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THE GLOAMING page 22 KILLING EVE MARK BRANDI ALICE JUDITH BRETT DERVLA page 21 page 7 ROBINSON page 11 MCTIERNAN page 7 page 15

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

NEWS March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 3

book in the range (of equal or lesser value) for free! The range includes titles from Ali Smith, March Tim Winton, Elizabeth Strout, William Boyd Writers on and Ottessa Moshfegh among others. This offer is exclusively available in all Readings News shops except Readings Kids until 31 March 50 years of Readings on stickered, in-stock items only, while stocks last. This offer is not available online. The Readings Children’s Book Prize shortlist This year marks Readings’ 50th birthday. To We’re delighted to announce the shortlist 3 for $10 Little Golden Books for The Readings Children’s Book Prize Throughout March, we have a special offer celebrate, we asked some of our favourite authors 2019. The shortlisted titles are Elementals: on a select range of Little Golden Books. You Ice Wolves (Book 1) by Amie Kaufman, can buy three Little Golden Books for just $10! to reflect on what Readings has meant to them. The Orchard Underground (Book 1) by Mat The range includes classic favourites such as Larkin, Real Pigeons Fight Crime (Book 1) by The Little Red Hen, The Poky Little Puppy, The Andrew McDonald with illustrations by Ben Saggy Baggy Elephant, The Tawny Scrawny Wood, Black Cockatoo by Carl Merrison Lion and The Shy Little Kitten. This offer is ‘I have two homes – one in bush on the outskirts of Melbourne, the other in the and Hakea Hustler, The Peacock Detectives exclusively available in all Readings shops thinking heart of the city, Readings in Carlton. I have been browsing, buying, by Carly Nugent, and Ottilie Colter and except Readings Carlton, until 31 March on listening and speaking there for the past fifty years. Its genius is to have adapted the Narroway Hunt (Book 1) by Rhiannon select, in-stock items only, while stocks last. seamlessly to all the trends in the book trade and to have seen off any rivals Williams. This year’s guest judge, author This offer is not available online. while always, in essence, staying the same.’ – Robert Manne and past winner of the Readings Children’s Book Prize Zana Fraillon, will help select the winner from this shortlist, to be announced Special offer on The Rip by Mark Brandi in the May edition of Readings Monthly. Find This month sees the release of Mark Brandi’s ‘When my first book Shadowboxing was released in 2006, one of my greatest out more on page 16. second novel, The Rip, which explores themes pleasures was seeing it in the window of the Readings store on Lygon Street, of homelessness in Melbourne. During the month of March, Readings will donate $1 from the bookshop where I had spent many, many hours browsing and buying 3 for 2 fiction favourites every sale of this book to Launch Housing, a books. I have written another six books since that day, and have bought Throughout March, we have a special offer Melbourne-based, secular and independent hundreds more. Like many people, I think of Readings as my shop, and the on a select range of award-winning and community agency formed in July 2015 with staff as generous and helpful friends.’– Tony Birch popular fiction titles from Penguin Random the goal of ending homelessness. See our House. Buy two books, and choose a third review of The Rip on page 7.

‘Readings has been enormously important to me personally and to me making my way as a writer and to finding the book I want when I want it.’ – Alex Miller

‘All bookshops are my favourite places but Readings is one of my favourites. As a reader I love the staff – so warm and knowledgeable – and the huge, eclectic range of books. As a writer I always look forward to a “Readings event”, knowing my work will be enthusiastically supported and that I’ll have a chance to meet so many Readings readers – thoughtful people who love books.’ – Kate Grenville

‘Over 50 years, Readings has become a significant cultural force in our community. They champion Australian writing like no one else. Their shelves offer a curation of the most powerful and tantalising stories and ideas from around the world. Personally speaking, the support they have given my writing has been hugely important to me. Whoever knew a book shop could change the world?’ – Zoe Morrison

READINGS MONTHLY EDITOR DVDS CURATOR CARTOON Free, independent monthly newspaper Elke Power Lou Fulco Oslo Davis published by Readings Books, Music & Film [email protected] oslodavis.com EVENTS CURATOR SUBSCRIBE EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Chris Gordon PRICES AND AVAILABILITY You can subscribe to Readings Monthly Judi Mitchell and Ellen Cregan Please note that all prices and release and our e-news by visiting our website: ADVERTISING dates in Readings Monthly are correct at readings.com.au/sign-up PROOFREADERS Ellen Cregan time of publication, however prices and Marie Matteson and Ellen Cregan [email protected] release dates may change without notice. DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Special price offers apply only for the MAIL-ORDER PURCHASES KIDS/YA CURATORS GRAPHIC DESIGN month in which they are featured in the $6 flat rate for anywhere in Australia Angela Crocombe and Dani Solomon Cat Matteson Readings Monthly. colourcode.com.au DELIVERY CHARGES FOR MUSIC CURATOR ONLINE PURCHASES Readings donates 10% of its profits each Dave Clarke FRONT COVER $6 flat rate for anywhere in Australia for year to The Readings Foundation: The March Readings Monthly cover by Cat readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation orders under $100. Free delivery on orders CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR Matteson. $100 and over. Phil Richards

Enter the $12,500 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize Judges: Maxine Beneba Clarke, John Kinsella, and Beejay Silcox. Closes 15 April 2019.

Accessing Australian Book Review has never been easier Subscribe now for only $10 per month at www.australianbookreview.com.au 4 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 EVENTS

Tuesday 12 March, Thursday 14 March, Saturday 23 March, 10.30–11am 6.30pm 6.30pm March 50 AUSTRA 50 AUSTRA LIA LIA N N ST ST KIDS 5O 9O R R IE IE S S Events CARRIE TIFFANY IN KATE LEGGE IN STORY TIME: ADAM CONVERSATION CONVERSATION WITH WALLACE AND JAMES Join us to hear Carrie Tiffany discuss her HEATHER EWART HART INTRODUCE Event times and locations are subject to change. new novel. Set at the close of the 1970s In Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story, COWBOY AND BIRDBRAIN For the most up-to-date information on and traversing thousands of kilometres of award-winning journalist Kate Legge Join us for this special story time at which events, please check readings.com.au/events inland roads, Exploded View is a revelatory tells the remarkable story of the two James Hart and Adam Wallace will introduce interrogation of Australian girlhood and a unconventional adventurers behind the their new book series, Cowboy and Birdbrain. fearless and masterful work from the Stella creation of the World Heritage listed Cowboy and Birdbrain are best friends Prize-winning author of Mateship with Birds. Cradle Mountain wilderness sanctuary. Thursday 7 March, 6.30pm who work for I.F.F.Y. delivery company – the Come along to hear Legge discuss Readings Carlton company that does the riskiest, zaniest, most these eco-tourism pioneers and their 309 Lygon Street, Carlton bizarre deliveries ever. They’re known for ANNALEESE JOCHEMS extraordinary legacy, which neither lived Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events their F.A.R.T.S. (Fast and Reliable Tracking to see, with Heather Ewart of ABC TV’s IN CONVERSATION WITH Service). This series is perfect for young Back Roads. JAMIE MARINA LAU readers that need to laugh often! Come along to hear Annaleese Jochems Readings Hawthorn Wednesday 13 March, Readings Kids discuss her debut novel, Baby, with Jamie 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn 6.30pm 0 AUST 5 RAL 315 Lygon Street, Carlton IAN Marina Lau (Pink Mountain on Locust ST Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 6O R Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events IE Island). Described by Eleanor Catton S (The Luminaries) as ‘Heavenly Creatures SALLY YOUNG IN for a new generation,’ Baby is a sunburnt CONVERSATION WITH psychological thriller of obsession and MICHAEL BACHELARD Thursday 14 March, 6.30pm escape by one of the most exciting new ABOUT AUSTRALIA’S voices in New Zealand fiction. NEWSPAPER EMPIRES DOMINIC KELLY IN CONVERSATION WITH Readings St Kilda Sally Young’s Paper Emperors: The Rise of 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Australia’s Newspaper Empires is a timely SOPHIE BLACK Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events corporate and political history of Australian In Political Troglodytes and Economic newspapers spanning 140 years and a Lunatics, Dominic Kelly delivers a riveting handful of dynastic empires. Come along case study in how very determined people to hear Young in conversation with Michael can change a political culture, looking at the Bachelard, The Age and The Sydney Morning enduring effect on mainstream public policy Herald’s foreign and investigations editor, for of four small but potent organisations set up an essential discussion of the relationship in the 1980s by two hard-right conservatives between media and politics. at Western Mining Corporation. Come along to hear Kelly in conversation with editor and ORIES Readings Carlton ST journalist Sophie Black. AN 309 Lygon Street, Carlton LI A Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Readings State Library Victoria R T 285-321 Russell Street, Melbourne S U Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Monday 25 March, A 6.30pm Wednesday 13 March, 10 6.30-7.30pm 50 AUSTRA LIA 50 Australian Stories N ST REBECCA HUNTLEY 7O R Monday 18 March, 6.30pm IE event series AUSTRALIAN S & MAXINE MCKEW ON IDENTITY IN A SONIA ORCHARD IN PROGRESS AND POLITICS Readings is celebrating our CHANGING LANDSCAPE CONVERSATION WITH Rebecca Huntley is one of Australia’s foremost social researchers. In the latest 50 year history in 2019. To We are thrilled to announce a panel that will RACHEL POWERS Quarterly Essay, Huntley looks at the state expand the way you think about Australia honour the stories that have Join Sonia Orchard as she discusses her of the nation and asks: what does social- and its place in the world. In celebration of emerged from the books on novel Into the Fire with Rachel Powers, democratic Australia want, and why? A the release of Australian Foreign Affairs 5, our shelves, we are hosting author of The Divided Heart and Motherhood majority of Australians have been saying David Walker will chair a panel discussion and Creativity. Into the Fire is a compelling they want change, yet recent attention has 50 special events that with Santilla Chingaipe, George Megalogenis, story about power, guilt and womanhood focused on the angry, reactionary minority. illustrate passion, artistry and Christos Tsiolkas and Alice Pung on the topic that explores, through exquisite prose and But is there a progressive centre? Join us Australian literature. We hope of Australia’s struggle to define its identity insight, the many ways we betray our ideals. to hear Huntley discuss these essential and and place in Asia as it balances its historic you will join our celebrations. timely questions with Maxine McKew. ties to the West with its geography. Come Readings St Kilda along to be part of a necessary conversation 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Church of All Nations about Australia’s past, present and future. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton Friday 8 March, Tickets are $25 and include a copy of the Cinema Nova 6.30-7.30pm 50 AUSTRA Quarterly Essay OR $5 per person for QE LIA 380 Lygon Street, Carlton N ST 4O subscribers. Bookings are essential, please book R IE Wednesday 20 March, 6.30pm S Tickets are $25 per person and include a copy at readings.com.au/events CHOICE WORDS ON of Australian Foreign Affairs .5 INTERNATIONAL HARRIET BIRRELL IN WOMEN’S DAY CONVERSATION WITH Saturday 30 March, 10.30am To acknowledge International Women’s Thursday 14 March, SHARLEE GIBB Day and the reality of women’s lives and 6.30pm 0 AUST 5 RAL KIDS IAN Join us to hear fresh ideas on how to eat ST their own freedom to choose, we are 8O R IE more plant-based wholefood with Harriet thrilled to bring you a panel of important ADOLFO ARANJUEZ S STORY TIME: AMELIA voices straight from the newly released Birrell, aka ‘Natural Harry’, a woman whose IN CONVERSATION mission is to show people a different way DONNELLY READS THE Choice Words: A Collection of Writing GOLDEN THREAD about Abortion. Among those joining us WITH TONY BIRCH to think about nourishing food. Birrell and Sharlee Gibb (co-author of Mr & Mrs for this event supported by the Victorian We are delighted to join forces with Meanjin Come along to a special story time to hear Wilkinson’s How it is at Home and the Women’s Trust will be editor Louise to bring you a conversation about identity primary school teacher and author Amelia creator of Fully Booked Women) will share Swinn, contributors Amy Gray and Monica and sexuality. Join Adolfo Aranjuez, editor Donnelly read her picture book, The Golden ideas and discuss Birrell’s new book, Whole, Dux, and social commentator and writer of Metro, Australia’s oldest film and media Thread. It follows a young girl called Rosie which contains more than one hundred Clementine Ford. periodical, and editor-in-chief of Archer, the as she learns to deal with the sudden loss plant-based, wholefood recipes that strike world’s most inclusive sexuality and gender of her big brother. This heart-warming story Church of All Nations, the perfect balance between whole, simple, magazine, as he discusses the importance of addresses the difficult concept of grief in a 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton satisfying and tasty. language with acclaimed author Tony Birch. positive way. All proceeds from the book are going to the Readings Hawthorn Readings Hawthorn Marie Stopes Choice Fund. Tickets to this event Readings St Kilda 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn are $5 per person and bookings are essential. 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, no booking required. EVENTS + COLUMNS March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 5

A Grain of Hope by Nicola Philip Join us as Julian Burnside launches Nicola Coming March Philip’s A Grain of Hope, a picture book Dear about refugees and animals which will make you catch your breath. Up Launches Monday 18 March, 6.30pm Reader Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required.

The Blackburns by Carolyn Rasmussen One of the things I loved Lazy Daisy by Caz Goodwin and Ashley Join us for the launch of The Blackburns King (illus.) by Carolyn Rasmussen, an incredible dual about Mark Brandi’s 2017 Join us for the launch of Lazy Daisy by Caz biography of Maurice and Doris Blackburn, debut, Wimmera, was his Goodwin and Ashley King. In this hilarious who changed the legal and social precise writing of rhyming story, all of Jasper’s dreams come landscape of Australia forever. atmosphere, time, and true when he finds his very own ‘puppy dog’ Tuesday 19 March, 6.30pm place. In his follow up novel, The Rip, Brandi to walk in the park. Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. again creates an unforgettable document of Saturday 2 March, 10.30am our times, this time illuminating tough | Readings Hawthorn Free, no booking required. The Stars in the Night by Clare Rhoden inner-city lives that are lived in plain sight. Join us for the launch of Clare Rhoden’s The Rip is the second installment in a stellar Islands by Peggy Frew new novel, The Stars in the Night. From the writing career, and our Fiction Book of the Join us as Jen Cloher launches Peggy beaches of South Australia to the muddy Month. It’s in company with some other Frew’s new novel, Islands. It’s a brilliant fields of France and back, this is a moving exceptional Australian releases, including portrait of a family in crisis by the talented and perceptive story of WWI. Alice Robinson’s The Glad Shout, Leah author of House of Sticks and Hope Farm. Wednesday 20 March, 6.30 Kaminsky’s The Hollow Bones, Trevor Monday 4 March, 6.30pm Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Shearston’s Hare’s Fur, Carrie Tiffany’s Exploded View, and Peggy Frew’s Islands. Unlike the Heart by Nicola Redhouse The Good University by Raewyn Connell Join us for the launch of Nicola Redhouse’s In international fiction, Pitchaya Join us for the launch of Raewyn Connell’s compelling memoir Unlike the Heart, in Sudbanthad’s anticipated debut novel, Thursday 4 April, The Good University. Jeannie Rae will which she explores her experiences Bangkok Wakes to Rain, is a sprawling 6.30pm 1 launch this powerful new book about what of postnatal anxiety and the historical historical epic which our reviewer calls 1 universities actually do, and why it’s time progression of psychoanalysis. ‘beguiling’; Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread is MELINA MARCHETTA for radical change. Thursday 21 March, 6.30pm a ‘[seamless blend of] writing about magic, IN CONVERSATION Wednesday 6 March, 6.30pm Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. heritage, culture, and deeply complex Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. relationships’; and Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Come along to hear Melina Marchetta, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage Children Archive is our reviewer’s favourite the bestselling, award-winning author by Judith Brett The Hollow Bones by Leah Kaminsky book of the year (a comment made to me in of Looking for Alibrandi, talk about her Join us as Peter Singer launches Judith Join us as Toni Jordan launches Leah passing, and an early call, you must agree, unforgettable new novel for adults, The Brett’s new book, From Secret Ballot to Kaminsky’s new novel, The Hollow Bones, but I’ll check with her again in December!). Place on Dalhousie. It’s a perfectly crafted a lyrical and poignant cautionary tale Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got If you’re looking for a book to fill the A Star novel about families, relationships and the about a little-known Nazi villain and Compulsory Voting. It’s a crisp, surprising is Born-sized hole in your heart, you might true nature of belonging. ruthless, cold ambition. and timely analysis. try Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Wednesday 6 March, 6.30pm Thursday 21 March, 6.30pm Church of All Nations Six, written like the best rockumentary | Readings State Library Victoria 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton Readings St Kilda Free, no booking required. Free, no booking required. you’ve never seen. Adèle is the debut, now Tickets are $30 per person and include a signed in English translation, from Leïla Slimani Practice: Journalism, Essays and Criticism copy of The Place on Dalhousie at the special by Guy Rundle Sabina Spielrein and the Poetry of of Lullaby fame. Jonathan Carr’s Make Me Psychoanalysis: Writing and the End of price of $29.99 (was $32.99). Come along to the launch of Guy Rundle’s a City, Andrew Ridker’s The Altruists, and Analysis by Michael Gerard Plastow new book, Practice: Journalism, Essays and Salvatore Scibona’s The Volunteer vie for the Join us for the launch of Sabina Spielrein Criticism. Practice distils his best writing title of ‘Big American Novel of the Month’. and the Poetry of Psychoanalysis: Writing on politics, culture, class and more – from and the End of Analysis, by Michael Gerard I’m intrigued to find out more about Joan Nirvana to Anzac Day. Plastow an examination of her legacy and Silber’s work: her novel Improvement won Thursday 7 March, 6.30pm original contribution to the field. the 2018 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Monday 25 March, 6.30pm It’s always an election year in Australia Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. (or the year before one or the year after one), You Must Be Layla by Yassmin Abdel- so there’s no better time to read award- Magied The Thinking Woman by Julienne van Loon winning historian Judith Brett’s story of Join Yassmin Abdel-Magied for the launch Join us as Maria Tumarkin launches our electoral system and our Nonfiction of her brilliant upper-middle-grade novel, Julienne van Loon’s The Thinking Woman, in You Must Be Layla. Packed with heart and Book of the Month, From Secret Ballot to which she applies a range of philosophical humour, it shows the strength required to Democracy Sausage. Our reviewer says ideas to her own experience, and asks what be a Queen with a capital ‘Q’. it ‘reads like a thriller’ (I’m not sure how it means to live a good life. Thursday 14 March, 6.30pm many thrillers ‘read like a history’ but that’s Tuesday 26 March, 6.30pm Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. their loss!). March brings some wonderful | Readings Carlton Free, no booking required. anthologies, including Toni Morrison’s Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Playground Circus by Simon O’Carrigan Eight Lives by Susan Hurley and Chrissy Byers Meditations, and Choice Words, a long- Join us as screenwriter Andrew Knight (Sea Join us for the launch of this new picture Change, Jack Irish) launches Susan Hurley’s overdue edited collection of writing about book, charmingly illustrated by Simon Eight Lives, an engrossing thriller with the subject of abortion. You’ll see books O’Carrigan. Playground Circus is, in part, a about Cradle Mountain (Kindred) and Sunday 28 April, 2-3.30pm origins in a real-life medical drug trial that cautionary tale for parents about spending ended in tragedy. Australia’s highest peak (Kosciuszko), and life on their smartphones. Thursday 28 March, 6pm some inspiring and revealing memoirs, NATASHA STOTT Saturday 16 March, 11am Readings State Library Victoria including Caro Llewellyn’s Diving into Readings Kids | Free, no need to book. DESPOJA: ON VIOLENCE Free, no booking required. Glass, Nicola Redhouse’s Unlike the Heart, Every two minutes, police are called to Hédi Fried’s Questions I Am Asked about the 52 Mondays by Anna Ciddor a family violence matter. Every week, a Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte Holocaust, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout, Join us for the ultimate 1960s-style kids’ woman is killed by a current or former Join us as Amie Kaufman launches Astrid Casey Gerald’s There Will Be No Miracles party to celebrate the release of Anna partner. Natasha Stott Despoja AM is Scholte’s Four Dead Queens, an enthralling, Here, and Albert Woodfox’s Solitary. Witches Ciddor’s new novel for younger readers, fast-paced YA murder mystery where Australia’s former Ambassador for Women is Sam George-Allen’s gift to the sisterhood, 52 Mondays. It involves three sisters, the competing agendas collide with deadly and Girls, is the founding Chair of anti- a book that explores and celebrates women’s perfect doll and lots of mischief! consequences. family violence organisation Our WATCh, collaborations. I’m very keen to read Sunday 17 March, 11am Thursday 28 March, 6.30pm and was named one of the top 100 Global Julienne Van Loon’s The Thinking Woman. Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Influencers on Gender policy in 2018. Join us Charlie Fox is a new voice of cultural critique for a discussion of her essay, On Violence, Hiding to Nothing by Andy Muir Colouroos by Anna McGregor from London recommended to you by no in which she asks why violence against Australia’s most loveable petty crim Lachie Join us as Anna McGregor celebrates the less than Chris Kraus, Olivia Laing and John women is endemic, and how do we stop it? Munro is back in another caper! Come and launch of Colouroos with a reading. In this Waters, so take heed of This Young Monster. Cinema Nova hear Andy Muir talk about Hiding to Nothing picture book, three mobs of kangaroos And finally, dear reader, don’t forget to 380 Lygon Street, Carlton and celebrate the release of this second come to the same waterhole and discover stock your autumnal reading reserves from Tickets are $45 per person and include book in his beachside noir series. they aren’t so different after all. our sale table: we have 3 fiction favourites afternoon tea, a glass of champagne and a copy Sunday 17 March, 2pm Sunday 31 March, 10.30am for the price of 2 this month from our of On Violence. Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. friends at Penguin Random House. 6 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 FEATURE

