor Erik Jensen will discuss Free, no booking required. the importance of independent journalism, as at cinemanova.com.au. DARRELL PITT ON Launch Sunday 2 March, 3pm 20 THE FIREBIRD Wednesday 26 March, 6pm well as answer questions from the audience. Cinema Nova, 380 Lygon Street, Carlton The Clyde, Cardigan Street, Carlton MYSTERY Free, but please book on 9819 1917. Monday 31 March, 6.30pm Melbourne author Darrell Pitt’s love of SONGS AND PHILLIP TAYLOR comics, science fiction and all things geeky Readings Hawthorn 5 ON THE HAWKS’ runs through The Firebird Mystery, an 26 STORIES WITH TRIUMPHANT 2013 addictive adventure story and spellbinding KATE CEBERANO homage to the world of Victorian literature. Comedian and football fan Trevor Join us for a night of intimate soulful sounds and storytelling as musician Kate Ceberano Marmalade will launch High on Hawthorn: Free, no booking required. April Events Launch talks on her memoir, co-written with The Road to the 2013 Premiership, a Thursday 20 March, 6pm Tom Gilling, and plays a few songs. Kate’s rollicking good read in which Hawks Readings Carlton tragic Phillip Taylor tracks the team’s career has spanned three decades and in inspirational 2013 season. I’m Talking she shares their highlights and LUNCH & struggles. Visit readings.com.au/events for Free, no booking required. the booking link. Launch 21 AUSTRALIAN ART Wednesday 5 March, 6.30pm Readings Hawthorn WITH SASHA Entry is $40 per person and includes GRISHIN a signed first edition of I’m Talking. Wednesday 26 March, 6.30pm–8pm Sasha Grishin is a leading Australian art 2 RAFAEL EPSTEIN Palace Westgarth, 89 High Street, Northcote historian, art critic and curator, and he’s just 11 IN CONVERSATION released his magnum opus, Australian Art: A WITH JON FAINE History. Join him for lunch and an informal, TRICIA BRENNAN In Prisoner X Rafael Epstein uncovers the but informative, chat about the art that 27 ON MAP OF intriguing story of Ben Zygier, a young surrounds our everyday lives. Wine will be THE SOUL Australian swept up in international provided by Brown Brothers. intelligence. Join Rafael as he discusses the Tricia Brennan, author of Map of the Soul, book and his research with radio presenter Entry is $25 per person and will discuss the topic of ‘Are you living the MANU FEILDEL ON Jon Faine. includes lunch and wine. life that you were ultimately born to live?’. 2 FRENCH CUISINE The ticket price is redeemable if There will be an opportunity to join in a Free, but please book on 9347 6633. you purchase a copy of Australian Art at the discussion on life’s purpose. Meet one of the sweetest chefs of all time Tuesday 11 March, 6.30pm event. Please book on 9819 1917. over a glass of Brown Brothers wine. Free, but please book on 9819 1917. Readings Carlton Friday 21 March, 12.30pm–1.30pm French chef Manu Feildel will talk on his Readings Hawthorn Thursday 27 March, 6pm work in television, his life in a kitchen and Readings Hawthorn his new book French for Everyone. ANITA HEISS IN 12 CONVERSATION PETER OXLEY Entry is $10 per person. Ticket price 22 BOOK SIGNING TOM BAMFORTH is redeemable if you purchase a copy WITH BELINDA 27 ON THE of French for Everyone at the event. DUARTE Peter Oxley, the bass player for seminal FRONTLINES OF Please book on 9819 1917. Australian rock band Sunnyboys, will be Wednesday 2 April, 6.30pm Join author Anita Heiss and Belinda Duarte, signing copies of his new cookbook Teenage AID RELIEF Readings Hawthorn both respected for their work as Indigenous Kitchen Rampage, the perfect gift for anyone pioneers within Australia, for a conversation Deep Field: Dispatches from the Frontlines who’s about to vacate the coop. about Heiss’s new novel Tiddas, a story about of Aid Relief from Pakistan to Kazan, the MEL DOYLE ON Punjab to the Pacific follows the footsteps of five women who have been best friends for Free, no booking required. Tom Bamforth, an aid worker responding to 3 SUPER MUMS decades, and their changing lives. Saturday 22 March, 2pm–2.30pm the challenges of delivering humanitarian Join Mel Doyle for an honest discussion on Readings Carlton Free, but please book on 9347 6633. aid under extreme circumstances to some super mums, multi-tasking, and what actually Wednesday 12 March, 6.30pm of the most dangerous and difficult regions happens when you’re an author, television Readings Carlton of the world. presenter and mother, all at the same time. Wine will be provided by Brown Brothers. Free, no booking required. Launch Thursday 27 March, 6.30pm Entry is $30 per person and includes Readings Carlton wine as well as a signed first edition of Mel Doyle’s Alphabet Soup. Please book on 9819 1917. For more information and updates, please visit the events page at readings.com.au/events. Thursday 3 April, 6.30pm Please note bookings do not necessarily guarantee a seat and some events may be standing Readings Hawthorn room only. 4 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

New Australian Writing

Suzanne McCourt’s debut novel, The Lost Child, is set in Burley Point, a quiet fishing town on Australia’s wild southern coast. Here, McCourt talks with Romy Ash about writing her young protagonist, Sylvie, and constructing the troubled narrative of a small town and a missing child.

The Lost Child Romy Ash interviews Suzanne McCourt about her debut novel

Suzanne McCourt. Photograph by Peter Derrett he Lost Child is a quiet epic, father through divorce when I was five, spanning a decade of immense and his early death when I was barely out change in the lives of its of my teens – pain which I’d long repressed out underground rivers and caves. There happen to strangers; in country towns characters and the small rural and denied.’ She allowed herself to listen are swamps and lagoons that fill and they happen to people you know.’ There Ttown of Burley Point where the novel is to Sylvie’s voice, a voice she’d ‘been given disappear and reappear; reedy soaks in is a grand scope to The Lost Child, and it set. This is a book that took over 10 years years before’. paddocks, fenced to stop sheep and cattle tackles big issues – post-traumatic stress to write, and Suzanne McCourt says, ‘in Writing in a child’s voice is drowning.’ She didn’t keep the town’s disorder, domestic violence, the limited the way of many first novels’, she ‘let the constraining; there are difficulties in real name, saying she found she ‘couldn’t options for women in the 1950s – but these story unravel without a lot of planning conveying information about other write freely if constrained by reality’. She never feel like capital ‘I’ issues; rather, and structuring. Initially I had a vague characters. McCourt says she came to says that she sometimes returned to the they are all filtered through the character idea that I was writing about divorce and realise she had ‘unconsciously chosen a town, looking for authenticity, but instead of Sylvie, and centred in family. Sylvie’s a child’s longing for a father. I also had a constraint that exactly matched an area of found the opposite. She needed distance mother is crippled with acute anxiety after sense of an ending, which I seem to need deep interest – the way we construct our from reality to write: ‘Burley Point is not Dunc, Sylvie’s older brother, goes missing, in order to be able to trust such a lengthy surface truths while another very different Beachport, and Sylvie is not me.’ but Sylvie rallies against the conservative and unpredictable process. As the novel world lies beneath’. This is a theme that The Lost Child is set in post-war options available to her and right from the progressed and deepened, I often felt I was runs deeply through the book, where the 1950s, and McCourt captures an incredible beginning attempts to write a new future, wrestling an octopus with tentacle limbs.’ small town setting, even the earth the town naivety in Burley Point’s reaction to one where girls get to be heroes. And if I Not that McCourt’s novel resembles this is built on, harbours its own secrets. change and development. Sylvie’s father, were an eagle with an eagle eye, could I fly tentacle-limbed sea beast; rather, McCourt The landscape McCourt evokes Mick, is the only voice of dissent, the only high enough to see the Coorong, and Dunc in has created a vivid world, and a story told is menacing; the environment threatens to the city? Could I sweep down and rescue him through the precise eye of Sylvie, who sweep a child out to sea, and snakes lurk in my eagle feet? … when the story begins is only five. in the underbrush where the ground itself McCourt’s book tackles themes of In 2000, McCourt won a is unstable. It’s riddled with caves and ‘… the small town setting, ‘loss and resilience, guilt, shame and blame, Writers Victoria mentorship with Andrea soak holes – the land is a trickster. But the even the earth the town and the power of landscape and community Goldsmith, who suggested she was writing environment is also the town’s livelihood; to nurture and save’. McCourt says, three novels, not one. McCourt says, ‘As Burley Point is a fishing town, but there is built on, harbours its ‘Aristotle theorised that we tell ourselves part of the re-drafting process, Sylvie may are hints the ground below might offer stories until we arrive at a version of life, well have been left on the cutting-room oil, and with it the chance of a new life. own secrets.’ or ourselves, that gives us power over our floor had it not been for the death of my The landscape McCourt depicts is also world. There are estrangements in my mother, followed over the next eight heartbreakingly beautiful. This is a book family that go back generations; perhaps months by the death of three other close where all the birds, animals, plants – even hint that the march of change could have in The Lost Child I’m drawn, in part, to family members.’ McCourt says the book the creatures that lurk in the rock pools long-reaching consequences, beyond the finding different ways of loving?’ On this originally began with the words, My father – are precisely named, and rendered with quick economic benefits. McCourt says, idea of imagination working with memory, has gone. He has taken his brown skin and what reads as love. The characters’ lives ‘Burley Point is a microcosm of generally McCourt says, ‘it’s almost an alchemical flashing eyes, his laughs and shouts and are set against this rich mosaic of flora and conservative attitudes that exist throughout process, the great mystery of art’. silences. He has taken his beer-man smell, fauna. Australia, particularly rural Australia. his fishy stink, his whiskers in the basin … McCourt grew up in a similar There is always a struggle between the Romy Ash is the author of Floundering, her Here, Sylvie’s voice is strong and assured, town, the tiny fishing village of Beachport enlightened view and self-interest.’ first novel, which was shortlisted for the Miles just as it is in the finished novel. in the south-east of South Australia. McCourt also does a wonderful Franklin, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and The Lost Child grew from She says, ‘It is a strange and beautiful job of capturing the intimacies of small- Prime Minister’s Literary Award, among McCourt’s crippling experience of grief, place. Over thousands of years, waters town 1950s life: ‘Growing up in the country others. She was awarded the SMH Best Young and through that she says, ‘an older, deeper have seeped into the ground, eroding keeps you closer to people’s lives; there Australian Novelists of the year award for 2013. grief began to surface – the loss of my weaknesses in the limestone and carving are fewer places to hide. In cities tragedies READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 5

New Fiction Mark’s News and views from Readings’ managing director, Mark Rubbo Say Fiction Book of the Month

Melbourne is one of five UNESCO Cities of Literature, inducted in 2008. One of the pitches THE BLAZING WORLD to obtain this status was the vibrancy of Melbourne’s bookselling landscape – since that Siri Hustvedt time at least 10 bookshops have closed within the City of Melbourne, with many more Hodder. PB. Was $29.99 closed in the suburbs and regional areas. Six years hence, the State Government and City of $24.95 Melbourne are about to announce a jointly funded office for the City of Literature to manage To put it plainly, The Blazing World lives up to its title and and promote Melbourne’s UNESCO status. No doubt, many booksellers will be hoping that burns the page away. Siri Hustvedt’s new novel is an their future will be a priority for the new office. A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of art-world satire with a genuine emotional resonance and sense booksellers with the City of Melbourne Council. Organised by Councillor Jackie Watts, of longing, eluding similar novels that strike off a shot at the who holds the Knowledge City portfolio, the purpose of the meeting was to inform City of grotesquerie of the occasionally vainglorious art industry (think, Melbourne booksellers of what the city could do for them. Dr Watts was emphatic about for example, of the messianic artist in Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island). the positive role that bookshops played in the cultural and intellectual life of this city and The art world is, to say the least, low-hanging fruit. assured the assembled booksellers that she was on their side. Council staff outlined the kinds The Blazing World is a biographical account of fictional New York artist Harriet of support on offer for small business, ranging from grants, to promotion and mentoring Burden, mostly referred to as Harry, compiled by editor I.V. Hess as a collection of programs. Things were all well and good until Dr Watts was asked whether she and other articles, essays and extracts from the artist’s labyrinthine diary. Harry came up in the councillors were, or would consider, taking a more proactive role to ensure that Melbourne art scene of the 1970s but withdrew by the 80s partly because she had been unjustly kept its bookshops. For the moment, she said, all Council could offer was its generic support overlooked in favour of lesser male colleagues. In the 90s, the artist began to create a programs for business. ‘Was the Council aware of the number of bookshops that had closed series of works that encapsulated the rejection she experienced in her early career – in the City of Melbourne in recent years?’ called out one bookseller. Another asserted that three installation works each with a different male ‘mask’ as a front, to ‘not only expose the Council was disingenuous in its support, only paying lip service to the booksellers and the antifemale bias of the art world, but to uncover the complex workings of human actually ‘didn’t give a toss’. Some booksellers then talked wistfully about the support that all perception and how unconscious ideas about gender, race and celebrity influence a levels of government give bookshops in France, with French parliament announcing an $18 viewer’s understanding of a work of art’, as Hess explains it. million package to help book retailers, and another $14.5 million to assist bookshops with The searing works, which are brilliantly depicted in overlapping cash flow and in the transfer of bookselling businesses. Dr Watts responded that initiatives descriptions, outgrow the brief and become complex tangles of Harry and the such as these would require adoption of policies not just by local government. other artists’ personas, ‘hermaphroditic’ melds that echo up to the surface, Last month my dear friend, writer Boyd Oxlade, died. A dropout from Monash reverberating the fictional doubles of a fictional artist in a staged biography. The University in the early 1970s, Boyd proudly led a varied life and spurned the idea of a chameleonic shifts between the voices of Harry, her partner, children and friends conventional career. He spent a number of years as a cook in a rock venue and as a grave that Hustvedt achieves are astonishing, but it is the ear for subtleties of tone and digger at the Melbourne General Cemetery – these were a source of inspiration for his uncanny resemblance to art historians and journalists that give chills. great comic novel, Death in Brunswick, recently republished as a Text Classic. Boyd has left Matthew Benjamin is from Readings St Kilda us a great legacy.

