Free JUNE 2013

Simmone Howell on Fiona Wood / Mel Campbell on Miles Franklin

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Talkin’ Graphi c Novels with Bernard Caleo, Nicki Greenber g & Elizabeth Macfarlane

Books music film events JUNE new releases

Neil Gaiman $27.99 p8

Philipp Meyer $32.95 / $27.95 p5

Fiona Wood $16.99 p4

Silver Linings Playbook $39.95 / $34.95 p17

Graphic Novels! Ronnie Scott on Art Comics, Peanuts, Chip Kidd & more... Laura grant by pat Cover illustration Marling $26.95 / $21.95 p18 COVERED IN MONSOON MUD AND INVITED INTO A LOCAL’S HOME FOR YAK-BUTTER TEA. more inside... TIBET, 1999. SHARE YOUR TRAVEL STORY TO WIN! lonelyplanet.com/shareyourtravelstory To enter, purchase a Lonely Planet book with a promotional sticker from Readings and enter online before 30 June 2013.

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This month’s news

COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS: 3 FOR 2 REGIONAL WINNERS Mark’s If you’re a lover of the classics, then you’ll be The regional winners of the 2013 Commonwealth glad to hear that we’re running our annual Naxos Say Book Prize have been announced. The winning AudioBooks sale again in June. Buy any two titles, by region, are Sterile Sky by E. Egya Naxos AudioBooks from our featured range and Sule (Africa), Island of a Thousand Mirrors receive a third (of equal or lesser value) free. From News and views from Readings’ by Nayomi Munaweera (Asia), The Death of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to Arthur Miller’s Bees by Lisa O’Donnell (Canada and Europe), managing director, Mark Rubbo Death of a Salesman, we have hours of wonderful Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (Caribbean) stories to choose from. Offer available at our and The Last Thread by Michael Sala (Pacific). Carlton, Hawthorn and St Kilda shops. Last month, we mentioned some interesting new fiction coming out later this year and I’ve been The judging panel, which included our very alerted to two other major titles to look forward to. Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan has a new own Books Division manager Martin Shaw, novel in September, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which borrows its title from the Japanese made their announcement in May, awarding poet Basho’s seventeenth century travel memoir. It’s partially set in a Japanese labour camp in 1943. each winning author prize money of £2500. See Chris Womersley, author of the acclaimed Bereft also has a new novel due in September, Cairo. more on the regional winners on page 6. It centres around the theft, and return, of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria. Chris’s publisher, Scribe, will be publishing Cairo under their UK imprint. HAPPINESS & ITS CAUSES CONFERENCE Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom has always had an interest in featuring international books on Happiness & Its Causes is one of the world’s his lists (last year, for example, he acquired the National Book Award-winning Behind the Beautiful leading forums on the causes of a happy and Forevers by Katherine Boo). When a slot came up at the Faber Factory Plus, a sales and distribution meaningful life. Now in its eighth year, the service in the UK for independent publishers, Henry jumped at the chance, although not without some conference will be hosted in Melbourne for the MADMAN FESTIVAL AT HOME trepidation. Scribe plan to publish a small list overseas. This will consist of their Australian releases, first time on 19 and 20 June, and Readings is DVD SALE like Cairo, where appropriate, and they have also started acquiring rights to publish international titles thrilled to be the official bookseller. The conference in the UK, Europe and Australia. At the recent London Book Fair, Scribe picked up UK and Australian Together with Madman, we’re excited to will feature more than 35 amazing speakers, rights to some major US titles. They included New York Times bestseller, The Way of the Knife by Mark announce Festival at Home, a new project including the world’s foremost expert on the Mazzetti, which describes how the lines between the CIA and the American military have been blurred, that offers cinephiles the opportunity to curate science of life satisfaction Professor Ed Diener, and The Book of Woe by Gary Greenberg, a critical look at the psychiatrist’s bible, the Diagnostic and their own film festival. To participate, simply acclaimed psychologist and researcher in the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This comes out appropriately just after the release of choose any five titles from our hand-picked field of motivation Professor Carol Dweck, and His the latest edition, the DSM-5, which has been ten years in the making. The DSM-5 has already been selection of critically acclaimed DVDs, slide Holiness the Dalai Lama. For more information, creating waves with its reclassification of Asperger’s syndrome as an autistic disorder, and is sure to them into one of the specially designed box visit www.happinessanditscauses.com.au. cause further controversy. sets, and they are all yours to take home for just $59.95. Titles include Melancholia, Scribe are not the only Australian publisher to venture into international waters. Lonely Planet was the BLOOMSDAY IN The Trip, Animal Kingdom, In the Loop, Bill first successful organisation to become a truly international, Australian-based publisher. Trade publisher Cunningham New York and more. Offer MELBOURNE FESTIVAL Hardie Grant have also had a UK presence for some years and have recently come to an arrangement available at our Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda The Bloomsday in Melbourne festival will with US publisher Rizzoli to move into that market. Sandy Grant, one of the principals of Hardie Grant, and Malvern shops until the end of June. celebrate its 20th year at fortyfivedownstairs has extensive UK experience, having been CEO of Reed Publishing in the late 90s. Hardie Grant’s from 12 to 16 June. The festival pays tribute high quality illustrated books have found a niche in the UK. Scribe’s foray is different in that they will to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and this year concentrate on serious non-fiction and some literary fiction. Perhaps some other publishers will follow – comprises of four events: a series of readings, Text, maybe, as their new shareholders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, maintain a base in London? In any a dinner and a seminar, as well as a play case, I wish Scribe and our other Australian publishers well as they venture further abroad! directed by Wayne Pearn, The Seven Ages of Joyce, which dramatises Joyce’s tumultuous and free-spirited life while drawing on his often hilarious and always mercurial fiction. To book for the play, visit www.fortyfivedownstairs.com or phone (03) 9662 9966. For general information, visit www.bloomsdayinmelbourne.org.au or phone (03) 9898 2900.

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

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Leonardo DiCaprio Carey Mulligan Tobey Maguire Visit the Cinema Nova Bar Léa Seydoux Diane Kruger Virginie Ledoyen Director Benoît Jacquot lavishly adapts Chantal Thomas' 380 LYGON ST CARLTON novel on the The highly-anticipated new film from Baz Luhrmann www.cinemanova.com.au final days of “AnGROUP ambitious BOOKINGS thriller AVAILABLE assisted IN BOTH 3D AND 2D! “An ambitious thriller assistedMarie Antoinette Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, ★★★★ SBS Film by excellent performances” EmpireNOW SHOWING National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. by excellent performances”JUNEEmpire 6, EXCLUSIVE Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 3

Meet the Bookseller June Events Gabrielle Williams, Readings Malvern For more information and updates, please visit the events page at www.readings.com.au. Please note bookings do not necessarily guarantee a seat and some events may be standing room only.

World Monique Justin 5 environment 14 diMattina 26 Clemens day Singer-songwriter and exquisite musical stylist Join us for the launch of Justin Clemens’s Join us at Readings Carlton on World Monique diMattina will perform from her brand Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy Environment Day. The Wilderness Society will new album, Nola’s Ark ($24.95), featuring an (Edinburgh University Press, PB, $44.99). announce the winner of the 2013 Environment all-star cast of musicians. Alain Badiou described psychoanalysis What was your favourite book as Award for Children’s Literature, which honours as an ‘antiphilosophy’ – a practice that a kid? Free, but please book on 9347 6633 or at books that promote caring and responsibility offers the strongest possible challenges to [email protected]. I adored Paddington Bear. From the moment for the environment. Previous winners include thought. Now, Justin Clemens examines I read about him sitting at the train station Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch, Jackie French psychoanalysis under this rubric, examining Friday 14 June, 6pm with ‘please look after this bear’ pinned and Sue deGennaro. the relationships of humans to drugs, Readings Carlton to his coat, I felt utterly protective of him. animality and sexuality. His penchant for marmalade sandwiches,

Free, no booking required. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch the fact that he was from deepest, darkest Free,la no booking required. Wednesday 5 June, 6.30pm Peru, the respect he got from the local shopkeepers because he drove a hard Readings Carlton Happiness & Wednesday 26 June, 6.30pm bargain, his partiality to ‘elevenses’ – I mean, 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch Readings Carlton

19-20 u nch Its Causes he was completely beguiling. la 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. Conference la What’s the best book you’ve Happiness & Its Causes is one of the world’s Nicole read lately? 6 Hayes leading forums on a happy and meaningful life. Anthony This year’s conference features more than 35 26 I loved Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (me Join us for the launch of a very special young amazing speakers, including special guest His R. Jansen and about a bazillion other people) adult debut, The Whole of My World (Random, and I thought Harvest by Jim Crace Holiness the Dalai Lama. Join us for the launch of Anthony R. Jansen’s PB, $18.95) by Nicole Hayes. Desperate to was spectacular, but they’ve both been thriller Severed Past. Fourteen years ago, escape her grieving father and harbouring her For bookings, please visit pipped at the post by Malcolm Gladwell’s computer expert David Hayes surfaced from a own terrible secret, Shelley disappears into www.happinessanditscauses.com.au. Outliers, which I just finished reading. terrible car crash with amnesia. It seemed like the intoxicating world of Aussie Rules football, It’s a fascinating insight into what makes an accident, but was it? His search for his true joining a motley crew of footy tragics. Finally, Wednesday 19 & Thursday 20 June humans tick – and tick successfully. identity will take him across Europe and bring things seem to be working out, if only she and Melbourne Convention and Exhibition him into contact with the formidable Company. her team can keep winning. Centre, South Wharf, Southbank, 3006. Name a book that has changed u nch Free, no booking required. the way you think, in ways small la Free, no booking required. or large. Wednesday 26 June, 6.30pm I have to go back to . While it may Thursday 6 June, 6.30pm Australian Outliers Readings Hawthorn

Readings Hawthorn 19 Impressionists u nch be that this book is the first thing that

u nch 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. in France la comes to mind because I’ve only just la finished it, I’m seriously and constantly In celebration of the NGV’s latest exhibition, astonished by what he has to say. I’d even Robin we are delighted to invite you to a special Brown Brothers use the word gobsmacked. Gladwell’s conversation with the curator of Australian art at 27 Winter Poetry research and writing has completely 12 Jeffrey the NGV and author of Australian Impressionists changed the way I look at everything. in France (NGV, PB, $39.95), Elena Taylor, and Festival Join us for the launch of Robin Jeffrey’s The the assistant curator of Australian art, Humphrey Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap Our winter poetry festival continues and as What’s your favourite book? Clegg. They’ll look at the visual journeys of Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics the nights get colder, the verse gets warmer. I can’t name a favourite book because that Australian artists who left for France in the late and Daily Life (Hurst, HB, $45). This is a This session features multi-award winning would feel disloyal to all my other favourites, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. multidimensional tale of what happens when poet and critic Jill Jones, writer and artist although I will admit to loving Emily Brontë’s a powerful and readily available technology Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 A. Frances Johnson, and emerging poet Wuthering Heights. This novel is still the is placed in the hands of a large, still or at [email protected]. Caroline Williamson. most intense, Gothic, intuitive exploration of predominantly poor population. human nature that I’ve ever read. (Just don’t Free, no booking required. Wednesday 19 June, 6.30pm tell all my other favourite books I said that.) Free, no booking required. Readings Hawthorn Thursday 27 June, 6.30pm

701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch Why do you work in books? Wednesday 12 June, 6.30pm Readings Carlton la

Readings Carlton 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch Working in a bookshop is like conducting u nch 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. la my own mini-marketing research every la Talkin’ day. As a writer, I’m fascinated by what 20 Graphic Novels Brother motivates readers to choose certain books. Paul 28 Johnstone Is it zeitgeist, word of mouth, reviews, 13 Fearne Join Bernard Caleo of Cardigan Comics, literary awards? What? So every day I get Dr Elizabeth MacFarlane of the University Join us as local band Brother Johnstone to go to work and talk to customers about Join us for the launch of A Schizophrenic of Melbourne and graphic novelist Nicki launch their brand new album, Ghost, a books, while secretly grilling them on their to Strindberg: An Unanswered Letter, Paul Greenberg (of The Great Gatsby and Hamlet mesmerising soundscape of indie-folk book-buying habits. Oh, and also, I love Fearne’s epistolary novel addressed to the fame) as they discuss the power of the hooks, laid-back grooves and acoustic rock, books. Or did I mention that already? famous nineteenth-century playwright unwritten word, and the next wave in comics. produced by the ARIA award-winning August Strindberg. Chris Thompson. What’s the best experience you’ve Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 had in a bookshop? Free, no booking required. or at [email protected]. Free, no booking required. Having someone come up to the counter Thursday 13 June, 5.30–7pm Thursday 20 June, 6.30pm Friday 28 June, 6pm and say, ‘I’m looking for a book by someone Readings at the Brain Centre, Dax Centre Readings Carlton Readings St Kilda called Gabrielle Williams.’ It’s happened a u nch u nch couple of times and each time I look around 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3052. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch 112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182. la la to see if someone’s set me up, to see if the la guys from Punk’d are lurking behind the new release section. GOLD COIN DONATIONS: We’re now asking people who attend our events to please make a small gold coin donation, when possible, to The Readings Foundation. There will be a tin for donations at each event. All contributions over $2 are tax deductible. Thank you for your support. 4 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