people’ along. If they could do it in Brisbane, I thought, imagine what we could do in Melbourne! Immediately Mark upon my return I set about organising the first Readings event at the Universal Theatre in Fitzroy with Helen Garner, Gerald Murnane and Robert Drewe. Now, under the direction of our programming and events manager Chris Gordon, we do over 300 events a year. Our events Rubbo on program also led to the founding of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Over the years, Readings has attracted wonderful people to work here who have joined me wholeheartedly 50 years of in our goal of promoting Australian writing and being part of the community. Many of these are career booksellers, people such as Desi Boardman, our Hawthorn shop manager, who has been bookselling with Readings us for over twenty years, or Sally Madsen, former manager of Paperback Bookshop, who joined us and finished her career at Readings. And now younger career booksellers Readings was opened by Ross quiet a thrill. It was the first Australian bestseller we’d are coming through the ranks and it’s inspiring to see. Reading in 1969 at 388 Lygon Street had. Readings had initially, like Professor Longhair’s, Many people have also worked with us during their with his wife Dorothy Reading, and specialised in importing hard-to-get books from America, time as students before moving on to other careers; our friend Peter Reid. Ross and Peter had and had paid little attention to the Australian publishing alumni include artist Callum Morton and Victoria’s been colleagues at the venerable scene. Monkey Grip and McPhee Gribble were part of a Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner, Kristen Hilton. We’ve attracted our fair share of writers, Mark Rubbo Cheshire’s booksellers and had turning point. In Fitzroy, Morry Schwartz, Fred Milgrom, Readings’ marked out Carlton as the most likely Colin Talbot and Mark Gillespie had set up Outback Press too, who see bookselling as complementing their careers, managing spot for a new bookshop in with the aim of publishing new Australian writing and including Miles Franklin Award-winner A.S. Patrić and director Melbourne. The shop was an in 1979 Penguin appointed Brian Johns as its publishing the inaugural Text Prize winner, Leanne Hall. There are immediate success. La Mama had director. Johns, a journalist, had also been a consultant probably lots that I don’t know about; last year’s Text opened in 1967, then in November 1969 the Pram Factory to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It Prize winner turned out to be our marketing manager, came into being and in 1973 the Melbourne Filmmakers’ was a bold move but a great success as he was a daring Nina Kenwood, whose YA novel, It Sounded Better in My Co-operative opened premises and a cinema in the same cultural nationalist whose goal was to revolutionise the Head, will be published later this year. Only one other building Readings then occupied at 384 Lygon Street. The infant Australian publishing industry and he wanted to colleague knew Nina was writing so we all got a fantastic street was becoming a cultural hub for Melbourne. Ross, enlist everyone in his crusade – Readings wasn’t to be surprise when we heard her news. according to Peter Reid, had a very good eye for what was left out. Shortly after his appointment, Brian turned up We have also had the pleasure of working with like- going to be the next big thing. I vividly remember going at Readings unannounced; he wanted to know what was minded booksellers elsewhere. I became president of the into Readings in the early ’70s and Dorothy thrusting a selling, what should be published, what I thought of this Australian Booksellers Association in 1988 and when copy of the newly arrived Avon edition of One Hundred book or that publisher. In my three years as a bookseller, facing a political battle over copyright reform I enlisted Years of Solitude by Gabríel García Márquez into my I’d never met a publisher, let alone one who was interested Sydney bookseller David Gaunt to help me. We’ve been hands, insisting that I had to read it. It would be a few in Readings. Immediately, I knew that I wanted Readings close friends ever since, united by our commitment years before the local Penguin edition became available. to join Brian’s crusade; encouraging Australian writers to bookselling. We also forged alliances with other I’d been a student at Melbourne University and had and publishers became our mission and remains so to this booksellers, such as Brisbane’s Fiona Stager and Suzy a part-time job at the bookroom there. I’d gravitated day. Steve and Greg, to their credit, went along with this. Wilson. Suzy is the founder of the Indigenous Literacy to helping Mr McCarthy in the music department and From my early days selling imported records and then Foundation; I sit on its board and marvel at how Suzy’s discovered I had an affinity for selling music. I thought as a bookseller, I’ve felt it was also our job to provide our dream now provides culturally and age appropriate books a record shop would do well in Lygon Street and, taking customers with what they wanted or what we felt they and programs to over two hundred remote communities a leap as Ross had three years earlier in books, in 1972 I wanted. I also believe that governments shouldn’t stand around Australia. opened Professor Longhair’s Music Shop, named after the in the way; that barriers shouldn’t be erected against Throughout our fifty years we’ve encountered so renowned New Orleans blues pianist. Like Readings, it culture and information. In the early ’80s it was often many wonderful people: other booksellers, writers, was an immediate success, feeding off and contributing difficult for booksellers to fulfil this role as the copyright publishers and our customers. Almost universally, we to the Lygon Street cultural scene. laws technically made it illegal for a bookseller to import are united by the drive to make the world a better place I then met Greg Young through a mutual friend. books without the permission of the copyright holder – through the dissemination of ideas, and to make it more Greg was the proprietor of The Record Collector in South which was impossible in a practical sense. There were enjoyable and stimulating through the wonderful stories Yarra; classical and jazz were Greg’s strengths, but he many books we knew we could sell that wouldn’t be we write, publish and sell. Whenever I travel, one of the also had an interest in Broadway shows. Greg and I soon available in Australia for many months, and sometimes places I always seek is the local bookshop, because I know started working together importing from the United never, so we brought them in. The government eventually it will be a window to that community. States records that hadn’t been released in Australia. recognised this issue and in 1991 changed the copyright When Borders opened across the road from Readings Technically, this was illegal, and we were in a constant laws to force publishers to make their books available Carlton, our community rallied around us, determined not state of apprehension that we would be sued. Once, we more quickly. Before the change in law, we were mostly to see us fail under the onslaught of the American giant. had word that we were going to be raided. I stripped the left alone, but there were occasional raids on our shelves. Many boycotted them and some passed little messages shelves of all our US imports and took them home to line One amusing episode was in 1987 when the British of hope; a long-time customer and friend handed me a the hallway of my share house in Drummond Street; when government was successful in getting an injunction to crumpled note shortly after they opened; scribbled on the raid took place, we were clean and the records were prevent the Australian publication of Spycatcher, the it were the words ‘Livres Sans Frontières’. It became our later returned. Greg and I decided to join forces and take memoirs of former MI5 operative Peter Wright. Acting rallying cry. When Borders closed, some of its booksellers over a shop in Hawthorn and asked Steve Smith, who’d run for the publisher was a young lawyer, Malcolm Turnbull, crossed Lygon Street and joined Readings’ ranks. pop-up shops on campus, to join us. At that stage we were and the case attracted huge interest. The book had been Since then, booksellers have faced the challenge of just having fun; it was very much an ‘accidental’ career. published in the US and I decided to capitalise on this the internet and the rise of e-books. Despite this, we have Ross and I had become friends over the years and in and ordered copies from our American supplier; when managed to survive and I like to think that is because a 1976 he came to me and said that he and Dorothy were they arrived I sent out a note to all the media I could good, well-run, well-stocked bookshop can provide treats moving to the country and asked if I would be interested think of informing them that I was going to sell copies and surprises that the online juggernauts will never be in purchasing Readings. By that time I was beginning to of the book. The Sun (as it was then) was the only one to able to emulate. In a bookshop you can find books in a tire of selling solely music and, after consulting Greg and respond and the next day I discovered that I was on the way that an algorithm can never replicate; in a bookshop Steve, we accepted Ross’s offer without quite knowing front page, standing up for free speech, and soon after the you can have an interaction with another person, be how we would pay for it. Fortunately, Greg’s family and rest of the media followed suit. Sadly, my order had been it someone you bump into, or a bookseller from whom my family stumped up the money and I moved into rather modest and we quickly sold out. Still, on receipt of you can seek advice. They become focal points for their books. We added books to our shops in South Yarra and a lawyer’s letter beginning with the words ‘We act for the communities. Hawthorn and changed the name to Readings Books and British Government and demand that you immediately As Readings turns fifty and I reflect on its history Music. I had a lot to learn. I had a bit of a handover with remove from sale the publication Spycatcher…’ I decided and my career, I do feel a touch of pride; I do feel that Ross, and Peter Reid stayed on for a few years; his advice we’d made our point! my colleagues and I have made a difference to our town was invaluable. Also, a number of Ross’s staff stayed on I was encouraged to become involved in the through our nurturing of writers with events and prizes, with us; Wayne Larsen was with us for another twenty- Australian Booksellers Association by Michael Zifcak, the through inspiring our customers, and through our five years. managing director of Collins Booksellers. In the early ’80s philanthropy, working with the most disadvantaged in In 1977, Di Gribble and Hilary McPhee published Helen the ABA held their conference in Brisbane. At that time our community. We are, indeed, Melbourne’s own since Garner’s Monkey Grip through their McPhee Gribble Brisbane was under the thrall of the conservative Bjelke- 1969. As I near the end of my career, I wonder what will publishing house. Set in Carlton and North Fitzroy, with Petersen government. Robert Brown from the University happen to Readings as my son Joe and his colleagues many of the characters based on real life, it became an of Queensland Press (UQP) told me that UQP organised develop their vision for the future of Readings, and I hope instant hit; it also mentioned Readings, which gave us poetry readings at the university and got ‘hundreds of it will be one of caring, innovation and fun.  FICTION March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 7

this is diminished during Isobel’s lifetime. drinking a coffee, staring out the window Thematically, Robinson explores the roles into the bush. Russell’s inner monologue New and relationships of mothers and daughters guides us through the bucolic scene. Inside, in the most sensitive and detailed manner. a fire of gum leaves and pine splits crackles. Fiction Isobel shares a wonderful relationship with Outside, the flora is in full bloom. The her grandmother Karen – a true free spirit – delicate ‘high-fired earthenware’ coffee cup but her mother, Luna, is a businesswoman Russell holds in his hands foreshadows a who never anticipated being a single tension – literally, how to reconcile a rustic If The Rip has any antecedents it’s probably novels like parent, and for whom parenting is an lifestyle with a life largely spent handling BOOK OF THE Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and the late Andrew McGahan’s imposition. When Isobel has her own precious aesthetic objects? How does one daughter, she must choose how to parent, handle fragility in everyday life? MONTH Praise; its gritty look at the underbelly of our society is raw and unflinching and at the same time hopeful. Fifteen, even particularly with dwindling physical and Russell is a professional potter living Fiction twenty years ago homelessness was barely visible on our emotional resources. on the edge of the Blue Mountains, leading streets, now on any busy inner-urban shopping strip the sight Isobel is the ideal protagonist to reflect a mostly solitary existence following the of people begging or sleeping rough is commonplace. The on themes of motherhood, feminism and death of his wife and young son. Walking question of how to explore these phenomena and portray the marriage, and this novel is a great choice for one day in search of potting materials, he inner lives caught within them is an interesting one. Mark book groups. Robinson’s first novel Anchor encounters three siblings: teenage Jade and Brandi has succeeded in doing so, making the characters that Point was long-listed for the Stella Prize, and her younger sister and brother, Emma and inhabit this underworld believable and intriguing. with The Glad Shout she has proved herself Todd. The three are sleeping rough in order Dani and Anton have hooked up, not romantically, they an important Australian writer. to avoid social services and their looming just look out for each other on the streets. Anton has a fantasy Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn separation in foster care. that one day they can get a place together – not that sleeping Shearston draws a parallel between the under the stands at Princes Park is that bad, but having their Islands caution required in Russell’s profession and in his interactions with the three damaged own place would be better. Dani’s got a bit of a habit, nothing Peggy Frew yet hopeful children. Russell eventually she can’t control of course, as she tells Anton incessantly. He A&U. PB. Was $29.99 won’t take the stuff, just some downers, but they aren’t really befriends and establishes some trust with $26.99 drugs. Dani turns a few tricks to fund her habit, not many, just the siblings, but their relationship is as Available 4 March The Rip enough, and Anton looks out for her but he hates her working. fraught and precarious as their transient After the success of Mark Brandi Anton’s been in gaol, for manslaughter, but it wasn’t his living situation. Constant is the stress her 2015 Stella Prize Hachette. PB. Was $29.99 fault, he was defending a girl. Dani likes hearing the story but between Russell’s concern for the children and Miles Franklin Award $26.99 notices that every time he tells it, it changes slightly. When and his desire not to be overbearing, just shortlisted and Barbara they hook up with Steve, someone Anton knows – how, he as the precious mug ‘belonged on a safe Throughout March, $1 from Jefferis Award-winning every sale of The Rip at won’t say – their lives change dramatically. shelf … but he continued to use it’. work, Hope Farm, Peggy Readings will be donated I’m so pleased Brandi has written this book; it’s powerful, With luminous prose and ekphrasis, Frew returns with her to Launch Housing compelling and makes you think. Quite a triumph, really. Shearston depicts the ubiquitously third novel, Islands. Frew relatable challenge of handling change Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings succeeds in creating an uncomfortable and in everyday life. Hare’s Fur is a poignant disorienting narrative. Each chapter is story of the literal and figurative pottery of about a different character, with plot points trust, friendship and new beginnings, dirty jumping back and forth through connected we read, human bodies, and that strange hands and all. Australian Fiction link between us, as well as such things as time frames. These vignettes converge to Jeremy George is from Readings Malvern gender, sexuality, family and even love, create a portrait of a family in crisis. Exploded View feel, if not artificial, somehow heavy and It’s the mid 1980s, with young sisters The Hollow Bones Carrie Tiffany made, in the way car parts are heavy and Junie and Anna sitting in the car on the way Text. PB. $29.99 made. There’s so much observational and to Nan’s house, neither of them wanting to sit Leah Kaminsky in the front seat with John, their father, just Vintage. PB. Was $32.99 Available 5 March felt intelligence convincingly crammed Carrie Tiffany writes into this child narrator. Days after I in case he cries. Jump back to 1969 and John $29.99 compact but finished reading, I still felt the strange is with Helen, the girls’ mother, in her room. Available 5 March expansive novels. Among ‘air’ or ‘sky’ or negative space around me, She rummages through strewn clothing Based on a true other prizes, Everyman’s around people, around our habits. looking for something to wear to a film on story, Leah their date night. It’s not until they get into the Rules for Scientific Living Oliver Driscoll is from Readings Doncaster Kaminsky’s The Hollow was shortlisted for the city that they realise that Helen is wearing Bones describes one of the Guardian First Book The Glad Shout mismatched white shoes that she flicks off most inexplicable and Award, while Mateship Alice Robinson and throws in the bin. Forward to the mid- intriguing occurrences of with Birds won the inaugural Stella Prize. Affirm. HB. Was $32.99 1980s and Ryan, a fellow student, develops the Nazi regime. For me, a fascination with Junie and Anna. While Both were shortlisted for the Miles $29.99 this heartbreaking story running past their house he looks up at the Franklin. Tiffany’s third novel, Exploded The Glad Shout is was reminiscent of tales from the Grimm lit up second-storey windows and imagines View will, I suspect, be similarly awarded, if set in a frightening brothers. The central characters fulfil that they might be the girls’ bedrooms, but not more so. A friend who happened to be future Melbourne where classical archetypes: charming evil leaders, instead of frills and teddy bears, he pictures reading a review copy just before I started storms and floods have foolish victims and innocent lost souls. them standing in each room surrounded by reading my own said to me, ‘No one in this ravaged the city; families Like all fairy tales, there is a message of nothing. Then, in 2011, Junie is a mother country writes like Carrie Tiffany.’ We were have been separated, and caution in this humane novel as it and in bed with the daughter she dreams is eating pizza, and I missed the moment to food and water supplies considers the consequences of greed, of her missing sister Anna, who disappeared tease this out, but when I started reading I are limited. I have to broken hearts and imprudent zealousness. in 1995. We jump to 1995 and Anna has been understood quickly. admit that speculative, or dystopian, novels Ernst Schäfer, an ambitious missing for a month. On a night out Junie The novel is narrated by a young girl generally do not appeal to me. But this novel ornithologist and explorer, comes to the thinks she sees Anna, but Junie is drunk and whose mother has a new partner, referred to is exceptional, and I expect to see it on many attention of the Third Reich through his the moment passes. as ‘father man’. Something is deeply amiss literary prize shortlists. previous exploratory work in Europe and Islands is a beautiful study of sorrow here, with him. In her own way, however, Alice Robinson is a skilled writer. She can America. He is courted by the SS to become that describes the disintegration of the girl is fighting back. Father man is a create nuanced and compelling characters a lead German scientist and, while initially a family due to a marriage break-up, mechanic, fixing cars at home. His business and plot a novel so it’s a page-turner right suspicious, his aspirations overwhelm his childhood neglect and the ongoing trauma is struggling. At night, in absolute darkness, to the final paragraph. Isobel, the main sensitivities, despite his sweetheart Herta’s of a disappearance. she slides down amongst the cars, removing character, escapes from her flooded home evident distrust of those involved. He is irreplaceable screws, compromising seals, with her husband and three-year-old Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton invited to lead a group of SS scientists to pipes and connections, navigating the daughter. They arrive at an emergency relief search for the origins of the Aryan race in intricate assembly by hand. All the while, it centre that resembles the MCG soaked and Hare’s Fur the frozen mountains of Tibet. Meanwhile, becomes increasingly apparent how much hungry, with few possessions. Thousands of Trevor Shearston Germany suffers great change. Ernst he’s taken from her. people are badly injured due to the storms Scribe. PB. $27.99 chooses to be blind to the corollaries of the This is a novel for readers of Emma and aid workers are not coping. Gradually we Available 5 March SS and instead sees only his own end game. Donoghue, Sophie Laguna, Michael Sala, discover the chaos Australia is in – the states In many ways, the This discomforting and timeless story Jenny Erpenbeck, but also for readers of have disbanded and there is no political or opening scene is is told with great poignancy and detail. those rare novelists who are as cerebral as military control. emblematic of the major Kaminsky portrays the birds felled by Ernst, they are emotionally rich – J.M. Coetzee, Robinson alternates chapters in the concerns in Trevor she explores Herta’s distress and Ernst’s Richard Ford, Elena Ferrante. The narrator relief centre with those from Isobel’s past. Shearston’s new novel, inability to realise the irony of his work. views and experiences life at a safe remove Beginning with her earliest memories, we Hare’s Fur. It opens in the It makes it a disturbing read, but it is also by way of the function and assembly of see how the world is changing. Access to early morning with its powerful and captivating. I read this novel mechanical objects. For her, and for us as fresh food, work, travel, hospital care – all protagonist Russell Bass in a day but surely will carry the essence of it 8 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 FICTION