protagonist who refuses to fit the Australian prescribed mould. She is a fire spark, just From the type who will burrow herself deeply the THE LOST CHILD within the reader, and be not lost at all. Suzanne McCourt Belle Place is the Editor of Readings Monthly Text. PB. $29.99 Books Martin Shaw, THE SECRET MAKER Readings Books Division Manager The protagonist of Desk Suzanne McCourt’s OF THE WORLD debut novel, The Lost Child, Abbas El-Zein is Sylvie, a sharp-witted but UQP. PB. $19.95 Well, it behoves me to mention, first of all, the latest work by one of Readings’ own , vulnerable young girl. Living The stories in The Secret namely, children’s book buyer Emily Gale, who has penned two books for younger readers: in the small fishing town of Maker of the World span Eliza Boom: The Explosive Diary and Eliza Boom: Fizz-tastic Diary. Having witnessed Burley Point, her father is different time periods, firsthand her agony at having to order her own book for the shops, all I can say is that she violent and angry, her mother brooding transporting readers across ordered very conservatively for what will surely be an immensely popular new series. and distant. After her adored older the world, from Lebanon to This month also marks the (gulp!) twentieth anniversary of my employment brother Dunc goes missing under Australia, to China. We meet a at Readings. That’s a lot of new releases I’ve seen in my time! But for those like me with mysterious circumstances, Sylvie blames mayor facing down scandal, a bookselling in their blood, the curiosity and excitement about new fiction and non-fiction herself, and flails to find someone, or priest welcoming his congregation, and a never really ebbs, which is why we just keep going and going and going … something, to buoy her. geographer in ancient Turkey. Each of these First up this month, I would have to note the publication of Paul Toohey’s Situated on the wild coast of stories is also a ghost story. While no spooks Quarterly Essay entitled That Sinking Feeling: Asylum Seekers and the Search for the southern Australia, the town teems with actually appear, Abbas El-Zein’s characters Indonesian Solution. Not that the issue is at all a new one, but the Orwellian doublespeak movement through Sylvie’s eyes. Stretches are inevitably haunted by regret or we now hear on an almost daily basis to legitimise current practices on our borders would of beach with hidden blowholes and thick memories, usually embodied by figures from seem to represent a particular nadir in this country’s democracy – investigative journalists bush hiding snakes and birdlife both their past. In ‘Fields of Vision’, a sniper in like Toohey are about all we have to get closer to the truth. A potentially more positive note scare and provide comfort. To bring the Beirut picks off targets with a machine-like will be struck by Masha Gessen’s analysis of the Pussy Riot phenomenon in Words Will landscape in this close to her protagonist detachment, yet as he works he is plagued Break Cement, as the women involved have now won their freedom; though, democratic is a good trick by McCourt; the brimming, by thoughts of a girl he once saw as a prospects for Russia remain dim I fear, particularly for all the propaganda success the coiling environment neatly mirrors Sylvie’s teenager. In ‘Yellow River’, a man fishing recent Sochi sideshow will no doubt reap. A final political book also worth mentioning: tumultuous home life, allowing another dead bodies from the Yellow River in China 774 ABC’s Rafael Epstein, with Prisoner X, digs deep into the murky tale of the Australian layer of expression. recalls once pulling a living woman out of Mossad operative Ben Zygier. Epstein reveals new information from the case, and the McCourt’s writing is assured and the water: ‘He had backstroked with the events surrounding his death in 2010 in an Israeli high-security prison cell. sinuous, the voice of Sylvie moving with other arm, slowly, awkwardly, her backside a In terms of fiction, March is largely a month of much-loved authors returning equal measure between the rough and sliver of warmth on his freezing belly, her with much-anticipated books. Lorrie Moore publishes her first new short-story collection tumble of a child’s perspective and clipped, breast a tiny protuberance in the palm of his in 15 years with Bark; Siri Hustvedt delivers a major new novel with The Blazing World; shrewd observations: ‘... People don’t hand, the beating of her heart fragile on his and Karen Joy Fowler, author of the 2004 bestseller The Jane Austen Bookclub, has a novel really want to know if you’re sick. Or that wrist.’ There is something fable-like that is already getting a rather ecstatic early reception – the suitably titled We Are All fathers burn houses.’ Sylvie is dynamic, inherent in El-Zein’s prose, aiding a sense Completely Beside Ourselves. as quickly sending herself down a well of timelessness. Locally, and as is only appropriate, we celebrate the eightieth birthday of David of guilt and insecurity over her brother’s At times the stories feel disjointed; Malouf in style: a new (and exquisite) poetry collection, Earth Hour, and a collection of disappearance as she can whip into a rage El-Zein has a habit of dropping you into a personal essays, The Last Place – both of which I’m happy to say Readings will be able to against her absent father or wilting mother. new country, a new situation, only to yank offer as signed editions. An inspiration for writers and readers alike, let’s hope David still McCourt has afforded Sylvie a witty sense you out before reaching a clear resolution. has many more books in him yet! of humour, and despite the bleakness This is a frequent problem with short- Finally, from Sasha Grishin and the veritable Miegunyah Press: a magnificent new surrounding her, she glimmers. fiction collections, yet fortunately El-Zein volume entitled Australian Art: A History. Our reviewer describes it as an ‘an important The Lost Child runs deeper and also makes full use of the form. In some and good-looking contribution to the understanding of Australian art’, notable in particular more darkly than a simple, small-town of the strongest stories, such as ‘Respect’, for its scope and the collaborative approach the author has taken, from consulting with domestic story, and though not quick- we’re presented with the kind of narrator tribal elders for the Indigenous section, to engaging with art professional respondents for paced, Sylvie captivates. From an ordinary the contemporary chapters. It looks set to be the standard work for many years to come. child, McCourt has finely carved a Continued on page 7 6 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

Essays Birds of America Laura Jean McKay returns to Lorrie Moore’s 1998 short-story collection

eading Lorrie Moore for the frankly’; ‘She’s a real dog, he said cattily’; I’ve tried and failed to pinpoint second time is a different ‘I like a good sled dog, she said huskily’. Just other writers who tap at the funny experience to reading her for as you have finished snorting at ‘Would you bone quite like Moore. David Sedaris is the first. Not just because of like a soda? he asked spritely,’ Moore brings marvellously comic, but he doesn’t drop Rthat extra skin of insight, though there’s in another refrain, ‘She missed her mother one-liners like Moore in her story ‘What that. Once you know Moore, you also know the most,’ a reference to the double death You Want to Do Fine’ with ‘It wasn’t true that she’s very likely to wreak havoc on by car crash of the narrator’s parents. In the what they said about bees. They were the lives of her characters: a woman who collection’s most infamous story, ‘People not all that busy.’ And George Saunders’ is holding a baby one minute will fall off a Like That Are the Only People Here’, about hilarious stories seem to be told from picnic bench and kill it the next; a ghost in a baby’s cancer diagnosis, Moore writes: the distance of some future time. Oddly, a roof will turn out to be an attic-squatting Moore’s style reminds me most of Jacques teenager; a country court judge will reveal Now, suddenly, alternative medicine Lacan’s, that fiercely original psychiatrist that she is having an affair ‘with a man who seems the wacko maiden aunt to the Nice famous for slapping the back of his is not dyslexic, and once in a while, Jesus Big Daddy of Conventional Treatment. psychoanalytic discourse with wordplay Christ, she needs that’. How quickly the old girl faints and gives and puns. Of course, I never actually get I re-read Birds of America white- way, leaves one just standing there. Lacan’s gags, but Moore’s puns, utterly knuckled, resenting anything and anyone Chemo? Of course: chemo! Why by all getable, are as astounding in serious Lorrie Moore. Photograph by Joyce Ravid who took me away from the stories. means: chemo. Absolutely! Chemo! literary fiction as an analyst who makes Moore’s prose is exquisite and she is duly jokes. It’s as though Moore is winking at Lorrie Moore plays, but not with praised for it. Critics call her Chekhovian. For the serious Antipodean writer, you through the text, hissing, ‘It’s not true! us. She seems to subscribe wholeheartedly But what grabs and holds me is that Moore this can be a surprise: are you allowed to It’s a story!’ to one of Kurt Vonnegut’s tips on writing a is funny. Extraordinarily funny. And she write a funny short-story collection about The stories in Birds of America good story: that every character should have doesn’t make jokes, she puns. Like her failing relationships, sick babies and cancer? flock together, a collection flying in ‘awful things happen to them – in order that similes and some of her characters, Moore Some still say ‘no’, and Moore’s formation. But Moore, who will release a the reader may see what they are made of’. In pushes her wordplays over the cliff and style often falls on unamused ears. Adam new collection, Bark, this month, describes Birds of America, we are page by page faced waves them down so that the lives of her Mars-Jones, reviewing her collected works them merely as a round-up. The title is with painfully witty revelations: about the protagonists become as tragic as a dad (of which Birds of America is included) from John James Audubon’s The Birds of characters, about ourselves, and about events joke at a funeral – summoning the sort of in the Guardian, complains that ‘most of America, a man in the habit of killing birds that we might not have been brave enough, hysterical relief that is part guffaw, part the outgrowths on Moore’s prose, begging before he painted them – so that they or had the humour, to confront. As a doctor sob. I don’t read for humour, but I do read to be sanded down, are wisecracks, puns would stay still, one supposes. In a similar tells a cancer patient in the story ‘Real Estate’, for beauty and horror and Moore is all and jokes’. Later he writes, ‘It’s a bad way, Moore pins her art to the wall and ‘“The only way to know absolutely everything that: she quips and in the next line she’ll bargain because she cheats herself and takes pot shots at it, inviting the reader to in life is via an autopsy.”’ rip out your heart. her readers of something that had a real do the same, just as the narrator in ‘Dance Laura Jean McKay is the author of Holiday in Scattered through the story chance of being original and fierce.’ In this in America’ instructs her young students Cambodia, a short-story collection that explores ‘Community Life’, for example, are Tom thinking, a writer can’t be ‘original’, ‘fierce’ that dance is ‘the purest metaphor of tribe the electric zone where local and foreign lives Swifties – puns that are made through and funny. But Moore’s work is all of that. and self. It’s life flipping death the bird. I meet. She is a PhD student at the University of dialogue: ‘This hot dog’s awful, she said What to do? make this stuff up.’ Melbourne. www.laurajeanmckay.com. A Mad and Wonderful Thing Belle Place interviews Irish writer Mark Mulholland about his debut novel, A Mad and Wonderful Thing, the story of an IRA sniper in the 1990s

ou’re from Dundalk, where deadly. They did it for Ireland. Along Johnny is described as a good person To ground the novel as close as possible – your novel is set, which with the excitable or vulnerable who will who does bad things, and Johnny himself in a work of fiction – to reality, I am loyal to explains your rich portrayal march under a flag and fight, history has says that it is the Irish way to be ‘cursed real events as they historically happened. of the setting, but what drew gathered a long series of calm and quiet to have two views on everything’. Is it The sniper killings are all real events; those youY to explore this particular historical people, intelligent thinkers, intellectuals, important to you that readers reach their men did die. Killing by a high velocity .5 territory in a novel, and how much poets, etc. who have lifted the gun for own conclusions of right and wrong? And calibre round is a brutal event and can only personal experience of The Troubles did nation or cause. establish where the line exists? be done by someone of extreme conviction you have to draw on? Absolutely. It is not for me to judge, to and violence. And yet, despite his I was born in 1966 and grew up in a town Johnny Donnelly, your protagonist in preach, or even to lead or explain. My role complications and brutality, Johnny is an on the Irish border, the base for much IRA A Mad and Wonderful Thing, lives a as a fiction writer is to present a conflict endearing boy. The street name change isn’t activity during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. For double life: he is both a dreamer and a through story, to detail the choices taken, a big thing and there is only one. And that all of my early life, a battle surrounded sharply trained IRA sniper. In your novel, and to write of the consequences. It is for is only for a simple, and perhaps personal me. It was an odd kind of battle, too, as Irish myths and legends allow these two the reader to analyse events and choices, reason. The settings and locations in the much of it was hidden; most had no idea worlds to intersect, and indeed, provide and to make judgements. Although A Mad novel are all real, but Cora’s home in River what was going on. Fiction is a slippery context for Johnny to make sense of his and Wonderful Thing is a peculiar tale, the Níth Terrace is an invention. This terrace is thing when aligned so closely to actual belief systems – why were these ancient theme is a common and universal call. And modelled on a real street, in that location. history, but I wanted to write of those stories so important to the characters in Johnny represents the choice to fight, to Mad as it is, I was uncomfortable locating who got involved in what the Irish call your novel? go to war, and to kill. Cause is a complex a dramatic event, albeit a fictional event, by the ‘Troubles’ and what activists call the For Johnny, the old tales romanticise motivation and within it are many conflicts somebody’s actual, real house. That may be ‘Struggle’, and others call ‘Terrorism’. It’s the defence of Ulster [a province in the and contradictions. Right and wrong silly; but, well, there you go. an odd thing, and many were not who north of Ireland] against invaders, and are different things, at different times, to one would imagine an IRA gunman or they give credence to the joining of an different people. Finally, Johnny is a voracious reader and bomber to be. Some were hoodlums, and old and noble cause. They lend a sense of I’ve read that you’re the same – what’s on some were gentle people with otherwise magic and adventure to the whole thing. You’ve carefully included real historical your reading list at the moment? normal, quiet lives. There was no ‘type’. And they help to justify the killing. For events, the timing and location of I live in France and so make trips For some it was about sides, a calling from me, introducing the old myths and tying particular sniper attacks, for one example, home to ravage bookstores and fill the a very basic us and them. Others would them to the story and characters – the with fiction. Conversely, I’ve read that you car. My immediate stack includes: have been involved in a sort of criminality story of Johnny mirrors the ancient tale renamed particular Dundalk streets, such Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his anyway, as that was their want. Others of Cúchulainn, another boy from Dundalk as the one where Cora lived, as you were Emissary, Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of were damaged or carried some grievance – allows me to show that the human uncomfortable using a real person’s home Mary, George Johnson’s Fire in the Mind, or wound. Others went along for the fundamentals dramatised in legends in your narrative – how did you allow for Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue, John adventure. But the remainder were the haven’t changed. We still kill and die for these sources to intersect, and decide on Moriarty’s Invoking Ireland and Eowyn committed and the true, and they were the same reasons. the parameters of each? Ivey’s The Snow Child. READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 7