New Australian Writing Feature

Fiona Wood won readers over with her debut novel, Six Impossible Things, which was also shortlisted for the 2011 CBCA Book of the Year Awards. Wildlife, a loose follow-up, tackles teenagehood, contraband, sex, survival and moving on in the theatre of the great outdoors. Here, she talks to Simmone Howell. ‘If you ever went on school Me, You camp, you may remember the

iona Wood’s much-loved debut, Six lack of privacy, Impossible Things, was a funny and forensic look at the life of 14-year-old the strain of nerd-boy Dan Cereill. The novel worked and the share, the Fthrough his impossible love, his depressed mother, his gay dad and his dying dog. In her realisation sophomore release, Wildlife, Wood opens the tent fly on teenage social and sexual mores at that your body a private school’s outdoor education campus. The year tens at the prestigious Crowthorne was built to Everyone Grammar have the dubious honour of spending their fourth term at Mt Fairweather in the embarrass you. Victorian highlands. There they will partake of If not, consider the fresh air, consider their relationship with nature, run a lot and NOT be alone with the Wildlife an opposite sex. Ostensibly. If you ever went on school camp, you may remember the lack of education We Know privacy, the strain of the share, the realisation that your body was built to embarrass you. and a serious If not, consider Wildlife an education and a Simmone Howell interviews Fiona Wood about her serious entertainment. entertainment.’ Wildlife alternates between narrators latest YA novel, Wildlife. Sibylla and Lou. Early on, Lou observes that camp ‘is functional, but also concerned with appearing to be functional’. Yet this description could easily apply to herself and Sibylla, both of whom are outwardly calm while a sea dialectic that, to me, spells Teenage. Reflecting rages within. Sibylla’s recent appearance on a on Fred’s death, Lou notes, ‘So much swings billboard (as the face of a perfume called Jeune on shitty timing.’ Lou’s voice, bleak in the first Femme Sauvage) has elevated her status from half of the novel, then growing warmer, tempers class nondescript to Person of Interest. Now that Sibylla’s parabolas of insecurity. Post party, she’s uncharacteristically kissed golden boy and post kiss with Ben, Sibylla’s mind rolls on: Ben, she must navigate all that tricksy romance ‘What’s it going to be like seeing him today? stuff in the ‘fishbowl’ camp environment. Sibylla My lips still tender, chin scratched. It had to be is egged on by Holly, who is a ‘good friend but a casual hook-up, right? A party thing? Please, a mean enemy’ and looked after by Michael, party-fling fairy, oh please visit and tell me what her ‘weird’ friend. Lou is the new arrival, staying face to put on this morning.’ in the same house. She’s a girl with a secret: Initially, both Sibylla and Lou are she’s grieving the death of her boyfriend, Fred, focused on their own dramas but as the weeks who was killed in a road accident. Lou is at Mt progress and camp-life infiltrates, change Fairweather to heal, but healing is a long way begins to happen. Lou develops a friendship off: ‘My heart is its own fierce country where no with Michael, and Sibylla realises that what she one else is welcome.’ thinks she wants is actually what somebody Wildlife is a companion book of sorts else wants. Through Lou, she is presented to Six Impossible Things. Lou had a smaller role with an alternative friendship to the one she in SIT, but remained for Wood a character who has with Holly. Increasingly, each girl delivers lived off the page. commentary on the actions of the other. And and F. Scott Fitzgerald as influences. ‘Books say youth is youth, fads change but feelings Wood explains, ‘Lou and Sibylla’s the reader feels privy to the happenings – it’s a were so vivid and offered such compelling stay the same. If I stretch my memory I can stories were separate ideas that ended up royal-court-ish kind of feeling. Meanwhile, the alternatives to my actual (so-called) life at that picture my own school camp at Somers in intersecting. I wanted to write about Sibylla, students are studying Othello, and jealousy, age.’ And yet, Wildlife sits firmly in the world of year 11. Somewhere there exists a photograph a character in a state of flux who’s being torn manipulation and betrayal are happening all contemporary young adult fiction. Wood writes of a four-bed cabin packed with flaming youth between old and new friends, and finding those around them. about sex and desire with cool-headed clarity: and nary a smoke alarm in sight. There was worlds hard to reconcile. As well, I had loved Wildlife is a novel concerned with ‘Because I was going there, I also wanted jealousy, laughing so hard that I thought writing Lou and Fred in Six Impossible Things, getting through, or over, things. Wood says that to say a few things around the topic – from I’d die, hopeless crushes, daggy teachers, and wanted to spend more time with one of the setting helped to push the theme. ‘Initially remembering about safe sex, to ‘drunk means pranks, theatre sports and contraband. them. So when I started thinking about what an outdoor education campus was appealing no’, to GLBTG are all normal. At certain ages, Reading Wildlife brought it all back in a mad sort of friend Sibylla needed, it was someone simply because it was a place away from you probably don’t want to listen to parents flood with art and insight and beautiful lines. like Lou. And to get Lou into a different school, parents, texting and Facebook. But wilderness or teachers talking about sex, but if you come It’s a truly satisfying read. something had to have changed in her life. The also suggests the Romantic Movement and the across it in fiction, that’s fine. By dealing well thing that changed was someone dying. Having primacy of emotion and feeling over reason.’ with sex and sexuality, YA fiction can help to Simmone Howell is the author of Girl lost someone she loved, she then became There is a classicism to Wood’s counteract homophobic and misogynistic Defective (Pan Macmillan). She likes op uniquely situated to help Sibylla.’ writing that makes sense when she reveals her attitudes that still abound.’ shops, sand dunes, polished floorboards, girl Wood’s great strengths are voice and teenage reading. She cites Charlotte Brontë, As a writer who is often faced with gangs, freesias, old records and chocolate. characterisation. The girls’ voices are distinct, Nancy Mitford, Jane Austen, Lynne Reid Banks the old head/young heart question, I always Find her at www.simmonehowell.com. though they share the sophistication/bluff Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 5

From New Fiction the Books crazy sociopath who can’t handle not getting his way. All of this is peppered with sharp dialogue Desk book and plenty of guns – some of them homemade. Elliott is a screenwriter by trade and these stories are the result, in his own words, of of ‘adapting backwards’. That is, transforming his —Martin Shaw, unpublished screenplays into prose. ‘They taste Readings Books Division Manager the a little like films,’ he says in the introduction, and ‘if you don’t like movies, you won’t like month these stories’. For Elliott hasn’t just rewritten his Late last year, I was very honoured to be invited to join the judging panel for the Commonwealth Book film ideas in the short story form, he’s actually Prize, an annual award for a best first novel from member countries. We were asked to choose winners The Son attempted to retain the cinematic nature of the from the five Commonwealth regions, and from those five to also elect an overall winner. So it was that in original screenplays, focusing on the traditional Philipp Meyer early January we began to whittle down an 80-odd longlist, which by late April became a shortlist of 20, three-act structure; short, crosscut scenes; a and finally just five. Needless to say it was a staggering amount of reading. But it was also fascinating to Vintage. PB. Was $32.95 sense of immediacy; and the inscrutability of a look at books from such diverse parts of the world, including some countries that have only a modicum Special price $27.95 character’s inner thoughts. of the literary apparatus that we take for granted in Australia. I was also struck by how literature functions Review: If John Wayne were still alive, he’d I confess, I was initially sceptical – but differently in different societies: a novel that emerges from war-torn Nigeria or Sri Lanka, for instance, be salivating. For Phillipp Meyer’s second raid on it worked. When I visualised the stories as if I is very unlikely not to bear traces of such conflict. Of course, one of the Australian shortlistees – Majok the American heart is the story of Texas, where were watching them on television, they really Tulba’s Beneath the Darkening Sky – is also marked in this way, as he tries to make sense of the strength, men, dust, violence, gunpowder, cattle came to life. Dialogue and description that homeland he escaped as a teenager, Sudan. and oil come together to shine in a blood-soaked would’ve perhaps seemed wooden in a more cowboy state. Meyer’s first novel,American Rust, traditional novel seemed incredibly vivid and I would of course recommend all of the winning titles to you very highly. From Australia, there’s Michael took place in a dilapidated small town. In stark convincing when I imagined it being enacted by Sala’s wonderful The Last Thread, which one of my fellow judges described as ‘deeply touching’ and contrast The Son is a broad sweeping epic that the characters on my favourite TV shows. ‘unforgettable’. Sri Lankan-born Nayomi Munaweera writes a heartfelt and utterly magical reckoning traverses multiple generations, with enough Elliott states that the stories aren’t for with her homeland in Island of a Thousand Mirrors, and Scot Lisa O’Donnell has The Death of Bees, horror and violence to rival Cormac McCarthy’s literary consumption, but are for reading while which takes on a confronting issue – parental neglect and abuse. The novel transports us through with a Blood Meridian. But this is not simply a tale of consuming popcorn, which I think is an apt dramatic opening scene, and contains some of the most tenderly-drawn and endearing characters I’ve war and incoherent brutality; it’s about what it is description. The speedy, action-packed nature encountered in fiction in a long while. to be American. of the stories means you can read through The McCulloughs are a powerful them quickly without missing anything, and Turning to June releases, we have some exciting new novels by Philipp Meyer, Colum McCann and Texan dynasty, and each chapter is narrated have clear, colourful imagery in your head at the Rachel Kushner. Also, there is a welcome retrospective of James Salter’s wonderful short fiction, Collected by a different family member, decades apart. same time. A very fun read. Stories, which is likely to be an essential volume for all fans of contemporary American literature. In Their patriarch is one of the most formidable Julia Tulloh is a freelance writer and a PhD non-fiction, Anne Summers’ The Misogyny Factor explores the relevance and meaning of the term in men in Texas, known as The Colonel. He was candidate in American Literature. contemporary Australian society. Meanwhile, Mel Campbell examines the fashion industry in Out of Shape, kidnapped by Comanche Indians as a boy, and and how sizing and fit is a social construct. ‘It’s about bodies and ideals, reflections and distortions, gazes reared on the plains of war and battle cries. Eli is A Wrong Turn at the and doubts,’ reflects our reviewer, Jessica Au. renamed Tiehteti by the Indians, and eventually lives to be 100 years old. His years spent with the Office of Unmade Lists Finally, our pick of Australian fiction this month is a young adult novel: Fiona Wood’s Wildlife. It's a follow- Comanche are narrated until the 1870s, where Jane Rawson up to her enormously successful Six Impossible Things, and there’s a veritable clamour around it here at the story shifts into the hands of his son Peter. Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 Readings pre-publication. Our children’s book buyer Emily Gale simply says, ‘Amazing!’ Told through journal entries from 1915-17, Peter Review: Picture Melbourne is haunted by the murder of a neighbouring in 2030 – what do you see? Mexican family. The third voice is Jeannie, the Jane Rawson paints a bleak WHO WE WERE just_a_girl Colonel’s great-granddaughter, who wanders picture. There’s a heatwave, Lucy Neave Kirsten Krauth through her memories from the floor of the family clean water is hard to come by Text. PB. $29.99 UWAP. PB. $24.99 mansion after suffering a fall in 2012. and disparity of wealth is rife. You can almost feel your own scalp Melbourne, 1938. Annabel’s Layla is only 14. She cruises UN troops are a common sight being ripped off by the complexity of such dream is to be a scientist. Falling online. She catches trains to and basic necessities like food and soap are a long-sweeping narrative, but Meyer kindly in love is not part of her plan. But meet strangers. Her mother, expensive. The landscape is almost apocalyptic includes a genealogy for us to return to. After when she meets Bill Whitten, she Margot, never suspects, even as you’re guided through it by Caddy. all, it’s family he is concerned with, and the vast knows instantly that they are when Layla brings a man into As a narrator, Caddy is charming in differences between siblings and the choices (or destined for each other. After the their home. Margot is caught in her bluntness, living off the streets and getting lack of) available to them. Meyer dissects this war, the newlyweds emigrate to her own web: an evangelical by on what she can. She once had a husband, idea through Texas – the classic American son – New York, where they meet Frank, an ex- church and a charismatic pastor. Meanwhile, a home and a cat, before an explosion on the where ‘the strong must be encouraged, and the Communist from Hungary, and his playwright downtown, a man opens a suitcase and Maribyrnong River left her to fend for herself. weak allowed to perish’. wife, Suzy. Frank, Annabel and Bill find work as tenderly places his young lover inside. A Now, she sleeps in a humpy on the riverbank, microbiologists, experimenting with lethal Puberty Blues for the digital age, just_a_girl living day to day. She has no perceivable goals Luke May is a freelance reviewer infectious diseases. But it’s the 1950s and the tears into the fabric of contemporary culture for the future and spends most of her time Cold War is in full swing, with suspicion, paranoia and explores what it’s like to grow up in a dreaming of a different reality. and deceit threatening to unravel everything. world of Facebook, webcams, internet porn Jump back to 1997, San Francisco. and cyberbullying. Two kids, Sarah and Simon, have been sent to Australian see America. Not just to see it, but to stand in The Asylum every 25-foot square of the country. John Harwood Fiction Although the book deals with some Random. PB. $32.95 Poetry pretty big ideas, Rawson manages to integrate Georgina Ferrars wakes to find them into an endearing narrative. Sustainability is Now Showing herself in a private asylum. Novelties one of the issues raised. 2030 is not that far away, Ron Elliott She has no memory of the Fiona Hile but realistically what resources will still be readily Fremantle Arts Centre Press. PB. $29.99 past six weeks. Dr Straker, the Hunter Publishers. PB. $19.95 available to us? Characters ask for water in a bar charismatic physician in charge, Review: Now Showing is but realise beer will be cheaper. Caddy relies on Novelties is a collection that tells her that she has suffered a quick, punchy and pulls you drinking boiled river water, which isn’t clean but is resonates with wildlife, love and seizure – and that her name is from page to page like a series the only source she has access to. literature – the traditional not Georgina Ferrars, but Lucy Ashton. Her of explosions. That is, it takes Playing with the idea of parallel Australian ballad is thwarted protests only serve to convince the doctors that you to the movies. Ron Elliott’s universes and reality versus the imagination, through playful language to she is in the grip of ‘hysterical possession’ and second book comprises of five the plot of this book is unpredictable, to say the provide a counterfeit narrative, Georgina is certified insane. With no money, long short stories – novellas, least. This is Jane Rawson’s first novel. She is the history of love is seized and and no one she dares trust, Georgina is left with really – that depict a relationship drama in the currently the section editor for environment and re-written, and an easel is a guillotine for writing only a stubborn determination to find out what desert, a botched mafia job, a post-office heist energy at The Conversation. poems about nature. This is prize-winning poet happened during those missing weeks, no matter gone wrong, the mishaps of a gambler and a Fiona Hile’s first full-length collection. Ella Mittas is a freelance reviewer how terrifying the consequences. 6 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