evermore. I recommend this book for those ‘having it all’, she is bored – and with each generation. Allusions to who read Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of consumed by an insatiable need for sex, timelessness also bring to mind David Auschwitz and need to know more about the whatever the cost. Struggling to contain Mitchell, whose world might not shape his other pieces of the puzzle; the fragments the twin forces of compulsion and desire, characters’ lives but at the very least puts that seem incomprehensible. she begins to orchestrate her life around them at its mercy. Christine Gordon is the programming and her one night stands and extramarital Somewhere in this vast, enigmatic events manager for Readings affairs until she becomes ensnared in a work there should be more of Bangkok. To trap of her own making. describe so many lives and worlds in a book The Time is Now, Monica of three hundred and sixty pages strains the Sparrow The Altruists prose at times, and means tall trees rob the Matt Howard Andrew Ridker flowers of light. The city loses its chaos and Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 closeness when spread over centuries; such beautiful, bittersweet lives are obscured by Cast adrift by loss, Monica Available 19 March the sheer number in view. Sparrow is marooned in Arthur Alter can’t afford her semi in Neasden, the his mortgage, he’s It may overreach, but I departed so-called ‘loneliest village exasperated his new Sudbanthad’s Bangkok utterly charmed: it in London’, her home girlfriend, and his kids exudes wisdom and hints at greatness, and stuffed with things she won’t speak to him. And if his work continues to explore this fertile doesn't need. It’s time to then there’s the money – ground then great things will surely follow. finally get her house in the fortune his late wife Paul Goodman is from Readings Hawthorn order, but can she isolate what really Francine kept secret, matters, and clear the junk? And while it’s which she bequeathed directly to his The Capital too late for her family to be as they were, can children. On the verge of losing the family Robert Menasse Monica fashion an entirely new one, from home, Arthur invites his kids back to St. MacLehose. PB. $32.99 Louis under the guise of reconciliation. But the unlikeliest set of contenders? This is a As the fiftieth anniversary of in doing so, he unwittingly unleashes humorous and heartwarming story of the European Commission long-buried resentments and memories. second chances and new beginnings. approaches, the Directorate- The Altruists is a razor-sharp, darkly funny General for Culture is tasked family saga from a sparkling new talent. The War Artist with organising a fitting Simon Cleary celebration: one that will UQP. PB. $29.95 Bowlaway serve the wider purpose of Available 5 March Elizabeth McCracken revamping the When Brigadier James Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 Commission’s image. But planning this Phelan returns from Available 18 March celebration turns out to be no easy task…The Afghanistan with the body From the day she is Capital is a satire, a philosophical essay, a of a young soldier killed discovered unconscious crime story, and a comedy of manners, but under his command, he is in a cemetery, Bertha at its heart it has the most powerful pro- traumatised by the tragedy. Truitt is an enigma to European message: no-one should forget What he isn’t expecting on everyone in Salford, the circumstances that gave rise to the his homecoming is a Massachusetts. Her European project in the first place. campaign of retribution from the soldiers mysterious origin who blame him for the ambush that killed scandalises and intrigues Charlie Savage the soldier. With his marriage also on the the townspeople, as does her choice to Roddy Doyle brink, his life spirals out of control. The War marry and start a family with the doctor Jonathan Cape. HB. $29.99 Artist is a timely and compelling novel about who revived her. With insight and sharp Available 19 March the legacy of war, the power of art and the humour, Elizabeth McCracken has written Meet Charlie Savage: a possibility of atonement. an epic family saga set against the middle-aged Dubliner backdrop of twentieth-century America. with an indefatigable wife, Star-Crossed Bowlaway is a brilliant unravelling of a an exasperated daughter, a Minnie Darke family’s myths and secrets, and the ties drinking buddy who’s that bind and the rifts that divide. Michael Joseph. PB. $32.99 realised that he’s been a Available 5 March woman all along… When Justine Carmichael Bangkok Wakes to Rain Compiled here for the first bumps into her old friend Pitchaya Sudbanthad time is a whole year’s worth of Roddy Nick Jordan it could be by Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 Doyle’s hilarious series for the Irish chance. Or perhaps it’s $29.99 Independent. Giving a unique voice to the written in the stars. Life in Pitchaya everyday, he draws a portrait of a man Justine works at the Sudbanthad’s – funny, loyal, somewhat bewildered – Alexandria Park Star – and Bangkok is neither fair trying to keep pace with the modern world Nick relies on the nor unfair: ‘it is only so,’ (if his knees don’t give out first). magazine’s astrology column to guide him goes the mantra, in life. Looking to get his attention, Justine reminding us that these Gingerbread makes some small alterations to Nick’s events, the passing of old Helen Oyeyemi horoscope before it goes to print. Charting to new, the rise and fall of Macmillan. PB. $29.99 the many unforeseen ripple effects of life and a nation, are as inevitable as ocean Available 12 March FROM THE Justine’s astrological meddling – both for eroding rock. The Lee family herself and others – Star-Crossed is the From nineteenth-century Siam, gingerbread is BESTSELLING funny, smart, feel-good novel of the year. through industrialisation and unrest to a legendary – it has been future where the old city is lost, submerged known to cause obsession AUSTRALIAN by the rising ocean, Bangkok Wakes to in a single bite. Margot International Rain charts the history of a house and its and her daughter Harriet AUTHOR OF Fiction inhabitants. In this book characters suffer are quite unusual. They profound disconnect, some returning home come from the land of WIMMERA to find they don’t belong, while others, Druhástrana, which doesn’t exist according Adèle who stayed behind, retreat so far inside to anyone who doesn’t come from there, Leïla Slimani themselves they can no longer be reached. and Harriet’s daughter Perdita, born and Faber. PB. $27.99 Throughout the novel Sudbanthad raised in England, has four talking dolls as Available 4 March evokes a Bangkok of smells and tastes her closest companions. Adèle appears to have the while his characters speak of identity both Perdita is desperate to know more perfect life. She is a personal and collective, of loyalty and about her mother’s past and heritage. For successful journalist in duty, and of globalisation against culture. this reason, she attempts to find Harriet’s Paris who lives in a chic Time passes. We live. We grow old and we childhood friend, Gretel Kercheval. Gretel apartment with her regret. Yet it is only so. has had an enormous impact on Harriet’s life surgeon husband and The result is beguiling. At its strongest since the day they met – and she also might their young son. But it is magic realism with Bangkok itself the not be exactly human. In her effort to track beneath the veneer of protagonist, an Orlando who transforms Gretel down, Perdita learns the story of how FICTION March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 9

her mother and grandmother came to live in the age of nonfiction…’ England, as well as the story of her own birth. If this sounds like it might be too This is a story that involves escaping small- theoretical, too self-reflexive to enjoy, be THE DYSASTERS town life, a potentially sinister gingerbread reassured by the number of times I cried P.C. CAST AND KRISTIN CAST factory, and the practice of a single, annual and laughed my way across the states good deed by one fortunate family. with this family and with the lost children ‘This sci-fi romance off ers a diverse cast and an Gingerbread is the strange and travelling from the south. Be reassured by action-packed plot.’ beautiful story of a sprawling family the beauty of the prose and the joy of so School Library Journal history. It has all the scope and sense of many voices being heard. This is a truly P.C. and Kristin Cast, the #1 New York Times bestselling place you might expect from a Zadie Smith remarkable work. authors of the House of Night phenomenon, return with novel combined with the surrealism of Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton an epic paranormal fantasy. a Murakami, and is strung together with stunning prose. The quality of Oyeyemi’s The Glovemaker writing is the making of this book. It has Ann Weisgarber the lilting, sing-song energy of a fairy tale, Pan Macmillan. PB. $29.99 yet manages to harness the abject at the In the inhospitable lands WHAT I LIKE ABOUT ME same time, often in the same sentence. I of Utah Territory, JENNA GUILLAUME believe that Helen Oyeyemi is one of the Deborah Tyler awaits her ‘Funny and heartfelt. I loved it.’ most underrated contemporary literary husband’s return. As his authors, and each time I read her work, due date comes and goes Melina Marchetta I’m blown away by the way she seamlessly without a word, Deborah Meet Maisie Martin, a clever, shy, funny, confused blends writing about magic, heritage, starts to fear the worst. 16-year-old. She’s ready for the summer of her life culture, and deeply complex relationships. Then, a desperate – and to minutely record it in her journal. Ellen Cregan is the marketing and events stranger arrives on her doorstep, claiming Until everything starts going wrong... coordinator for Readings to just need a place to rest for the night. But he wouldn’t be here in the bitter Daisy Jones & The Six month of January if he wasn’t on the run. Taylor Jenkins Reid With her husband’s absence felt stronger BRAIN CHANGER Hutchinson. PB. $32.99 by the minute, Deborah must make a Available 5 March decision that will change her life forever. PROFESSOR FELICE JACKA Everyone knows Daisy ‘Jacka is leading the way.’ Jones and The Six – they Golden Child Professor John Cryan sold out arenas from coast to Claire Adam coast, their music defined Faber. PB. $29.99 This is not a diet book. This is a guide to the good an era and every girl in Available 4 March habits that will protect your most precious organ, America idolised Daisy. But Clyde, Joy, and their two improve your quality of life and optimise mental on July 12 1979, on the night teenage sons live in rural and brain health across your lifespan. of the final concert of the Trinidad in a brick house Aurora Tour, they split. Nobody ever knew surrounded by bush. The why. Until now. This is the whole story, right boys are twins but nothing from the beginning: the sun-bleached streets, alike: Paul has always been the grimy bars on the Sunset Strip, knowing considered odd, while Peter Daisy’s moment was coming. But everyone is widely believed to be remembers the story differently. destined for greatness. When Paul goes missing in the bush, Clyde must go looking Lost Children Archive for him. And as the hours turn to days, Valeria Luiselli Clyde’s world shatters, and he’s faced with a HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 devastating decision. Golden Child is both beautiful and unsettling; a resoundingly In Valeria Luiselli’s human story of aspiration, betrayal, and love. Lost Children Archive, the archive is a noun, a repository for The Gunners information collected by Rebecca Kauffman the first narrator on her Profile. HB. $29.99 road trip, trying to find the Available 4 March children lost as they tried From childhood into to cross from Mexico to the US. ‘Lost adolescence, The Gunners children archive’ is also a verb, a description were an inseparable gang of the process of making meaning from of friends. Years later, one chaos, from parts you have no control over, of their number dies by half-formed ideas and experiences not fully suicide, and the group is related, reconfigured by the boy (the final forced back together for narrator) and girl in the back of the car. her funeral. Mikey, the The first narrator is a sound only one who never moved away, is documentarist. She is setting out with her worried they will have nothing in common husband, and the boy and girl, her children, when they finally meet again. But together on a cross-country drive from New York to they might be able to shed some light on Arizona. She and the man are both working Sally’s tragic decision. The Gunners is a on different sound-archiving projects. She humorous but poignant look at growing up has been with ‘undocumented’ migrants and what it means to be a friend. held in detention in New York. She is trying to find information about a friend’s The River children, detained just over the border and Peter Heller now lost in detention. He is working on a W&N. PB. $29.99 recording of the lost echoes of the Apaches, Available 12 March the last resistance, he says, to the white Wynn and Jack have been occupation of the southern states. best friends since their The structure of Lost Children Archive first day of college, expertly carries the reader through the brought together by their dizzying multiplicities of questions love of literature and the about how to record experience, how outdoors. When they to construct meaning. In a bookshop decide to take time off along the way, overhearing a book-club university and canoe meeting, the first narrator listens to a down the Maskwa River in Canada, they woman quietly contribute, ‘I think it’s anticipate the ultimate wilderness more about the impossibility of fiction in experience. But as a wildfire starts to make 10 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 FICTION its way towards them, their expedition define her own sense of identity. An for acceptance. Chicago is brought to Permission becomes a race for survival. And when a exciting, bold, witty debut, Stubborn dazzling, colourful life in this epic tale Saskia Vogel stranger suddenly appears, the fight Archivist is a book you won’t soon forget. that speaks of not just one city but Dialogue. PB. $32.99 against nature’s destructive power America as a whole, and of how people Available 12 March becomes entangled with a much deadlier Improvement come to find their place in the world. When Echo’s father gets game of cat and mouse. Joan Silber swept away by a freak Atlantic Books. PB. $27.99 The Tempest current off the Los Angeles How We Disappeared Available 4 March Steve Sem-Sandberg coast, she finds herself Jing-Jing Lee Reyna knows her Faber. PB. $29.99 sinking into a complete Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 relationship with Boyd Available 18 March state of paralysis. With no Available 4 March isn’t perfect, yet as she After many years away, true friends and a troubled Kevin is being bullied at visits him throughout his Andreas returns to his relationship with her school, his father is three-month stint in childhood home on a mother, the failed young actress attempts suffering from prison, their bond grows small island off Norway’s to seek solace in the best way she knows: by depression, and his tighter. Reyna’s aunt Kiki coast. Searching through losing herself in the lives of strangers. grandmother’s health is admires her niece’s spirit the belongings of his late declining fast. Then, on but worries that she always picks the foster father, Andreas her deathbed, she makes wrong man. Little does she know, Boyd is uncovers the sinister Sci-Fi a startling confession. pulling Reyna into a scheme which events of the island’s past as a summer Kevin sets about finding out the truth – a violates his probation. Improvement colony for deprived children, and learns truth that will lead him to the story of a examines conviction, connection and the about the disappearance of his parents. The Raven Tower sixteen-year-old forced into sexual slavery possibility of generosity in the face of Rich in echoes from Shakespeare’s play, Ann Leckie in 1942, to the events of a brutal war, and loss, and is full of narrative twists and The Tempest is a majestic and deeply Orbit. PB. Was $32.99 to a reckoning no one is prepared for and turns as surprising and unexpected as the compassionate novel, exposing the $29.99 which can no longer be suppressed. lives all around us. inherited guilt that haunts an island For the people of overgrown with myths. Iraden, faith in the Stubborn Archivist Make Me A City: A Novel of gods is a highly Yara Rodrigues Fowler Chicago The Snakes transactional and complex Fleet. PB. $32.99 Jonathan Carr Sadie Jones affair. Any prodigy of nature – be it a meteorite or When your mother Scribe. PB. $32.99 Chatto & Windus. PB. $32.99 a recurring swarm of insects considers another country Available 5 March Available 19 March – can take on awareness home, it’s hard to know This masterful debut Bea and Dan, recently and power if given enough attention. Humans where you belong. This is novel spans Chicago’s married, rent out their have given the gods language, and the ability a lyrical novel of growing tumultuous first century, tiny flat to escape to act on the world by speaking their desires up between cultures, showing how a city is London and visit Bea’s into being. But language is a tricky tool for finding your space within made. We meet the city’s dropout brother Alex at making magic, and any claim about the truth them and learning to live unacknowledged the hotel he runs in places a god in potential danger. in a traumatised body. Our stubborn founder, a descendant of Burgundy. Disturbingly, archivist tells her story through history, colonisers and slaves; they find him alone, the The Raven Tower tells two stories in family conversations, the eyes of her witness the dispersal of the Indigenous ramshackle hotel deserted apart from the parallel: that of an ancient god who has mother, her grandmother and her aunt, people; and track the lives of immigrants nest of snakes in the attic. When Alex and observed the world around it and quietly and slowly she begins to emerge and from all over the world, as they struggle Bea’s parents make a surprise visit, gathered knowledge for millennia, and tragedy strikes suddenly and brutally. In that of Eolo, a young rural soldier thrown its aftermath, the family is stripped back unhappily into a courtly conspiracy in the to its rotten core, and even Bea with all modern day. Passages of lyrical science- her strength and goodness can’t escape. fantasy and a god’s musings on philosophy and human behaviour are interspersed Discover with Eolo’s dangerous attempts to solve the The Runaways mystery of a disappeared religious leader. Fatima Bhutto a new favourite These two threads of story may seem Viking. PB. $32.99 incongruous at first. One is gentle and Available 19 March meandering, while the other often reads as Anita lives in poverty, in Diving into Glass tensely as a detective story. But these settings Karachi’s biggest slum. Caro Llewellyn and characters twist together beautifully by On the other side of An emotionally brutal memoir of the story’s end, weaving through themes of family, vulnerability and purpose, Karachi lives Monty, this is a searing, often funny portrait identity, communication and humanity. The whose father owns half of the realities of disability and an questions raised are tantalising and cryptic: intimate account of two lives filled the city. Then, there’s who is speaking now? What can we safely with vigour and audacity. Sunny, who lives in assume to be true? England. His father left The Fork, the Witch, With an anthropological sensibility that India to give his son the opportunities he and the Worm fans of C.J. Cherryh and China Mieville will Christopher Paolini never had, yet Sunny doesn’t fit in delight in, Ann Leckie delivers a thoughtful Re-enter the magical world of anywhere. These three lives will cross in Alagaësia with this stunning new novel that will satisfy anyone hungering the desert, a place where life and death collection of stories based in the for a rich new world to sink into. After her world of the Inheritance Cycle, walk hand-in-hand, and where their continuing the adventures of Eragon. enormous success in the science-fiction closely guarded secrets will force them to genre, this is Leckie’s first fantasy novel; I make a terrible choice. “Imagination can save your life if you need certainly hope she’ll write many more! it to. It saved my father. I was not sure if mine would be able to save me when my life The Volunteer Ele Jenkins is from Readings Carlton depended on it most.” Salvatore Scibona DIVING INTO GLASS BY CARO LLEWELLYN Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 The Priory of the Orange Tree The Hollow Bones Leah Kaminsky The year is 1966 and a Samantha Shannon The Hollow Bones brings to life young man named Vollie Bloomsbury Circus. PB. $32.99 one of the Nazi regime’s little- Frade, enlists to fight in The House of Berethnet known villains through the eyes of the animals he destroyed and the Vietnam, putting in has ruled Inys for a wife he undermined in the name of motion a chain of events thousand years. Still science and cold ambition. that sees him go to work unwed, Queen Sabran must conceive a daughter The Shepherd's Hut for people with Tim Winton intentions he cannot yet to protect her realm – but A rifle-shot of a novel – crisp, fast, grasp. From the Cambodian jungle, to a assassins are getting closer shocking – The Shepherd’s Hut to her door. Ead Duryan, an is an urgent masterpiece about flophouse in Queens, to a commune in solitude, unlikely friendship, and New Mexico, Vollie’s path traces life on outsider at court, has risen to the position of the raw business of survival. the margins of America, culminating in lady-in-waiting. Loyal to a hidden society of an inevitable and terrible reckoning. mages she keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, Epic in scope but intimate in feeling, secretly protecting her. Meanwhile, the Read more at penguin.com.au this is an immersive read from a rising divided East and West refuse to parley, and star of American fiction. forces of chaos are rising from their sleep. NONFICTION March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 11