Continued from page 5 International perhaps only sustainable within the short form – as a construction worker races BARK through an Indonesian jungle in a four- Lorrie Moore wheel drive, we slowly become aware of Faber. PB. Was $29.99 the horrific situation he’s in. It’s here, in $24.95 writing like this, that The Secret Maker of the World reaches true heights. Lorrie Moore fans rejoice. Her first new Chris Somerville is from Readings Carlton collection of stories in 15 THE YELLOW PAPERS years is here and reading it will remind you of why you Dominique Wilson fell in love with her corrosive Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 wit in the first place. Darker Do you dare... An exceptionally funny account Let a girl join your cricket team? of the Shteyngart family’s escape Melbourne-based and more overtly political than Moore’s Fight for your friends? in 1979 from Leningrad to the consumerist independent press much-celebrated Birds of America, this slim Risk everything to save your family? promised land of the USA, and the author’s Transit Lounge has a volume prickles and crackles with the transformation from asthmatic Soviet An exciting new series of action-packed toddler to 40-something Manhattanite particular interest in works cruelty inspired by strained relationships: a adventures in Australian history. with a memoir to write. that explore the connections mother attempts to navigate life and between East and West, and romance with a mentally ill son; a wife this latest release, with a receives notification of her divorce in the narrative that moves between characters in mail while still living with her husband; a Australia and China, certainly fits this brief. casual meeting at a dinner party turns ugly The Yellow Papers is Dominique Wilson’s when the upcoming election is mentioned. first novel but she has published several Yet, in typical Moore fashion, even as these short stories and was founding managing encounters leave you heart-stricken you’ll editor of Wet Ink, a magazine devoted to inevitably find yourself smiling. new writing. Moore’s use of humour is The Yellow Papers spans 100 underhanded, her ‘jokes’ sneaking up on you years, shifting between several countries in clever, unexpected ways: ‘Although Kit and following characters over generations; and Rafe had met in the peace movement, Spalding Quibble ruled the roost. amazingly, Wilson fits this epic scope into a marching, organizing, making no-nukes He shared it with no other. reasonably sized, 350-page novel. She does signs, now they wanted to kill each other. But then his parents introduced a brand new baby brother. The spirit of coming together: authentic Italian this skilfully by passing over decades and They had become, also, a little pro-nuke.’ food rituals and family recipes. Featuring 110 trusting the reader to fill in the gaps. At the The final story of the collection, ‘Thank You Uh oh. recipes, from everyday meals to elaborate heart of the novel is the character of Chen for Having Me’, is brilliantly funny. A mother feasts to feed a crowd and sweet treats for special occasions. This book will soon become Mu, born in China but sent to America when and daughter attend a very strange wedding A picture book about love (and war) from a well-thumbed volume in your collection as she was seven. As a teenager he is forced that is gatecrashed by a bikie gang who’ve the award-winning author of Pearl Barley you come together to cook and eat with your and Charlie Parsley, The Dreadful Fluff loved ones. to flee and by chance ends up in outback reportedly eaten ‘a hell of a lot of Twinkies’. and Noah Dreary. Australia. We then follow several other I have a real soft spot for Moore’s narrators characters throughout the century, lingering and this collection proves no exception. In on a forbidden relationship between a ‘Thank You for Having Me’, the mother’s white Australian and a Chinese woman, attitude toward her teenage daughter is a both of whom are married to other people. delight – long-suffering and fearful, tender Although impeccably researched, and awe-struck – and Moore’s tactics for the writing was a little passive in parts, dealing with their difficult, yet loving, and I found some of the characters, and relationship are hilarious. their relationships, hard to connect with These depictions of relationships because of this. Chen Mu, however, is – between mothers and daughters, Wilson’s most fleshed out character husbands and wives, old friends – and the and his presence is affectionately felt problems that arise is also what lay at the throughout the novel, even when he is not heart of Birds of America and it’s easy to part of the immediate narrative – I was see how Bark will fit within the context of genuinely moved by his fate. Moore’s work. Let’s hope we don’t have to Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton wait another 15 years for the follow-up. Bronte Coates is the Online and Readings THE WEAVER FISH Monthly Assistant Robert Edeson Fremantle Press. PB. $26.99 A MAD AND Cambridge linguist Edvard WONDERFUL THING Tøssentern, presumed dead, Mark Mulholland reappears after a balloon Scribe. PB. $29.99 crash. When he staggers in It’s a strange irony that from a remote swamp, Bernard McGinn died of gravely ill and swollen natural causes just a few beyond recognition, his months or so back; Mcginn colleagues at the research station are was part of an IRA group of overjoyed. But Edvard’s discovery about a snipers based in South rare giant bird throws them all into the Armagh, Northern Ireland, on path of an international crime ring. the Irish border. Between 1990 and 1997 they terrorised the British army and police, TIDDAS killing seven soldiers and two police. Johnny Anita Heiss Donnelly, the central character in Mark S&S. PB. $29.99 Mulholland’s stunning first novel, A Mad Five women, best friends for and Wonderful Thing, is also a sniper for the decades, meet once a month IRA. Johnny is smart, charming and to talk about books, life and attractive – all the young women in his small love. Dissecting one town are in love with him. When Johnny another’s lives seems the was six, his Dad made a wrong turn and the most natural thing in the family were stopped at a British checkpoint world – but each woman where the soldiers humiliated his father and harbours a complex secret. When their terrified his family. It was an incident that circle begins to fracture, is their sense of Johnny didn’t forget, though his anger had sistahood enough to keep it intact? How little direction until a teacher, Delaney, took well do these tiddas really know one a shine to the smart, restless young man. another? 8 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

A milestone publication to celebrate a milestone occasion What I Ed Moreno david Loved Readings Carlton HOUR OF THE STAR Clarice Lispector & Benjamin Moser (trans.) Penguin UK. PB. $19.99 My favourite books hook me with their first lines: Margaret Atwood’s A collection of essays and malouf Surfacing, for example, or Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, personal reflections from Limited signed or Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The best deliver copies available David Malouf an uninterrupted flow of intriguing sentences, beginning to end. to celebrate his 80th birthday. Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star does this in a brutal, disconcerting way, while conveying its story through a scrim of self-consciousness. It is bizarre and unsettling, but full of gems; it is bleak but funny, and it begins with these fantastic lines:

There’s so much more at ‘All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was /randomhouseau randomhouse.com.au born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began.’ It’s an unusual way to begin the story of Macabéa, a poor, uneducated girl from Brazil’s northeast living in the slums of downtown Rio, but the tale’s bitter narrator, Rodrigo S.M., inserts himself and his inner dialogue into the narrative so frequently that the tale is as much about him as it is about Macabéa. Rodrigo S.M. grapples with his need to write her poverty, to make clear the wretchedness of her existence, but ‘… it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.’ As ‘… a novel unlike he writes, the desolation of his own life becomes evident, while Macabéa is revealed – anything despite her poverty, malnourishment and meagre intellect – to be ultimately happy.

you’ve read ‘… Macabéa is one of the all-time great, loveable creations in literature: before ’ she’s dirty, underfed, lives on hot dogs and Coca-Cola and listens to Books+Publishing the radio for the ads …’

fremantlepress.com.au Rodrigo S.M. narrates a tale that is cerebral, perplexing, fractured – but the stark writing glimmers, and Macabéa is one of the all-time great, loveable creations in literature: she’s dirty, underfed, lives on hot dogs and Coca-Cola and listens to the radio for the ads, but Rodrigo’s sad account of her life is full of humour and light. Much of this light comes via the ‘dim’ dialogues between Macabéa and her boyfriend, Olímpico. Revered within Brazil as one of the country’s greatest novelists, Clarice Lispector’s reputation has not really spread beyond the country’s borders, though this has started to change. A new biography, Why This World by Benjamin Moser, was widely reviewed when it was published in 2009, and New Directions then commissioned new translations of five of her novels, which were overseen by Moser. These new translations are now available as Penguin Modern Classics. Lispector’s writing is self-conscious and non-narrative, and it is genuinely rewarding. Sentence by sentence, it sparkles. Feel free to ignore Rodrigo S.M.’s warning at the beginning of his tale: ‘So don’t expect stars in what’s coming: nothing will twinkle, this is opaque material and by its very nature despised by everyone. That’s because this story lacks a cantabile melody. Its rhythm is sometimes discordant.’ Expect stars – it’s the Hour of the Star, after all.

At first Delaney has him helping is a college student in her early twenties. with small jobs, moving weapons and She has a past filled with secrets she doesn’t supplies, then an assassination of an informer want anyone to know, and several of her and his handler, before teaching him to shoot. family members are mysteriously missing. Johnny’s hatred of the British gave him no The first 18 years of her life were defined by cause to question until he met the beautiful one fact, and she doesn’t want the reader to Cora, who shares his passion for Ireland but know it right away (you’ll find out around a not for the methods of the IRA. Although quarter of the way into the book): ‘I had to she knows nothing of Johnny’s role in the move halfway across the country in order to IRA she senses his anger and impulsiveness: leave that fact behind. It’s never going to be ‘Tell me you’ll do no harm, Johnny.’ Johnny’s the first thing I share with someone.’ answer is equivocal. A Mad and Wonderful A novel that twists and turns, Thing is an extraordinary book; it confronts We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves political and moral choices with a harsh intimately examines a family from all angles. Readings brutality, but is, as well, a great love story. It jumps around in time, moving from Mark Rubbo is Readings’ Managing Director Rosemary’s college years to her childhood and back again, and finally, to Rosemary in Gift WE ARE ALL the present day. Karen Joy Fowler’s writing COMPLETELY BESIDE style is strong and distinctive, and Rosemary OURSELVES is a witty and engaging narrator who will Vouchers at once charm and infuriate readers. Karen Joy Fowler We Are All Completely Beside Serpent’s Tale. PB. $27.99 Ourselves raises a lot of interesting ideas, Our Readings gift vouchers Alternatively funny and including ethical dilemmas and questions make the perfect gift! heartbreaking, We Are around the reliability of memory. But at its All Completely Beside heart, it’s the story of a broken family, and Buy them online or at any Ourselves tells the story of a it genuinely made me laugh and cry. This Readings shop. young woman, Rosemary, and novel is an absolute joy to read. I highly her not-so-ordinary recommend it, especially for book clubs – upbringing. This is the kind you’ll be dying to discuss it with someone of book where the less you know about the else once you’ve finished. story before reading, the better. That said, I Nina Kenwood is Readings’ Online Manager can tell you the novel begins when Rosemary READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 9

THE FREE Ampersand and other A.N. Dyer novels. New Crime Dead Write Willy Vlautin It’s a clever feat; however, this cleverness Faber. PB. $27.99 often detracts from the impact of the story’s with Fiona Hardy revelations – of which there are many. By At times in Willy the time I pieced everything together, the Vlautin’s fourth novel, Crime Book of the Month story had lost much of its emotional fizz. The Free, I found myself That aside, & Sons still has a wondering if I was reading BEAMS FALLING lot to offer readers. The writing is often or had in fact drifted while P.M.Newton wonderful, and the book has many unique, watching a documentary. Penguin. PB. Was $29.99 weighty descriptions that demand to be re- The stories in this realist $24.99 read. The glimpse into the rarefied world fiction so well match America’s working of the New York literary scene is golden. If you’ve ever entertained the thought that years of reading underclass of today I felt I could easily have Mostly, however, this is a story for anyone crime fiction have given you enough insider knowledge to been watching a news exposé; here, Vlautin who has felt the double-edged sword of become a blisteringly incredible police officer, this is the book to introduces three characters to demonstrate inheritance. make you say, ‘You know what, I am going to stick to being an the dire state of the working poor. architect/gardener/session musician/stay-at-home parent/crane Leroy Kervin has lived in a group Joe Rubbo is from Readings Carlton operator,’ and just be glad that crime books exist. With Beams Falling, P.M. Newton has home for the past eight years after being crafted a book so compelling, and so real, that I could feel the sweat of the book’s severely wounded in Iraq; he naively THE GOOD LORD BIRD Sydney summer and literally covered my mouth with my hand in tension. It made me enlisted in the National Guard, believing it James McBride glad I am a bookseller and not a cop. would help with his existing job security. Riverhead. HB. $29.99 Detective Nhu Kelly – Ned to her fellow officers – is not recovering well from Waking one night to an unusual moment It’s easy, at first glance, a shooting that left her suffering damage to her body, her reputation and, worse still, of lucidity he makes a decision that will to critique James her ability to work, as the trauma of her attack flashes into her thoughts. She’s punted see him stuck between the constant pain McBride’s award-winning from her station into a poisonous task force in Cabramatta, a suburb that, in the 90s, of his life and a science-fiction dream novel as a flippant, perhaps has enough history and violence coursing through its streets that it’s not too long world. Freddie McCall works night shift insensitive, retelling of the before a routine enquiry turns bloody, and the effect on Ned leads her to be stripped at the group home and a day shift at the prelude to the American of her weapon and told to get help. Following Ned through her investigation into the paint store he has worked at since high Civil War. But on closer deaths of two young Vietnamese men and her efforts to get better is so compelling school. He is physically, emotionally and inspection, The Good Lord Bird is a that it feels as real as a documentary: Newton’s writing is punchy, sharp, immediate financially exhausted. Still living in the multifaceted narrative that captivatingly and beautiful, and includes Ned’s psychological journey in a way that is real – not house his grandfather built, he knows tells the tale of John Brown and his hackneyed – making this stand-out literature. that he will soon lose it, just like he lost notorious end, as a tragic comedy. his wife and kids. Pauline Hawkins is a Brown was the white abolitionist MISSING YOU IRENE nurse at the local hospital. She is a great who led an attack on the federal armory at Harlan Coben Pierre Lemaitre nurse, wonderful with her patients, but has Harpers Ferry that was said to have been a Orion. PB. $27.95 Quercus. PB. $29.99 learnt to disconnect at the end of each shift, catalyst for the Civil War. McBride portrays though one patient, a young girl, will make him partly as a military genius, but mostly Harlan Coben is an Lemaitre’s debut, Alex, was it difficult for her to walk away. as a religious quack, and the story follows a irresistible author, quick with incredibly popular, following What makes this all so good is the young boy, Onion, whom Brown takes under wit, able to craft engaging the impeccably attired honesty and simplicity of Vlautin’s writing. his wing. Onion narrates from the future characters and design a Commandant Camille Although it’s a depressing tale, I never felt looking back. In his old age he sounds like mystery as enthralling as it is, Verhoeven, who had an I was being manipulated into feeling for something out of a Clint Eastwood film and well, mysterious. NYPD undisclosed story of his own. the characters, and that is a task. Vlautin is at times, downright crude: ‘The Negro Detective Kat Donovan is In Irene, set before Alex, we highlights that other side of the human comes in many colors. Dark. Black. Blacker. trawling an online dating site when a profile find out what happened to Verhoeven’s condition: hope and goodwill. I can’t wait Blackest. Blacker than night. Black as hell. picture stops her dead: it’s her ex-fiance, lovely wife, who was eight months pregnant to backtrack and read his earlier novels. Black as tar.’ Jeff, and with it, all of her emotional baggage when she was kidnapped and murdered. falls off the overhead racks. But when it The killer, arranging his murders like those Suzanne Steinbruckner is from Brown constantly tries to free unearths a deadly and horrifying conspiracy, in popular crime fiction (dear reader, look Readings St Kilda slaves who don’t want to be freed; Onion, who is a freed slave, is continually in a state her tentative reaching out for a new what you have done!) is given the sobriquet & SONS of confusion about where he fits into the relationship with him instead becomes a The Novelist – and he and Verhoeven lock date (I know, I’m sorry) with death. horns before more people elaborately die. David Gilbert world. Onion, mistaken by Brown as a girl, HarperCollins. HB. $29.99 is also a half cast – he says, satirically: ‘I just don’t know where I belongs, being a tragic BODY COUNT THE ACCIDENT David Gilbert’s second mulatto and all.’ Barbara Nadel Chris Pavone novel, & Sons, begins McBride pokes fun at Brown’s Headline. PB. $29.99 Faber. PB. $29.99 with a funeral. Charlie ‘connection’ to God and how it allowed The year is not boding well Working in the bookselling Topping, father of the book’s him to feel it was his right to lead slaves for Inspector Çetin Ikmen, link of the publishing chain, I narrator Phillip Topping, has to freedom, killing anyone who got in his and January is not even over can only assume that The died. New York’s elite have way. Brown constantly reels off verses before the grisly discovery of Accident – which tells the turned out to witness the from the Bible to his soldiers who pay the body of a local eccentric story of an explosive, ceremony, many just to catch a glimpse of little to no attention to him, and even in the tumultuous district of anonymous manuscript the famous author Andrew (A.N. on the doze off. It’s a joke that perhaps runs a bit Tarlabasi. It’s a crime not making its way to literary book jacket) Dyer, best and oldest friend of dry, but this is a solitary slip in the novel. easy to solve, and as the months pass, more agent Isabel Reed, bringing danger upon the deceased. The Good Lord Bird is a great story on a bodies are found – it seems Istanbul has a everyone who gets close to it – is an origin Dyer is a Salinger-type character, number of levels, recommended for fans of serial killer. The answers seem more and story typical of every book I sell. The a reclusive author who hasn’t published in vibrant historical writing. more unclear: what is the murderer’s manuscript, in this case, is the biography of a 20 years. He was, however, prolific early in interest in the number 21, and what sinister media mogul, holding secrets so brutal and his career. His magnum opus, Ampersand, Ella Mittas is a freelance reviewer thoughts could motivate such brutality? widespread that Isabel herself must go on is a cult coming-of-age novel – Dyer’s the run to save the book – and her own life. Catcher in the Rye – and has sold over 45 AN UNNECESSARY THE BLACK EYED BLONDE million copies. Charlie’s death puts Andrew WOMAN Benjamin Black AFTER I’M GONE in a panic. Fearing his impending doom, Rabih Alameddine he summons his estranged sons, Richard Macmillan. PB. $29.99 Laura Lippman Text. PB. $29.99 and Jamie, to New York to resolve some Here, the crime-writing Faber. PB. $29.99 The original meaning suddenly pressing family business. It is the pseudonym of John Banville, When the law catches up of Aaliyah is ‘above it first time they meet Andrew’s youngest takes on one of crime’s most with Felix Brewer, he all’, and for Rabih son, 17-year-old Andy. These three sons dearly loved and caustic disappears, along with a big Alameddine’s protagonist in are inextricably tied to Ampersand, caught protagonists, Phillip whack of money, leaving An Unnecessary Woman, the somewhere between pride of association Marlowe, the yardstick by behind his wife and three name is becoming. Aaliyah’s and the burden of never being able to which many modern heroes daughters. This was 1976, and existence is defined through scramble out from under the great novel’s are measured (and rightly so – original in the present, retired multiple displacements – estranged from lengthy shadow (you’ll notice the ‘&’ author Raymond Chandler was an unfairly Baltimore detective Roberto Sanchez is her family, divorced, retired and friendless, cleverly preceding them even in the title). skilled wordsmith). It is 1950s America, and probing cold cases. Felix’s disappearance is Aaliyah observes the present and past with Like many family stories, the PI Marlowe is bored, sitting around in his one thing, but as his mistress, Julie, went aloof detachment. She lives in Beirut, in the narrative flips from the past to the present, office, when a beautiful dame is shown in, missing too, a rendezvous seemed likely. banal aftermath of the turmoil that once constantly dredging up new complexities. looking for a former lover. Wisecracks Then her dead body turns up 26 years later. caught the world’s attention. In a quiet Gilbert uses an elaborate construction to follow, investigations go awry and someone This is deeper than your average crime book, refusal to assign causal significance to that bring it all together: an unreliable narrator, – probably Marlowe – will undoubtedly get and has an ending to knock you off your feet. conflict, Aaliyah seeks a lifetime of meaning letters, film scripts and extracts from socked deliciously in the nose. 10 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