It’s rare for sex to be merely erotic in Salter’s International work, and it’s never prurient. COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE: Collected Stories is a book that brings together Salter’s two collections, Dusk and Other REGIONAL WINNERS HIGHLIGHTS Fiction Stories and Last Night, plus one other piece. THE FLAMETHROWERS It’s sometimes an uneasy mix and a Selected Stories might have been a more welcome option Island of a Thousand Mirrors Rachel Kushner to a reader encountering Salter for the first time. Nayomi Munaweera (Sri Lanka) Harvill Secker. PB. Was $32.95 However, you can rest assured that despite Asia Perera Hussein Publishing House. PB. $22.95 Special price $27.95 a few poor examples there are undeniable A few months after the 1983 riots, a Sinhalese family leaves Sri Lanka for Review: It’s possible that, masterpieces of the short form to be found in America. The two children, Yasodhara and Lanka, adapt to their new life in another life, I lived in New what is a deeply rewarding book. quickly, but memories of their childhood on a tropical island are seared into York, rode a motorcycle and A.S. Patrić is from Readings St Kilda their souls. Meanwhile, Saraswathi, living in the middle of a war-torn was in love with an Italian country, is struggling to be a teenager in a land that is anything but normal. artist. This would certainly TransAtlantic explain why I find myself Colum McCann The Death of Bees captivated by Rachel Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99 Lisa O’Donnell (UK) Kushner’s The Flamethrowers – her second and much-lauded novel. William Heinemann. PB. $19.95 Review: I have to confess to The Flamethrowers is set in the being a fan of Colum McCann’s At the Hazlehurst housing estate in Glasgow, 15-year-old Marnie and her mid-70s, and the novel’s narrator, nicknamed writing. When I read his 2009 little sister Nelly finish burying their parents in the back garden. Meanwhile Reno (it’s where she’s from) is a young woman novel Let the Great World Spin, I Lennie, the old guy next door, soon realises that the girls are all alone, and obsessed with speed, motorcycles and, to a raved about it for months need his help – or does he need theirs? As the year ends and another lesser degree, art. We first encounter Reno afterwards, so needless to say I begins, the sisters’ friends, neighbours and the authorities begin to ask setting records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in was very excited to receive his questions. And as one lie leads to another, darker secrets about Marnie’s family come to light. Utah. This racing turns out to be a catalyst for latest offering, TransAtlantic. her art; she wants to photograph the traces her McCann was born in Dublin but now The Last Thread bike leaves in the earth. A year later, she arrives resides in New York, and the Irish-American Michael Sala (Australia) in New York, where she falls in with a rather connection has been a recurring theme in Affirm. PB. $24.95 outrageous group of artists, and finds herself his work. As the title suggests, this is again girlfriend to Sandro Valera, an estranged scion Michael Sala’s The Last Thread recounts a life in fiction. From his early the case with TransAtlantic. Similarly to Let of the Moto Valera motorcycle and tyre empire. years in the Netherlands to growing up in Australia during the 1980s, the Great World Spin, McCann sets his fiction As it happens, it’s a Moto Valera that Reno rides Michael recalls how events from the past fractured his family. And, as his life against historical events to deliver a book and this convenient coincidence helps to set up unfolds, Michael – now a father himself – must decide if he can free himself that is immediately absorbing. The opening the story’s darker subplot. from the dark pull of history. chapters are seemingly unrelated and could Later, after Sandro abandons her almost be considered a collection of short in Rome, Reno finds herself in the midst of a stories. However, it soon becomes clear that violent demonstration led by Italian radicals. She what McCann is doing is delivering a series falls in with the welcoming group of militants, of snapshots of characters and the moments and it is at this point that the simmering political of history that they find themselves in. It is a WHAT I LOVED menace of the novel finally goes up in flames. saga that spans three generations of women Reno’s story is cleverly entwined and covers the Irish potato famine in 1845, the with nominal doses of history, from the radical American Civil War, the Troubles in Northern The Complete Peanuts New York artistic scene of the 70s to the Red Ireland and the first non-stop flight across the Charles M. Schulz Brigades and proto-fascists of Italy, and the riots Atlantic in 1919, as well as the present day. that ensued. Fantagraphics Books. HB McCann’s writing is so wonderfully Kushner’s narrative stays brilliantly descriptive that it’s not difficult to be transported Review: There’s this story about Charles M. Schulz, the creator of alive despite a less than electric denouement. to another era or to share the experiences of his Peanuts, that I really love. After drawing and writing strips for close to 50 years, uninterrupted Her prose is sharp and her characters are characters. His account of the flight across the except for a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday, he was diagnosed with sublimely real, complemented by vivacious Atlantic, for instance, had me nervous for the two cancer. The illness soon began to affect his ability to see clearly and, as a result, he announced dialogue. This is a story of losing one’s aviators; I could almost feel the icy air that made his retirement. Later, in an interview on The Today Show in 1999, Schulz said that some time after innocence and finding one’s place in the ‘the bones in their ears ring’. Not only did I enjoy drawing his final panel, he looked up and thought, ‘You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even complex social and political contexts of the time. TransAtlantic as a work of fiction, but I enjoyed it got to kick the football.’ For those who’ve never read a Peanuts comic, Schulz is referring to a as a work of history as well. A great book to curl long-running gag where the main protagonist, Charlie Brown, is repeatedly thwarted in his Nicole Mansour is from Readings St Kilda up with in front of the fire on a cold winter’s day. attempts to kick a football by the bossy, vivacious Lucy. Much like a television sitcom, the world of Peanuts features a cast of characters who COLLECTED STORIES Sharon Peterson is from Readings Carlton all operate within their own idiosyncratic framework, from Lucy’s enduring love for the musically James Salter talented and definitely-not-interested Schroeder to Peppermint Patty’s mistaken belief that Picador. HB. $39.99 AND THE MOUNTAINS Snoopy is just a ‘funny-looking kid with a big nose’. (A mistake easily made given the dog’s ECHOED lovable tendency to act human.) Perhaps it is Schulz’s adherence to this winning formula – one Review: James Salter is a that rewards our love for nostalgia – that has ensured the overwhelming popularity of Peanuts deeply satisfying combination Khaled Hosseini Bloomsbury. PB. Was $33 over the years. of raw power and finetuned Back in 2003, Fantagraphics Books announced an ambitious project: the complete precision. He writes stories that Special price $27.95 are never content to rest at reprinting of every Peanuts strip, to be published in 25 volumes over 12 years. Now up to volume Review: And the Mountains perfection – they push and 19, this is a mammoth undertaking and I’m more than a little in love with it. Reading from the very Echoed is Khaled Hosseini’s shove for more. Writers are beginning, it’s fascinating to see how Schulz’s comics have developed in terms of artistic style as much-anticipated third novel, often described as elegant and polished as well as character and narrative. For example, even the famous football gag I mentioned earlier was following bestsellers The Kite though that were the epitome of literary art, but originally performed by another little girl named Violet, who later disappeared. Runner and A Thousand the ugly and ragged are just as vital for a One of my favourite Peanuts moments (first published in a strip on 25 April, 1960 and Splendid Suns, which genuine reflection of life. And theCollected later the inspiration for a book with the same title) is ‘Happiness is a warm puppy’. To regular combined sold more than 38 Stories of James Salter do indeed reflect the readers, Lucy and Snoopy’s animosity is well known. They fight and treat one another with million copies worldwide. long and varied life of a man who has been a disdain. Perhaps most memorably, Snoopy will often plant a surprise kiss on Lucy, causing her Despite similar themes of love, loss fighter pilot for the US Air Force, a Hollywood to run away screaming. Yet in this particular strip the girl embraces the ‘stupid beagle’ to the and powerful yet fragile family connections, screenwriter and a mountain climber. pleasing sound of ‘mmmmm’. As a dog lover, this sweet, simple interaction tugs a heartstring, this is a quieter story than his previous Running through almost everything but what I really like is the implied understanding that while Lucy and Snoopy will invariably epics. The novel begins in 1952, in the small Salter has written is sexual passion. It’s a clash, there’s love here as well. Even as Schulz is delivering the familiarity we so often seek as village of Shadbagh, Afghanistan. Kaboor, a particular sense of vitality that animates his readers, he suggests there will always be exceptions to the rule. labourer, tells his 10-year-old son, Abdullah, writing in the same way as with the works of And so I wonder, why didn’t he make an exception for Charlie Brown? Just imagine and daughter, Pari, a story about a young D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. In if, in that final strip, the little boy had kicked that football. On the one hand, I do wish for the child being taken from his family in distressing most fiction, the sexual life is often seen as an pleasure such a triumphant moment would have awarded me, yet I also like that Schulz circumstances. In the fable, the father makes experience of encounters. Yet in Salter’s stories, withheld this ending. His decision reveals a deeper truth: a sense that sometimes things don’t a brave pilgrimage to faraway mountains to we are more likely to discover long relationships happen and ‘that's the way it goes’. Charlie Brown is not going to be anyone other than Charlie save his son, only to realise that the child is that are examined or informed through sexuality, Brown, and that’s okay too. being raised in paradise. He needs to make the and the ways in which it waxes and wanes. difficult decision of whether to take him home While this might provide frisson in an otherwise Bronte Coates – Readings Monthly & Online Assistant to a life of poverty or leave him there. In the flat story, there’s also an implacable sense of end, he leaves him. hunger for life that it gives each of his characters. Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 7