to this vantage point, to a time and place the human condition and her own unique that deserves to be better known. At mind. Unlike the Heart is an insightful New Kosciuszko, Australians came together in account of mental health experiences in a peacetime. And they did so simply family, particularly postnatal anxiety. It is Nonfiction because two mates vanished. also a profoundly personal reflection on navigating through competing frameworks – Paper Emperors: The Rise of in particular psychoanalysis, psychology, Australia’s Newspaper Empires psychiatry, and neuroscience – for Judith Brett’s latest offering, hot on the heels of her Sally Young understanding these issues. The result is a BOOK OF THE bestselling (and award-winning) biography of Alfred Deakin, UNSW Press. PB. $39.99 sophisticated examination of the tensions between these sparring schools of thought MONTH is a tightly written history of Australia’s electoral system. This magisterial book Moreover, it reads like a thriller. reveals who owned and their theories, and the story of a quest Australian Some would argue that our electoral system isn’t perfect, Australia’s newspapers and for self-knowledge that makes for Studies but it’s pretty damn good: we all turn out on a Saturday, how they used them to compulsive reading. queue for a bit, vote, then eat our democracy sausages (or wield political power. A Redhouse brings an open mind, an cakes). And then in the evening, if you’re anything like me, corporate and political appetite for research and an occasionally you get out the cheese and wine and settle down to watch the history of Australian devastating turn of phrase to her count. The majoritarian nature of the system ensures that newspapers spanning 140 years, it endeavour: ‘I lay in my bed beset by an all votes are utilised, capturing the views and preferences of explains how Australia’s media system impermeable doom; not quite thoughts minority groups in society, unlike in the UK where first-past- came to be dominated by a handful of about particular events but a climate of the-post is used. The voting, the counting, the individual empires and powerful family dynasties. dread in me.’ She captures the mental booths, the chosen day, and even the pencils have a backstory. Written with verve and insight and gymnastics of early parenthood with Something I didn’t know until reading this book is that the showing unparalleled command of a vast crystalline accuracy: ‘I feared that Reuben booths themselves (now heavy-duty cardboard) are a uniquely range of sources, Sally Young shows how wasn’t sleeping because of something that Australian invention! newspaper owners influenced policy- I was doing to him or not doing to him.’ In Brett’s thematic chapters explore the key innovations making, lobbied and bullied politicians, the midst of this work of serious enquiry such as how we administer our elections and the creation of and shaped internal party politics. and complex theoretical engagement, her our preferential voting system, showing that the evolution presence is vivid and relatable: ‘Which of From Secret of these systems was far from smooth. She also delves into The Seventies: The Personal, me was the real me? The one who woke Ballot to the heated issues and debates around women’s suffrage, the Political and the Making of with terror in the pit of my guts? Or the one Democracy Indigenous disenfranchisement, and compulsory voting; Modern Australia who could enjoy a bowl of porridge once Sausage: How illuminating key figures along the way. The chapter giving Michelle Arrow the terror was annihilated?’ Australia Got an account of the debate over the Franchise Act which, NewSouth. PB. $34.99 Unlike the Heart is intense, rigorous Compulsory when passed, resulted in the disenfranchisement of First The seventies was the and impossible to ignore once you begin Voting Australians, left me appalled and ashamed. Those supportive decade that shaped modern it. Having already monopolised the Judith Brett of Indigenous enfranchisement rationally argued that suffrage Australia. It was the decade attention of numerous Readings staffers, Text. PB. $29.99 should extend naturally from the original and traditional of ‘It’s Time’, a tumultuous it shows every sign of becoming an Available 5 March custodianship of the continent. Peppered with fascinating period of economic and influential book that will be discussed facts such as the early name for the Liberal Party when it was political upheaval. But the for years to come. It will resonate with originally formed (The Fusion Party – sounding every bit like seventies was also the era readers who have experienced perinatal a ’90s boy-band!), this is a fantastic read for an election year! when the personal became political, when depression or anxiety, but it is also a must- read for anyone interested in the history Julia Jackson is from Readings Carlton social movements tore down the boundary between public and private life. Women and future of the study of the mind. wanted childcare, equal pay, protection Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly from violence and agency to shape their progressive centre? In this vivid, grounded own lives. In the process, the reforms they Diving into Glass Australian essay, Rebecca Huntley looks at the state of sought – and achieved, at least in Caro Llewellyn the nation and asks: what does social- Studies part – reshaped Australia’s culture and Hamish Hamilton. PB. Was $32.99 democratic Australia want, and why? rewrote our expectations of government. $29.99 Political Troglodytes and Available 5 March Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Talking Sideways Economic Lunatics: The Hard Love Story Caro Llewellyn was living Reg Dodd & Malcolm McKinnon her dream life in New York, Right in Australia Kate Legge UQP. PB. $32.95 directing an international Dominic Kelly MUP. HB. Was $44.99 Black Inc. PB. $32.99 Available 5 March literary festival. Then she $39.99 Available 5 March Reg Dodd grew up at Finniss was diagnosed with Available 5 March In the mid-1980s, Ray Evans Springs, on desert country multiple sclerosis. Caro was He was an Austrian and his boss at Western bordering South Australia’s no stranger to disability immigrant; she came from Mining Corporation, Hugh Lake Eyre. For the Arabunna – her father Richard had spent most of his Tasmania. He grew up Morgan, became the and for many other life in a wheelchair due to polio, and made beside the Carinthian Alps; pioneers of a new form of Aboriginal people, Finniss every day count. Only by looking back at she climbed mountains political activism. Together Springs has long been a her father’s example was Caro able to when few women dared. they had an energy that homeland and a refuge. With his long-time rediscover her own grit. Diving into Glass Their honeymoon glimpse bordered on fanaticism. It was Bob Hawke friend Malcolm McKinnon, Dodd reflects on is a searing portrait of the realities of of Cradle Mountain lit an urge that filled who called them ‘political troglodytes and his upbringing in a cross-cultural disability and an intimate account of two their waking hours, and when they stood economic lunatics’, yet in their dogged environment that defied social conventions. lives filled with vigour and audacity. on the peak in the heat of January 1910, pursuit of influence these hard right Talking Sideways is part history, part memoir they imagined a national park for all. conservatives had an impact on and part cultural road-map. Together, Dodd Going Back Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story mainstream public policy that continues and McKinnon reveal the unique history of Munjed Al Muderis traces the achievements of these today. Calmly, forensically and with a dry this extraordinary place and share their A&U. PB. $32.99 unconventional adventurers and their fight wit, Dominic Kelly shows how they did it. concerns and their hopes for its future. Available 4 March to preserve the wilderness where they pioneered eco-tourism. In Going Back, Munjed Al Quarterly Essay 73: On Biography Munjed shares the extraordinary journey that Progress and Politics Kosciuszko his work as a pioneering Rebecca Huntley Nick Brodie Black Inc. PB. $22.99 surgeon has taken him on. Hardie Grant. PB. $29.99 Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Available 18 March Brain and Mind Munjed has operated on Cross-country skiers Evan For some time, a majority Nicola Redhouse thousands of people, but Hayes and Laurie Seaman of Australians have been UQP. PB. $29.95 nothing has been as extraordinary as his went missing in August saying they want change – Available 5 March return to Iraq, at the invitation of the Iraqi 1928. Their disappearance on climate and energy, on In this extraordinary government, to operate on amputees into the wilds of housing and inequality, on memoir, the reader is wounded in the horrific war against ISIS. Kosciuszko left a mystery, corporate donations and taken into the confidence of These stories are heartbreaking and full of and became a sensation. their corrupting effect on Nicola Redhouse: writer, hope, and are told from the unique Kosciuszko is more than a mountain, it is democracy, to name just a few. Recent editor, reader and, above all, perspective of a refugee returning to the a collective heritage, part of Australia’s attention has focused on the angry, someone who constantly place of his birth as a celebrated sense of self. Evan and Laurie are guides reactionary minority. But is there a seeks to better understand international surgeon. 12 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 NONFICTION

Questions I Am Asked about War Doctor: Surgery on the communities of women, George-Allen queer identity, about sex, and about the ways the Holocaust Front Line offers a sense of collaboration – she Islam and feminism go hand in hand. Funny, Hédi Fried & Alice E. Olsson David Nott doesn’t keep her interview subjects as just warm, sometimes sad, and often angry, each (trans.) Macmillan. PB. $29.99 subjects, she also lets them tell their own of these essays is a passionate declaration, Scribe. PB. $27.99 For over twenty-five years, stories; when she writes outside her own and each essay is calling time on the Available 5 March U.K. surgeon David Nott has experience, she literally collaborates with oppression, the lazy stereotyping, the Hédi Fried was nineteen taken unpaid leave from his her subjects, giving them space to write misogyny and the Islamophobia. when the Nazis transported job to volunteer in the in their own words. Witches honours the her entire family to world’s most dangerous war heritage of the women who have come No Apologies Auschwitz, where her zones. As time passed, Nott before us and those still fighting for Joanne Brookfield parents were murdered and realised that flying into to a equality today. George-Allen represents Echo. PB. $29.99 she and her sister were catastrophe was not enough. Doctors on girlhood as something multi-faceted that Available 4 March forced into hard labour. Now the ground needed to learn how to treat the isn’t easily defined, but shows how the Joanne Brookfield has spent ninety-four, she has spent her life appalling injuries that war inflicts. So, he power of women working together is magic. two decades working in the educating young people about the set up a foundation that trains other Cindy Morris is from Readings Carlton world of comedy. Over Holocaust and has answered questions like, doctors in the art of saving lives threatened coffee, wine, laughter and ‘How was it to live in the camps?’, ‘Why did by bombs and bullets. War Doctor is his The Thinking Woman tears, she’s talked with the Hitler hate the Jews?’, and ‘Can you extraordinary story. Julienne Van Loon women of comedy about forgive?’. With sensitivity and candour, NewSouth. PB. $34.99 every aspect of their lives, Fried answers these questions and more in Solitary One of the age-old questions from the butterflies of their first gigs to the this deeply human book that urges us to Albert Woodfox of philosophy is what does it hell of their worst. Here, these women never forget, or repeat. Text. PB. $34.99 mean to live a good life? In share the ways they’ve lived the feminist Available 5 March this extraordinary book, war cry of ‘nevertheless, she persisted’ and Shout: The True Story of a Solitary is the unforgettable scholar and writer Julienne the triumphs they’ve enjoyed as a result. A Survivor Who Refused to be life story of Albert Woodfox, van Loon applies a range of funny and feisty read, at its core No Silenced who served more than four philosophical ideas to her Apologies is about the power of women’s Laurie Halse Anderson decades in solitary own experience. Her journey is intellectual voices and stories. Text. PB. $24.99 confinement in a six-foot by and deeply personal, political and intimate Available 19 March nine-foot cell, twenty-three at once. It introduces readers to six Practice: Journalism, essays Bestselling author Laurie hours a day – all for a crime extraordinary women whose own deeply and criticism Halse Anderson is known he did not commit. That he was able to thoughtful work has much to offer all of us. Guy Rundle for the unflinching way she emerge whole from his odyssey within Their stories may transform our own views Black Inc. PB. $32.99 writes about, and America’s prison system is a triumph of of what it means to live a good life. Available 5 March advocates for, survivors of the human spirit, and makes his book a Known for his wild wit and sexual assault. Searing and clarion call to reform the inhumanity of Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, irreverent commentary, Guy soul-searching, this solitary confinement in the U.S. and Speeches, Meditations Rundle is one of Australia’s important memoir is a denouncement of around the world. Toni Morrison sharpest and most our society’s failures and a love letter to C&W. PB. Was $35 entertaining minds. Practice all the people with the courage to say $29.99 distils his best writing on #MeToo and #TimesUp, whether aloud, Cultural Studies Spanning four decades, politics, culture, class and online, or only in their own hearts. Shout these essays, speeches and more. In it, Rundle roves the campaign trails speaks truth to power in a loud, clear Witches: What Women Do meditations interrogate the of Obama and Trump, Rudd and Abbott; voice – and once you hear it, it is Together world around us. They are rides the Greyhound around a desolate impossible to ignore. America; bails up Bob Katter and Pauline Sam George-Allen concerned with race, gender Hanson; and excavates the deeper meanings Vintage. PB. Was $32.99 and globalisation. Toni There Will Be No Miracles Here of everything from Nirvana to Anzac Day. $29.99 Morrison speaks to Casey Gerald Witches can be many graduating students and visitors to both Profile. HB. $32.99 This Young Monster things, but one thing the Louvre and America’s Black Holocaust Available 18 March Charlie Fox is for sure: they are women Museum. She revisits The Bluest Eye, Sula Casey Gerald grew up gay Brow Books. PB. $29.99 of fearsome power. They are and Beloved; reassessing these novels that in an ordinary black This Young Monster is a also women who have a have become touchstones for generations neighbourhood in Dallas, hallucinatory celebration of tradition of helping other of readers. A Mouth Full of Blood is a his parents struggling artists who raise hell, women. Witches are women powerful, erudite and essential gathering of with addiction. He then transform their bodies, anger on the margins, and in our patriarchal ideas that speaks to us all. attended a prestigious their elders and show their society that makes just about all women college, and eventually audience dark, disturbing witches. Witches and women’s rights have Choice Words: A Collection of found himself in the inner sanctums of things. From Twin Peaks to been growing together in popularity over Writing about Abortion power on Wall Street and in Washington Leigh Bowery, Harmony Korine to Alice in the past few decades. Since 1970, there has Louise Swinn (ed.) DC. But gradually, Casey realised that Wonderland, This Young Monster gets high been an increase in interest in Wicca, a A&U. PB. $29.99 salvation stories like his own are part of on a whole range of riotous art as its voice resurgence of witches in pop culture (Buffy, Available 18 March the plan to keep others from rising. and form shape-shift, all in the name of Sabrina, Charmed, Bewitched, and Wicked), Edited by Louise Swinn, There Will Be No Miracles Here is a dealing with the strange wonders of what and a web of connections forming through Choice Words is a timely memoir that forces us to judge our Nabokov once called ‘monsterhood’. Ready digital communities. Witchhood is an collection of stories, essays, society not on those who rise highest, or not, here they come. alternative to the typical idea of femininity, rants and raves from high but on those left behind. and with it have come girls and women profile women that seeks to claiming their place in a sisterhood that demystify abortion and its Environmental Thirty Thousand Bottles of feels magical, whether or not it is. surrounding stigma. This Wine and a Pig Called Helga: In Witches: What Women Do Together, treasury of stories highlights the sheer, Studies A not-so-perfect tree change Sam George-Allen looks at the power unspoken commonality of abortion. It is Todd Alexander of women working together in groups, poignant, wise, funny and true; a salute to S&S. PB. $32.99 particularly groups that focus on the group those who have been working in the field, a The Uninhabitable Earth Todd and Jeff have had rather than the individual, such as female- celebration of how far we’ve come, an David Wallace-Wells enough of the city. Sick of only bands, AFLW, midwives, nuns and electrifying caterwaul at how far we still Allen Lane. PB. $29.99 the daily grind, they buy matriarchal communities. Women working have to go, and a clarion call to action. Available 5 March 100 acres in the renowned together frighten our patriarchal society, The signs of climate change Hunter Valley wine region, and often women have to work against It’s Not About the Burqa are unmistakable even intent on building a their own internalised misogyny. George- Mariam Khan today, but the real fabulous B&B, where they Allen wrote Witches to help herself and Picador. PB. $29.99 transformations have hardly can offer the joys of country life to begun. We’ve been taught others learn from other women. Her tone Taking one of the most heart-weary souls. Todd will cook, Jeff that warming would be slow, is light-hearted when talking about her politicised and misused will renovate. They have everything they but barring very dramatic experiences and insecurities, and Witches, words associated with Muslim need to make their dreams come true. action, each of these impacts is likely to though covering serious topics and delving women and Islamophobia, It’s What could go wrong? This is a hilarious arrive within the length of a new mortgage into feminist theory at times, is accessible, Not About the Burqa has and honest account of a tree change that signed this year. In The Uninhabitable with numerous funny moments. something to say. Here are didn’t work out quite how this couple Earth, David Wallace-Wells undertakes a The West has a history of discrediting essays about the hijab and had planned. new kind of storytelling and a new kind of feminine knowledge. In exploring different wavering faith, about love and divorce, about NONFICTION March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 13