in the vast collection of books she has KINDER THAN SOLITUDE TERMS & CONDITIONS acquired over her 72 years. Yiyun Li Robert Glancy Alameddine develops his fourth HarperCollins. PB. $27.99 Bloomsbury. PB. Was $29.99 novel through a series of tender frames. Kinder than Solitude is $24.99 An ageing woman drinks two glasses of an intriguing book wine and accidentally dyes her hair blue. In the wake of a car accident, about three friends – A solitary translator begins a new work Frank, a lawyer who teenagers during the 1990s on the first day of every year, packing the specialises in small print, and the era of the Tiananmen previous year’s work away in a maid’s begins to piece together his Square protests. Ruyu is an bathroom, never to be read. A handsome former life and self, but the orphan who has been raised lieutenant walks a hospital worker home, picture that emerges, of his by her Catholic grand-aunts and at the age where his politeness is mistaken for marriage, family and career, is of 15 is sent to a Beijing high school. She is a marriage proposal. These intensely not necessarily a pretty one. Could it be that boarding at the home of Shaoi, a politically personal memories are somehow best the terms and conditions by which Frank active university student, and her family. restored by the quotations of others. The has been living are not entirely in his favour? Living in the close neighbourhood is beaten, yet somehow resilient protagonist high-school student Boyang, a self-assured jerry-rigs an identity around existential BUTCHER’S CROSSING and intelligent young man, and his literary empathies: ‘I am Raskolnikov. I am John Williams childhood friend Moran, an eager to please K. I am Humbert and Lolita.’ Vintage. PB. $12.99 young woman whose feelings for Boyang Although the novel centres on Will Andrews leaves Harvard have recently deepened. Aaliyah’s perspective of a failed life, the and sets out for the west to Moran and Boyang befriend Ruyu story is multifaceted. At once a sublime discover a new way of living. and show her around the neighbourhood encomium to the art of reading well, In a small town called and school. The neighbourhood families where the pleasures of the text are called Butcher’s Crossing he meets show her every kindness, especially to the task of self-making, the novel is a hunter with a story of a lost because of her orphan status, but also a gentle appeal against loftiness. For herd of buffalo in a remote soon realise she won’t willingly enter every canonical seduction, there is pause Colorado valley, just waiting to be taken by conversations or demonstrate emotion. In for the folly of disconnection, the vanity a team of men crazy enough to find them. particular this infuriates Shaoi, who resents of denial. In Alameddine’s examination Ruyu’s emotional and political passivity. of memory, translation and freedom, The central event of the story, there is an insistence that life is more Poetry though, is the poisoning of Shaoi. Shaoi than the cruel absurdities of a reductive survives but is intellectually and physically reality. An Unnecessary Woman charms disabled and requires 24-hour care. The EARTH HOUR with expressive cynicism and inadvertent poison is found to have come from Boyang’s optimism, shining a unique light on the David Malouf mother’s university laboratory, which Ruyu, art of storytelling. UQP. HB. $29.99 Moran and Boyang have visited together. Signed by the author Lucy Van is a freelance reviewer The question of whether the poisoning was David Malouf creates purposeful becomes almost secondary to the cosmologies around THE RAVENS story of what happens in the ensuing years, what we typically regard as Tomas Bannerhed and how each of the three characters deals banal spaces – most famously Profile. PB. $24.99 with their feelings and memories. After the suburban Brisbane in works event, the three do not communicate, with In deepest, darkest such as Johnno. His novels, the exception of an email Boyang sends each Sweden there is a short stories, essays and poetry are each a year reporting on Shaoi’s health. telltale heart amid the virtuoso of memory, exploring the flesh of Yiyun Li’s writing is delicate panoply of crime fiction. experience that weds space to time. and she is able to capture her characters’ Very rarely do we see the Though his prose receives more attention discomfort and awkwardness so their inner- raw beauty of an infernal than his verse, Malouf’s career as a poet is lives are revealed. The themes of this novel consciousness like The long-standing, with Earth Hour marking his – guilt, shame, the risks of intimacy and the Ravens knock on our door and remind us tenth poetry publication since ‘Interiors’ cost of solitude – are beautifully explored. that brutal poetics hold a more damning appeared in 1962. truth. Who else would have a 12-year-old Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn In Earth Hour, Malouf again boy cycle to his beloved recanting produces a graceful and provocative vision Steppenwolf? THE VIRGINS of life. This collection continues a desire Klas is a solitary child, a dreamer, Pamela Erens to define space (earth) and time (hour) a twitcher. He prefers life with the birds Hodder. PB. $26.99 through each other, as the title subtly than with the oddballs of an isolated town Aviva Rossner and Seung suggests. But while this is a strong theme with its own cast of arseholes and clowns. Jung are an unlikely couple across Malouf’s accomplished career, It’s just unfortunate that his father Agne at an elite boarding school Earth Hour has the freshness of a newly also holds these cards, falling riotously into and are not shy in flaunting imagined world. And in many ways that is madness. The family has toiled the land their newly discovered precisely what this collection represents, for generations, and just as Agne’s father sexuality. Their blossoming Malouf’s gift for imaginative inhabitation. was dragged kicking and screaming to the relationship is watched with The poems weave through gardens, cities, asylum, Klas must reconcile the love and envy and fascination by Bruce, the narrator, bays and seascapes, reveling in the varied fear of his father’s insanity with a future life and other classmates, who believe their ways memory imprints space. In poetry of drudgery on the farm. His mother and liaison to be one of pure, unadulterated Malouf seems particularly adept in the art brother bear witness to this shift in varying pleasure. But nothing is what it seems, and of planet-shrinking, wrapping the self in a degrees of pain, frustration and kindness. their ultimate descent into shame and subjective map of the world. Klas is constantly reminded of what lies betrayal has calamitous consequences Animated by memory and history, in store for him and soon realises that the beyond their own lives. Earth Hour brings past to present in many farm may not be the only thing he inherits. ways. Time is an enigma where centuries But for all his bookishness and intellect, he THE TRAIN TO PARIS telescope into days, and the sediment of attracts the somewhat troubled affections history fills the earth as ‘dead under the Sebastian Hampson of a holidaying Stockholm girl who remains topsoil’. Not only does history inscribe Text. PB. $29.99 oblivious to the stigma Agne’s condition cartography, it also speaks the words of attracts, and questions the limits of love After a disastrous holiday yesterday’s heroes today, as shown in the and obligation. with his girlfriend in Madrid, poems after Charles Baudelaire and Heinrich Everything is tense and Lawrence Williams takes the Heine. Throughout this collection there uncomfortable, possibly because of Klas’s train back to Paris where he is is the radiance of a master poet, whose narration; it is almost out of time and studying art history. Stranded technical flair delights equally in light place, with vignettes that give the novel an at the border, Lawrence and shade, abstraction and whimsy. Many imagistic or kaleidoscopic feel, remaining meets Élodie Lavelle. Twice writers of prose also write poetry, but rare linear but drawing us deep into his mind his age, she’s amused by his earnest charm are the novelists who are also major poets in until we are uncertain if he is going mad or and decides to entertain herself by educating their own right. Malouf is a heavyweight of We love a good story not. The intimacy is surprising and before him in the rules of her society, treating him Australian poetry, and Earth Hour is sure to be you know it you’re bereft, left asking: can to an unforgettable evening in Biarritz. But among the finest poetry publications of 2014. there be freedom in death? Élodie has not counted on how much their unlikely encounter will mark them both. Lucy Van is a freelance reviewer Luke May is a freelance reviewer READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 11

New Young Adult Fiction See books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 14–15

Young Adult Book of the Month HALF BAD Sally Green Penguin. PB. $16.99 I can’t wait to put vampires behind us, so the moment I was told I was reviewing a book about witches I was super excited. Set in contemporary England, Half Bad tells the story of Nathan, a 15-year-old boy who is half White witch (good), and half Black witch (evil). In a world where witches live among humans, being a half blood sees Nathan ostracised for simply being born the way he is. His mother is dead, and his father is a murderer – one of the most notorious Black witches alive. When the White Council sends Nathan to be guarded by a woman who keeps him locked in a cage and trained like a soldier, Nathan realises he is being used as bait to lure his powerful, evil father. Nathan needs to escape before he turns 16; on this birthday, your parents present you with three gifts, allowing you to become a full witch. Ah, this was fantastic! With a brilliantly captivating plot and a protagonist as Vietnam a case of you actually feel for, Half Bad surprised me for being so well written and so WAustralia fighting ‘other wonderfully creative. Throw down your Twilight and Hunger Games – this is where people’s wars’? Were we really ‘all fantasy gets great. the way’ with the United States? How valid was the ‘domino Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn theory’? Did the Australian forces develop new tactical methods in earlier Southeast Asian conflicts, THE ONE AND ONLY TWO WOLVES and just how successful were they JACK CHANT Tristan Bancks against the unyielding enemy in Rosie Borella Random. PB. $16.99 Vietnam? This landmark book tackles these questions and more. A&U. PB. $15.99 Ben is busy in his room After completing her creating a new last year of high school, stop-motion film when a Amber takes a job as a carer knock at the door changes in an old people’s home. A his life forever. When he country girl, she has finds two police officers remained in her hometown looking for his parents, Ben’s to work while her best friend passion for becoming a detective kicks in. As has moved away for university. Amber soon as the police leave, his parents arrive www.newsouthbooks.com.au quickly becomes familiar with her new job home, claiming they are going on a holiday – she’s compassionate and hardworking, and grabbing Ben and his sister before befriending co-workers and bonding with heading off. As they travel to an old cabin in residents. When a mysterious boy named the woods, Ben slowly starts to piece little Jack Chant begins to appear around the bits together as to what has happened and nursing home and her family’s farm what exactly it is his parents have done. SON, SOLDIER, SPY. property, Amber is charmed, but impossible The problem is, if Ben is right, should he go and often troubling things always seem to to the police, or help his family? happen in his presence. Jack’s past is I’m a huge fan of Tristan Bancks’s ‘An engrossing attempt to unravel the revealed as the novel progresses, giving Mac Slater books and was excited to read enigma of Ben Zgyier, a young Melbourne Amber the clues she needs to understand his new one – it doesn’t disappoint. Two who he really is. This is a mysterious and Wolves is a fantastic, suspenseful novel for man turned Israeli spy’. LEIGH SALES compassionate novel exploring life and readers aged 11 and up, and a book that will death, friendship and community. keep them reading well into the night! KD Kim Gruschow is from Readings Hawthorn THIRTEEN PANIC Tom Hoyle PanMac. PB. $14.99 Lauren Oliver Hodder. PB. $19.99 Born at midnight on the stroke of the new millennium, From the versatile pen Adam is the target of a cult of Lauren Oliver, that believes boys born on author of the bestselling this date must die before the Before I Fall, Panic is a end of their thirteenth year. fast-paced thriller about a Coron, the crazy cult leader, terrifying game of dare. will stop at nothing to bring in his new Carp is a small town with kingdom, planning a bombing spectacular small aspirations. No one has much money, across London to celebrate the sacrifice of so winning a game of Panic can change his final victim: Adam. lives – but it can also take them. Every day, the high school students each put in a FEED dollar to a kitty, and at the end of the school year all graduating seniors are M.J. Howes eligible to enter Panic and win the money Chicken House. PB. $17.99 – if they dare. To determine the winner, Lola and Patrick are in challenges take place through summer, desperate trouble – beginning with a high cliff jump into water monstrous enemy invaders and finishing with a car race. The have increased their human anonymous judges choose the challenges raids and those taken face a and contenders are eliminated if they fail, terrible fate: like animals tell an adult about the game, or die. This is they will be transported, an exhilarating ride into the lives and processed and eaten in a food chain like no friendships of three challengers, each other – unless Lola and Patrick can find a damaged, each desperate. An intoxicating way to save them. Feed will appeal to AVAILABLE NOW read for ages 12 and up. readers who like the gory stuff, but this is also a thought-provoking book about how mup.com.au Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda we, as humans, see ourselves in the world. 12 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