Kaboor later hands Pari over to a its viewers. It is a film that everyone should watch, wealthy poet in Kabul, who is barren and in a but for many might be unwatchable. loveless marriage, for the money that will keep A far more accessible meditation his remaining family alive in their impoverished on grief is Michel Rostain’s novel The Son, village. The poet moves with Pari to Paris, and winner of France’s Prix Goncourt Debut the girl is never told that she was adopted, let Novel award. Rostain tells the story of a father alone that she was paid for. struggling to cope after the unexpected death The novel then radiates from this small, of his son from an aggressive virus. Although broken family nucleus into the second generation. told through a softer, more hopeful lens than Here, we meet Abdullah’s daughter, also named Haneke’s masterpiece, the novel still delves Pari, who, as a middle-aged woman, meets her into uncomfortable territory, from the body’s aunt and learns the terrible truth of her beginnings. frightening decay to the business side of funerals. This is a beautifully crafted novel Punctuating the chapters are quotes and the true story lies within Hosseini’s from famous writers and thinkers, musing on multigenerational, layered strands. He moves those age-old concepts of love and death. The from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the acknowledgements section sadly reveals The Son Greek island of Tinos, encountering wives and is loosely autobiographical. It’s clear that when mothers, refugees and druglords, doctors and faced with the unexplainable, we, like Rostain, villagers. It explores the many ways in which seek solace in literature where words are carefully families love and betray each other and how measured, at once intimate and universal in their often we take these formative bonds for granted. reach. How well the novel’s second person, omniscient narration works is a matter of individual Emily Harms is Readings’ marketing manager reception. Some might find its tone preachy, others consoling. To be fair, The Son is coming to VIENNESE ROMANCE readers as a French-to-English translation. David Vogel Rostain also makes clear in his (translated by Dalya Bilu) acknowledgements that he is not providing Scribe. HB. $29.95 any set answers for the living. He believes, rather, ‘It’s for each of us to work out. And for Review: In 2012, poet and each of us to help others work it out.’ As a work novelist David Vogel of fictionThe Son is flawed, the plot largely posthumously set the Israeli overshadowed by its themes. Nevertheless, it literary world alight with his generously offers a window into grief and the unpublished manuscript, painstaking journey to the other side of it. Viennese Romance. Scribed on 15 large sheets of paper in tiny Emily Laidlaw is a freelance reviewer writing, it was uncovered during a search for Vogel’s 1934 novella, Facing the Sea. Most likely SISTERLAND written in the 1920s, it is the latest of his works to Curtis Sittenfeld be translated for the English-speaking world. Doubleday. PB. Was $32.95 The protagonist of Viennese Romance Special price $27.95 is 18-year-old Michael Rost, a Russian-Polish Jew who arrives in Vienna with no money or Identical twins Kate and Violet direction. In the smoke-filled cafes and bars, he share a hidden gift – a special soon finds himself in the company of aristocrats, kind of intuition that allows them artisans and actors, all of whom have Woody to see things yet to come. Yet Allen-style obsessions with philosophy, despite when Kate inadvertently reveals Rost’s own disengagements. ‘In my opinion most their secret at 13, both are set One wet Friday evening, Professor Andrew Martin solves the world’s men of action invest themselves in activity itself, on diverging paths. Twenty greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found in order to save themselves from the boredom years later, Kate is a suburban housewife, while walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems … different. and emptiness of doing nothing, and the goal Violet works as a psychic medium. Then, one incidental … How do you intend to live?’ asks the day, Violet ignites a media storm by predicting a Besides the lack of clothes, he hates everyone on the planet. man who later becomes Rost’s patron. major earthquake in the St Louis area where they Except Newton. And he’s a dog. The novel is also an account of Vogel’s live and the sisters are left grappling with the sexual awakening. In Vienna, Vogel himself had legacy of the past, as well as the unsettling an affair with his landlady and his landlady’s glimpses they both have of the future. daughter. Here the women are fictionalised as Gertrude, a woman whose loneliness and near- THE YONAHLOSSEE obsession with Rost is born out of ‘existing in a RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS state of constant thirst, forever unsatisfied’, and Anton DiSclafani her 16-year-old daughter Erna, who although Headline. PB. $29.99 initially wary of Rost’s involvement with her mother, later only wishes to ‘hide her hand in In 1930s America, 15-year-old [Rost’s] forever; to be buried inside him, reduced Thea Atwell is exiled from her to a tiny, distant dot at the core of his being’. wealthy family following a Each woman is acutely drawn, and in this arena scandal and sent to a debutante Vogel’s observations are deeply felt. boarding school in North Vogel later died in Auschwitz. Carolina. As Thea grapples with Viennese Romance is a seminal addition to the the truth about her role in the secular Hebrew canon, providing vital insight tragic events, she finds herself enmeshed in the into the history of the Jewish diaspora. Along world of the Yonahlossee Riding Camp, with its with its author, it must not be forgotten. complex social strata of money and beauty. Nicole Lee is a freelance reviewer Brief Loves That The Son Live Forever Michel Rostain Andreï Makine (translated by Headline. PB. $24.99 Geoffrey Strachan) MacLehose Press. HB. $29.95 Review: Filmmaker Michael Can a bit of Debussy and Emily Dickinson keep him from murder? Haneke’s Amour (2012) offers Now entering middle age, an viewers an unflinching look at orphan recalls the fleeting Can the species which invented cheap white wine and peanut butter death, or rather the less-talked- moments that have never left sandwiches be all that bad? And what is the warm feeling he gets him from Soviet Russia – a about aspects of dying. when he looks into his wife’s eyes? Chronicling the final days of an scorching day in a blossoming elderly woman being cared for orchard with a woman who by her husband in their Parisian apartment, Amour loves another, and a desperate has an honesty and compassion that devastates affair in a Black Sea resort. It is an era in which the desire for freedom is also the desire for the 8 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

way and much more. This bizarre string of freedom to love. And, as the dreary Brezhnev era exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in seemingly random catastrophes threatens to gives way to Perestroika, the orphan finds himself London, as well as specially commissioned Science Fiction bring the whole construction industry down. discovering the truth about another memory – the drawings and illustrations. Batman must somehow solve the problem and life of Dmitri Ress, and his tragic fate. The Ocean at find whoever is behind it all. A TREACHEROUS the End of the Lane EVERY PROMISE PARADISE Neil Gaiman My Dirty Dumb Eyes Andrea Bajani (translated by Henning Mankell Headline. PB. $27.99 Lisa Hanawalt Alastair McEwen) Harvill Secker. PB. Was $32.95 An unnamed man and narrator Drawn & Quarterly. PB. $32.95 MacLehose Press. PB. $24.99 Special price $27.95 returns to his Sussex roots to My Dirty Dumb Eyes is the When Sarah leaves – In 1904, Hanna Lundmark attend a funeral and, before debut collection from award- heartbroken by their inability to escapes the brutal poverty of long, memories begin to flow. winning cartoonist Lisa conceive – Pietro reverts to a rural Sweden for a job as a His mind is cast back to 40 Hanawalt, whose satirical, wild younger self, leaving the dishes cook on board a steamship years ago, when a South sense of humour has won her unwashed, his bed unmade headed for Australia. But African lodger stole the family acclaim in publications such as and the post unopened. Soon disaster strikes on the East car and committed suicide in it, stirring up The New York Times, The afterwards, Sarah confesses African coast, and Hanna jumps ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark Believer, Lucky Peach and at VanityFair.com. that she is pregnant, but from a casual ship and decides to begin her life anew. creatures from beyond the world are on the Combining drawings and single-panel jokes, My encounter. She comes to rely on Pietro’s mother Stumbling across a down-at-heel hotel, she loose, and it will take everything he has just to Dirty Dumb Eyes is a startlingly observant for support, leaving all three in a painful limbo. somehow ends up inheriting the most stay alive. The man’s only defence is three commentary on pop culture and contemporary Into this void falls Olmo, an old man haunted by successful brothel in town. Hanna tries to make women on a farm at the end of the lane. The society, from the secret lives of celebrity chefs to memories of war. At first he provides a changes for the better, but the distrust between youngest claims that her duck pond is ocean. our animal friends and their tennis-ball brides. distraction, but when he asks Pietro to travel to blacks and whites, and the shadow of The oldest can remember the Big Bang. Russia on his behalf, he offers the chance for a colonialism, lead to tragedy and murder. The Playboy new beginning. Chester Brown MY NOTORIOUS LIFE BY Graphic Novels Drawn & Quarterly. PB. $23.95 MEMORY PALACE MADAME X Hari Kunzru Batman: Death A blazingly honest memoir about Kate Manning adolescence, sexuality and Bloomsbury. HB. $27.99 By Design Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99 shame, The Playboy chronicles a Memory Palace is an innovative Chip Kidd This is the testament of Axie teenager’s obsession with the new work of fiction and Random. PB. $22.95 Muldoon: female physician, magazine of the same name. collaboration by Hari Kunzru, distributor of ‘obscene’ An original graphic novel from Fifteen-year-old Chester is visited the bestselling author of Gods materials and the most superstar writer-designer Chip by a time-travelling adult Chester, Without Men. In a dark future, scandalous woman in all of Kidd and artist Dave Taylor. who narrates his younger self’s compulsion to books, as well as the act of New York. As Axie goes from Gotham City is undergoing one purchase each issue of Playboy as it appears on remembering itself, is banned. impoverished beggar to local of the most expansive newsstands. Even more fascinating is Brown’s A small group of renegade memorialists is all midwife, she soon discovers that the right way is construction booms in its need to keep this habit secret, and the great that stands in the way of total oblivion. One of not always the way of God or the law, and that history, with the most lengths he goes to in an effort to avoid detection their members lies incarcerated in a cell, you should never trust a man who says ‘trust prestigious architects from across the globe by his family, and then, later, by girlfriends. clinging to the belief that a civilisation without me’. But her downfall might yet surface in the completing buildings all over town. And then the Originally published in 1992, The Playboy was memory is a world doomed. The book includes form of the irresistible Charlie G. Jones, a fellow explosions begin. There are faulty crane ahead of its time. This expanded reissue includes an essay by the curators of a supporting orphan and poetical Irish soul. calculations, software glitches, walkways giving all-new appendices and notes from the author.

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nne Summers makes the case Athat Australia, the land of the fair go, still hasn’t figured out how ‘I thoroughly loved this book. Melbourne looks great as a ruined to make equality between men tropical mega shanty town – I can’t wait. Film-like, dream-like, and women work. She shows how uncomfortable we are with the life-like. Funny and charming.’ Dave Graney idea of women with political and financial power, let alone the reality. ‘A free-range and funny apocalyptic time-space road trip with Summers dismisses the idea that we James M. Cain, J.G. Ballard, and Tom Robbins all fighting for should celebrate progress for women the wheel.’ Steven Amsterdam as opposed to outright success. She shows what success will look like.

www.newsouthbooks.com.au Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 9

Little Green Walter Mosley book New Crime Dead Write W&N. PB. $29.99 with Fiona Hardy Recovering slowly from a coma after his car flew off a cliff, of hardboiled detective Easy The Heist heart of the organisation that really runs this Rawlins returns to life in the the troubled city: the Catholic Church. new, psychedelic world of the Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg 1960s. Ignoring instructions to month Headline. PB. Was $33 The Crocodile rest, he goes on the search for Special price $24.95 Evander ‘Little Green’ Noon at the request of his Maurizio de Giovanni A Bitter Taste Janet Evanovich’s new series oldest, most loyal and generally most Abacus. PB. Was $33 Annie Hauxwell with Lee Goldberg stars FBI dangerous friend, Mouse. Gritty, rollicking and Special price $24.95 Penguin. PB. Was $29.99 Special Agent Kate O’Hare and sharp, Mosley’s latest venture through a Los Special price $24.95 notorious con artist Nicholas Sent to Naples for a Mafia-related Angeles both bright and dark is an indication of Fox. O’Hare has been in pursuit debacle that was not his fault, his bestselling status. Review: In crime fiction, the downtrodden are of Fox for five years and then Detective Inspector Giuseppe frequently used as asides – bribed for information there he is: caught. But Fox is Lojacono is supposed to keep No Safe Place or killed off with little remorse. Annie Hauxwell’s A quiet in his new little police never one to let an opportunity pass, and instead Jenny Spence Bitter Taste takes us into their world, one that not of jail time the dashing criminal wrangles a job station. One night, however, A&U. PB. $29.99 every crime reader might be prepared for. with the FBI. He’s put to work with the he’s called to a murder, where Catherine Berlin is a 56-year-old mostly high- determined agent and they travel to Indonesia to it’s revealed that his skills are far beyond those Review: Elly Cartwright functioning heroin addict. She’s trying to get clean find a corrupt banker, but the new team end up of the other officers. Asked to join the writes software manuals for Soft with methadone to heal her physical and internal causing some turbulence of their own. investigative team, Lojacono is on the hunt for a Serve. On returning home one scarring, and working with little money after her vengeful killer, someone much more dangerous evening after having a meeting career as a private investigator was ruined. Now Holy Orders than the Mafia – The Crocodile. with Carlos, the company’s unhappy enough to accept crappy jobs and be brilliant and reclusive Benjamin Black paid in booze, she carries on through the heat of a programmer, her Brunswick blistering summer until an old acquaintance turns Mantle. PB. $29.99 Someone To Watch Over Me neighbour is shot and killed by a mysterious up with a request that Berlin cannot bring herself Benjamin Black (aka Man assassin. A second shot grazes her arm. Her Yrsa Sigurdardottir to refuse: a missing daughter. Booker Prize-winning author neighbour is an elderly woman and there is no A Bitter Taste is yet another example of H&S. PB. $29.99 John Banville) puts another motive for the murder. The next day, Elly discovers how excellently painted characters and thrilling body in front of the ever- Lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir is Carlos brutally murdered in his backyard – is there action that doesn’t resort to cheap tricks can inquisitive pathologist Quirke. working on the case of Jakob, a a connection between the drive-by shooting and plunge you directly into a world. I hated putting It’s 1950s Dublin and the city is man with an intellectual disability Carlos’ death? The question leads Elly and her this one down, often saying ‘just another chapter’ collapsing under the pressure who has been accused of colleagues at Soft Serve on a suspenseful quest to before bed and then secretly reading eight more. of its own strict rules. The body in question burning down his shelter home track down the culprits using all their hacking London’s grime is on show and Berlin is often belongs to a friend of Quirke’s daughter Phoebe and killing five people. She’s skills. Jenny Spence has introduced a clever, feisty more at home bunking down with the homeless and, with Phoebe’s own safety compromised, been hired by another inmate at character and created a gripping urban thriller set than in the bright and untrustworthy world of the Quirke and Inspector Hackett set out to rail Jakob’s current home, who believes that he is in inner Melbourne and Sydney. authorities. This book has enough to differentiate against the oppressive system in place. It’s an innocent. But the killer, and the connection to a Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director itself to make it a stand-out in the genre. FH investigation that will lead them into the dark hit and run accident, are still a mystery.