social science to explore the era of human his amazing journey, drawing on many history on which we have just embarked. sources to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives. A Family Guide to Waste-Free Living How to Hide an Empire: A Lauren & Oberon Carter Short History of the Greater Plum. PB. $34.99 United States A Family Guide to Waste- Daniel Immerwahr Free Living gives you all the Bodley Head. PB. $35 information, advice, Available 5 March budget-friendly recipes How to Hide an Empire tells and projects you’ll need to the story of the United start reducing waste in States outside the United your life. Lauren and States – from nineteenth- Oberon Carter make it simple and sustainable century conquests like for families to eliminate waste in the home, at Alaska, Hawai‘i, and Puerto work, at school and out in the world. This is a Rico, to the US-owned practical and inspiring resource for anyone islands, archipelagos and military bases wanting to tackle our ever-growing waste dotted around the globe. But the problem and live more sustainably. populations of these territories, despite being subject to America’s government, do

not enjoy the rights of full citizens. Full of ‘... a fascinating book that will have History surprises, and driven by an original us all thinking, whether or not we are conception of what empire and women.’ – Anne Summers globalisation mean today, this is a major Mother: An Unconventional and compulsively readable work of history. he concerns of philosophy are History important to us all, yet the voices Sarah Knott T and thoughts of women have often Viking. HB. $29.99 King and Emperor: A New Life been missing from the conversation. Available 19 March of Charlemagne Janet L. Nelson In this extraordinary new book, When acclaimed historian Allen Lane. HB. $55 award-winning Australian writer Sarah Knott became Available 5 March pregnant, she started Julienne van Loon addresses the looking for a history of Charles, King of the Franks, is work of leading international women motherhood, only to find one of the most remarkable thinkers, including Julia Kristeva, that no such book exists. For figures ever to rule a Rosi Braidotti, Marina Warner, centuries, historians have European super-state. That is Siri Hustvedt, Laura Kipnis, Nancy concerned themselves with wars and why he is so often called Holmstrom, Helen Caldicott, and ‘Charlemagne’ by the French, revolutions, but never with the everyday Rosie Batty. details of carrying and caring for a baby. and ‘Karl der Grosse’ by the Mother vividly brings to life the lost stories Germans. His strength of character was felt to www.newsouthpublishing.com of both ordinary and extraordinary women be remarkable from early in his long reign. to create a moving depiction of a universal Janet L. Nelson’s wonderful new book brings and endlessly various human experience. together everything we know about Charlemagne and sifts through the evidence to come as close as we can to understanding Greece: Biography of a the man and his motives. Modern Nation Roderick Beaton Allen Lane. HB. $69.99 Mortal Republic: How Rome Available 19 March Fell into Tyranny Edward J. Watts Greece has been brought Basic. HB. $45 under repeated scrutiny In Mortal Republic, prize- during the financial crises winning historian Edward J. that have convulsed the Watts shows how Rome’s country since 2010. We think governing institutions, we know Ancient Greece, parliamentary rules, and the civilisation gave us just political customs succeeded about everything that defines ‘Western’ in fostering compromise and culture today, in the arts, sciences, social negotiation for centuries. The death of sciences and politics. But this book sets out Rome’s Republic was not inevitable. It died to understand contemporary Greece and because it was allowed to, as a result of the collective identity that goes with it. It is thousands of small wounds inflicted by not only a history of events and high Romans who assumed that it would last politics; it is also a history of culture, of the forever. This book makes clear that, in arts and of ideas. ancient Rome as today, when citizens take the health and durability of their republic The Volunteer: One for granted, its future is at risk. Man’s Mission to Lead an Underground Army in Auschwitz and Expose the Music Greatest Nazi Crimes Jack Fairweather W.H. Allen. PB. $35 Another Planet: A Teenager in Available 19 March Suburbia In the summer of 1940, an Tracey Thorn underground operative Canongate. HB. $29.99 called Witold Pilecki Before she was a bestselling accepted a mission to musician and writer, Tracey uncover the fate of the Thorn was a typical teenager: thousands of people bored and cynical, despairing interred at Auschwitz. It was of her aspirational parents. only after arriving at the camp that he Returning more than three discovered the Nazi’s terrifying designs. decades later to the scene of Over the next two and a half years, Witold her childhood, Thorn takes us beyond the smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the bus shelters, cul-de-sacs, and weekly discos, West, shaping the Allies response to the to the parents who wanted so much for their Holocaust. This is the first major account of children, and the children who wanted none 14 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 NONFICTION

of it. With her trademark wit and insight, accounts to give unparalleled insight into tastes and is presented with evocative Thorn reconsiders the post-war dream so the man at the heart of global politics. storytelling that both explains and entices. many artists have mocked, and so many Food & This cookbook is a delicious bridge from artists have come from. Science Gardening one culture to another. Politics with Chris Gordon Tel Aviv The Gendered Brain Haya Molcho Gina Rippon Murdoch. HB. $49.99 Manual for Survival: A Bodley Head. PB. $35 Dining In If we are all one-eyed Chernobyl Guide to the Future Available 19 March Alison Roman devotees of Hardie Grant. HB. $48 Ottolenghi, it’s Kate Brown We live in a world where we Alison Roman has because we haven’t Allen Lane. HB. $45 are constantly bombarded amassed serious yet discovered the Available 19 March with messages about sex and social media delicious food of Governments and journalists gender. On a daily basis we stardom because her Haya Molcho. This tell us that though Chernobyl face deeply ingrained beliefs recipes have three wonderful cookbook was the worst nuclear disaster that your sex determines your enviable traits: fun, highlights why in history, a reassuringly skills and preferences, from simplicity and Molcho will be our next foodie crush. In small number of people died, toys and colours to career choice and salaries. deliciousness. This this book, she takes us on a journey to and nature recovered. But, Drawing on her work as a professor of collection of 125 meet Tel Aviv’s chefs, capturing the drawing on a decade of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon ‘why didn’t I think of that’ recipes, distinctive spirit of the city’s many archival research and interviews, Kate Brown unpacks the stereotypes that weigh over us including treats like roast chicken smeared cuisines. There are recipes for one plate uncovers a more disturbing story, one in from our earliest moments and shows how with anchovy butter or crispy baked meals, shared feasts and, of course, a which radioactive isotypes caused hundreds these messages shape identity, and our brains. of thousands of casualties. Manual for potatoes, are absolutely obtainable by even recipe for hummus. Let the hummus Survival makes clear the irreversible impact the most amateur of home cooks. This rivalry begin I say! The Nocturnal Brain: Tales of cookbook is perfect for anyone living life at on every living thing not just from Chernobyl, Nightmares and Neuroscience but from eight decades of radiation from a hectic pace but still wanting to ensure a Tokyo Stories Guy Leschziner nuclear energy and weaponry. home cooked meal with a fancy touch is S&S. PB. $32.99 Tim Anderson within reach at any given moment. Hardie Grant. HB. $39.99 What happens to our brain at This very cute In the Closet of the Vatican night? Are we really fully Feathered cookbook is Frederic Martel asleep? Or can it be the case P.J. Booth designed to take you Bloomsbury. PB. $34.99 that perhaps the brain never Peter Booth. HB. $74.99 on a road trip of In the Closet of the Vatican fully goes to sleep, and that This is not a book for Tokyo and its food. exposes the rot at the heart in some individuals there is a the faint hearted There are recipes for of the Vatican and the disconnect between the home chef, but it is a ramen, sushi, Roman Catholic Church sleeping part of their brain and the active perfect resource for barbeque and more. today. The celibacy of part of their brain? In this ground-breaking those who want to It’s a smorgasbord of priests, the condemnation book, Dr Guy Leschziner takes us on a know exactly how to wondrous sights, tastes and desserts. This of contraceptives, the cover fascinating journey through the nocturnal cook our fine book makes cooking Japanese easier by up of countless cases of sexual abuse, brain to illustrate the neuroscience behind feathered friends. showing you tricks of the trade, and is the misogyny among the clergy – all these nightmares, night terrors and sleep walking. issues are clouded in secrecy. This brilliant Using brilliant ideal gift for anyone who dreams of photography, Booth takes you through a visiting Japan or indeed has returned and piece of investigative writing is based on Professor Maxwell’s four years’ research, including interviews detailed guide to cooking both common and wants to set up their very own Ramen bar Duplicitous Demon unusual species of bird, preparing eggs, almost straight away. with those in power. No one can claim to Brian Clegg really understand the Catholic Church small goods, sauces and accompanying Icon. HB. $32.99 today until they have read this book. dishes. Think of it as the Silver Spoon of Tortellini at Midnight Available 4 March fowl, and all from a Melbourne home cook. Emiko Davies Asked to name a great Hardie Grant. HB. $52 Tired of Winning: A Chronicle scientist, many would mention Coffee: How to buy it, how to The recipes in this of American Decline Newton or Einstein, Feynman brew it pretty book take us Richard Cooke or Hawking. But ask a physicist Black Inc. PB. $27.99 Jason Scheltus from the beginnings and there’s no doubt that Available 11 March Smith St Books. HB. $24.99 of a traditional James Clerk Maxwell will be Scheltus has made Italian meal to the Polarised, unequal and near the top of the list. coffee his life’s work. He very end, with spiritually bereft, the Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, is the director and significant American experiment under transformed the way physics was undertaken co-founder of Market emphasis on fresh Donald Trump, looks to be on in his explanation of the interaction of Lane Coffee, one of the filled pasta. The the brink of failure. In this electricity and magnetism, laying the most respected specialty recipes come from four generations across award-winning series of groundwork for everything from Einstein’s coffee companies in Italy, and so it is the perfect book for those essays, Richard Cooke special relativity to modern electronics. This is Australia (and where I who dream of travel, or who want their explores US society before, during and after the story of a great contributor to our get my coffee every kitchen to be filled with bubbling pots of one of the most high-stakes midterm understanding of the way the world works. elections in history. The nation has shattered morning). This book could save me money, passata, jugs of basil, and chopping boards under a barrage of social estrangement, because under his guidance I should be scattered with cheese and biscotti. This is malign politics, dark money, and the pull of Travel Writing able to create impeccable home espresso. my type of book, the type that is good for the internet and social media. This chronicle Each step of the process is detailed here: the soul. collects the glittering shards, and is a searing grinding, tamping, extraction, and manual analysis from an inimitable political thinker. Stranger Country brewing methods. This book is ideal for The New Plant Parent Monica Tan anyone in search of the perfect coffee. Darryl Cheng We Need to Talk About Putin A&U. PB. $32.99 Abrams. PB. $39.99 Mark Galeotti Available 4 March Salt & Time: Recipes from a Blogger and author Ebury. PB. $22.99 In mid-2016, Monica left Russian Kitchen Cheng wants to show Available 5 March Sydney. As a Chinese Alissa Timoshkina you how easy it is to Despite the millions of words Australian city slicker, she Hachette. HB. $45 fill your home with written on Putin’s Russia, was unsure of her place in In Salt & Time, chef plants. The New the West still fails to truly Australian culture. And more Alissa Timoshkina Plant Parent is filled understand one of the importantly, how could she has used her talent to with practical and world’s most powerful ever feel she truly belonged create a collection of pragmatic advice on politicians. In this essential to a land that has been the spiritual domain delicious modern how to ensure your primer, Professor Mark of Indigenous Australians for over 60,000 recipes from Siberia plants thrive. After reading Cheng, the Galeotti uncovers the man behind the years? Stranger Country is the riveting and beyond that will indoor gardener (you!) will be a more myth. From Putin’s early life in the KGB account of the six months Monica spent transform confident and active grower, able to rely and his real relationship with the USA to travelling through some of Australia’s most perceptions of the on new skills of observation and insight. I his vision for the future of Russia – and the beautiful and remote landscape, and is a food of the former Soviet Union. The 100 promise, this book will give anyone a world – Galeotti draws on new Russian unique portrait of Australia and all it means recipes range from hearty chicken soup to fighting chance of creating their very own sources and explosive unpublished to those who live here. delicate cakes. Each is adapted for modern home jungle. CRIME March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 15

Gallowstree Lane ravaged not only the country he lives in but Kate London his beloved Mexico. Winslow continues his Dead epic, shocking shakedown of America’s Atlantic Books. PB. $29.99 A teenager dies on cartels, everyone who feeds into them, is Write Gallowstree Lane, stabbed paid by them – and is ruined by them. with Fiona Hardy in the heart of London’s gang problem. The death of The Department of Sensitive someone so young should Crimes Regular Readings Monthly readers will no doubt remember paralyse a city, but for DI Älexander McCall Smith BOOK OF THE how obsessed we were by Irish born, Perth-based Dervla Kieran Shaw, the death of an Hachette. PB. $29.99 MONTH McTiernan’s debut crime novel. After turning the final page of unimportant gang member only serves to In case you sometimes think, Crime The Rúin in early 2018, surviving the wait until we could read hamper his investigation into the Eardsley ‘all this murder is a bit her second book seemed impossible, and yet she has kindly Bluds, the syndicate that has London by its exhausting and I’d like a bit of given it to us within a year. And not a moment too soon! teeth. Not everyone is so dismissive, a break,’ it’s time to go back to The Scholar sees Detective Inspector Cormac Reilly though, and the ramifications of the young the unfairly prolific embroiled in another gripping tale of murder and deceit. man’s death on those around him – the Älexander-with-an-umlaut When Cormac’s brilliant partner Dr Emma Sweeney finds friend who witnessed his murder, DI Sarah McCall Smith, who has taken a body late one night at Galway University, the crime is Collins (the first on scene and no friend of it upon himself to invent a new genre: too close for comfort. Emma is quickly caught up in an Shaw), and eventually, Shaw himself – will Scandi-blanc. The polar opposite of Scandi- investigation that will have enormous ramifications for reverberate out onto London’s streets. A noir’s traditional vibe (e.g. dead bodies her career and personal life. For Cormac, the phone call crisply written, punchy police procedural. leaking dramatic red blood onto snow), the summoning him to the scene of the apparent hit-and-run is No 1. Ladies’ Detective Agency author instead only the first of many moments in this new case when his Hunter features Ulf Varg, a Swedish detective who personal and professional lives will be in conflict. Jack Heath solves minor leg injuries, searches for The victim appears to be gifted young scientist Carline Allen & Unwin. PB. $29.99) missing persons who might not even be Darcy, who is also heir to Emma’s employer, Galway If, like me, you enjoy a hearty persons, survives his colleagues and cares The Scholar University-based Irish pharmaceutical giant Darcy snack alongside your reading for his lip-reading dog, Marten. Dervla McTiernan Therapeutics. McTiernan effortlessly plunges Cormac material, you might want to HarperCollins. PB. into the viciously competitive world of academia and big keep the fridge closed on this The Taking of Annie Thorne Was $32.99 pharma, among big brains and even bigger egos. With a one. Timothy Blake – once a CJ Tudor $29.99 racing plot (another one!) and visceral details, McTiernan consultant for the FBI, now a Penguin. PB. $32.99 draws the reader into this fraught environment in which professional solver of The Chalk Man cemented Emma has been pursuing her career with skill and integrity riddles – has a side hustle in body disposal C.J. Tudor as one of Britain’s for years. Or has she? As Cormac meets – and investigates – more of her colleagues, the for a local crime boss. He favours a delicate premier horror crime path ahead becomes less clear, the stakes are raised, and, as the case progresses, doubt procedure more commonly known as authors. It’s good to see her is even cast upon the past. ‘cannibalism’. When he encounters a dead back to make readers shiver This is another thrilling tale that delivers on all the promise of McTiernan’s debut – body in the woods while waiting for a job, he with delight all over again. not to be missed. can’t help but take a tiny bite – but he can’t Joe Thorne returns to his Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly leave behind a body with his DNA on it. English hometown to apply for a job at the Then, Blake receives a call from his FBI miserable school he attended. Joe’s not handler and old friend, Reese Thistle, to help there for money – though he does need it – out with a missing persons case. He soon but because he received an anonymous Past Life themselves at the barrel end of an armed realises that said person is not in fact email. It’s happening again. And all those Dominic Nolan robbery – and the easy life Lachie had missing, but in his freezer. So all Blake needs years ago, when Joe’s eight-year-old sister Hachette. PB. $29.99 almost built up is about to get a lot more to do is solve a crime without giving himself went missing for forty-eight hours, she One day police detective complicated. He’s about to discover that away, try not to get murdered by his boss, came back different: she was no longer Abigail Boone left for work things at the milk bar aren’t all just and not eat his partner. Annie Thorne, no longer Joe’s favourite and did not come home. milkshakes and lollies, and worse still, he person, no longer herself. It won’t be long Three days later she woke has the unsettling feeling that despite the Painting in the Shadows before Joe finds out what that email up following a bloody, balaclava on the other end of that shotgun, Katherine Kovacic meant – and he might wish that he hadn’t. violent showdown. Boone Lachie might just recognise the man who Echo Publishing. PB. $29.99 escaped with her life and a robbed him. But thinking about who might After the success of her handful of injuries, but without her be behind that balaclava (and who’d wear a Unto Us a Son is Given 1930s-set historical crime, memory. Her husband knows her as Abby balaclava in this weather!?) is easier said Donna Leon The Portrait of Molly Dean, William Heinemann. PB. $29.99 and her son knows her as his mother, but than done when your apprentice might be Kovacic returns with a she does not know either of them. All she in a spot of trouble and an old ‘business In Leon’s twenty-eighth modern-day tale of art really has left is the determination to find associate’ is trying to interest you in some Commissario Brunetti intrigue. When a supposedly who did this to her, and to find Sarah, the ‘work’. Hiding to Nothing is light, punchy novel, everyone’s favourite cursed painting is exhibited missing woman on whose case Boone was and interesting as hell, full of good Venetian detective is given a in a premier Melbourne museum, art dealer working when she left for work that day. intentions, great blokes, bad types and somewhat different task – to Alex Clayton and conservator John Porter Following Boone as she moves farther worse behaviour. From page one, this is as investigate his father-in- don’t take the idea seriously. That is, until away from her old self and into her refreshing as a cold beer on a hot day. law’s old (and elderly) friend, somebody falls ill and damages the new existence is compelling reading. who wants to adopt a much younger man painting, and the restoration process is British crime fiction has really embraced Blood Orange as his son, which has raised everyone’s immediately halted by the death of the psychological crime, and often has a style Harriet Tyce suspicion. While not as traditionally museum’s senior conservator. As Alex and that stays very much in characters’ heads. Hachette. PB. $32.99 deadly as some of her others – the criminal John investigate what is really behind the This approach delivers the full experience British psychological side of things doesn’t kick in for a while – tragedy, Alex’s loyalties are called into of Boone – flawed, confused, brutal, and crime’s favourite thing to do this is as strong as any of Leon’s novels. question when the museum offers her the someone I didn’t want to let go of, just as is take a successful woman, She is a master of both character and the job she’s always wanted – and the truth may she doesn’t want to let go of herself – while give her a secret, and ruin city of Venice. cost her everything she’s worked towards. revelling in the excitement of not knowing her life. In Harriet Tyce’s what happened before, or what might debut, criminal barrister Also out this month come next. It crackles with wit. Alison does not have secrets, The Border Meg Keneally and Tom Keneally return since her flaws are out in the open: her Don Winslow with their fourth Monsarrat book, The Hiding to Nothing drinking problem leaching into every part HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 Ink Stain (Random House, PB, $32.99); a Andy Muir of her life, her on-again off-again affair There’s something so very good but probably hard-to-search-for Affirm Press. PB. $24.99 with a colleague, her parenting called thrilling about watching title with Anthony Good’s Kill [redacted] It’s a sweltering Newcastle constantly into question. Despite all this, other people’s excitement (Atlantic Books, PB, $29.99); Camilla Grebe’s summer and Lachie she finally lands the lead on her first over books – and the After She’s Gone (Bonnier, PB, $29.99); Munro – painter, generally murder case – but the killer, a woman who enthusiasm I’ve seen from a journalistic thriller with Holly Watt’s good guy, ‘known to the stabbed her husband to death, is booksellers Australia-wide To the Lions (Bloomsbury, PB, $29.99); a police’ – thought he was determined to plead guilty. Unsure of the over the new Don Winslow new Robert Goddard with One False Move going to spend his woman’s motives, Alison’s investigation has been electric. The Border is the (Bantam Press, PB, $32.99); Amy Lloyd’s afternoon giving a quote for into the case causes her to question what conclusion to Winslow’s Cartel trilogy and One More Lie (Random House, PB, $32.99); a job to a guy who owns a milk bar, and really happened – before she realises she sees Art Keller soaring high in America’s Karen Rose’s Say You’re Sorry (Headline, maybe get himself an icy cold milkshake to has some unanswered questions about her drug enforcement after forty years PB, $29.99); Gregg Hurwitz’s Out of the Dark boot. Instead, the two of them find own life. A twisted psychological thriller. immersed in the war on drugs that has (Michael Joseph, PB, $32.99) … and more! 16 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 READINGS CHILDREN'S BOOK PRIZE