New Non-Fiction Aboriginal people across the continent Meet were using domesticated plants, sowing, the harvesting, irrigating and storing – all Biography happens when you leave. These pieces invite behaviours inconsistent with those of the Bookseller you to fall inside Malouf’s generous and hunter-gatherer. questioning perspective of life. GEEK SUBLIME AUSTRALIA AND THE Vikram Chandra Margaret Snowdon, PRISONER X VIETNAM WAR Faber. PB. $27.99 Readings Carlton Rafael Epstein Peter Edwards For most of us, MUP. PB. $32.99 NewSouth. HB. $49.99 computers and the programs that run on them Kept in one of the most The Vietnam War was Why do you work in books? are tools, designed to make technologically sophisticated Australia’s longest and most I grew up reading voraciously, and when our lives and work easier. But solitary jail cells, at the behest controversial military I left school I got a job in a bookstore. for the developers who build of one of the world’s most commitment of the Somehow or other I’ve rarely not worked this software, the lines of feared intelligence agencies, twentieth century, ending in in one. code that underpin what we see on screen it’s not easy to kill yourself, humiliation for the United What’s something new you’ve observed are not just practical – they can be beautiful. yet Ben Zygier managed to do States and its allies with the in bookselling? ‘Beautiful’ code is concise, structured and just that. Prisoner X uncovers the intriguing downfall of South Vietnam. The war Bookselling has changed a lot with the linguistically flexible – as such, many story of a young Australian swept up in provoked deep divisions in Australian development of digital technology. About programmers see their work as a creative international intelligence. society and politics, particularly since for 18 years ago talk first started about ebooks practice, akin to creating music, or literature. the first time young men were conscripted killing off the paper book, but it’s been like Award-winning novelist Vikram THE TWELFTH RAVEN for overseas service in a highly the ‘death of painting’ discussion – I’m Chandra is thus in a unique position, having Doris Brett contentious ballot system. In this still a bookseller and still a painter. The worked as a programmer alongside his UWAP. PB. $29.99 landmark book, award-winning historian attitude to books as objects is changing. writing career. In Geek Sublime, Chandra’s Peter Edwards skilfully unravels the When Doris Brett’s 59-year- I don’t think it’s a bad thing to print first work of non-fiction, he recounts his complexities of the global Cold War, old husband Martin had a lesser quantities of mass-market books. early career as an Indian student in New decolonisation in Southeast Asia and stroke, it was only the first in They are perfectly suited to digital forms. York, and his gradual turn to coding as both a Australian domestic politics. a series of crises. His stroke Good books as objects (and collectables) way to make money and a relief from fiction: turned into a golf-ball sized seem to be rising in status. Rapid changes ‘Write some code, and it either works or it blood clot on his brain, QUARTERLY ESSAY 53: in information culture and technology doesn’t.’ From here, Chandra launches into followed by a life-threatening THAT SINKING FEELING have caused a degree of uncertainty in an impressively broad history of computer heart condition and, later, Doris’s own Paul Toohey bookselling that was unthinkable when I science, its transition from egalitarian battle with cancer. Doris’s research into Black Inc. PB. $19.99 got my first job. beginnings to modern Silicon Valley’s issues brain plasticity and her implementation of Describe your own taste in books. with race and gender, India’s post-colonial Travelling to Java where he neurotherapy techniques made Martin’s Extremely eclectic. emergence as a programming powerhouse witnesses the realities of exceptional recovery possible. people-smuggling, Paul Name a book that has changed the way and the evolving thinking around code as a you think, in ways small or large. matter of form as well as function. MISTER OWITA’S GUIDE Toohey takes a clear-eyed look The book’s second half takes on at Tony Abbott’s promise to All Quiet on the Western Front. Also, when TO GARDENING I was about 14 and got my first bookstore a decidedly more academic tone, as Geek ‘stop the boats’ and asks if the job, the two fabulous women I worked for Sublime evolves into an exploration of Carol Wall government has succeeded, introduced me to Elizabeth David, whose the concept of beauty and consciousness Random House. PB. $34.99 and if so, at what cost. As he traces the path that led to the PNG Solution, he examines books changed the way I thought about through the perspective of pre-modern Carol Wall is at a crossroads Australian attitudes to politically charged food and culture and inspired a need to go South Asian philosophy and Sanskrit, a in her life, and a neglected representations of refugees, and considers to Paris as deep as my desire to go language with such strict structure and garden is the least of her whether there are realistic alternatives. to Italy to see the works of Giotto and grammar that parallels can be drawn with worries – that is until she Fra Angelico. modern programming languages. Chandra’s meets a stranger. Mister thesis covers so much ground as to lose Your job entails recommending good Owita comes from Kenya and Politics reads: how do you balance personal taste focus at times – a diversion into tantric he’s very good at gardening. with customer nous? sexual practice, though fascinating, feels Although the two seem to have nothing in A few questions regarding what they’ve unnecessary – and casual readers might common, a bond grows between them and WORDS WILL BREAK read recently and their favourite books struggle with the book’s heavier sections. before long Mister Owita is transforming CEMENT help guide you to a suitable selection. For readers of philosophy and literary not only Carol’s garden, but also her life. You also have a feel that some customers theory, however, Geek Sublime offers a Masha Gessen Granta. PB. $22.99 really do want to know that you’ve read valuable contribution to the discussion A THOUSAND SHARDS and liked the book yourself, or you can around art in the age of technology. OF GLASS On 21 February 2012, five honestly say another staff member has – members of an obscure Alan Vaarwerk is a freelance writer Michael Katakis which fortunately at Readings is easy. feminist post-punk collective S&S. HB. $22.99 What’s the best book you’ve read lately? A MILE DOWN called Pussy Riot staged a I can’t say what’s best, but I’m enjoying David Vann A powerful and personal performance in Moscow’s Art Cities of the Future: 21st-Century Text. PB. $32.99 polemic, A Thousand Shards Cathedral of Christ the Avant-Gardes. It poses future art centres of Glass is Michael Katakis’ Saviour. The performance outside the prevalent Western paradigm: David Vann has loved boats appeal to his fellow American lasted only 40 seconds but it resulted in Beirut, Bogota, Cluj, Delhi, Istanbul, all his life so, naturally, he citizens to change their two-year prison sentences for two of the Johannesburg, Lagos, San Juan, São leaps at the opportunity to course; a cautionary tale to performers. Masha Gessen presents an Paulo, Seoul, Singapore and Vancouver. start an educational charter those around the world who intimate account of this famed protest, the I’m getting a sense from this book and business teaching creative idealise an America that never was; and, controversial trial that followed and the another recent favourite, Raw + Material writing workshops aboard a crucially, a glimpse beyond the myth, to a ensuing global support movement. = Art, that there’s a lot to explore in this sailboat. But when he finds country whose best days could still lie ahead. idea. I’ve been to Delhi, loved it and didn’t himself at the helm of his own 90-foot boat DARK INVASION: 1915 see enough of it, so I don’t know how on the Turkish coast, chaos rapidly descends. Howard Blum I’m going to get to all those other places, Australian Scribe. PB. $32.99 because you’re in bookselling and art for A FIRST PLACE New York City, 1915: When love, not money. David Malouf DARK EMU Random House. HB. $29.99 the Germans discover that Who has the best book cover? Bruce Pascoe Released 7 March the supposedly neutral I don’t know who has the best book Magabala. PB. $35 United States has been Signed by the author cover, but on the Readings’ shelves at the supplying goods to Britain Dark Emu puts forward an moment I like the cover designs of The In celebration of his eightieth and other Allied powers, argument for reconsidering Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller birthday, David Malouf they enlist the aid of a the hunter-gatherer tag that Seitz, Wes Anderson and Eric Anderson, presents a collection of debonair spymaster to create a network of has been conveniently It by Alexa Chung, and Forty-Six Square personal essays and writings spies within the city. Head of the city’s attached to precolonial Metres of Land Doesn’t Normally Become on all manner of subjects: bomb squad Tom Tunney is assigned to Aboriginal Australians. Using a House by Stuart Harrison. I also have a from the sensual and stop them and what follows is a tense evidence sourced from the fondness for designs that are minimally bountiful beauty of Brisbane, cat-and-mouse battle, a riveting real-life records and diaries of the Australian Bauhaus, for example, J.W. Power: to the mysterious offerings of Queenslander thriller from history. explorers, Bruce Pascoe reveals that Abstraction-Création Paris 1934. houses, to the idea of home and what READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 13