State Library of Victoria

Join us for a day of curious delights from across time! Marvel at stilt walkers and magicians, march alongside an old-time Paul Kara, mentalist, c. 1921, gelatin silver brass band, enjoy tours, talks and Full program on sale now photograph, WG Alma performances. Whether you’re 1 or 101, conjuring collection there will be surprises galore for all. www.byronbaywritersfestival.com Sunday 7 July or phone 02 6685 5115. Free! Sponsor of the Dome Centenary 10 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

INNOVATIVE YA FICTION from New Young Adult Fiction AUSTRALIA'S SMALL PUBLISHER See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 15. JUNE RELEASES OF THE YEAR, 2012 for over the school holidays. Plus, there’s Ben book Capaldi, and the kiss. Really, everything should be perfect, but as the term progresses and of friendships and morals are questioned, Sibylla has to think about what and who is really important in her life. the Watching all this is Sibylla’s roommate Lou (from Fiona Wood’s first novel,S ix Impossible month Things). Lou is dealing with a death that has torn her apart, and she has decided to move Wildlife to Crowthorne Grammar instead of going on NEW IN Fiona Wood exchange to France. Reserved and hiding in her own world, Lou finds herself slowly becoming JUNE Pan Mac. PB. $16.99 more intrigued at the drama that is Sibylla’s life. Review: It’s the term of all terms for the year Wildlife is wonderful. Fiona Wood has tens at Crowthorne Grammar as they embark on once again created a quirky and intelligent novel their school’s annual outdoor education camp, for young adults, with characters that question tucked away in the Victorian bush. As if it’s not friendships, learn that fitting in isn’t everything enough to be surrounded by your classmates and tackle that scary thing called first love. NEW TEXT 24/7 and made to tackle the wilderness, Sibylla Highly recommended for ages 14 and up. CLASSICS is also getting used to her newfound fame that Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn STILL stemmed from a perfume ad that she modelled $12.95 ‘The loss of ALP voters to the NAN CHAUNCY begins to feel like life is getting back on track, just Greens is, in the long term, introduced by The Bone Dragon potentially as damaging as earlier John Marsden Alexia Casale as long as Glenthorn can keep winning. JOAN PHIPSON This is a brilliant coming-of-age story splits of the ALP’ Faber. PB. $19.99 introduced by about family, tragedy and the power of AFL. Margo Lanagan An election is looming, and the future IVAN SOUTHALL Review: I wanted to read I’m beyond thrilled that someone has finally of progressive politics nationwide introduced by this story as soon as I saw the given us a well-written, fun yet serious novel James Moloney seems deeply uncertain. In this timely beautiful cover and read the about girls who love our great game. I loved it. and visionary book, Brad Orgill argues PATRICIA WRIGHTSON single line hook: a teenage girl, Recommended for ages 13 and up. that progressive voters, and Australia introduced by Evie, carves a tiny dragon from Kate Constable as a whole, deserves an aligned a piece of her rib that has been Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn ALP-Greens platform. removed after an operation, TEXTPUBLISHING.COM.AU and it becomes a powerful symbol of her road to Fairytales for recovery from an abusive past. Evie’s voice Wilde Girls convincingly navigates us through both her Allyse Near wisdom and her anguish. At 14, she’s suffered Random. PB. $19.95 more pain than many of us will in a lifetime, but this is no misery memoir. Through her dream- Review: Isola Wilde sees like visions and the difficult conversations she ghosts, is obsessed with TALKIN’ has with those trying to help her adjust, we learn fairytales and has no less than six just enough of her past to understand what brother-princes to protect her. GRAPHIC she’s up against. However, the focus is on She lives so much in the world of dealing with the present. Evie can’t be generous the unseen that she seems not with the specific details of her trauma, but she is quite of this world to those NOVELS with her fluctuating emotions, torn between the around her, including her friend James, whom courageous drive to move on and a deep desire she’s known forever, and the new boy next door, THURSDAY 20 JUNE to avenge her lost innocence. While the dragon Edgar. When Isola spies a dead girl in a birdcage Available in English for the first time, 6:30PM is a regular fixture, overall the story is fairly light in the woods, the ghost of the girl starts haunting here is David Vogel’s previously on the magic realism elements, leaving just her and terrible things begin to happen. Her unknown novel that had literary READINGS CARLTON enough room for the reader to interpret what is tenuous relations with her real friends start to fail Israel abuzz when it was published happening. Recommended for ages 12 and up. and her brother-princes disappear one by one. in 2012, almost one hundred years This fascinating story is interspersed after the author started working Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton with beautiful illustrations, quotes from Edgar on it. A compelling portrait of a decadent society, it also lays bare the Allen Poe and metaphorical fairytales. It’s obsessive–destructive nature of love. The Whole of My World beautifully written and utterly unique. Allyse Nicole Hayes Near lives near Melbourne and is only 23. She’s Woolshed Press. PB. $18.95 already quite a talent and definitely one to watch.

Review: AFL has always Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda been a huge part of Shelley’s life, from going to local games Through My Eyes: to analysing every part of the Shahana Glenthorn Football Club’s Rosanne Hawke performance, the team she is Viennese Romance is the first A&U. PB. $15.99 in a series — scan here for more passionate about. But then the information on these stunning books accident happens and everything changes. With The first title in a new Australian series that focuses on children JOIN BERNARD CALEO, a father who’s just barely functioning and a secret that’s breaking her heart, Shelley throws living in conflict zones around DR ELIZABETH MACFARLANE herself even further into the game she loves. the world. Shahana lives alone AND GRAPHIC NOVELIST Leaving behind the awkwardness of with her young brother in the NICKI GREENBERG AS THEY her old school and beginning afresh at St Mary’s shadow of the Line of Control, DISCUSS THE POWER OF THE Catholic Ladies College, Shelley meets Tara, a the border between the UNWRITTEN WORD, AND THE fellow Glenthorn fan, who introduces Shelley to Pakistani and Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir. the world of fanatics. Shelley starts watching the One day, she finds a boy lying unconscious near NEXT WAVE IN COMICS. players train and joins a cheer squad to help rally the border. Zahid is from the other side, but how them on the weekend. And when a friendship can she give Zahid up to the authorities when blossoms with one of the club’s new stars, Shelley she knows he'll be imprisoned – or worse? Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 11

Project Republic Benjamin T. Jones & Mark McKenna (eds.) New Non-Fiction Black Inc. PB. $29.99 See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 15. Featuring forewords by Most of all, it’s a fascinating examination Malcolm Turnbull and Wayne of what popular culture and fashion actually are Australian Swan, Project Republic unites a – a manifestation of both the lowbrow and the range of passionate Australian high. Campbell travels easily from dreamscapes Non-Fiction voices to argue why Australia of couture to Target’s latest 3D body scanning must become a republic. It booth. She explores the evolution of standardised THE MISOGYNY FACTOR explores how such a change sizing, as well as fashion’s many waves, from could be viewed as a chance for national Anne Summers Regency-era dandies to the queens of French renewal, as well as how we get there from here. New South. PB. $19.99 gamine. From there, Out of Shape goes deep into Contributors include Thomas Keneally, Larissa the arteries of media storms and gossip rags – Review: In August 2012, Behrendt, Julian Morrow, Anthony Dillon, Helen wardrobe malfunctions, slut shaming and plus-size Anne Summers delivered a Irving, Joy McCann and more. speech at the University of modelling. There is as well a genuine love of I Take You Newcastle titled ‘Her Rights at materials and clothes, with savouring descriptions Why Labor Should Work: The Political Persecution of garments and styles, films and fantasy: low- BY Nikki Gemmel retro, mid-century glam, 1950s crinoline petticoats, Savour Its Greens of Australia’s First Female 9780732297787 | RRP $27.99 Prime Minister’. The speech rolled fringes and 80s excesses. Brad Orgill detailed the sexist treatment that Julia Gillard Throughout, Campbell is also savvy Scribe. PB. $24.95 has received in the media, in parliament and to the ironies and inequalities of where research Australia is suffering from a more widely on the internet. A little over one can lead. The antique garments often housed Nikki Gemmell concludes the loose crisis of confidence. Now, with month later, the Prime Minister gave her now and treasured in museums, for instance, trilogy started with international an upcoming election, the legendary ‘misogyny speech’ in which she will only ever represent the lives of a select bestsellers The Bride Stripped Bare Australian Labor Party and the urged Tony Abbott to ‘think seriously about the privileged few, and not that of ethnic minorities and With my Body with this astonishing Greens are splitting the role of women in public life and in Australian or the working class. Stores often don’t stock new tour de force. left-of-centre vote, leaving the society, because we are entitled to a better larger sizes not because they aren’t aware future of progressive politics standard than this’. that the majority of women aren’t a size 8, but deeply uncertain. Former investment banker and is an extension because they deliberately want to restrict their The Misogyny Factor economist Brad Orgill reviews the Greens’ major of Summers’ original speech and a deeper clientele. This is exactly the type of writing that I economic, social and environmental policies, analysis of the status of women in Australia love – intellectually charged, feminist and smart. and argues that progressive voters are due an today. In it, Summers defines the ‘misogyny Jessica Au is editor of the Readings Monthly aligned ALP–Greens platform incorporating the factor’ as entrenched attitudes within major best elements of each. institutions that ‘stand in the way of women being included, treated equally and accorded Life in Ten Houses: respect’. I was dismayed to read that in Canada Penguin Specials A Savage History: 80.2 per cent of women aged 25 to 54 are in Sonya Hartnett Whaling in the Pacific full-time work, but in Australia the figure is 66.2 Penguin. PB. $9.99 and Southern Oceans per cent. Summers contends that we still have Review: Coming in at just John Newton a culture that disapproves of working mothers over 70 pages, this latest New South. HB. $49.99 and, despite progress made by the women’s addition to the Penguin movement, an increasingly large number of Hunted, studied and revered, Specials range is an evocative educated women are choosing motherhood whales have always held a glimpse into a writer’s life. and domesticity over a career. particular allure for humans. In Sonya Hartnett’s has been a The Shining Girls I personally don’t agree with A Savage History, John rather peripatetic one, having Summers’ criticism of stay-at-home mothers. Newton explores our complex BY laureN BeukeS lived in ten houses over the last ten or so years. Until full-time parenthood is respected as much and bloody relationship with As I’m someone who’s only lived in three over 9780732295530 | RRP $29.99 as a career (coupled with a transformation these magnificent creatures, the last 40 years, Hartnett’s quest for the place of our economic system that presently only following whalers from the eighteenth century that she’ll live in forever struck me as bold and who stalked their prey along the coasts of unevenly rewards certain types of ‘work’), The girl who wouldn’t die ... hunting a a little bit unsettling. When Hartnett makes a Australia and New Zealand, across the Pacific women will continue to do the lion’s share of killer who shouldn’t exist. mistake in her choice of abode, she moves on child care, and gender inequality will persist. and into the Southern Ocean. Newton’s and thinks hang the consequences. It goes However, I’m thankful for Summers’ book, overview exposes the truth that while the without saying that she’s become somewhat of because although the internet and social media modern era has seen the end of industrial a real estate expert. helped Julia Gillard’s speech reach a wide whaling, whales are not yet protected. Hartnett also recounts how each audience, there’s something comforting about house, except for one, has been the place in an analysis of its context and impact being which she has produced one of her works, preserved here in book form, ensuring the issue Anthology and how the area or residence provided remains one to debate well into the future. certain touchstones. The house in Of a Boy Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton – one of my favourite works of hers – for Just Between Us instance, was in Box Hill (I don’t know why but Maya Linden (ed.) Out of Shape I always thought it was in Adelaide). It won’t Pan Mac. PB. Was $33 take you long to read this short, engrossing Mel Campbell Special price $27.95 memoir, but I can assure you that it will give Affirm. PB. $24.95 you a lot of pleasure. Review: Female friendships Review: Mel Campbell has are often stereotyped. There’s a brilliant eye for popular culture, Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director the saccharine BFF (Best as anyone who’s followed her Friends Forever) types, the Atomic City blog, A Wild Young Under- The Year it All pathological ‘Single White BY SallY BreeN Whimsy, or her other writing will Fell Down Female’ or the dysfunctional know. Her first book,O ut of Bob Ellis pull/push of the bully/doormat 9780732293017 | RRP $24.99 Shape, tackles the fashion (think Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Viking. PB. $29.99 industry on the issues of sizing, fit and feel, and is Wannabes). However, this wonderful collection a smart, sharp mix of cultural anthropology, The year 2011 was portentously takes the time and emotional energy to really Set in the dark shadows of the Gold first-person journalism and online trawling. charged, from the Arab Spring to explore individual friendships and examine the Coast’s glittering high-rise strip, atomic Out of Shape isn’t a fashion glossy the London riots and Occupy grey areas in between. City is a wild rollercoaster ride of a or a confessional. Rather, it’s a look at how Wall Street, from the Christchurch Just Between Us contains 12 works story — a neo-noir tale of identity theft, the industry works on a social level: how earthquake and the Fukushima of non-fiction, which I generally enjoyed more subterfuge and new beginnings. what we’re offered influences what we wear, meltdown to the possible than the six fiction pieces. The standout for me how what we wear makes us feel about discovery of the Higgs-Boson was ‘In Broad Daylight’ by Julienne van Loon, ourselves and others, and what this signals to ‘God’ particle. Together with collaborators Damian which describes her long-term friendship with the broader social strata in return. It’s about Spruce and Stephen Ramsey, Bob Ellis reviews Jo, a university friend. The story is punctuated bodies and ideals, reflections and distortions, these events and more, and charts the powerful with letters between the two that demonstrate gazes and doubts. echoes of their influences. their closeness and their understanding of 12 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