The Readings Children’s Book Prize celebrates exciting new voices in The Readings Australian children’s literature. This year’s six shortlisted titles are for Children’s readers aged 6 to 12. Book Prize shortlist 2019

The 2019 shortlist includes: Elementals: The Peacock Detectives Black Cockatoo Ice Wolves (Book 1) by Amie Kaufman Carly Nugent Carl Merrison & Hakea Hustler (HarperCollins), The Orchard Text. PB. $16.99 Magabala Books. PB. $11.99 Underground (Book 1) by Mat Larkin When Cassie’s neighbours ask her to look for Mia, a thirteen-year-old Jaru girl, cares for a (Hardie Grant Egmont), Real Pigeons Fight their missing peacocks, William Shakespeare dirrarn black cockatoo injured by her older Crime (Book 1) by Andrew McDonald with and Virginia, she eagerly takes the case. But brother Jy. As the cockatoo slowly regains illustrations by Ben Wood (Hardie Grant the search takes some unexpected turns, its strength, Mia’s confidence grows. Mia is Egmont), Black Cockatoo by Carl Merrison and leads her to deeper puzzles about her a sensitive observer of her world, feeling the and Hakea Hustler (Magabala Books), The family and friends: Why is her father sad? undercurrents of tension within her family Peacock Detectives by Carly Nugent (Text) Why has her mother moved out? Why is her and community, particularly as Jy makes and Ottilie Colter and the Narroway Hunt sister becoming a Buddhist, and what is Buddhism anyway? Cassie choices that distance him from their culture and traditions. (Book 1) by Rhiannon Williams (Hardie knows and understands far more of what’s going on around her Although Mia is apprehensive about leaving her home in a remote Grant Egmont). than the older people in her life are prepared to tell her. Because community in the Kimberley to continue her education, her This year’s wide-ranging shortlist is of this, she has to piece together the interconnected stories of her connection to her culture helps her face the future with courage. brimming with action-packed adventure, family, friends and even the school bully from the clues she picks This deceptively simple tale has a quiet power, and is illustrated compelling mysteries, zany humour, and up along the way. Cassie’s narration is charming and insightful, with moody, impressionistic images that capture the wild beauty complex human drama. Many of these rich with texture and well-observed details about the changing and vitality of the black cockatoo. It is a reminder that gentleness stories are about characters who speak seasons in a rural Victorian town and the internal lives of its is a form of strength. For ages 10+. out in the face of forces that seem beyond inhabitants. For ages 9+. their control, proving that with curiosity Elementals: Ice Wolves and bravery, it is possible to meet the Amie Kaufman challenges of a complex world and change Ottilie Colter and the Narroway HarperCollins. PB. $17.99 it for the better. The shortlist features Hunt Orphaned during the last great battle thrilling exploits, as well as quiet stories Rhiannon Williams between the warring Ice Wolves and Scorch that reveal different kinds of strength Hardie Grant Egmont. PB. $17.99 Dragons, twelve-year-old twins Anders and and sensitively tackle themes of mental When Ottilie’s younger brother is taken Rayna grew up on the streets of Holbard, health, bullying, family dynamics, by the Pickers, she disguises herself as a a lively harbour town in the icy country growing up, and facing the future. Kids boy to rescue him. She soon finds herself of Vallen. They are used to looking after and their families will adore these at an elite training school for hunters, themselves and each other, but they are entertaining, thought-provoking stories in the mysterious in-between world of separated when Rayna is recruited by the destructive Scorch that reflect the rich diversity of Australian the Narroway – a dangerous place that Dragons. Anders enlists at the foreboding Ulfar Academy, a children’s book publishing. doesn’t appear on any maps and is overrun with terrifying school for young wolves that demands loyalty to the pack, as This year’s judging panel is made up creatures called dredretches. Not only does Ottilie face great he tries to find a way to rescue Rayna. From the opening pages, of four children’s book specialists: Leanne peril, she also risks being found out to be a girl in this highly Holbard’s bustling, smoke-filled streets come to life and set the Hall, Pilgrim Lee and Bianca Looney (all gendered, segregated world, where girls are confined to servant scene for gripping action sequences, family tension, emotional from Readings Kids) and myself. We’re roles. Ottilie soon realises she has far more to fight for – and turmoil and embarrassing mishaps. Set in a diverse and inclusive delighted that children’s writer Zana against – in this twisted, shadowy world of conspiracy, political fantasy world, Anders, Rayna and their friends are poised on Fraillon will be joining the panel as a intrigue and discrimination. This fresh fantasy with high the scary knife-edge of high stakes, divided loyalties and great guest judge to help select the winner from stakes introduces a rain-soaked, squelchy world to explore and a responsibility. Readers will be desperate for the next instalment in the shortlist. complex web of mysteries to be unravelled. For ages 9+. the trilogy. For ages 9+. Look out for the announcement of the Continue the adventure: Ottilie Colter and the Master of Monsters winner online and in the May edition of (Book 2) will be published in April. Continue the adventure: Elementals: Scorch Dragons (Book 2) will be published in late March. the Readings Monthly. Freya Howarth, children’s bookseller at The Orchard Underground Readings St Kilda Mat Larkin Real Pigeons Fight Crime Hardie Grant Egmont. PB. $17.99 Andrew McDonald & Ben Wood Pri Kohli is ‘The Face’ of the overly planned (illus.) Hardie Grant Egmont. PB. $14.99 town of Dunn’s Orchard, appearing on billboards, TV ads and at events lauding Real Pigeons Fight Crime introduces a the benefits of its manicured and controlled dynamic crime-fighting team: Grandpouter lifestyle. When precocious new girl Attica is the patriarch in charge of super- shows up, she asks one very important strong Frillback, extra-bendy Tumbler, question: If the town is called Dunn’s Orchard, navigational expert Homey and the newest where are all the trees? This leads them on a madcap adventure recruit, Rock, a master of disguise. Together they solve mysteries with the town’s future at stake. As Pri and Attica delve into Dunn’s and defend the city against threats both great and small. In a Orchard’s many secrets, expect political scheming, strange trio of adventures, the team search for the missing breadcrumbs, inventions, a Bogeyman, disappearing doors and lamps, a sloth investigate bat-nappings from the park, and rescue an imperilled train, a robot caterpillar, and much more weirdness. Alongside food-truck fair. Each adventure tests the courage, ingenuity all this zaniness is a sweet, whimsical story of friendship that and teamwork of the Real Pigeons. These fun, accessible and delicately touches on themes of mental illness and environmental entertaining stories are packed with lively illustrations, clever degradation. It’s a moving portrait of a family, which includes a wordplay, hilarious sight-gags and loads of pigeon personality. gentle reminder that even in the busiest of adventures, we all need This is the first book in an exciting series that newly independent a quiet moment with a cup of chai. For ages 8+. readers will adore. For ages 6+. Continue the adventure: A second book is in the works, but no release Continue the adventure: Real Pigeons Eat Danger (Book 2) is available date is yet available. now. Real Pigeons Nest Hard (Book 3) will be published in May. YOUNG ADULT March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 17 Young Adult Be inspired this Women’s History Month What I Like About Me is the highly-anticipated debut from BOOK OF THE Buzzfeed columnist, journalist, editor, and pop-culture MONTH connoisseur Jenna Guillaume. Written in diary form, this witty YA novel takes place over one transformative summer Young Adult holiday as sixteen-year-old Maisie Martin is forced to face her unrequited crush on her childhood best friend head-on. Crippled by poor self-esteem, but determined to prove a point – to herself, to her glamorous best friend, and to the older sister she feels she can never measure up to – Maisie applies to enter the local beauty contest, and when her application is unexpectedly accepted she finds herself taking her first wobbly steps towards realising her own value.

Heartfelt and unexpectedly deep under its sparkling exterior, this novel features an authentic teen voice, a diverse cast of genuinely likeable characters, a distinctly (and refreshingly) Australian ambience, and a charming protagonist What I Like About Me Jenna Guillaume Guillaume is no stranger to writing about big topics – PB. Pan Mac. $16.99 including body image, feminism, first love, and bullying – in an accessible and entertaining way, and What I Like About Me is the perfect vehicle for her chatty and engaging writing style. Heartfelt and unexpectedly deep under its sparkling exterior, this novel features an authentic teen voice, a diverse cast of genuinely likeable characters, a distinctly (and refreshingly) Australian ambience, and a charming protagonist. It’s perfect for fans of Dumplin’ and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, or anyone on that difficult journey towards self-love. For ages 14+. Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager

We Are Okay Internment Nina LaCour Samira Ahmed UQP. PB. $19.95 Atom. PB. $16.99 This moving novel Set in a possible near creates the future, this is a claustrophobia and snowy terrifying America featuring hush of seventeen-year-old segregation, abuses of power student Marin’s winter and racism. One night, break, which she’s chosen to seventeen-year-old Layla and spend in the empty dorms of her parents are given ten her upstate New York college. This decision minutes to pack up their things before they is part of a year spent deliberately removing are taken to an internment camp for Muslim herself from her previous life in California, Americans. There they are held under guard, after a shocking revelation about the along with many others, separated by race grandfather who raised her. and encouraged to police one another. Loss and loneliness are at the heart of Anyone who complains is forcibly this layered, considered and ultimately life- ‘disappeared’. Layla is horrified by how affirming novel. Marin misses her mother, fearful and compliant her parents have who died when she was young; she misses become under these unjust conditions. With her grandfather, even though she feels she her friends on the inside and boyfriend barely knows him now; and she misses her campaigning outside, she claims her voice closest friend and ex-girlfriend Mabel, who and learns to fight for freedom for her family is due to visit her for three days. When Mabel and the other people in the camp. arrives, both young women are relieved, Inspired by the American overwhelmed and cautious, but they government’s ‘zero tolerance’ border struggle to close the distance between them. protection program as well as the World LaCour’s writing is precise and War II internment of nearly 120,000 economical, while still evoking vivid Japanese Americans, this is a highly and complete emotional and physical political novel that has a compelling environments. The isolation and intimacy story with complex characters and strong caused by the extreme wintry weather leave writing. It comes with an impassioned Marin and Mabel with nowhere to hide, and author’s note for young readers to educate they gradually excavate the history of their themselves and to engage in active friendship and Marin’s family secrets. It can resistance. There are also resources to be a dangerous thing to have a novel pivot learn more about Japanese internment on a reveal or twist, but in this case, when in World War II. Highly recommended for the truth at the heart of Marin’s family is budding activists aged 14+. uncovered, it deepens everything the reader Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids has previously understood about her story. This is a beautiful and sombre read Also out this month: Astrid Scholte's that restores faith in connection after enthralling murder mystery Four Dead disconnection, love after loss, and reminds Queens (Allen & Unwin. PB. $19.99) and us that solace can always be found by Poppy Nwosu's Making Friends with Alice seeking understanding and support from Dyson (Wakefield Press. PB. $24.95), a other people. For ages 14+. romantic story about rumours, friendship, Leanne Hall is from Readings Kids and discovering who you really are. 18 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 KIDS

Yahoo Creek of fun to a story guaranteed to delight young readers, Tohby Riddle which is good news as this looks like the first book in a Children’s series. Highly recommended for readers aged 7+. A&U. HB. $29.99 Yahoo Creek is a haunting Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Books evocation of actual reports, mostly in the early 1900s, of an ape-like creature inhabiting bush Middle Fiction areas that are connected with the massive breadth of the Great Dividing Range. The descriptions of The Girl, The Cat and the Navigator hair colour and length vary but all agree he is big, has a Matilda Woods huge bellow at times and seems very strong. Linking the Scholastic. PB. $14.99 newspaper reports are the words of Indigenous elder We loved Matilda Woods’ first Peter Williams, which add deep insight into the legend. book, The Boy, the Bird and the The shadowy, inky-blue of the illustrations reinforce Coffin Maker, which was shortlisted for the mystery and seeming loneliness of the creature. our Readings Children’s Book Prize in Tohby Riddle always surprises with the range and variety 2018. Her follow up is another fantastic, of his picture books and what a mesmerisingly beautiful lyrical book with a fable-like quality. addition this is to our Australian picture-book archive. The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator is a wonderful adventure with touches of Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn magic and stylish illustrations throughout. BOOK OF THE Baz and Benz Nordor is a town where houses are built from wood that comes from shipwrecks, and they sway as though MONTH Heidi McKinnon still at sea. Oona dreams of adventures, but she was Picture Book A&U. HB. $24.99 born a girl. While her father, a successful captain, Baz and Benz are friends. goes off to hunt whales, Oona must remain on land But sometimes Baz gets a with mean, vapid stepsisters that are straight out of little worried and has to check, Cinderella. However, Oona is daring and determined. ‘Benz, are we friends?’. Benz She makes moves to see the icy North, a place of assures Baz they are Bestest legend, danger and mythical creatures, for herself. Friends forever and ever. Even if She’s a great character with a kind heart and a hunger Lottie and Walter Baz turned purple and spotty. for knowledge and adventure. This book has a classic Anna Walker Even if Baz made really, really annoying MEEEEEEP feel and a particularly satisfying ending. Highly Puffin. HB. $24.99 sounds all night long and never stopped they would recommended for ages 9+. still be friends. Kids will be delighted at how annoying Baz can be – and he is very good at being annoying – Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Award-winning local author and illustrator Anna and will feel comforted knowing that even at his most Walker, creator of such favourites as Florette, Mr annoying, Benz will always love him. With lovely, You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! Huff and Peggy, amongst others, has done it again with brightly illustrated owls contrasted against a dark Alex Gino her latest wonder, Lottie and Walter. night sky, Baz and Benz is another hilarious (and Scholastic. HB. $24.99 It’s a clever story about a little girl called Lottie who slightly more heartwarming!) book about friendship Alex Gino’s debut novel, George, isn’t a big fan of her swimming lessons. There’s a shark in from the author of I Just Ate My Friend. A really fun about a young transgender child the pool that no one else seems to notice, and it wants to book to read aloud, Baz and Benz will also be a great is an award-winning and beloved story eat Lottie. It’s a brilliantly imaginative way of expressing addition to the libraries of Jon Klassen fans young and that we regularly recommend at Lottie’s fears; she doesn’t want to be afraid, but she just old. For readers aged 2+. Readings. Their new novel for middle can’t go in the water, which may mean she’ll miss all the Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids fiction readers covers disability and fun at next week’s pool party. What a disaster! racism with compassion and an Then with a Humbelly doo, Lumbelly la, Loopy loo, Say Something equally engaging story. in waddles Walter the Walrus. He loves books, bubbles Twelve-year-old Jilly’s baby sister has just been and fish fingers, just like Lottie – and he also loves to Peter H. Reynolds Scholastic. HB. $24.99 born deaf and her parents are upset and confused. Jilly swim. Perhaps this might help Lottie out? There are so many ways to tell has an online friend who is proudly Black and deaf A beautifully illustrated and heart-warming story the world who you are, what you and she seeks his advice to help her understand how to that shows that with a helping hand you can have all are thinking, and what you help her sister, but he doesn’t enjoy being stereotyped. the courage you need. Perfect for ages 3+ believe. This empowering Jilly also has an auntie who is Black and two cousins Claire Atherfold is from Readings State Library Victoria picture book explores the many who are half-Black. She observes and worries about the ways that a single voice can racism they and other Black people experience both make a difference. Perfect for kid within her primarily white family as well as the outer activists everywhere, this timely story reminds readers of community. Jilly bravely faces these big issues, asks the undeniable importance and power of their voice. questions, calls out family members, sometimes gets it Picture Books wrong and learns from her mistakes. She’s a very real, Junior Fiction uplifting and likeable character. Circle In a powerful author’s note Gino explains their Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen (illus.) motivation was to provide a tool for young white Walker. HB. $24.99 Hotel Flamingo people to talk about these vital issues. This is important writing for young readers that is also highly Dynamic duo Mac Barnett Alex Milway enjoyable for ages 10+. and Jon Klassen return in the Picadilly. PB. $12.99 final of their Shape trilogy. This The Hotel Flamingo, once the Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids time we have Circle as the main sunniest hotel on the character. Circle suggests to her boulevard but sadly past its heyday, To Night Owl From Dogfish friends Square and Triangle that is uninhabited, save for its concierge Meg Wolitzer they play a game of hide and seek, (a lemur named Lemmy) and the Hardie Grant. PB. $16.99 with one rule – don’t go behind the waterfall because it is doorman (a bear named T-Bear). To Night Owl from Dogfish is a dark. After Circle finishes counting, Square informs her But when irrepressible Anna whip-smart and funny tween that Triangle has gone behind the waterfall. Circle goes to Dupont arrives as the new owner, her drama about two twelve-year-old find her friend and with each page the scene gets darker boundless energy and infectious optimism inspires girls, Bett Devlin and Avery Bloom, until only Circle’s eyes can be seen. When another set of the trio to restore the hotel to its former glory and the whose dads plan to marry each other. eyes appears Circle assumes them to belong to Triangle, team recruit a bevy of animals of all shapes and sizes Written in epistolary form, the reader until a third set becomes visible and they run out in (including a brilliant and stylish troupe of performing is privy to the personal emails fright. Circle later wonders who the eyes belonged to and flamingos) in an attempt to draw crowds AND guests! between Bett and Avery as they learn what shape might they have been? This is a gentle This heart-warming story celebrates friendship, co- not only about these impending nuptials but also the message about rule-breaking but more importantly about operation, determination and a place to call home; it’s coordinated plan to send both girls to summer camp so how things aren’t as scary as they may seem. bright, charming, funny and a little bit wacky. Energetic that they can meet and develop a sisterly bond. Bett Morgana Keating is from Readings Hawthorn line illustrations (with spots of colour) bring extra layers and Avery are each the only child of a single dad. The KIDS March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 19