Berliners over five centuries, taking Cultural Studies readers on a tour of Berlin’s history. Art & Design Food & Gardening with Margaret Snowdon with Chris Gordon MFA VS NYC THE DARK BOX John Cornwell Chad Harbach (ed.) AUSTRALIAN ART: MANGIA! MANGIA! Profile. HB. $35 n+1. PB. $25.95 A HISTORY GATHERINGS In a widely read essay The Dark Box is an erudite Sasha Grishin Teresa Oates & Angela Villella entitled ‘MFA vs NYC’, and personal history. MUP. HB. Was $175 Penguin. HB. $39.99 Chad Harbach argued that Cornwell draws on his own $129.99 in-store, $139.99 online Mangia! Mangia! Gatherings the American literary scene memories of Catholic is about accigliarsi, the spirit has split into two cultures: boyhood, and weaves them This is an important and of coming together. Teresa New York publishing versus with the story of confession good-looking Oates and Angela Villella’s university MFA programs. from its origins in the early contribution to the parents come from Calabria, Here he brings together MFA professors church to the current day, where its understanding of on the southern tip of the and students, as well as New York editors, enduring psychological potency is Australian art. Covering Italian Peninsula, where the publicists and agents, to talk about these evidenced by everything from the ground from the earliest food is simple and generous. Their book overlapping worlds, and the ways writers Vatican’s ‘confession app’ to Oprah rock art to the twenty- features 110 recipes, and includes plenty of make a living within them. Winfrey’s talk shows. Since the 16th first century, Sasha Grishin presents an everyday meals, as well as elaborate feasts to century, seclusion of two individuals in the engaging and comprehensive narrative that feed a hungry crowd. Roast pig anyone? NO FIXED ADDRESS intimate ‘dark box’, often discussing sheds light on our cultural history, There are no surprises in this book; rather, Robyn Davidson sexual actions and thoughts, has eroticised attitudes and influences. Grishin took a collaborative approach and sought the here are generous recipes suitable for any Black Inc. PB. $19.99 the experience of confession. input of a ‘council of elders’ to critique his level of home chef. If these dishes are not Robyn Davidson explores the manuscript, and when it came to already family favourites, here is your chance paradoxes and strengths of Environmental Science discussing the more recent history of to spread the message. Meals are family time. nomadism, in both its Australian art, he cast a wide net among traditional and modern forms. artists and art professionals. With 68 artist LEON: FAST Having spent a good part of WINDFALL and 42 art professional respondents he had VEGETARIAN her life living with nomadic McKenzie Funk a breadth of information and opinion to Henry Dimbleby & Jane Baxter cultures in Australia, north- Penguin. HB. $29.99 cross reference and inform his own text. Hodder. HB. $49.99 west India, Tibet and the Indian Himalayas, Illustrated with hundreds of Davidson sees nomadism as a strategy that McKenzie Funk argues that Leon is a restaurant the best way to understand quality colour images, sections cover group, based in London, permits access to resources, rather than a pre-white settlement, the first fleet and the political organisation or world-view. the catastrophe of global specialising in seasonal, warming is to view it as a art of convicts and settlers, the goldfields, locally-sourced fast food. pastoralism and colonialism,Tom Roberts BULLY FOR THEM market opportunity. After It’s one of those cool spending six years reporting and the squattocracy, the Boyds and places where the staff Fiona Scott-Norman (ed.) from around the world on Murrumbeena, as well as the well-known wear T-shirts saying Affirm Press. PB. $24.99 how we are adapting for a warmer planet, Heide circle. I was happy to see the ‘From farms we trust’. In candid and entertaining she now presents us with profiles of beautiful works of Bea Maddock included This is not their first cookbook, but like the interviews, 22 talented entrepreneurial people who see a potential in a later section, along with Tracy Moffatt, others, it’s beautifully presented with a sort Australians – musicians, windfall arising from the three key Fiona Hall and Bill Henson, to name a few. of 1950s feel, though with totally modern sporting stars, actors, consequences of climate change: melt, This is a small sample as the book is very cuisine. There are over 150 recipes for diverse and looks at architecture, graphic writers, comedians, drought and deluge. flavourful, vibrant meals that can be created politicians – recount their arts and applied arts as well as painting, from a tremendous range of vegetables and own experience of being sculpture and photography. I have grains. This book is simple yet gutsy, vibrant bullied at school. Their Parenting thoroughly enjoyed dipping in and out of yet sensible, and really very hip. stories reveal that not only did they all this new history and will continue to do so survive the ordeal, but also how their for years to come. EATING WITH THE CHEFS experiences helped shape them into the BRAINSTORM Per-Anders Jörgensen remarkable individuals they are today. Daniel J. Siegel PAINTING ABSTRACTION Phaidon. HB. $75 Contributors include Penny Wong, Christos Scribe. PB. $32.99 Bob Nickas I become quite anxious Tsiolkas, Missy Higgins, Benjamin Law, Author of the bestselling The Phaidon. PB. $59.95 when celebrated chefs Hazem El Masri, Eddie Perfect and more. Whole-Brain Child, Daniel In recent years, abstract suggest dishes for family Siegel now illuminates how painting has developed a meals. What type of brain development impacts rich complexity that, family meal are they History teenagers’ behaviour and more than ever, rewards talking about? The quick relationships. Drawing on intensive viewing. Bob Tuesday pasta between important new research in ALTERED PASTS Nickas introduces the basketball runs and the field of interpersonal neurobiology, he Richard J. Evans reader to the key issues in speech night or the type that you plan for explores exciting ways in which Little, Brown. PB. $35 contemporary abstraction while profiling when in-laws are arriving? This book understanding how the teenage brain eighty artists who, in the last five years, really is a celebration of the latter; do not What would have happened functions can help parents tap into what is have made it one of the most exciting areas expect quick solutions to family meals here, had Britain not entered the an incredibly positive period of growth, in contemporary art. Lavish, full-colour rather, dishes where preparation creates First World War but stood change and experimentation in their images and the accompanying text bring truly delicious and spectacular meals. I do aside as a neutral non- children’s lives. out key details and lead the reader through note with some pride that the quickest and belligerent? And how would the work in language both accessible and easiest recipe comes from our very own the British have behaved illuminating. Ben Shewry of Attica fame with his had they lost the Battle of Business marvellous tom yum soup – suitable, I Britain and been conquered and occupied THE CHAMBER OF might also note, for a Sunday meal. by the armed forces of Hitler’s Third CURIOSITY Reich? In Altered Pasts Richard J. Evans THRIVE Robert Klanten THE WORLD’S BEST imagines what could have been, and how Arianna Huffington DieGestalten Verlag. HB. $92.50 alternate pasts could have shaped WH Allen. PB. Was $34.99 SPICY FOOD alternate futures. $29.95 This is new interior Various Arianna Huffington, of design focusing on Lonely Planet. PB. $29.99 elegance and BERLIN Huffington Post fame, argues Lonely Planet asked 30 individuality. The Rory MacLean that our current model for chefs from around the apartments featured are Orion. PB. $35 success is not working and world to provide over 100 reflections of their contends that a truly recipes of tongue tingles! Berlin is a city of fragments occupants’ personalities successful life must also If you need to clear your and ghosts. The once – it might be a collection of modern include what she calls ‘The sinus, tuck right into an arrogant capital of Europe classics in a historical setting, muted Third Metric’: personal care, health and Indian curry and watch was devastated by Allied colours against bold geometrics or fulfilment. In Thrive, she shows how the steam blow from your ears. The World’s bombs, divided by a Wall, antiques against ultra-modern lights. women can use tools like mindfulness and Best Spicy Food could do with a few beer then reunited and reborn as Here is pioneering interior design that meditation to change the system itself, recommendations, but if you are a lover of one of the creative centres of the world. focuses not so much on the latest products making a case for redefining what success hot, spicy deliciousness, this is the book to Here Rory MacLean presents intimate as the telling of a story. portraits of a dazzlingly eclectic cast of means today. take you around the world and back again. 14 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 Picture Books Junior Fiction ONCE UPON A MEMORY THE EXPLOSIVE DIARY: Nina Laden & Renata Liwska (illus.) ELIZA BOOM BOOK 1 Hachette. HB. $26.99 Emily Gale Does a feather remember it was once a bird? Hardie Grant. PB. $9.95 Does a story remember it was once a word? A new heroine has arrived – Eliza In this simple yet evocative picture book, Boom: feisty, fearless spy and inventor readers go on a journey through the various extraordinaire. Well, at least that’s how she cycles of growing up, from a garden that imagines herself. With best friend and began as a single seed to a child assistant, her dog Einstein, she has built 92 remembering that she was once small. Once failed inventions, so she must be close to Upon a Memory is told in gentle, rhythmic verse. one that is going to work. Her dad is an inventor who makes gadgets for spies and Eliza helps him. A LION IN PARIS But she must also deal with the school bully, Zoe Beatrice Alemagna Wakefield, and get back some secret spy film that Zoe has T&H. HB. $29.95 taken. This will require her to devise her greatest Big in size, A Lion in Paris is also invention yet. Eliza is funny and smart and her engaging big on imagination with a diary also has plenty of wonderful drawings that illustrate haunting, surreal sensitivity. You want her escapades. Eliza Boom is a fabulous new junior series, to re-read it immediately and really with adventures that will be enjoyed by both boys and explore the mixed media and collage of girls aged 5 to 8. The Explosive Diary and Fizz-tastic Diary writer and illustrator Beatrice Alemagna. Lion is bored are both available now. with the large open grasslands of his home, so travels to Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda Paris which is teeming with life but also scary. He is surprised at the nonchalance of people as he explores the THE CUNNING PLAN: city. This big, proud beast is sad when he is ignored but as FOXY TALES BOOK 1 he wanders around Paris’s landmarks, he begins to feel Alex T. Smith & Caryl Hart (illus.) more at home until he finds the place for him. Alemagna is Hachette. PB. $12.99 an award-winning author and illustrator, and A Lion in Paris has itself won many awards overseas. Partly based on Young readers will have lots of fun Alemagna’s experience of moving to another country and reading this crazy, laugh-out-loud on a statue of a lion in Paris, this extraordinary book will adventure starring Foxy Dubois (the fox) find an appreciative audience for 4 and up. and Alphonso (the alligator) and the outlandish population of the bustling town Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn of Vaudeville. This zany, slap stick comedy has it all: hare-brained get-rich-quick SHH! WE HAVE A PLAN schemes, which inevitably go awry; alligator dress-ups with Chris Haughton make-up; pet abductions with incredible chase scenes; and Walker. HB. $24.95 even alligator gas (from gorging on hot dogs)! When Chris Haughton arrived on If you’re on the lookout for a page-turning, madcap the children’s book scene four years adventure, filled with wonderfully quirky illustrations for ago with A Bit Lost there was a lot of young readers, you’ll find it in The Cunning Plan. And even excitement. His style was original and his more exciting, it’s the first in a new series so there are more palette was superb. His shapes, patterns to look forward to. The creator of the much-loved Claude and colours exude atmosphere and books (also for young readers) has done it again! Highly humour. In his new book, four friends are out hunting and recommended for younger readers aged 6 and up. spot a beautiful bird enjoying the peace. Stealthily, they Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern attempt to surprise it with their nets, but the youngest of the group is not so quiet and hence the Shh of the title. However, time and again the older boys fail to capture the Middle Fiction bird whereas the little noisy one with his candid friendliness has success in tempting it near. This is stylish THE SIMPLE THINGS fun for ages 2 and up. AD Bill Condon & Beth Norling (illus.) WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE A&U. PB. $12.99 Steven’s first meeting with his great ANIMAL? aunt Lola doesn’t win him any points. Jack Mason, an orphan, Eric Carle & Friends She seems a bit scary and grumpy, and what embarks on a high-speed Walker. HB. $24.95 on earth are they going to talk about, given adventure to rescue an You would think Lucy Cousins’s she’s ‘really really old’? But the three-week atomic bomb from Nazis! favourite animal would be a mouse but holiday at Lola’s holds many surprises for surprisingly it isn’t. Eric Carle has asked 14 Steven, including wonderful new friendships A JACK MASON of the world’s leading children’s book with neighbours Norm and Allie, and the discovery that first ADVENTURE FROM illustrators what their favourite animal is impressions can be deceiving. In fact, in spite of their age WIN! and why. This makes for a diverse and fun TEXT PUBLISHING difference, Steven and Lola become firm friends. book, particularly when you have Mo Willems nominating This is a heart-warming story exploring themes of the Amazonian Neotropical Lower River Tink-Tink as his family, friendship and the challenges of growing up. Prime A Yarra Valley hot air balloon favourite animal! This is a charming book with excellent Minister’s Literary Award-winning author Bill Condon has ride for three kids and contributor biographies at the back and autographs on the written a gentle, humorous story for readers aged 7 and up, an adult, worth $1250! cover under the dust jacket. Inspire your child to illustrate and a read-aloud book that both the classroom and family their own ideal creature after reading this with them. For will surely enjoy. Athina Clarke Just buy a copy of The Firebird Mystery ages 3 and up. AD from Readings to enter. THE FIREBIRD MYSTERY: Competition ends 28 March. MY NANNA IS A NINJA JACK MASON BOOK 1 Entry forms available in-store. Online purchases automatically enter the draw. Damon Young & Peter Carnavas (illus.) Darrell Pitt UQP. HB. $24.95 Text. PB. $16.99 Some nannas dress in pink when they jog In his steam punk Sherlock Holmes around the track. But my nanna is a ninja … mashup, Melbourne-based writer JULY so she dresses up in black. All nannas are Darrell Pitt playfully manipulates reality and NOV different. But what if your nanna was history to create a fast-paced mystery. really different? What if your nanna was a Teenage orphan Jack Mason keenly ninja? This fun, poetic picture book misses his circus performer parents, but portrays the many different guises, faces and personalities his harsh and grounded life at Sunnyside that nannas can have and demonstrates the significance of Orphanage takes a sudden leap when eccentric Ignatius their role in the modern family. TEXTPUBLISHING.COM.AU Doyle, a consulting detective, offers Jack employment as READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 15

Readings Carlton Mondays 11am – 11.30am Book of the Month MAX Readings St Kilda Saturdays 10.30am – 11am Marc Martin Viking. HB. $24.99 Meet local author and illustrator Natalie Released 21 March Marshall, who will be our special Story Time guest on Saturday 8 March. Hear stories about the seasons, monsters and more! Max is the sweet story of a seagull, Max, who likes fish, but also likes chips. When his good friend Bob, who coincidentally owns a fish-and-chip shop, moves away, Max flies across the city to search for him. Readings Malvern Thursdays 10.30am – 11am Marc Martin is a Melbourne-based illustrator; his previous picture books include A Forest, which uses stunning illustrations to introduce kids to ideas about sustainability Each week, Readings’ staff will read their and the environment, and The Curious Explorer’s Illustrated Guide to Exotic Animals favourite picture books – new or classic – for A–Z, a bizarre and alluring collection of unusual creatures. Max, meanwhile, is a gently pre-school children (0 to 6 years old). told story with a message about an unlikely friendship and change.

The rich and playful illustrations are what really shine here. Martin has a unique and colourful style; his illustration work is published widely. In Max, Martin uses bright colours and distinct texture to construct a fun world, full of detail for kids to discover. The pages where Max explores the city from the sky are particularly impressive. This is another charming picture THE EXECUTIONER’S DAUGHTER book from a brilliant local illustrator. Jane Hardstaff Max Denton is from Readings Hawthorn Egmont. PB. $16.95 Moss is a prisoner in the Tower of London, her father is the executioner, and it’s Moss who has to catch the heads in her basket. Discovering a hidden tunnel that takes her to freedom, she also unearths a terrifying secret, and discovers that her life isn’t what she believes it to be. When she runs away from the Tower and meets the mouthy rascal called Salter, she learns the true value of freedom and choice. well as a father figure, of sorts. Doyle recognises that Jack’s considerable acrobatic skills, bravery and quick- thinking are the ideal complement to his own knack for Non-Fiction acute observation and mystery-solving. MY ANIMAL BOOK Their first case begins with a missing person but quickly escalates into a dramatic plot to save the world New Okido from a very surprising villain. Along the way there are T&H. HB. $24.95 references to great works of art, historical characters A hands-on, large-format, action-packed (in alternative roles) and Nazism. Pitt keeps it light title to share with young children, with humour and far-fetched rescues. Readers will also containing all kinds of questions and enjoy the steam-powered transport – air ships and space activities about where different animals live, steamers – as well as the 200-mile-high metro tower. Kids’ what they eat and how they socialise. There This is Jack Mason’s second outing – Pitt are things to do both on and off the page, previously published an early version of this story himself including games, recipes and craft activities. – and readers won’t have long to wait for the sequel. Recommended for ages 9 and up. Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton Books Classic of the Month Buy a copy of The Firebird Mystery at any Readings THE ADVENTURES OF shop or online and enter our exclusive competition South America and avoid being expelled from school by HUCKLEBERRY FINN to win a hot air balloon flight over Melbourne for Principal Scrimshaw? Readers aged 8 to 12 who enjoy a Mark Twain one adult and three children! Competition entry forms are good laugh should read this book to find out. available at all Readings shops, and customers who purchase Penguin. PB. $9.95 Kate Campbell is from Readings Hawthorn a copy online from readings.com.au are automatically entered Set in the antebellum Deep South, into the draw. A receipt must be attached to each entry Huckleberry Finn is a beguiling form submitted in-store. This prize is valued at $1500. The WILDWOOD IMPERIUM tale about a pair of runaways and the competition opens on 28 February and closes on 31 March Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis (illus.) friendship that develops between them 2014. Only the winner will be notified. Penguin. HB. $22.99 as they journey by raft down the In the third book of this bestselling Mississippi River. One of these fantasy-adventure series, the fate of runaways is, of course, Huck, who also NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE: Wildwood hangs in the balance. A young serves as the narrator. Readers see the Mississippi TIMMY FAILURE BOOK 2 girl’s midnight séance awakens a and its surrounds through his unsullied eyes; Stephan Pastis malevolent spirit. A band of runaway determine what he determines through the oddly Walker. HB. Was $19.99 orphans ally with a collective of saboteurs ordered syntax of his Deep South dialect; grow $14.95 and plan a daring rescue. Two old friends draw closer to increasingly more fond of him as he begins to treat his Timmy Failure has returned! Still as their goal of bringing together a pair of exiled toymakers adult African-American travelling companion, Jim, amusingly incompetent as ever, this in order to reanimate a mechanical boy prince. with less cruelty and more respect. time he has some new challenges to deal As you’ve probably already guessed, this book with, including an eccentric rich aunt he THE ADVENTURES OF will appeal to readers who enjoy adventure. Though now lives with and some new cases to solve. SCOOTERBOY AND SKATERGIRL beware: it could easily turn into a dangerous book for In order to win a $500 prize so that his Andy Jones & Doreen Marts (illus.) children if Huck’s use of a certain racial epithet fails to detective agency can go global, Timmy HarperCollins. PB. $12.99 be understood in terms of its socio-historical context. But don’t let that deter you. By placing Failure needs to solve the case of the missing globe. Skatergirl is cool. She has cool hair, wears Huckleberry Finn in the hands of a young reader, There’s also the case of his classmate Nunzio’s missing cool clothes and rides a really cool you’re not only introducing them to one of the finest spooney spoon. Unfortunately for Timmy, the way he skateboard. Scooterboy, on the other hand, (and funniest) examples of modern literature, you’re decides to investigate may not be the best method for lives on the not-so-cool side of cool. When also introducing them to a friend for life. And what gift success or discretion. He also has his supremely Scooterboy and Skatergirl get together, could possibly be greater than that? incompetent polar-bear partner, Total, to contend with. only one thing is certain – something As usual, Timmy’s lack of insight makes this story very hilarious is about to happen! Packed with Scott Brady is from Readings Hawthorn funny. Can Timmy solve his cases, expand his agency into cartoon-style illustrations. 16 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