each other’s attempt to find a place in the economy in recent years, Martin endeavours to world. The relationship is complicated by Jo’s recreate the way we perceive money through both schizophrenia and her battle to stay well. a historical narrative and contemporary analysis. Jawbreakers for your eyes Nikki Gemmell confronts women’s The book begins with the fascinating goading of each other, quoting emails sent case of Yap, a remote island in Micronesia Ronnie Scott tells us why art comics are the true radicals of the in response to her newspaper column and that managed to construct a highly developed graphic novels world, from Paper Rad to Kramers Ergot. describing these vicious put-downs as ‘voices of system of debt and credit that mirrors our own. the dark heart of the female psyche’. She then Underlying Yap is Martin’s central argument that It’s been a long time since the 80s and getting longer every day, but looking at headlines about turns to examine her five-year-old daughter’s money should be viewed not as a ‘thing’ or a mere comic books you wouldn’t really know it. friendship with another girl, whose desire seems medium of exchange, but as a social technology. It all started with three books that changed the game forever: two apocalyptic to be to make Gemmell’s normally vivid and From Yap, Martin meanders back reimaginings of the superhero origins-story, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen and vibrant child self-conscious and unsure. and forth throughout history. He describes the Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a Holocaust memoir in Some close bonds in the book simply origins of numeracy and literacy in Ancient which mice menaced by cats stood in for the Jews and Nazis. ‘seep away’ with changing times or circumstances. Mesopotamia, explores merchant banking in ‘BANG! POW! ZAP! Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!’ And so they weren’t. Some writers lament this, while others recognise sixteenth-century Lyons, and examines both the Comics was suddenly recognised as a medium as unique as text or art or film, which led to a that the friendships cannot continue. A frequent Soviet Union’s and the Spartans’ attempts to general explosion of cultural weirdness as the world tried to separate the medium’s most likely question arises: could/should I have done more? fundamentally reshape the idea of money. What content – tights, capes and funnies – from its potential, which was largely untapped. This is Another extremely honest exposition makes this book so compelling is the author’s roughly the time we got the term ‘graphic novel’. At best, it’s is Liz Byrski’s ‘Friendship – In Several Painful ability to draw upon a variety of seemingly a descriptive term, like hardcover or paperback, for a book- Lessons’. Byrski details three friendships, the unrelated theorists and historical events. In length work of comics that’s bound into a codex. At worst, earliest at age five, and examines the role doing so, he demonstrates how the financial it’s a class category – a way for publishers to indicate that she has played in maintaining less than ideal world of today came to be, and how that world their readers should expect serious stuff. connections. Byrski describes the process of has become crippled by debt and uncertainty. The problem is that there’s always more than one way discovering what she requires in a friend as Of course, Money culminates in the to be serious. Because while the headlines have stayed pretty ‘protracted and painful’, and quotes author Alice current global crisis, where Martin makes his much unchanged since the 80s, comics has expanded in Walker: ‘No person is your friend who demands most pertinent contributions to the discourse of directions nobody back then could have foreseen. A side your silence, or denies your right to grow.’ our wounded financial system. He challenges effect of comics’ ongoing quest for legitimacy is that the ones flawed assumptions underpinning our system Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn that tend to get the most cultural space are, well, literary. And and describes alternatives. But, ultimately, by literary, I don’t mean complex and thrilling and boundary- Martin’s greatest observation echoes that of pushing and smart and fun (although frequently, they are). Larry Summers and an emerging group of I mean they tend to be the comics that have a whole lot of text – the comics that are most like Cultural Studies prominent economists and academics. Much written books. But when the space devoted to discussing comics in newspapers and magazines can be learnt about our present crisis by is so limited, this means a whole slew of terrific work gets swept under the rug. CONFESSIONS OF examining the past. Much of it belongs to the non-genre you can loosely group as ‘art’. It’s the medium being A SOCIOPATH Martin’s work is considerably pushed and squeezed and distorted by fine artists, installation artists, architects, programmers … complex yet undeniably provocative. But then M.E. Thomas the list goes on and on. again, any attempt to redefine the concept of By far the best and most consistent publisher of art comics is PictureBox, a Brooklyn- Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 money needs to be. based outfit fronted by Dan Nadel, who also co-editsThe Comics Journal (the best online M.E. Thomas is a high- venue to keep up with this stuff). One collective of artists producing great work through them is functioning non-criminal Dexter Gillman is a freelance reviewer Paper Rad. One member, Ben Jones, makes hallucinatory animations for the Cartoon Network. sociopath. In this compelling To give you an aesthetic idea: it’s absurdist, retro and wild. memoir, she writes honestly CARELESS PEOPLE A world apart, there’s Renée French, also publishing through PictureBox, who has about her life, from the confusion Sarah Churchwell more in common with H.R. Giger, designer of the monster from the Alien movies, than with of trying to fit in as a child to her Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 psychedelic cartoons. We can part-claim French as Australian, since she’s sometimes based growing need for power over Careless People is a fascinating in Sydney, but her work belongs to a beautiful and terrifying dreamscape that’s often purpose- others, and her motivations for controlling her reconstruction of the crucial built for rendering her chronic migraines. Her pages dizzy you. behaviour – most of the time. Drawing on the latest months during which F. Scott For my money, the most interesting artist working research, Thomas explains why at least one in 25 Fitzgerald and Zelda returned to in comics today is C.F., the alias of Rhode Island-based artist of us are sociopaths and gives a gripping insight New York in the autumn of 1922, Chris Forgues. He’s highly memeable, having spawned even into the mind of a social predator. Melbourne-based copycats, and one look at his pages shows and when the seeds for The you why. They’re deceptively simple, with wan, lanky, malleable Great Gatsby were sown. Sarah characters interacting in a world of quick, clean lines. In his Churchwell tells the surprising story behind Philosophy the novel, exploring in detail the relationship ongoing series, Powr Mastrs, they’re all coalescing into a sci- fi-inflected fantasy universe that will eventually – you imagine between Fitzgerald’s masterpiece and the chaotic – make sense. But maybe it won’t, because Forgues’s bright, PSYCHOANALYSIS world in which he lived – a world of high society, shocking characters might just be tools for him to exhibit his IS AN ANTIPHILOSOPHY organised crime and celebrity culture. ingenious grasp of form. A page might be devoted to showing a Justin Clemens drop of liquid falling (I won’t say what kind of liquid; his comics Edinburgh University Press. PB. $44.99 are very adult). But the same drop of liquid is shown almost Travel Writing identically across 12 panels, which confuses the very dimensions of comics. Which panels are Psychoanalysis was the meant to show space? Which are meant to show time? In the hands of Forgues, basic sense- most important intellectual Italian Ways: On and making questions like ‘how long?’ and ‘how far?’ become ontological exercises. If you let them. development of the twentieth Unlike dense, difficult prose, they’re also stunning visual documents, which means you’re century. It left no practice, from Off the Rails from entirely welcome to dissemble them – or just drink them up. psychiatry to philosophy to Milan to Palermo C.F., Renée French and Paper Rad suggest alternate futures for comics. They’re politics, untouched. Drawing Tim Parks equally radical departures from the sophisticated narratives towards which the 80s forefathers on the work of Freud, Lacan, Random. HB. Was $35 Badiou and others, Justin Clemens re-examines directed the form. For anyone who loves books, they’re also just the start. Mould Map is a Special price $29.95 gorgeous, tabloid-sized publication from UK set-up Landfill Editions. It defines its content as a series of psychoanalytical themes – addiction, Review: There is often a ‘narrative art’, lets artists run wild and prints on sumptuous paper. Kramers Ergot, edited by fanaticism, love, slavery and torture – and offers level of trepidation when also-sometimes-Australian Sammy Harkham, unearths fascinating artists and puts them in a radical reconstruction for thinkers today. approaching a travel memoir – contrast and context with Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine and Daniel Clowes (Time magazine called what new truth or epiphany is one issue ‘a jawbreaker for your eye’). Dig deep on blogs and you’ll find more. going to be revealed this time? Comics is attracting more types of readers, thinkers and practitioners than ever History Happily, in the hands of Tim before, and nobody knows what the medium will look like in ten years’ time. As artists continue Parks, Italian Ways doesn’t rely their excursions beyond the realm of the book – into online platforms, mobile devices and Money on the quest for personal growth that has lately even 3D media, such as sculpture – we’ll be seeing work that demands fresh answers to the become the norm for so many books of this genre. question ‘what is a comic?’ for longer than any of us will be alive. For now, comic-makers are Felix Martin Random. PB. $34.95 Parks’s reflections on his journeys as a passenger taking the question of what books are to deep places, and since they’re artists, they know how onboard the trains of Italy are not just mere travel to make experiments look nice. For the lazy home decorator, I’d even suggest them as a low- Review: Felix Martin’s adventures. Rather, they delve into Italy’s past, and investment alternative to succulents. Money: The Unauthorised not only observe the cultural identity of the country Biography is more than just an as a whole, but also consider where this might be By Ronnie Scott attempt to chart the history of heading in the future. money from its ambiguous Having lived in Italy for 30 years, Ronnie Scott is a contributor to The Believer, The Australian and Meanjin, and is the comics origins to the elaborate world of Parks is a refreshingly legitimate voice, but in and graphic novels critic for ABC Radio National. In 2007, he founded The Lifted Brow, a free- finance today. Motivated by the true Italian style he’ll never be considered a form culture and fiction magazine; nowadays, he's the art editor. www.ronalddavidscott.com. great calamities that have bedevilled the global local. Thus, we get to enjoy his perspective as Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 13 our connected but far from constricted guide. Parks relays hilarious accounts of the charms Popular Science Art & Design Food & Gardening and eccentricities of fellow passengers during his with Kate O’Mara, with Margaret Snowdon, with Christine Gordon, daily commutes from Verona to Milan, or jaunts Readings at the Brain Centre Readings Carlton Readings Carlton to Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily as well as other less familiar destinations. At the same time, his travels often reveal the links between the rail Cracked Australian The Set Table system and the political and social aspects of the James Davies Impressionists Hannah Shuckburgh Italian way of life, both then and now. Icon. PB. $24.99 in France T&H. HB. $35 For those of us who have been One in four people will develop Elena Taylor Of course this is a beautiful charmed by Italy, or who have dreams of a mental disorder in any given National Galley of Victoria. PB. $39.95 book. The author, Hannah visiting, Italian Ways is an utterly enjoyable and year. That’s what psychiatry Shuckburgh, is the lifestyle unpredictable journey. Australian Impressionists in tells us. But many – even most editor for Condé Naste’s Easy France explores an overlooked – will not actually be mentally Living magazine. Here, she Danielle Mirabella is from Readings Hawthorn period in our art history. Many ill. The everyday sufferings and takes you through the basics of Australian artists spent time in setbacks of life are now how to set a lovely and France during the late ‘medicalised’ into illnesses that require imaginative table from scant resources, from Biography nineteenth and early twentieth treatment – usually with highly profitable drugs. linens to glasses, flowers and serving platters. It’s centuries, yet this era is often bypassed in favour In Cracked, psychological therapist James full of sweet pictures: brown paper twisted of examining the work of well-known impressionist SANE NEW WORLD Davies uses his insider knowledge to show around bread, tables laden with vibrant colours. landscape painters, such as Tom Roberts and Ruby Wax how psychiatry has put riches and medical My daughter has created some masterful Frederick McCubbin, and their role in developing H&S. PB. $32.99 status above patients’ wellbeing. He reveals for arrangements with ideas picked from the great our national identity. Beautifully illustrated with the first time the true human cost of an industry glossary of ideas – one ho-hum Wednesday eve Ruby Wax – comedian, writer more than 130 paintings, prints and drawings, this that, in the name of helping others, has actually we even served our pizza on some coloured tiles. and mental health campaigner catalogue is a comprehensive and welcome look been helping itself. Eye-catching and inspiring. – shows us how our minds can at a vibrant and fascinating time of artistic jeopardise our sanity. With her exchange. It includes a series of informative own periods of depression and Chaotic Fishponds and essays looking at different groups of artists and A Cook’s Tour a Masters in Mindfulness-Based Mirror Universes collaborators, and it is divided into two time- of France Cognitive Therapy from Oxford Richard Elwes blocks: 1885-1900 and 1900-1915. Australian Gabriel Gaté to draw from, she explains how our busy, Quercus. PB. $19.99 Impressionists in France uncovers a period of Hardie Grant. HB. $34.95 chattering, self-critical thoughts drive us to artistic creativity and diversity that many will not be What can we learn from fish in a We are nearly at that time of anxiety and stress. If we are to break the cycle, aware of, and will be pleasantly surprised by. we need to understand how our brains work and pond? How do social networks the year again, when that great find calm in a frenetic world. connect the world? How can road race is about to begin: the artificial intelligences learn? Why Vitamin D2 Tour de France. This is when NIJINSKY would life be different in a mirror Phaidon. HB. $79.95 Australian-based French chef universe? Mathematics is Gabriel Gaté talks up the very Lucy Moore The sequel to Vitamin D is an everywhere, whether we’re aware up-to-the-minute survey of best of French food as cyclists Profile. HB. $49.99 of it or not. This book provides an insight into the international contemporary head for the hills and we head for our couches. Immersed in the world of dance ‘hidden wiring’ that governs our world. From the drawing, featuring 115 artists Obviously the gastronomy of the country is quite from his childhood, Nijinksy astonishing theorems that control computers to nominated by respected critics simply superb, and here Gaté pulls together a found his home in the Imperial the formulae behind stocks and shares, Chaotic and curators from around the collection of easy-to-follow traditional recipes. Theatre and the Ballet Russes, Fishponds and Mirror Universes explains how world. Drawing has resumed its importance in There’s the popular Chicken Casserole Vallée acclaimed for his extraordinary mathematics determines every aspect of our lives artistic practice, and all the artists featured here d’Auge from Normandy, the vibrant Ratatouille grace and elevation. Then, a – right down to the foundations of our bodies. are pushing the boundaries of the medium. This with Lemon and Olive Chantilly from Provence, dramatic and public failure is both an inspiring reference book for the and, of course, divine desserts, as only the ended his career and set him on a route to SCATTER, ADAPT practitioner and an accessible introduction for French can do, like the luscious Strawberry Tart madness. In this landmark biography, Lucy Moore AND REMEMBER newcomers, with the same lovely production from the Loire Valley. Why not use this book examines a career defined by two forces – inspired values as the first volume. throughout the race – it will give you the energy performance and a talent for controversy. Annalee Newitz you need to stay awake in the wee hours. Black Inc. PB. $29.99 Genesis The Astronaut Climate change. Pandemics. Catastrophic volcanoes. Sebastião Salgado Rick Stein’s India Wives Club Should we just give up and Taschen. HB. $100 Rick Stein Lily Koppel Random. HB. $49.95 accept our doom? Annalee I suspect many readers Headline. PB. $32.99 Newitz’s speculative and would have been introduced I reckon Rick Stein is the type As American astronauts were hopeful work of popular to Sebastião Salgado’s of bloke that always wants launched on death-defying science focuses our attention photographs by his answers. He might ask himself, missions, television cameras on humanity’s long history of dodging the extraordinary images of massive what makes a good curry? It’s focused on the brave smiles of bullet of extinction – and suggests practical gold mines from his 1993 not good enough to follow a their wives. Overnight, these ways to keep doing it. From bacteria labs in St book, Workers, where human few recipes or visit a few women were transformed from Louis to ancient underground cities in Turkey, beings toil like ants in a scene from purgatory. restaurants. Rather, Rick wants shy military spouses to we discover the keys to long-term survival. Genesis, his new opus, is a beautiful publication. to immerse himself in the answer, and so he American royalty. Here, Lily Koppel tells the true Scatter, Adapt and Remember leads us away It is the result of an epic eight-year expedition to journeys to India to eat every curry he can. Is it story of the wives behind the American Space from apocalyptic thinking into a future where rediscover the mountains, deserts and oceans, sensual spicy aromas or thick, creamy sauces Race, chronicling their romantic, domestic and we live to build a better world. as well as the animals and peoples that have thus that makes the dish? Rich, dark dhals or crispy public dramas, the challenges they faced and far escaped the imprint of modern society. fried street snacks? As Rick travels through this the 40-year friendship that bound them together. Mad Science 2 colourful, chaotic nation, he encounters fragrant Theodore Gray Taxidermy kormas, delicate spiced fish and slow-cooked biryanis, all the while gathering ideas, for what The Trip to Echo Spring: Black Dog & Leventhal. PB. $29.99 Alexis Turner will be the perfect curry. Why Writers Drink For nearly a decade, T&H. HB. $39.95 Olivia Laing Theodore Gray has been From icky and dusty to the A&U. HB. $35 demonstrating the basic Not Quite Nigella height of cool, taxidermy has Lorraine Elliott Why is it that some of the principles of chemistry and staged an extraordinary Penguin. PB. $29.99 greatest works of literature have physics through exciting and comeback. No longer confined been produced by writers who sometimes daredevil to stately homes, stuffed Lorraine Elliot is Australia’s Julie are in the grip of alcoholism? experiments for his popular science column, animals are appearing Powell (of Julie & Julia novel- Here, Olivia Laing examines the Gray Matter. This second volume includes a everywhere, from modern turned-film fame). Her popular link between creativity and host of even more dramatic, enlightening and apartments to luxury department stores. blog Not Quite Nigella was so drinking through the lives of six daring demonstrations. Gray dips his hand into High-profile artists have rejuvenated the medium successful that she was able to extraordinary minds. As she travels from John molten lead to illustrate the Leidenfrost effect, and museums have dusted down their historic leave her corporate life and write Cheever’s New York to Ernest Hemingway’s Key crushes a tomato between two small magnets collections and put them back on display. about food full-time. This book is West to Raymond Carver’s Port Angeles, she to explain their power, and creates trinkets out With stunning photography that explores this the story behind the story and the hard yards she pieces together a topographical map of of solid mercury to show how the state of rich art form, past and present, this title is the did before her blog took off. In each chapter, alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the matter depends very much on the temperature most comprehensive and beautiful survey of there’s a recipe, along with recollections of the miraculous possibilities of recovery. at which it exists. taxidermy ever produced. good times and the downright disasters. 14 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