merge into a larger family unit and change to sharing 52 Mondays books like Brilliant Ideas by Wonderful Women, history is attention around don’t appeal to either of them, so Anne Ciddor finally recognising the mothers of invention. they plot to break up the dads! A&U. PB. $14.99 Highly recommended for ages 7+, this picture book Bett and Avery are fantastic characters full of wit It’s 1960s Australia, a time when will sit proudly on the shelf next to the Little People Big and charm. Raised on opposite coasts of America and teachers still write with chalk, cars Dreams series and is a wonderful forerunner to Good with vastly different personalities, these girls surprise have no seatbelts, and ice-cream cones Night Stories for Rebel Girls. even themselves when they come to love each other cost half a penny. Anna and her sisters Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern as only sisters can. But everything gets turned on its fill their days with fun, mischief and head – choosing a sister doesn’t guarantee a marriage adventure. Inspired by the author’s will follow. real childhood, this is a warm, funny Nonfiction Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster and fascinating family story. From Tiny Seeds Squirm You Must Be Layla Emilie Vast Carl Hiassen Yassmin Abdel-Magied Thames & Hudson. HB. $29.99 Macmillan. PB. $14.99 Penguin. PB. $16.99 Stylistically stunning Billy hasn’t seen his father, Layla has just started at a fancy new and simply explained, Dennis, since he was three. His high school, and she’s made a less-than- From Tiny Seeds explores the mum refuses to talk about him and perfect first impression. Unfortunately myriad ways plants reproduce. Dennis is a huge mystery in Billy’s and her better judgement can take a while to Presented in sections such as his sister Belinda’s lives. When Billy is catch up to her mouth! Layla will need ‘Flying’, ‘Creeping’ and finally able to find his dad’s address, to come to terms with who she is and ‘Exploding’, this clever and informative illustrated book despite his mum’s best attempts at who she wants to be if she has any portrays nature in all its dazzling resourcefulness. Not hiding it, he steals his mum’s credit card chance of succeeding. only does it show the lifecycles of the plants and their (leaving her a cheque for the amount stolen) and buys a ways of proliferation, but also how animals and humans plane ticket from Florida to Montana to find his dad. When (sometimes) assist in the process. Brilliant. Ages 5+. he finally arrives he is greeted by his stepsister, Summer, a Classic of the Month Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn First Nations American from the Apsáalooke Nation (AKA the Crow Nation) who informs him that his dad is off on a mysterious ‘mission’. Together, Summer and Billy are Watership Down Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of determined to find out where Dennis goes when he Richard Adams Species disappears into the wilderness. Bloomsbury. HB. $29.99 Sabina Radeva Billy and Summer enjoy Enid Blyton-levels of Written nearly half a century ago, Puffin. HB. $27.99 freedom in Squirm (though not always approved of or this classic tale about rabbits still I’m excited by beautiful, signed off on by the adults in their lives!) and though vividly resonates today, with another informative books that inspire they trek about unaccompanied by adults in both the TV mini series released last Christmas young minds to wonder and ask Floridian and Montanan wilderness, they are very to a whole new generation. questions. Sabina Radeva’s inspired sensible about it, even when danger strikes. In this way With that in mind I’m embarrassed retelling of Charles Darwin’s seminal the book is reminiscent of old adventure stories like to say that this was the first time I have work On the Origin of Species is just Hatchet by Gary Paulson. Squirm is a refreshing and fun read the novel. As someone who grew such a book, using an amalgam of story for kids 10+. up with the 1978 movie, I felt like I already knew this history and science with beautiful illustrations to make Darwin’s insights accessible to open minds of all ages. Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids well-loved story, but how wrong I was. The detailed and beautiful text, including the wonderfully clever Lapine It explains species and the variations within each, (rabbit language and culture) that Adams created are so domestication and migration as well as Darwin’s theories Catch a Falling Star easy to read. The story just flows and you find yourself of evolution and natural selection, in language that’s easy Meg McKinlay completely immersed. for all to understand and conveys the great scientist’s Walker. PB. $17.99 Set in the picturesque English countryside, it begins sense of wonder and excitement, often in his own words. Twelve-year-old Frankie Avery when Fiver starts to have visions of doom approaching There’s important additional material at the back of knows that sometimes things fall the idyllic Sandleford warren. Little do they know that the book, including the contribution by Alfred Wallace when they’re not supposed to. When a developer has listed their home for destruction. A (an important mind of Darwin’s time), new ideas such the small plane that’s carrying her dad motley band of rabbits decide to leave, led by Fiver’s as epigenetics and (most significantly) corrections to across Australia falls from the sky, brother Hazel, but the world outside the warren hides popular misconceptions that some hold even to this Frankie loses her father and her hopes dangers that they could not have imagined; dogs, birds day. There’s an invaluable glossary for younger readers for the future with him. Carrying her and humans among them. and a list of further reading for budding scholars. grief close allows Frankie to navigate An adventure full of courage, suspense and heart- This is a wonderfully multi-layered book that the the days – school, friends, and keeping her little brother, wrenching sadness, I definitely cried more than once, whole family can savour and enjoy for many years. Newt, safe. But when Skylab, one of the world’s first but there is hope and renewal at the end. A novel full of Very highly recommended for ages 6 to adult. space stations, starts to fall towards the earth, towards heart, recommended for readers aged 10+. Frankie’s home, it ignites something in Frankie and Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Newt that won’t go out. Claire Atherfold is from Readings State Library Victoria In a book perfectly pitched for readers on the cusp of When The Stars Come Out adolescence, Meg McKinlay explores the isolation of grief Brilliant Ideas by Wonderful Women Nicola Edwards and Lucy Cartwright (illus.) and the importance of having something to wish for. Aitziber Lopez and Luciano Lozano (illus.) Little Tiger Press. HB. $34.99 Frankie’s frustration at her mother, at Newt, and at her Wide Eyed. HB. $22.99 Discover the magic of our world at best friend, Kat, is so relatable – the feeling of not having Men have long been credited as night, from shooting stars to the your life truly seen is one that middle-grade readers will great innovators but thankfully Northern Lights. Experience how be so familiar with, as they occupy the space of being publishers are now celebrating the different habitats come alive when no longer a child but not quite a teenager. McKinlay, as contribution of ingenious women the sun sets, meet animals that sleep always, brings an enormous amount of insight to a story inventors in a flood of wonderful while swimming or flying, explore without weighing it down and the result is a book that is titles we can’t get enough of! the history of human sleep across tender, hopeful, and slightly surreal. For ages 11+. This latest picture book showcases the globe and dive into a world of dreams. Bec Kavanagh is from Readings Kids fifteen brilliant inventions from domestic products (such as dishwashers and disposable The Wonder of Trees A Great Escape nappies), to medical devices (including the one-handed Nicola Davies and Lorna Scobie (illus.) Felice Arena glass syringe and the first diagnostic test for diabetes) Hodder. HB. $29.99 Puffin. PB. $16.99 and everything from sea flares, non-reflective glass, the Did you know that there are over When Peter’s family leaves for a trip first WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS down to the Kevlar used in 60,000 tree species? This stunning across the border, he stays behind. So bullet-proof vests. book explores the extraordinary when the government builds a wall It’s an amazing diversity of innovations with one diversity of trees and forests – the through the city, guarded by soldiers, thing in common: they were all invented by women lungs of our earth. There is tanks and ferocious dogs, he’s you’ve probably never heard of – women from all different something to delight on every page trapped. Everyone says he might socio-economic and professional backgrounds who faced with fascinating facts and figures. never see his family again. But Peter enormous obstacles to patenting and marketing their This exquisite book will encourage children to treasure has a courageous plan. inventions simply because they weren’t men! Thanks to the world’s biodiversity and help to stop it slipping away. 20 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 BARGAINS

named Lyra Belacqua. This is the first How About Never – Is Never always greater and more delicious than the book of The Book of Dust trilogy in which Good For You? sum of its parts. This book will unlock a March Philip Pullman returns to the world of His Bob Mankoff whole new world of fantastic food. Dark Materials. HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.95 Bargains People tell Bob Mankoff The Monk Of Mokha Into the Water that as the cartoon editor Dave Eggars Paula Hawkins of The New Yorker he has PB. Was $32.99 Now $12.95 PB. Was $32.99 Now $10.00 the best job in the world. This is a vitally important The 21st Century Art Book In the last days before her But he believes that journalistic account of the Phaidon Editors death, Nel called her because he is also a ongoing Yemeni civil war. HB. Was $49.95 Now $19.95 sister, Jules, who didn’t cartoonist at the Documenting his first- The 21st-Century Art pick up the phone, magazine, he actually has two of the best hand research over the Book is an accessible ignoring her plea for help. jobs in the world. This book brings together past couple of years, Dave guide to the best With Into the Water, some of his funniest, most beloved cartoons. Eggers presents an contemporary art made Paula Hawkins delivers unflinching portrait of the since 2000. Showcasing an urgent, satisfying read The Beatles Lyrics conflict in Yemen. Imbuing his subject with over 280 artists in that hinges on the stories we tell about drama, urgency and compulsive readability, alphabetical order, it Hunter Davies (ed.) our pasts and their power to destroy the HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.95 Eggers throws a much-needed spotlight on places established lives we live now. an ongoing crisis. figures alongside the rising stars of the For the Beatles, writing next generation. Each artist is songs was a process that Autumn in Venice: Ernest The Lies That Bind: Rethinking represented by a full-page colour plate could happen anytime – Hemingway and His Last Muse Identity and text that both explains the work and songs we all know by Andrea di Robilant Kwame Anthony Appiah introduces its creator. heart often began as a HB. Was $35.00 Now $11.95 scribble on the back of an PB. Was $29.99 Now $13.95 In late, 1948 Hemingway We often think identity Agents of Empire envelope. The intimacy travelled for the first time of these fragments, gathered here for the is personal. But the Noel Malcolm to Venice. There, he met first time, ensures that The Beatles Lyrics identities that shape PB. Was $29.99 Now $12.95 and fell in love with will be a treasure for musicians, scholars, the world, our In the second half of the Adriana Ivancich, a and fans everywhere. struggles, and our sixteenth century, the striking young Venetian hopes, are social ones, Christian states of Europe girl. Adriana became shared with countless were on the defensive Downtime Deliciousness at Hemingway’s muse, and Home others. This is radical against the Ottoman he continued to visit Venice to see her. new thinking from a Nadine Levy Redzepi Empire. There was violent This story of writer and muse also master in the subject and will change HB. Was $55.00 Now $13.95 conflict, but also many examines the cost to a young woman of her forever the way we think about ourselves Inspired by her own forms of peaceful association with a literary celebrity. and our communities. interaction between the two. A masterpiece childhood and life-long love of food, Nadine Levy of scholarship and story-telling, Agents of Vegetables The Other Side of Happiness Empire builds a panoramic picture of the Redzepi has created a Antonio Carluccio Brock Bastian interrelations between the Christian and personal and inviting HB. Was $39.99 Now $19.95 PB. Was $35.00 Now $12.95 Ottoman worlds. notebook of recipes that Like most Italians, the bring her family together In the modern world, we great Antonio around the kitchen table. The Guardian have become addicted to The Equations of Life: Hidden Carluccio loves positivity. Here, social Rules Shaping Evolution calls these ‘recipes smartly pitched at the vegetables. In this competent and less confident cook.’ psychologist Brock Charles Cockell book he turns his Bastian shows that Now $12.95 PB. Was $29.99 attention to his hardship and sadness are Saga Land The puzzles of life favourites, and many neither antithetical to Richard Fidler and Kári Gíslason astound and confuse us others, adding up to pleasure nor incidental: HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 like no other mystery. But over one-hundred different varieties. The they are necessary for happiness. The in this groundbreaking Italian way with vegetables is renowned Broadcaster Richard Other Side of Happiness encourages us to new account of the the world over, the Carluccio way with Fidler and author Kári take a more fearless approach to living process of evolution, vegetables is unsurpassed, and this book is Gíslason share a deep that recognises the meaning of pain in Professor Charles Cockell an essential for every kitchen. attachment to the sagas our lives. reveals how nature is far of Iceland: the stories of more understandable and predictable than The Mothers: A Novel the first Viking families Wormwood Mire we would think. Provocative and who settled on that Brit Bennett Judith Rossell captivating, this book will fundamentally remote island in the PB. Was $32.99 Now $10.00 HB. Was $24.99 Now $13.95 change how you view the world. Middle Ages, some of the greatest ever Set within a Stella Montgomery is written. Together, Richard and Kári travel contemporary Black being sent away to the across Iceland to immerse themselves in Equus community in Southern family home at the folklore of this fiercely beautiful island. Tim Flach California, Brit Bennett’s Wormwood Mire, where HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 mesmerising first novel is she must live with two No animal has an emotionally Jet Plane strange cousins and captured the human perceptive story about David Macaulay their governess. Within imagination quite community, love, and HB. Was $29.99 Now $11.95 the overgrown grounds, like the horse. ambition, and the possibilities of the road An aeroplane weighs as dark secrets slither and skulk, and soon Photographer Tim not taken. In entrancing, lyrical prose, much as one hundred Stella will find out who – or what – she Flach’s quest to The Mothers asks whether a what if can be elephants, but it can fly really is. This is the thrilling and document the horse has resulted in this more powerful than an experience itself. for hours. How does a jet magical sequel to the award-winning intensely moving look at an animal – as a do that? From the engine novel, Withering-by-Sea. solitary subject and en masse, from the air Turtles All The Way Down that provides the power and from underwater – an animal whose John Green to the cockpit controls What You Did Not Tell history is so powerfully linked to our own. and passenger cabin, see HB. Was $27.95 Now $11.95 Mark Mazower how these modern marvels work and what Turtles All the Way Down HB. Was $49.99 Now $10.00 makes them stay in the air. La Belle Sauvage: The Book is about lifelong Uncovering his family’s Of Dust Volume One friendship, the intimacy remarkable and moving Philip Pullman of an unexpected River Cottage Easy stories, Mark Mazower HB. Was $39.99 Now $14.95 reunion, Star Wars fan Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recounts the sacrifices Eleven-year-old Malcolm fiction, and tuatara. But HB. Was $45 Now $14.95 and silences that marked Polstead and his daemon, at its heart is Aza Holmes, How often have you a generation and their Asta, live at the Trout Inn a young woman wished there was a magic descendants following the near Oxford. Across the navigating daily existence within the formula to make cooking Russian Revolution. What River Thames is the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. easier? Well, there is. Put You Did Not Tell recounts a humanistic Godstow Priory. Malcolm In his long-awaited return, John Green just three good things brand of socialism erased from memory, learns the nuns have a shares Aza’s story with shattering, together on a plate and but it also explores the unexpected guest with them; a baby unflinching clarity. somehow the whole is happiness that may await history’s losers. DVDS March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 21