THIS IS HOW YOU ROCK SHACKLETON’S their senses, to illuminate aspects of taste LOSE HER COUNTRY EPIC many readers never would have noticed or appreciated. Junot Díaz Christian Ryan (ed.) Tim Jarvis PB. Was $27.99 HB. Was $75 HB. Was $45 A MORE PERFECT NOW $39.95 NOW $23.95 NOW $13.95 HEAVEN This Is How You Lose Her is Rock Country is an entertaining and In 1916, Ernest Shackleton a collection of linked narratives about revealing romp through the story of led a small band of men is what was later Dava Sobel love, told through the lives of New Australian rock and pop told by those called the greatest survival story of all PB. Was $19.99 Jersey Dominicans, as they struggle that lived it, performed it and adored it. time, facing monstrous seas, icebergs, NOW $13.95 to find a point where their two worlds Lavishly illustrated, this book includes storms and vile seasickness. In 2013, In her elegant, compelling meet. At the heart of these stories is 35 essays from some of Australia’s finest explorer Tim Jarvis and a crew of five, style, Dava Sobel chronicles the conflicting the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a authors and musicians including M.J. set out to replicate this journey, using personalities and extraordinary young hardhead whose longing for love Hyland, Fiona McGregor, Clinton Walker, the same equipment, eating the same discoveries that shaped the Copernican is equaled only by his recklessness – and Jeff Jenkins, Toby Creswell, Stephen unpalatable food, facing the same hostile Revolution, describing how young German by the extraordinary women he loves and Cummings, Neil Murray and Malcolm ocean and desolate conditions. mathematician Rheticus managed to loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Knox. persuade the cautious Polish cleric Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican THE DREAM OF Nicolaus Copernicus to publish his men are cheaters; and the love of his life, TIWI THE CELT precious and dangerous theory, one which whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre Jennifer Isaacs Mario Vargas Llosa own. In prose that is endlessly energetic of our universe. HB. Was $119.95 & Edith Grossman and inventive, tender and funny, it lays NOW $39.95 bare the infinite longing and inevitable (trans.) Jennifer Isaacs presents a REMEMBERED weaknesses of the human heart. PB. Was $45.95 beautifully illustrated and NOW $14.95 GARDENS WELL MAY WE designed, authoritative guide to Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Holly Kerr Forsyth the art of the Tiwi Islands. PB. Was $45 SAY: THE Llosa recreates the life of The dangerous waters Irish nationalist Roger NOW $14.95 SPEECHES THAT separating mainland Casement, a human Holly Kerr Forsyth brings MADE Australia from rights pioneer, in to life the stories of women gardeners in AUSTRALIA Bathurst and Melville this subtle and Australian history including Elizabeth islands have seen the Macarthur, Edna Walling, Kath Carr and Sally Warhaft (ed.) enlightening work blossoming of an art sharply translated more. Remembered Gardens celebrates PB. Was $34.95 and culture unique by Edith Grossman. these women’s lives, a rich commemoration NOW $14.95 to the Tiwi people, Bargain of more than two centuries of gardening The Dream of the Celt From the inspirational to the eulogising, the basis for the provides intriguing in Australia and of the role of women in from the political to the satirical, from shapes of traditional insight into a deeply establishing a rich gardening heritage. the sacred to the controversial, the carvings, such as that Table controversial man speeches in this anthology are each deftly used in used in burial whose story has long been GREAT ceremonies. introduced by innovative researcher neglected, and in doing so, SOUTHERN Sally Warhaft. Her collection provides a pushes at the boundaries of the reminder that Australia has a unique and ALL THE RIGHT historical novel. LAND distinguished tradition of public oratory. ANGLES Ivan O’Mahoney & THE TALENTED Steve Bibb CONFRONTING Joel Levy HB. Was $39.99 MISS HIGHSMITH HB. Was $60 THE CLASSICS NOW $24.95 NOW $13.95 Joan Schenkar Great Southern Land is an epic journey Mary Beard Within every sport, a variety of PB. Was $35 across Australia, from the top of the HB. Was $49.99 mathematical and scientific principles NOW $13.95 NOW $19.95 are at work at all times. Some of these Snowy Mountains to the tropical wilds Joan Schenkar maps out of the Gulf of Carpentaria; the irrigated In a series of sparkling principles are familiar and clear to see, the richly bizarre life of author Patricia essays, Mary Beard explores our rich others are more complex and hidden just farms of the Murray Darling Basin to Highsmith, from her birth in Texas to the ancient forests of Tasmania. Written classical heritage, taking us from Greek beneath the surface and here, Joel Levy Hitchcock’s filming of her first novel, drama to Roman jokes and introducing exposes and explains them all, leaving by series producers and writers Ivan Strangers On a Train, and onto her long, O'Mahoney and Steve Bibb, with an some larger-than-life characters of the reader with a new insight into the strange, self-exile in Europe. In this classical history, such as Alexander the fundamental principles that drive their introduction by presenter Professor Steve compulsive page-turner, Highsmith is Simpson, and including the photography Great, Nero and Boudicca. Confronting the favourite sports. revealed as a secret writer for the comics, Classics captures the world of antiquity of Richard Woldendorp, this stunning a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions book features more than 300 incredible and its modern significance with wit, GOUGH and an erotic predator. verve and scholarly expertise. WHITLAM: photographs of Australia from above. THE NARCOPOLIS HIS TIME THE WAY WE Jenny Hocking UNPLUGGED Jeet Thayil WORK PB. Was $34.99 PLAY BOOK PB. Was $29.99 David Macaulay NOW $13.95 NOW $13.95 Bobbi Conner HB. Was $49.95 In the second volume of In Rashid’s opium room on PB. Was $27.95 NOW $16.95 her biography of Gough Whitlam, Jenny Shuklaji Street, Old Bombay, NOW $13.95 In this comprehensive Hocking uses previously unearthed the air is thick with voices The Unplugged Play Book and entertaining resource, multi award- archival material and extensive interviews and ghosts: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. is the family bible of hands-on fun, a winner David Macaulay reveals the inner with Gough Whitlam, his family, Here, they say you introduce only your parent-friendly encyclopaedia of over workings of the human body as only colleagues and foes, to take us behind the worst enemy to opium. Stretching across 700 games and variations, with not a he can. This one-of-a-kind book takes political intrigue and reveal a devastated three decades, with an interlude in Mao’s screen, plug, chip, disk or battery in sight. readers on a visual journey through the Whitlam in the aftermath of his dismissal China, and written in electric and utterly Here are games to play alone and games human body as Macaulay builds a body as prime minister. original prose this Booker shortlisted novel to play with siblings and friends; games and explains how it works, all the while portrays a city in collision with itself. to play indoors and outside; games for displaying his trademark humour. VOGUE toddlers and ten-year-olds and the whole THE MODEL: THE family together. LEVELS OF LIFE HOROLOGICON FACES OF Julian Barnes FASHION TASTE WHAT HB. Was $24.95 Mark Forsyth YOU’RE MISSING HB. Was $29.99 Robin Derrick & NOW $13.95 NOW $14.95 Robin Muir Barb Stuckey In this genre-defying and From the author of the HB. Was $89.95 HB. Was $29.99 cleverly-crafted work, bestselling The Etymologicon comes NOW $29.95 NOW $14.95 author Julian Barnes writes movingly a book of weird words for familiar Throughout history, fashion models In Taste What You’re Missing and honestly on his pain following the situations. Mark Forsyth shares the have occupied a curious position as Barb Stuckey explains the science behind death of his wife, the literary agent Pat most extraordinary words in the English while their faces were instantly familiar, what’s happening in your mouth, nose Kavanagh, in 2008. Barnes blends his own language, arranged according to the hour virtually nothing else was known about and mind when you eat, and shares experiences with fiction and history to present a raw and intimate meditation on of the day when you really need them. them. Shining a light on these women’s fascinating stories about people who’ve grief, love and ballooning. From ante-jentacular to snudge, by way lives, Vogue Model uses photographs and experienced changes or loss of one of of quafftide and wamblecropt, at last you illustrations from more than ninety years can say, with utter accuracy, exactly of Vogue’s history to tell the fascinating what you mean. story of the real faces of fashion. New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at readings.com.au for more. READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 17

New Film & TV hotspot. Set post-Katrina, the series chronicles the struggles of a diverse group DVD of the Month with Lou Fulco of residents as they rebuild their lives along with their city and culture. Now, in TIM WINTON’S THE TURNING STORIES WE TELL the final season, their stories come to a $34.95 $29.95 thrillingly hopeful conclusion. Settle in ladies and gentlemen, settle in; this could take Canadian writer and some time. So much time, in fact, that when this film was director Sarah Polley THE BROKEN SHORE screened in local cinemas, an interval was programmed. There is has created a tender and $24.95 certainly a lot of ground to cover in The Turning, with 17 unforgettable love letter to Based on the acclaimed directors each taking a chapter of Tim Winton’s haunting novel. her parents with this Peter Temple book of the There is no doubt that this is a passion project of the very documentary, a pastiche of same name, The Broken extraordinary director and producer Robert Connolly. Connolly dramatised retellings and Shore follows Detective Joe has said he wants the film to feel like a group exhibition, with the linking and ‘home videos’, genuine archive footage Cashin’s return to his overlapping of stories exploring the ‘turning’ points in ordinary people’s lives. and intimate testimonies that explore the childhood town and his To that end, he secured quite a roll call of notable Australian directors, including unreliability of memory and the act of investigation into the Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah), Tony Ayres (The Slap), Claire McCarthy storytelling. Rather than follow a linear violent attack of a well-heeled (The Waiting City) and Justin Kurzel (Snowtown). Two high-profile actors, Mia narrative, the design of the film is closer to philanthropist. Simmering racial tensions Wasikowska and David Wenham, make impressive directorial debuts. Connolly that of an onion; the story is peeled layer in the small community erupt when two of also secured some remarkable stars, including Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, by layer, and in this manner, Sarah’s search the three Aboriginal boys suspected of the Miranda Otto and Richard Roxburgh. is less one for ‘the truth’ as a definitive crime are killed in a high-speed police It’s fair to say there are not many laugh-out-loud moments here, but we conclusion, but rather a way to allow for chase, with the third released on bail. As know that already from reading the book. The Turning is, after all, filled with conflicting truths to co-exist. The result is Joe digs deeper, he uncovers a cycle of ‘Winton’ characters and themes – surfers, drunks, beaten women, working-class astonishingly moving. lies, betrayal and corruption. angst, the trivial moments that make a lifetime of circumstances – offering another Bronte Coates is the Online and Readings GENERATION WAR means of looking at Australian culture; here is a film that doesn’t ignore Australia’s Monthly assistant origins, and indeed, the effect of white people settling in remote areas. The Turning $44.95 is noted as ‘unapologetically’ Australian. That’s true, but gathering the joy of this GRAVITY This three-part miniseries epic production, I would consider it a celebration of many, many great Australian $39.95 depicts the lives of five artists: directors, dancers, actors and, of course, the storytellers. German friends from 1939 Sandra Bullock and George Christine Gordon is Readings Events Manager Clooney star in this heart- to 1945 and the different pounding thriller that pulls paths they take during these you into the infinite and years, from the Eastern unforgiving realm of deep front to the Nazi a troupe of bullfighting dwarves, any spoilers. A box-set containing the space. On a seemingly concentration camps in occupied Poland. Carmencita soon discovers a new, yet complete first three seasons is also routine mission to repair a Violence, complicity and guilt lie at the equally perilous, calling: to become Spain’s available for $119.95. satellite, disaster strikes and Ryan (Bullock) core of Generation War, and the first female toreador. and Matt’s (Clooney) shuttle is destroyed, combination of high-quality performances FLY ME TO THE MOON leaving the astronauts alone, tethered only and storytelling make this one of the best GAME OF THRONES: $29.95 to each other and spiralling within the void series I’ve seen in recent memory. SEASON 3 The women in Isabelle’s of space. Part psychological thriller and family suffer from a curse BLANCANIEVES $59.95 part action movie, director Alfonso If you want blood, sex and where their first marriage $34.95 Cuaron’s Gravity is a must-see film. betrayal packaged up in is always a disaster, Released 5 March some seriously epic inevitably ending in TREME: SEASON 4 The fairytale of Snow White storytelling, Game of divorce. Determined to $29.95 is reinvented in Thrones will not circumvent the curse and Created by David Simon Blancanieves, a sumptuous disappoint. Similar to the ensure the success of her impending and Eric Overmyer, the silent, black-and-white first two seasons, the third marriage to faultless fiancé Pierre, minds behind The Wire, offering from writer and consists of 10 drama-filled, plot-heavy Isabelle devises a plan: marry and divorce Treme has been highly director Pablo Berger. episodes and is adapted from the A Song a complete stranger before the wedding. praised for its joyful and Carmencita, the daughter of of Ice and Fire book series by George R.R. She sets her sights on Jean-Yves, a travel honest portrayal of New a celebrated matador, is cast from grace Martin. The events of this season are writer with a sense of adventure, Orleans, the acclaimed when her now-quadriplegic father marries roughly based on the first half of A Storm following him to Africa and Morocco birthplace of jazz music and creative the cruel, conniving Encarna. Rescued by of Swords but I’ll stop here before I reveal amid a series of misadventures. KATE CEBERANO I’M TALKING

Kate Ceberano, speaking about her Wednesday 26 March memoir I’m Talking: My life, my words, my music and performing a special set 6.30pm-8pm of songs. Westgarth Theatre In her own unmistakable voice, Kate 89 High St, Northcote Ceberano takes us on a very personal journey from her surburban childhood, $40 per person, includes signed her immersion in the Melbourne club first edition book. scene of the eighties and her rise to stardom at the age of fourteen when Booking details online at she fronted the wildly popular funk readings.com.au/events band I’m Talking, to the life of a female performer and recording artist in London, Los Angeles and New York. 18 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014