Miles Franklin & Anti-Romance

Mel Campbell writes on why My Brilliant Career is modern, feminist, funny and brilliantly anti-romantic, still. Picture Books She’s now lent her name to two literary prizes, but until recently I’d never read Stella Maria Yoo Hoo, Ladybird! Sarah Miles Franklin’s famous novel My Brilliant Career. The reason I’d avoided it for so long Mem Fox & Laura Ljungkvist (illus.) was that its worthiness made it seem leaden. I expected it to be long-winded, boring, full of Viking. HB. $19.99 clichéd outback colonialism. Instead I found it astonishingly fresh, funny and modern, and its protagonist, Sybylla Melvyn, uncompromisingly feminist. Review: There is a giraffe in the bath and is I especially enjoyed Franklin’s ear for the Aussie vernacular, now sadly lost to our that really a car in there too? But where is the globalised tongues. As the Melvyns’ disgruntled servant Jane says: ‘A girl could have a fly ladybird? As we hunt for the elusive little bug, round and a lark or two there I tell you; but here … there ain’t one bloomin’ feller to do a mash we are introduced to an array of creatures and with. I’m full of the place.’ objects that surreally populate the pages from The novel got me actively interrogating why I hate books set in the Australian bush. start to finish. Mem Fox’s ear for rhythmic It’s not that I dislike the outdoors; rather, I’m a Romantic by disposition. I love the capacity of rhyme is flawless and guarantees a fun, wild landscapes to inspire feelings of sublime awe and admiration. And I’ll happily read about must-join-in read aloud, and the colourful, playful illustrations are remote places in other countries. Literary depictions of wilderness reflect local ideologies. For perfect for the intended audience. Young children (and not so instance, books by Mark Twain, Jack London and Henry David Thoreau echo the American young adults!) will delight in looking for the cheeky red bug, but doctrine of ‘manifest destiny’. In these works the vast sprawl of the North American continent there are plenty of other things to keep an eye out for too, symbolises freedom and redemption though adventure. Meanwhile, in the European literary including the busy, dizzy endpapers. This is Mem Fox at her imagination, the wilderness is a space of magic and myth. A mystical, allegorical atmosphere Did you best, and Laura Ljungkvist’s capricious artwork has ensured a also leaks into European colonial narratives, from Rudyard Kipling’s whimsical The Jungle Book perfect picture book that is sure to become a classic. For ages to the Congolese nightmare of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. know... 12 months and up. My Brilliant Career was published in 1901, at the height of the chauvinistic Australian Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn nationalist movement championed by The Bulletin magazine. This was the heyday of the ... that Pippi idealised Aussie bushman of Banjo Paterson, Norman Lindsay and Henry Lawson. To give these On the Day You Were Born stoic, sardonic heroes a struggle by which to define themselves, their bush surroundings are Longstocking Margaret Wild & Ron Brooks (illus.) described as inhospitably harsh and arid. It’s a tradition I find deeply dreary, not to mention started out as a repellently racist and sexist. Franklin rapturously praises the struggling rural peasant in her A&U. HB. $24.99 closing pages: bedtime story? Review: This sweet and gentle book will ‘Ah, my sunburnt brothers! – sons of toil and of Australia! I love and respect you give you both goosebumps and a warm glow well, for you are brave and good and true … I love you, I love you … but I cannot help you. My Astrid Lindgren in your stomach. It will sing to you of a father’s ineffective life will be trod out in the same round of toil – I am only one of yourselves, I am only love, and the wonder and elation that the birth an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a – woman!’ made up the of a child can bring. It will carry you through Henry Lawson endorsed Franklin’s novel in a preface whose casual sexism annoys character of the nature’s wonderland and paint images of a me: ‘I don’t know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book – I leave that to girl readers to busy, radiant world, before lulling you with serene skies or a judge; but the descriptions of bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me … the beloved redhead tranquil, moonlit night. On the Day You Were Born is a celebration truest I ever read.’ of life and a beautiful introduction to our magnificent world by two Yet Sybylla’s struggle is clearly also a woman’s demand for self-determination. It’s (who was strong of our most esteemed picture-book makers. This is the perfect gift strikingly similar to the speech Charlotte Brontë gives to her sensitive, suffering heroine Jane enough to lift a to welcome a new baby, and for children ages 2 and up. AD Eyre: ‘Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!’ horse and was Scarlett and the Scratchy Moon Like Jane Eyre, My Brilliant Career is a powerfully interior coming-of-age novel, driven Chris McKimmie by Sybylla’s inner desires and torments. Her capacity for emotion makes her an appealing proud of her A&U. HB. $29.99 heroine, but she’s doomed to be misinterpreted by others as cynical, uncaring and ungrateful: ‘Did my mother understand me, she would know that I am capable of more depths of agony freckles) for her Review: Scarlett can’t sleep again. The moon is scratching the sky, and she’s and more exquisite heights of joy in one day than Gertie will experience in her whole life.’ daughter, Karin, Jeffrey Eugenides’ recent novel The Marriage Plot has been hailed as a clever counting sheep called Daddy Neema, Mummy deconstruction of the romantic narratives of the nineteenth century. These literary conventions who was ill with Neema and Baby Neema. Scarlett is also sad guide not only Eugenides’ protagonist Madeleine, but also the reader. We expect Madeleine to because her pet dogs, Holly and Sparky, have find happiness with one of several potential suitors, but neither she nor we find such simple, pneumonia at died. But then a surprise comes to the door familiar comfort. and the world seems new again. Chris My Brilliant Career similarly subverts the reader’s expectations … more than a the time. McKimmie is well known for his strange, metaphoric and utterly century earlier! It surprised me that it seemed to satirise a Jane Austen comedy of manners. beautiful picture books, and this is no exception. There’s Caddagat, the gorgeous rural property where Sybylla stays with her grandmother, something new to discover upon each reading and a four-year- plays the same pivotal role in this novel as the country houses in Austen’s fiction. Franklin sets old will have an entirely different perspective on the story to an up several potential love interests for Sybylla: honest jackaroo Frank Hawden, sophisticated adult, which makes for an enjoyable experience for all. urbanite Everard Grey, and smouldering local squattocrat Harold Beecham. Each pair gets Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda a meet-cute, zingy dialogue and emotionally charged encounters. They circle one another at dinners and parties, and pay and return visits in elegant formal attire and in charmingly Ballet Cat unguarded dishevelment. The scene in which Sybylla finally provokes Harold into displaying his notorious Fiona Ross temper is genuinely steamy in a way today’s pallid erotica can only hope to imitate. He seizes Walker. HB. $27.95 her arm in a bruising grip, brutishly ignoring her cries of ‘Unhand me!’ The Crazy Cat Crew love to dance – they ‘He drew me so closely to him that, through his thin shirt – the only garment on the groove and bop, they move and hop, all night upper part of his figure – I could feel the heat of his body, and his big heart beating wildly. long. Then, one night, Arthur slinks off and “I’ll do what I like with you. I’ll touch you as much as I think fit.”’ discovers something really special: a pair of Eat your heart out, Christian Grey! ballet shoes. He puts them on and goes back But Franklin has her reject him and her other suitors, for the sake of her immutable to show the gang his new style. But the other moral principles! That Sybylla values intellectual and creative freedom over love and financial cats don’t like ballet and laugh Arthur out of town, only to realise security makes My Brilliant Career resolutely feminist. The passionate Harold seems like an that all dancing is cool and that they really miss their friend. ideal match – he begs to marry Sybylla and even pledges to support her authorial ambitions. But she knows that eventually Harold will want a ‘normal’ wife – which she can never be. The Circus and Other Stories Of course, as Sybylla pens her autobiography, she’s still a teenager driven by Samuil Marshak & Vladimir Lebedev immature impulses and smarting from fresh wounds. Franklin’s literary conceit is that Sybylla’s Tate Gallery. HB. $35 story has taken just one month, March 1899, to write. This lends hope to what is otherwise a These four books, published in the Soviet total downer of an ending. The ‘brilliant career’ Sybylla ironises so bitterly could still be hers. Union between 1925 and 1927, were a collaboration between poet Samuil Marshak By Mel Campbell and painter Vladimir Lebedev. Based on the idea that children’s literature is an important Mel Campbell is a Melbourne freelance journalist and cultural critic. Out of Shape, her cultural object in its own right, they linked non-fiction investigation of clothing size and fit, is published by Affirm Press. painting, poetry and typography, creating the timeless precursor to the modern picture book. Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 15 Book of the Month The Apprentices Maile Meloy Text. PB. Was $19.99 Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Special price $16.99 Not Reading Review: This is an utterly delicious read in so many ways. On one level, it’s rich in everyday Tommy Greenwald & J.P. Coovert (illus.) realism. On another, it’s full of impossible, thrilling but always believable happenings. St Martin’s Press. PB. $9.99 Janie is a clever girl at a privileged American school. One day, her science experiment, a simple way to Charlie Joe Jackson may be the most reluctant desalinate water, is stolen, and she believes that the culprit is one of the parents – the blustery mining tycoon reader ever born. So far, he’s managed to get Mr Magnusson. To get it back, Janie contacts friends she has not seen for two years: Benjamin and his father, through life without ever reading an entire book and Pip and Jin Lo, all of whom were party to Janie’s adventures in Maile Meloy’s previous novel, from cover to cover. But now that he’s in middle The Apothecary. school, avoiding reading isn’t as easy as it used to be. Then his friend Timmy McGibney decides Benjamin, who has never stopped thinking of Janie, has been working on a sort of telepathic powder that allows that he’s tired of covering for him, and Charlie a person to see through another’s eyes for a brief period, even on the other side of the world. He and Jin Lo also Joe finds himself resorting to desperate know the powers of the Avian Elixir, which facilitates transformation into a bird but is measures to keep his perfect record intact. uncomfortably unstable.