Luther: Series 5 future will hold for the Roy children once $29.95 their aging father begins to step back from Film & TV the company, and a feud over company Available 6 March As a series of monstrous control and family loyalties collide. killings becomes more audacious, John Luther Some television shows beg to be binged, others are better and new recruit DS Film DVD OF THE enjoyed slowly. Killing Eve, painfully for me, is both. As each Catherine Halliday are episode finished, I desperately wanted to hit play on the MONTH confounded by a tangle of following one, but restrained myself to better savour how Let the Sunshine In misdirection that seems to Television excellent this show is. $29.95 protect an unspeakable horror. And as he As the series opens, MI5 are tracking a particularly Available 6 March works to solve the case, Luther faces the psychotic assassin, one who they have not been able to gather Isabelle is a Parisian ghosts of his own past. Whatever his next any solid information on. Eve Polastri, played by the marvellous artist and middle-aged move, it will change him forever. Sandra Oh, is an intelligent but poorly-utilised MI5 worker divorcée moving from trapped doing monotonous desk work. She has a theory that relationship to this assassin is a woman, but her ideas are dismissed. As it turns Acquitted: Season 2 relationship. Hungry for out, she’s exactly right. The killer (played, also marvellously, $39.95 love but afraid of never by Jodie Comer), is given the codename Villanelle by MI5. After the dust of Season having a meaningful Villanelle is an elusive assassin at the top of her game, whose One’s explosive finale has relationship with a man again, Isabelle brand of off-kilter ultra-violence is unsettling for even the settled, Aksel receives the grapples with the keys to fulfilment. Let most hardened agents. Eve becomes obsessed with bringing answer he was looking for the Sunshine In is a sophisticated Villanelle down. In the process, she risks her career, friendships so desperately; his quest romantic comedy examining female and even her relationship with her husband. But the mystery of for justice seems over. But companionship and sexual desire. Killing Eve: Villanelle’s true identity is unravelling, and Eve’s focus can’t be Aksel’s hope is short-lived. Season 1 broken. Gradually, the two enter into an obsessive, strange and As the fog of lies and vindictiveness that Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda $34.95 wonderfully creepy game of cat and mouse. shrouds a decades-long murder case $29.95 clears, a showdown between Aksel and his I have watched so many crime/thriller television series Available 6 March arch-rival Eva is inevitable. and films that privilege men over women: male characters are detectives, complex ‘Admirers of the highly villains, fully fleshed-out characters where female characters are sidekicks or corpses. respected Japanese Killing Eve is a superb exception to this dull rule: both the cat and the mouse are complex, The Cry musician (and occasional flawed, brilliantly written, women. This show truly has it all – thrills, violence, tragedy, $24.95 actor) will enjoy Ryuichi and perhaps most appealing of all, a twisted, dark sense of humour. I loved every second Available 6 March Sakamoto: Coda, a of it, and can’t wait for season two to arrive. Joanna and Alistair travel leisurely look at a multi- Ellen Cregan is the marketing and events coordinator for Readings with their baby from talent best known in the Scotland to Australia to West for composing memorable original visit family there. scores for directors from Bertolucci and However, when they Oshima to Inarritu and Miike.’ – Variety Documentary Television arrive, they face an unthinkable tragedy that Boy Erased changes their lives forever. It is the $29.95 catalyst for a journey into the Magical Land of Oz Upstart Crow: Seasons 1 to 3 Jared Eamons is faced $24.95 $29.95 disintegrating psychology of a young with an ultimatum: Available 6 March Available 13 March woman, exposing the myths and truths attend a gay conversion of motherhood. In three stunning episodes, It’s 1592, and Will therapy program – or be Magical Land of Oz shows Shakespeare is at the permanently exiled and Australia, from its highest beginning of his career. Succession: Season 1 shunned by his family, snow peaks to the depths of He’s not taken seriously at $39.95 friends, and faith. Boy its frigid and wild southern work, or at home. Packed The Roy family controls Erased is the true story of one young seas, and the creatures who with sparkling wordplay, one of the biggest media man’s struggle to find himself while call it home. The series Upstart Crow pays comic and entertainment being forced to question every aspect of both entertains and deepens our tribute to the greatest writer in the conglomerates in the his identity. understanding of how the natural world is history of the English language – and world. Succession tracks made up of distinct individuals, whose reveals some rather surprising stories their lives as they lives are far from predictable. about where his best ideas came from. contemplate what the

HOTEL MUMBAI Opens March 14 (CTC) THE WATER LILIES BY MONET: THE MAGIC OF MID90s April 4, exclusive (CTC) Directed by Anthony Maras and starring Armie Hammer, Jason Isaacs, WATER AND LIGHT Opens March 23 (E) Written and directed by Jonah Hill, MID90s follows Stevie, a Dev Patel, Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Anupam Kher, HOTEL MUMBAI is A journey through the masterpieces and obsessions of the genius thirteen-year-old in 1990s LA who spends his summer navigating based on the true story of the devastating terrorist attack on the Taj Impressionist. With the exclusive participation of Ross King, between his troubled home life and a group of new skater friends. Mahal Palace Hotel in 2008. The terrifying assault catapulted the city author of the best-selling Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the A heartfelt and nostalgic look back at friendships and experiences into chaos and brought the guests and staff of the luxurious hotel Painting of the Water Lillies, this brand new and deeply immersive art during adolescence, Hill’s directorial debut has had fans and critics together in a desperate fight for survival. film allows us to discover what gave Monet the inspiration to return to buzzing ever since its premiere at TIFF late last year. “...powerful debut feature...heart-wrenching” – IndieWire work, and to produce such a stunning and immortal work of beauty. “Mid90s is a time capsule, an immersion in the sights and sound of a pop-cultural moment.” – The New York Times

Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema 22 READINGS MONTHLY March 2019 MUSIC

present. Undone at 31 does not shy away from raw emotion, and its tunefulness and Country Popular exploration combine to elevate the music above the melancholy subject matter. Tides of a Teardrop Music Mandolin Orange Still Here $19.95 | Also on vinyl Beasts Anchored by poignant | $21.95 Also on vinyl songwriting and their Irish traditional/contemporary ensemble The Gloaming “With the sad passing of intimate live shows, follow up their ground-breaking and bestselling previous ALBUM OF Spencer P. Jones and Mandolin Orange two albums with The Gloaming 3. There’s nothing original THE MONTH Brian Hooper [last year], (Andrew Marlin and about the title, but the band’s intention to bring Irish there will never be Emily Frantz) has quietly Folk/World traditional music into the modern era is continued in this another Beasts of and confidently found their audience. Now album. When they started playing together, two-guitar Bourbon reunion … But comes their new album, Tides of a Teardrop, duo Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill never imagined they there’s a lot about The Beasts that will be a collection of songs which are thematically would perform at some of the most esteemed venues in familiar to fans of that band. You’ll hear focused on letting go and finding peace. the world, but with The Gloaming they have been doing that on the record, which features tracks exactly this since 2011. Bringing in rock producer and by Hooper and Jones, as well as the rest of piano-playing Irish and minimalist music fan Thomas the band…” – Double J Folk/World Bartlett was the master stroke that brought all five members together and made The Gloaming the amazing Stolen Diamonds collaboration that it is. Once again traditional singer Iarla The Cat Empire All Ó Lionáird has brought along Gaelic poetry to give the Yann Tiersen The Gloaming 3 $19.95 | Also on vinyl songs a fully atmospheric treatment. $19.95 The Gloaming Stolen Diamonds is the These arrangements seem more daring and creative All was recorded on $24.95 | Also on vinyl seventh studio album than previous recordings from The Gloaming. The opening Ushant, a small island from The Cat Empire. track, ‘Meáchan Rudaí (The Weight of Things)’ has got a lot positioned in the Celtic Band member Felix going on musically. It opens with repetitive keyboards, and then gradually develops sea between Brittany Riebl says that when the with incredibly soulful singing, hybrid fiddle drones and scrapes from Caoimhín Ó and Cornwall, Tiersen’s band wrote this new Raghallaigh, beautiful piano accompaniment from Bartlett and some Irish fiddle tunes home for the past ten album, they “weren’t afraid to add layers interspersed throughout. The second track, ‘The Lobster’ is classic The Gloaming: a years. This album explores themes of and experiment with sounds outside our slow fiddle tune that gradually brings in other instruments – piano, guitar, and a second environment, incorporating recordings usual collection. But we also kept coming fiddle – all the while cranking up the intensity and excitement. The third track, ‘Áthas from the Redwood forests of California as back to the simplicity of the melodies and (Joy)’ sees Ó Lionáird deliver another soulful performance and dials things back before well as field recordings from Tempelhof the song’s direct impact.” the next set of tunes – the stately fiddle and piano piece, ‘The Pink House’. All ten tracks airport in Berlin, and also includes a are impeccably played and arranged. The Gloaming 3 will certainly be in many of 2019’s number of guest vocalists. ‘best of’ lists, and is a great start for new music this year. Inferno Robert Forster Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton And If You Will Come To Me $21.95 | Also on vinyl Idan Raichel Available 8 March $24.95 Inferno is acclaimed Fifteen years after his Australian singer- brevity, it is loaded with wry observations first hit single, Idan Pop/Rock/Alt songwriter Robert on life, love and pain. Raichel releases this Forster’s first solo album new album which in four years – his second promises to be the most Triage Silver City album over the last impactful of his career. Methyl Ethel Brian Cadd eleven years. Forster only makes records And If You Will Come To Me features guest $19.95 | Also on vinyl $19.95 when he feels he has the songs, and on this appearances by African guitar wizard Methyl Ethel has always Brian Cadd has album, he has nine he totally believes in. Bombino, Cuban Grammy nominee Danay been a surrealist outfit journeyed far and wide Suarez, Israeli stars Berry Sakharof, – a dark and obscured in his many years on the Patty Griffin Zehava Ben and more. expression of life set to music scene. Silver City Patty Griffin the backdrop of dream takes Cadd’s work of the $19.95 pop hooks. But Triage is past fifty years and Available 8 March Jazz/Blues a more reflective album – one that explores consolidates it into a remarkable musical This self-titled album the notion of coming of age, only to summary. Cadd is truly one of Australia’s represents an reference it for the snapshots and passing greatest treasures, and Silver City is extraordinary new Signs memories that it has become. testament to his relevance. chapter for this Tedeschi Trucks Band incomparable singer- $21.95 | Also on vinyl Crushing The Words of Men songwriter and “The first track to be Julia Jacklin Deb Conway & Willy Zygier immediately stands among the most deeply released from Signs, $21.95 | Also on vinyl $22.95 personal recordings of her remarkable ‘Hard Case’ features an The second full-length Recorded live to two-decade career. Griffin can express the uplifting, brass- album from Australian capture the chemistry strikingly intimate while never making it accented soul groove, singer–songwriter Julia Deborah and Willy about herself, all wrapped in sparse propelled by Tedeschi’s Jacklin, Crushing share with their band, arrangements that breathe an incomparable soaring vocals and Trucks’ stellar slide embodies every possible The Words of Men force and import into her songcraft. work … With an electrifying sound that meaning of its title reflects one of the most mixes R&B, gospel and many shades of the word. It’s an album formed from the sheer creative bursts in a twenty-seven year blues, Tedeschi Trucks are carrying intensity of heartbreak and infatuation. collaboration. It traverses a range of Soul/Funk forward the Allman’s legacy of Southern Across ten songs, Jacklin’s vivid themes, from relationships, the mysteries rock expansionism.” – Rolling Stone storytelling shines as she explores how our and joys of ageing, to the strange American Love Call circumstances we find ourselves in as the physical experience of the world shapes and Durand Jones & The Indications This Land twenty-first century progresses. sometimes distorts our inner lives. $21.95 Gary Clark Jr Durand Jones & the $19.95 | Also on vinyl Prisoner of Love Undone At 31 Indications aren’t Grammy Award- Stephen Cummings Martin Frawley looking backwards. winning artist Gary $21.95 | Also on vinyl $24.95 | Also on vinyl Helmed by foil vocalists Clark Jr. returns, One of Australia’s most Those familiar with in Durand Jones and channeling his loved and respected Frawley’s time as drummer Aaron Frazer, signature sense of soul singers and songwriters, co-leader of Twerps will the Indications conjure the dynamism of from the crossroads of Stephen Cummings, take comfort in hearing Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, and the rock ‘n’ roll, blues, jazz, hip-hop, reggae releases his twentieth his deceptively simple Impressions. Even with an aesthetic of and punk. This Land delivers socially solo album Prisoner Of songwriting is still early ’70s soul, American Love Call is relevant, transcendentally ambitious, and Love. This hotly anticipated new album is a intact, but in this, his first solo album, new planted firmly in the present, with the musically rich declaration as unapologetic, tight and concise ten tracks, but despite its instrumentation and influences are urgency of this moment in time. undeniable and unique as he is. MUSIC March 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 23

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 a strong sense of spirituality – is another Francois- Xavier Roth & substantial contribution to the Classical Gurzenich-Orchester Koln Messiaenic monument. Harmonia Mundi. HMM90531415. $29.95 Music ‘Roth and the Edmund Finnis: The Air, Turning Cologne orchestra Various have a knack of NMC. NMCD249. $29.95 making the most Finnis’ compositions I can think of no more fitting title for this complete series familiar Mahler are beautiful and ALBUM OF of Shostakovich’s symphonies performed by the Boston sound new, with vivid iridescent, and THE MONTH Symphony Orchestra than ‘Under Stalin’s Shadow’. Born in extremes of colour explore in detail the 1906, Shostakovich suffered as many composers in Russia Classical and dynamics. Hearing the prodigious potential embodied did during the early twentieth century – denounced, forced Third makes me marvel afresh at it, and at in each of the out of his job, but luckily never shipped off to a Gulag; his the stupidity of critics who were deaf to its instruments he was a battle of wits. His was the challenge of working out greatness’ – The Sunday Times writes for. Two examples of this are the how to remain true to himself musically while satisfying the title track ‘The Air, Turning’ which draws demands of the overbearing government. Vierne & Franck: Violin Sonatas on the idea that music is just vibrating air If you don’t know the opening of the Symphony No 6, you Alina Ibragimova & Cedric and the sensation of sound moving around really must listen to it. It sobs and cries out for relief. Relief Tiberghien us and ‘Elsewhere’, written for violin with from what though? It was written in 1939 at the beginning Hyperion. CDA68204. $29.95 reverb, that delicately spins melodic of World War II but the end of what is known as the ‘Great Violinist Alina shapes like spiderwebs, with light bowing Terror’ in Russia, where many of Shostakovich’s friends and Ibragimova and and whispy flautando effects. This is a Shostakovich: family were imprisoned and killed. Followed by two fast pianist Cedric stunning release from a young composer Under Stalin’s movements, there are little licks of ideas that are almost jazz, Tiberghien perform a with a unique and compelling soundworld. Shadow almost modern, almost traditional but all Shostakovich. The trio of delectable Andris Nelsons & third Galop movement, in particular, is the one the composer Franco-Belgian treats, Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 Boston Symphony thought most successful. including Eugene & Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Orchestra Asaye’s Poème élégiaque, Louis Vierne’s Exhibition DG. 4836728. These two symphonies ... demonstrate Violin Sonata and the Cesar Franck Violin Gianandrea Noseda & LSO 2CD $24.95 how one person can show independence sonata – one of the best-loved works in the LSO Live. LSO0810. $29.95 of thought while surviving under a entire Romantic violin repertoire. Tchaikovsky’s Fourth totalitarian regime. is said to reflect the Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1-7 turmoil he found Paavo Jarvi & Orchestre de Paris himself in while Just over twelve months later he had produced another symphonic masterpiece, RCA Red Seal. 19075924512. 3CD $29.95 composing: a which many people know as the ‘Leningrad Symphony’. Legend has it that Shostakovich ‘From the clarinet disastrous marriage, used the rhythm of the bombs falling from German planes to create the underlying solo that opens No 1 struggles with his foundation. It is still performed every year at the Leningrad cemetery where more than to the unforgettable sexuality and severe depression. Yet, despite half a million people are buried from this onslaught – there is a reason this work is C major scale the gloomy outlook, the symphony proves recorded again and again. These two symphonies in particular are so important, not only launching No 7, undoubtedly that Tchaikovsky knew how to musically but also historically, and demonstrate how one person can show independence intensity and fill his works with memorable melodies. of thought while surviving under a totalitarian regime. idiomatic Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings intelligence abound. No 7 is magnificent, and aptly follows No 6 (they’re related) in Classical Specials of this achronological sequence. The mutation of No 5’s first movement into a the Month Ibn Battuta: The Traveler of Britten: Hymn to St Cecilia scherzo is effortless.’– The Sunday Times Islam Justin Doyle & RIAS Kammerchor Early Recordings Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI Harmonia Mundi. HMM902285. $29.95 Handel: Serse Martha Argerich Alia Vox. AVSA9930. 2CD & book $59.95 Benjamin Franco Fagioli, Maxim DG. 4795978. 2CD. Was $26.95 Recorded over two Britten was just Emelyanychev & Il Pomo d’Oro years and across two twenty-nine when Orchestra $14.95 (limited stock) countries, Ibn Battuta: his Hymn to St DG. 4835784. 3CD $54.95 ‘The difficulty in Traveller of Islam tells the Cecilia premiered on ‘I’d guess that a voice writing about the story of the travels of the 22 November, 1942 like Franco piano playing of great Muslim Moroccan – the feast day of St Fagioli’s…comes as Martha Argerich is scholar of the same name. Cecilia, patron saint of music, and Britten’s close as we can get that it is now, and In the fourteenth century, over a thirty- birthday. He had returned to England after today to the mingled always has been, so year period, Ibn Battuta traversed much of three years spent in America, during brilliance, relentlessly good... the Islamic world and Asia. At the end of which time he cohabitated with various suppleness and Her Mozart bubbles with the freshness and his life he transcribed his travels, artists, including old friend W.H. Auden. power of the great castrati in their pomp… effervescence of a Bernini fountain in the describing the extraordinary sights he Although by the time Britten returned to few if any falsettists today could match his midday sun...Argerich’s command of witnessed, the people he encountered, and England his friendship with Auden had combination of temperament and vocal Prokofiev is quite unlike anyone else’s, his the wives and concubines he spent time cooled considerably, their previous glamour in this notoriously taxing part. compatriots included.’ – Gramophone with on the way. Like many of Jordi collaborations were formative ones, and The rest of the cast easily hold their own in Savall’s musical projects, Ibn Battuta is a composer and poet maintained deep vocal lustre and dramatic immediacy. [Il Argerich: The Collection 2 – vast concept, involving a diverse array of respect for one another’s work. When Pomo d’Oro’s] eagerly responsive, high- The Concerto Recordings instruments – such as shawm, tabla, kora Britten went about setting Auden’s poem, octane playing underpins the whole Martha Argerich and zheng – and an international lineup of he did so with his utmost reverence. Not performance.’ – Gramophone DG. 4778124. 7CD. Was $79.95 musicians. only was Britten returning home, he was $39.95 (limited stock) The album begins as Ibn Battuta setting the work of his fellow countryman, Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur The Concerto travels to Samarkand, and ends in and asserting his place as an English l’Enfant-Jésus Recordings, on 7 CDs, Morocco, retracing Battuta’s itinerary in composer by – like Purcell, Parry, and even Martin Helmchen comprising all of her between. Preceding most tracks – in Arabic Handel before him – adding to the canon Alpha. ALPHA423. 2CD $29.95 concerto recordings and English on the first disc and French yet another ode to St Cecilia. This is the second with Deutsche on the second – is a spoken description of The lilting, intricate and playful Hymn great pianistic cycle Grammophon, from Battuta’s travels and brief explanation of to St Cecilia is the centerpiece of RIAS by Olivier Messiaen: her scintillating socio-political happenings of that place Kammerchor’s glorious album of Britten’s a major work indeed, debut playing Prokofiev and Ravel under and time, followed by a recitation from choral works. Although a German choir, not only in the Claudio Abbado in 1967 to her most recent his travelogue. The recitations are as the English diction is superlative, perhaps composer’s oeuvre collaboration with the same conductor in evocative as the music, and the journey even clearer than some iterpretations but in the entire 2004. In between come classic recordings across musical landscapes is seamless, by choirs for whom English is the first repertoire for solo piano. As we know, its of Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky and despite the disparate styles and sounds. language. A brilliant recording, and a great origin is in the faith and spirituality of Beethoven, as well as a memorable Ibn Battuta is a finely executed, immersive addition to the discography of Britten’s Olivier Messiaen. The vision of this work collaboration with Gidon Kremer (in listening experience. choral music. transmitted by Martin Helmchen – a great Mendelssohn) and dazzling virtuosity in Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton piano virtuoso who is himself marked by Haydn and Shostakovich.