New Music London Grammar and, of course, Melbourne artist Vance Joy, who was named number Album of the Month one in the countdown. Pop & Rock MORNING PHASE TH BOB DYLAN: THE 30 Beck HEY DAYDREAMER ANNIVERSARY CONCERT $21.95 Sally Seltmann COLLECTION Late one warm Wednesday in February, sitting in the $22.95 Various gathering dark with a tart glass of wine, I listened to Beck’s 2CD $21.95. DVD $24.95 Sea Change in anticipation of its new companion album, Morning With Hey Daydreamer, Phase. I smiled after just a few bars, grateful for the rediscovery; arguably her most vibrant On 16 October 1992, afterwards, glass empty but heart full, I dove into this new album. The six years and fully realised album to Madison Square Garden between this and his previous album, Modern Guilt, have been lean on musical releases date, Sally Seltmann hosted a live gathering of from Beck – Songbook was released solely as sheet music, and although I own it, I expresses the full spectrum musical giants who’d come haven’t done anything but stare at it in a bewildered fashion – as a spinal injury kept of human emotion with her pop-drenched together to celebrate the him away from full use of his voice and guitar. songs that tell stories of luscious sound thirtieth anniversary of Bob Dylan’s debut Here, armed with both instruments back in full force, Morning Phase becomes scapes wrapped tight around the heart and self-titled album. The performance brought a personal, acoustic album, folksy and indie by way of the Nashville setting where soul. The album was produced in together an unprecedented roster of artists seeds of the songs were planted years before. It is also soaring – Beck’s father, David collaboration with her husband Darren and icons including, but not limited to, Lou Richard Campbell, composed the lush orchestral moments, like the swell of strings Seltmann (of The Avalanches) and together Reed, Chrissie Hynde, Sinéad O’Connor, over ‘Wave’ – and throughout, the album borrows from earlier times, 70s folk classics they recorded a wide array of Stevie Wonder, Tracy Chapman, George that sneak their way into echoing voices and electric guitar chords. ‘Waking Light’ instrumentation in their home studio, Harrison, Kris Kristofferson and Neil Young, builds from gentle xylophone notes, like pebbles in water, to a chorus loaded with including the contribution of many friends who dubbed the evening ‘Bob-Fest’. The piano and emotion: Beck sings ‘... fill your eyes with waking light’, but for those of and guests. Their attic and lounge-set majority of that concert is captured here in us unimpressed with the idea, just make this the song your alarm sings to you in the recording sessions see Sally handling piano, this amazing live double-album which ends morning. ‘Blue Moon’ has an animated, synth-laden finale that I still find myself synth, organ, guitar, bass and percussion, in with three songs from Dylan himself. tapping on train windows, while the liberal application of reverb and vocal harmonies addition to her powerful vocals. THE CLASSIC unleash Beck’s alt-charm, presumably stored under the giant hat on the album’s cover. ACOUSTIC AT THE Joan as Police Woman Like us all in the morning, sometimes Beck is quiet, introspective, and sometimes he is RYMAN $21.95 joyous and loud. In all his phases, he is worth listening to. Band of Horses Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton $21.95 Singer-songwriter Joan Wasser builds on the creative impetus and long-time collaborator Boo Hewerdine on Acoustic at the Ryman is a EMMAAR success of her 2011 LP The guitar, and heavyweights from the Celtic 10-song virtual greatest Tinariwen Deep Field with a vivacious scene like Ian Carr, also on guitar, Alan hits set of acoustic $21.95 new album. Rooted in an intimate, Kelly, whose accordion playing is a real renditions of songs from The desert is a place of elemental and uplifting brand of soul, The highlight here, John McCusker on fiddle, across the Band of Horses hardship and subtle beauty, Classic pulses with Joan’s own torch- Michael McGoldrick on whistles and pipes, catalogue. Recording the album at a stark world that reveals singing temperament to create a more and various members of Capercaillie, to Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium its secrets slowly and liberated feel than ever before. The result is name but a few. The band really swings, over two magical nights in April 2013, the carefully. For nomadic a perfect reflection of her efforts to address easily shifting from up-tempo jazzy group set about translating the energy and blues maestros Tinariwen, this desert is also – and solve – personal issues, rejecting her numbers to more melancholic Celtic songs. electricity of those performances into the their home and their hypnotic, electrifying melancholic disposition in favour of an Reader has always had strong closest possible experience to having been guitar rock reflects on the complex realities unashamed lust for life. connections to the traditional music of there. The record is one of a mere handful of life in Northwest Africa. Due to political her homeland and she continues this here of non-classical or jazz albums to be mixed instability within their home, the group HAVE FUN WITH GOD with her first foray into writing Gaelic and mastered in the DSD format, capturing travelled to California’s Joshua Tree lyrics on ‘Buain Na Rainich (Fairy Love the ragged magic of an unforgettable Bill Callahan National Park to record this new album, yet Song)’ and a really good version of ‘In Ma performance in dangerously pristine quality. $32.95 their music remains firmly located in the Country’. ‘Pray the Devil Back to Hell’ heart of their homeland. is a slice of Celtic soul with brass that Bill Callahan’s Dream River ST. VINCENT Van Morrison would be proud of. The was one of our favourite St. Vincent beautiful title track is a poem adapted to releases of 2013, appearing Jazz $21.95 song by Reader, and the autobiographical in our Top Ten list for Best ‘Midnight in Paris 1979’ recounts an early Pop Music. Now with Have This self-titled follow up busking adventure and the beginnings of MEHLIANA: TAMING THE Fun with God, Callahan and his mixer Brian to 2011’s Strange Mercy and a vagabond life. The last year has been a Beattie have expanded on this record, DRAGON 2012’s Love This Giant, a difficult one for Reader – her husband, remixing the songs with inspiration from Brad Mehldau & Mark Guiliana collaborative album with John Douglas, has been chronically 1970 dub and Jamaican music. Here are $21.95 David Byrne, will not ill – but she has emerged triumphant, versions of the Dream River songs, killed Pairing world-renowned disappoint the fans. St. Vincent showcases producing a really beautiful and well- and resurrected, spilling tales of the other pianist Brad Mehldau and musician Annie Clark at her most assured rounded collection of songs. side of life in a language conceivable only if acclaimed percussionist and gripping, as she meshes distorted, you let yourself be taken there. Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton Mark Guiliana, the debut aggressive electric guitars with ethereal album from this sizzling vocal and synthesizer arrangements, all VAMPS ET VAMPIRE: electric duo had been hotly anticipated by layered on top of an infectious rhythm Folk & World THE SONGS OF SERGE the jazz world. Comprising 12 original tunes, section and relentless percussion. The Mehliana features Mehldau on Fender record’s 11 tracks also feature performances GAINSBOURG Rhodes and synthesizers, and Guiliana on from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, VAGABOND Various drums and effects, and was engineered and Homer Steinweiss and Midlake drummer Eddi Reader $25.95 mixed by Greg Koller. The vinyl, due for McKenzie Smith. Vamps et Vampire is a $24.95 release later in March, includes two sprawling journey deep 140-gram LPs pressed at Pallas MFG in TRIPLE J’S HOTTEST 100: into the sexy, playful world Glaswegian Eddi Diepholz, Germany. of French pop through the VOLUME 21 Reader has had a music of Serge Gainsbourg. Various long and varied career: Regarded as one of the most important RECOMMENDED VINYL 2CDS. $29.95 busker, actor, backup figures in French popular music, Gainsbourg Triple j’s Hottest 100 wraps singer for some big names, was renowned for his provocative and High Hopes up another huge year in including Gang of Four and Eurythmics, Bruce Springsteen scandalous releases, as well as his diverse music, one which saw some brief pop stardom with Fairground $34.95 artistic output. Spanning his entire canon, incredible talent and brand Attraction, and then a series of very Has God Seen My Shadow? this collection of Gainsbourg music ranges new sounds introduced to well-regarded albums. Vagabond shows Mark Lanegan from existential chanson, to yé-yé and $49.95 the world, as well as some old favourites Reader emerging more as a songwriter – her beyond. The songs are performed by a stellar So Frenchy So Chic 2014 come back to dominate the airwaves. This command of a number of musical styles is all-female cast including Juliette Gréco, Various year’s double album features songs from impressive, and provides a showcase for one France Gall, Brigitte Bardot, Françoise $34.95 musicians as diverse as Daft Punk, Lorde, of the most underrated voices around. Hardy, Jane Birkin, Catherine Deneuve, Morning of the Earth Arctic Monkeys, Kanye West, Matt Corby, Reader has gathered a very Vanessa Paradis and many more. Various Haim, Lana Del Rey, Arcade Fire, Flume, sympathetic bunch of musicians, including $49.95 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2014 19

New Classical Music which he wrote, ‘It will be my swan song of THE VIRTUOSO this kind, and will serve to ensure that I CLARINET: VOL. 2 shall not soon be forgotten after my death.’ Michael Collins & Michael McHale This recording re-creates the program of Classical Album of the Month Chandos. CHAN10804. $24.95 this historic concert and confirms the prophetic nature of the composer’s words. Clarinettist Michael MOZART ARIAS Hans-Christoph Rademann leads the RIAS Collins presents the Emma Matthews Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik second volume of his ABC Classics. 4810776. $21.95 Berlin and a stellar cast of soloists in Virtuoso Clarinet series, In 2009 Australian soprano Emma Matthews released an definitive recordings of these fascinating showcasing the album simply titled Emma Matthews in Monte Carlo. It was and innovative works. extraordinarily wide range of music a roaring success so I was excited to hear she was releasing a written for this versatile instrument. This new recording. Featuring all Mozart arias, this was a chance for Matthews to really ARANJUEZ volume includes works that test the abilities of the player with their exuberant show what her voice is capable of. Miloš Karadaglic, London displays of virtuosity such as Debussy’s Earlier this year I was lucky enough to see Matthews perform in Sydney at the Philharmonic Orchestra & Yannick ‘The Première rhapsodie’, as well as pieces Australian premiere of The Turk in Italy, an opera by a very young Rossini. If you’ve Nézet-Séguin from Rabaud and Widor. In other works, a only heard her recordings and not yet seen her on stage, then you’ve only seen half DG. 4810652. Was $24.95 jazz influence is notable, including the performance. Her voice commands your attention and her acting is also superb $19.95 – I can now say, having seen Matthews a few times, that we are incredibly lucky to Milhaud’s Duo Concertante and Martinu’s With his movie star have such a performer here in Australia. She completely stole the stage as the cheeky Sonatina, both composed in 1956 and good looks and and man-grabbing Fiorilla in this saucy opera that Rossini decided was too risqué demonstrating a diversity of influence that undeniable talent, Miloš to publish. combines folk and jazz elements. Karadaglic has had a rapid Mozart, on the other hand, has more moods and colours than a Pantone colour Muczynski’s Time Pieces are also included rise to the top of the booklet, from risqué to sombre, from the heights of love to depths of despair. To truly in this volume, each one highlighting a classical guitar world in the last three succeed as a singer of Mozart you must not only have the ability to let rip in the large- specific characteristic of the clarinet in years, and this new recording should keep scale arias, but also to draw the audience in when the drama calls for it. This is exactly terms of range, technical prowess, tone, his star on the rise. On his latest release, what Matthews does in this album, from her command and depth of tone in the ‘Queen colour and expressiveness. Karadaglic tackles arguably the greatest of the Night Aria’, which will make you smile involuntarily, to the more subdued ‘Ach, piece written for the classical guitar, ich fühl’s’ as Pamina laments the loss of her love. SCHUBERT: Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, and as This recording is a terrific blend of arias that you know, with a few that are WINTERREISE usual delivers an excellent performance. lesser known, each filled with that Mozartarian vigour and crafted into a dramatic Jonas Kaufmann & Helmut The acid test that all guitarists must pass showcase for a truly great singer. Highly recommended. Deutsch when playing this piece is the second Sony. 88883795652. $22.95 Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings movement – the adagio. This movement requires the performer to be at their best Along with Franz and Miloš shines through this section. He Schubert’s earlier song RACHMANINOV NO. 3 SARASATE also gets great support from conductor cycle, Die schöne & PROKOFIEV NO 2: Julia Fischer & Milana Chernyavska Yannick Nézet-Séguin as well as the Müllerin, Winterreis (Winter Journey) is Decca. 4785950. $21.95 London Philharmonic Orchestra. PR PIANO CONCERTOS generally considered the composer’s The dazzling showpieces of Yuja Wang, Simón Bolívar greatest contribution to the Lied repertoire. violin legend Pablo Sarasate MONTEVERDI: Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela Set to 24 poems by German poet Wilhelm meet their match in Julia MADRIGALS OF LOVE & Gustavo Dudamel Müller, this particular song cycle was Fischer, one of the most DG. 4791304. Was $24.95 AND LOSS completed by Schubert a year before his sought-after musicians of $19.95 Arcangelo & Jonathan Cohen death in 1827. Now, after 20 years of her generation. Her recording will help shine Recorded live in Hyperion. CDA68019. $24.95 working together and countless a new light on Sarasate’s music, which Caracas to celebrate With their first recording performances, Jonas Kaufmann and his Fischer wants to restore to the concert Venezuela’s unique music as a vocal and instrumental piano-partner Helmut Deutsch finally platform. The key track of the release is education program El group, Gramophone commit their interpretation of the celebrated composition ‘Zigeunerweisen’ Sistema, this is the first Award-winning ensemble Winterreise to disc. (‘Gypsy Airs’). With its heady czardas recording from conductor Gustavo Arcangelo present a rhythms and folk flavour, it is best known as a Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar selection from Monteverdi’s last three books showpiece for violin and orchestra, but Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela to of madrigals. These ardent and passionate Special of the Month Fischer and long-standing accompanist feature a soloist, and it is a magnificent works are microcosms of Monteverdi’s great Milana Chernyavska present it here as it was For the entire month of triumph for all concerned. Yuja Wang’s operas, and among his most celebrated and originally written, for violin and piano. March, Readings will playing is stunning and it’s obvious from significant music; the eighth book offer a special price of the opening notes that she loves the introduces genere concitato – the ‘agitated’ C.P.E. BACH: MAGNIFICAT $9.95 (reduced from passion Dudamel and the SBSO bring to manner that Monteverdi devised to convey $14.95) on all recordings the table. Although these concertos were Hans-Christoph Rademann & the emotions of war, whether physical or from the Helios label, the budget line of written just three years apart there is a others psychological. Book eight also includes the prestigious Hyperion label. With over clear delineation between the two; Harmonia Mundi. HMC902167. $29.95 Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, 400 titles in this range, classical music Rachmaninov’s work celebrates the On 9 April 1786, Carl which sets an extended passage from Tasso’s lovers will be delighted with the fantastic romanticism of the nineteenth century Philipp Emanuel Bach epic poem ‘La Gerusalemme liberata’. The selection of music on offer, from the and Prokofiev’s is firmly rooted in the conducted a charity poem is set in the time of the first crusade symphonic, orchestral, baroque, chamber, twentieth. Both works require a technical concert in Hamburg and tells of the combat between the solo instrumental and vocal genres. This ability that only the best should tackle and featuring three of his Christian knight Tancredi and the Saracen offer is only available in-store at our Wang definitely has that, playing with finest and most representative works: the maiden Clorinda. The story is conveyed by a Carlton, Hawthorn and Malvern shops, great passion and sensitivity. Symphony Wq 183/1, the Magnificat, and narrator, sung here by deservedly celebrated his stupendous ‘Heilig’ for double choir, of tenor James Gilchrist. and only while stocks last. Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton

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