Mr Magnusson is mining an island in the Pacific but that’s just the half of it, andThe Apprentices moves Non-Fiction from the US through to England through to war-torn Vietnam, as well as the idyllic but ravaged Pacific Islands themselves. The story is compelling and culturally rich, and, above all, the young characters Australians All are courageous, resourceful and fiercely loyal to each other. stands on its The Apprentices Nadia Wheatley & Ken Searle (illus.) own and you don’t need to have read The Apothecary, the first book in this series, to A&U. HB. $49.99 enjoy this one (although of course both are well worth reading). Recommended for imaginative readers aged 11 to adult. Personally, I can’t wait for the next one. This is the history of our continent from the Ice Age to the Apology, from the arrival of the First Kathy Kozlowski is from Fleet to Mabo. The book is made up of brief Readings Carlton accounts of the lives of real young Australians – some are famous, while others were legends within their own families and communities. New Meticulously researched and highly readable, Exclamation Mark Australians All helps us understand who we are and how we Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld (illus.) belong to the land we share. Scholastic. HB. $24.99 From the bestselling creators of Duck! Reaching Out: Messages of Hope Rabbit! comes an exciting tale of self- Mariah Kennedy (ed.) discovery. It’s not easy being seen, Kids’ HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 especially when you’re not like everyone Heartfelt and inspiring, Reaching Out contains else. Especially when what sets you apart is stories, poems and illustrations that have been you. Sometimes we squish ourselves to fit in. We shrink, twist and donated by world-renowned authors and bend. Until, that is, a friend shows us other possibilities. In this bold illustrators, including Graeme Base, Jackie and highly visual book, an emphatic but misplaced exclamation Books French, Michael Leunig, Bruce Whatley, Michael mark learns that being different can be very exciting! Period. Morpurgo, Andy Griffiths, Anna Perera, Libby Australia. What a rich and inspiring background Murrell had at Gleeson, Melina Marchetta, Alison Lester, Morris her fingertips. Readers of theO ur Australian Girl series who are Gleitzman and many more. UNICEF Australia looking for something more detailed, or fans of Jackie French, Junior Fiction Young Ambassador Mariah Kennedy created the book as a will enjoy this. fundraising project, and all royalties will be donated to UNICEF. Lulu Bell and the Birthday Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton Unicorn Belinda Murrell & Serena Geddes (illus.) Wild Boy Random. PB. $9.95 Rob Lloyd Jones Classic of the Month Meet Lulu Bell. Where there’s Lulu, there’s family, Walker. HB. $19.95 friends, animals and adventures galore. It’s almost Review: In 1840s London, the star attraction Comet in Moominland time for Lulu’s little sister’s birthday party. But of a travelling freak show is Wild Boy, whose Tove Jansson there’s a problem – a pony is running loose and unfortunate appearance has condemned him to Puffin. PB. $12.95 Lulu and her dad, the local vet, have to rescue it. a miserable life of rejection and ridicule. As Wild Review: How I wish I had been Can they find the runaway in time? And what will Boy plots his escape from this intolerable introduced to these stories as a child, but happen if the naughty pony gets into more mischief existence, he sharpens his Sherlock Holmes-like unfortunately for me, they were not widely at the party? It’s lucky that Lulu has a plan! talent for observation and deduction. And when known in Australia in the 90s. The he’s wrongfully accused of murder and forced into a reluctant Moomins are a lovely, whimsical family alliance with Clarissa, the feisty acrobat, his talent for reason created by Tove Jansson (1914-2001), a becomes invaluable. While these two misfits attempt to clear Middle Fiction Finnish author and illustrator of the their names by finding the murderer, they also discover country’s Swedish-speaking minority who friendship and acceptance. The River Charm produced numerous works for children This incredibly compelling mystery culminates in Belinda Murrell and adults. Comet in Moominland is a dramatic and surprising twist that readers will love. This Random. PB. $15.95 actually her second book about the Moomins, her first being wonderful story will appeal to readers aged 9 and up and Review: I can’t resist a time-slip novel and The Moomins and the Great Flood, which was the last to be I suspect (and hope) that there will be further adventures Belinda Murrell has already established herself translated into English. Comet in Moominland serves well as involving Wild Boy and Clarissa. Highly recommended. as a contender in this genre with The Ivory Rose the introductory book to these characters, however, as it and The Forgotten Pearl. Her stories are a Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern presents the family and their friends afresh. wonderful way to access Australia’s past; this The story does, I suppose, deal with some darker one draws on Murrell’s own family history, The Cat, The Rat And The issues, such as the comet that is fast approaching (and dating back to the 1840s. Baseball Bat will destroy) the idyllic Moominvalley, where these happy Sensitive Millie is living on an old estate in the bush creatures live. Rather than being bleak or depressing, though, with her mother and sister when, with the help of an old charm, Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton (illus.) these themes are handled with joviality and sweetness. The she gains access to the past. There we meet Charlotte Atkinson, Pan Mac. PB. $6.99 creativity of these books is brilliant. They are as thrilling to whose family is in danger of losing their beloved home, as well The title story from Andy Griffiths’ popular and me as an adult as I know they are to seven to 11-year-olds. I as their lives, due to marauding convicts, bushrangers and hilarious The Cat on the Mat is Flat is now have even tried and tested them on a group of eight-year-olds an abusive stepfather who threatens them. The law is against published as a stand-alone book for middle while working as a counsellor at a summer camp in Canada. Charlotte and her mother, but they’re determined to survive and readers. Cats and rats are natural-born enemies My campers would beg me every night to read them another seek refuge in a stockman’s hut in the wilderness. – but throw a baseball bat into the mix and the chapter about Moomintroll and his family. I was fascinated to learn that Charlotte Atkinson had situation is sure to explode. Warning – this book George Munn is from Readings Hawthorn gone on to write the very first children’s book published in may cause a laugh attack! 16 Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013

Planet Word Vanished A Hologram inside the perplexing world of cosmology. J.P. Davidson (with a Beginning with relativity theory and the Big Kingdoms for the King Bang, Greene introduces us to the world forward by Stephen Fry) Norman Davies David Eggers of parallel universes. With his inspired HB. Was $45 HB. Was $59.95 PB. Was $29.95 analogies starring everyone from South NOW $16.95 NOW $17.95 NOW $12 Park’s Eric Cartman to Ms Pac-Man, Greene Planet Word uncovers everything Europe’s history is littered In a rising Saudi Arabian presents a lucid, intriguing and triumphantly you didn’t know you needed with vanished realms. There’s the Empire of city, a struggling businessman pursues a understandable look at the universe. to know about how language evolves. Learn the Aragon, which once dominated the western last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay tricks to political propaganda and why we can talk Mediterranean, and the Grand Duchy of his daughter’s college tuition and finally do The Better but animals can’t. Meet the 105-year-old man who Lithuania, which was, for a time, the largest something great. In A Hologram For the King, Angels of invented modern-day Chinese and find out why country in Europe. Much of this is now half- Dave Eggers shows us one man’s fight to hold language caused the go-light in Japan to be blue. remembered at best, but here, Norman Davies himself, and his splintering family, together in the Our Nature takes the reader through the cracks of history face of the global economy’s gale-force winds. A Steven Pinker Power Systems to listen to the echoes of lost worlds across powerful evocation of the contemporary moment, PB. Was $32.95 Noam Chomsky the centuries. and a moving story of how we got here. NOW $13.95 PB. Was $29.99 Given the images of conflict we see daily on our screens, can violence really have NOW $12 Toby’s Room Literary declined? And wasn’t the twentieth century In this collection of conversations, Pat Barker Melbourne: the most devastatingly brutal in history? conducted from 2010 to 2012, PB. Was $29.95 A Celebration Extraordinarily, however, Steven Pinker Noam Chomsky explores NOW $12 of Writing shows that humankind really has become a diverse range of concerns: the future of Toby and Elinor, brother and progressively less violent over millennia and democracy in the Arab world, the implications sister, closest friends and and Ideas decades. Debunking both the idea of the of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the ‘class confidants, are sharers Steve Grimwade (ed.) ‘noble savage’ and a Hobbesian notion of a war’ fought by US business interests against of a dark secret, carried from HB. Was $24.95 ‘nasty, brutish and short’ life, he argues that the working poor, the breakdown of mainstream the sweltering summer of NOW $12 modernity and its cultural institutions are in political institutions and the rise of the far right. 1912 into the battlefields Created to mark the fact making us better people. of France and wartime celebration of Melbourne Short Walks London. When Toby becoming a UNESCO 1001 Paintings from Bogotá is reported ‘Missing, Readings City of Literature, this Believed Killed’, anthology draws You Must See Tom Feiling another secret casts a together a selection of HB. Was $40 Before You Die lengthening shadow Bargain the best local writing. Stephen Farthing (ed.) NOW $12 over Elinor’s world: Extracts from 80 PB. Was $49.95 For decades, Colombia was the how exactly did Toby writers across different NOW $16.95 ‘narcostate’. Now, it’s seen as one of the rising die – and why? Table genres – crime, literary stars of the global economy. Where does the fiction, poetry, Indigenous 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die truth lie? Writer and journalist Tom Feiling has A Book stories, migrant tales, theatre, brings you right up to date with an incisive journeyed throughout Colombia, down roads children’s fiction and more – look at the world’s best artwork, from Ancient that were until recently too dangerous to travel, of provide a colourful and insightful Egyptian wall paintings to contemporary to paint a fresh picture of one of the world’s Secrets snapshot of the city’s rich literary heritage. Western canvases. Within its pages you will most notorious and least-understood countries. Michael Holroyd see displayed 1001 of the most memorable, HB. Was $36.95 A Classical important, controversial and visually arresting paintings that have ever been created. Each Underground NOW $13.95 Education image is accompanied by text discussing both David Bownes, Oliver A Book of Secrets is a treasure-trove of hidden Caroline Taggart the work and the artist. lives and family mysteries. With grace and Green & Sam Mullins HB. Was $17.95 HB. Was $49.95 tender imagination, Michael Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into light, from NOW $12 Shakespeare’s NOW $14.95 How many times have you Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Restless A lavishly illustrated book with a cast of characters wished that you’d been taught Latin at school? Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales, to encompassing entrepreneurs, architects, Or that your history stretched all the way back World Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin, and the politicians and passengers, Underground is a to Greek and Roman myths and legends? Or Neil MacGregor novelist Violet Trefusis. must for every urbanite. Authors David Bownes, perhaps you wished you knew all about the HB. Was $40 Oliver Green and Sam Mullins draw on previously great inventions and medical developments NOW $13.95 unused sources and images to produce a new Future Perfect that have made our world what it is today? Shakespeare’s Restless World uncovers the history that celebrates the crucial role of the Steven Johnson A Classical Education provides all of these fascinating stories behind 20 objects from Underground in modern London. HB. Was $33 facts and more, filling the gaps that modern the Bard’s life and times. The items range NOW $12 schooling leaves out. from the rich, such as the hoard of gold While What connects the ‘miracle coins that make up the Salcombe treasure, Mortals Sleep on the Hudson’ to the Art + Soul to the very humble, like the battered trunk Kurt Vonnegut French railway system? Or Hetti Perkins and worn garments of an unknown pedlar. the mysterious outbreak of strange smells Through each, Neil MacGregor explores the HB. Was $37.95 HB. Was $89.99 in downtown Manhattan to the invention of defining themes of the Shakespearean age – NOW $13.95 NOW $20 the internet? With his characteristic flair for globalisation, reformation, piracy, Islam, magic The 16 previously unpublished This lavishly illustrated book multidisciplinary storytelling, Steven Johnson and more. short stories of this collection are taken from the captures the remarkable shows what lies behind these and many other beginning of Kurt Vonnegut’s career, and show a energy and diversity of Aboriginal art, from the fascinating human stories – namely the concept young author already grappling with themes and Papunya Tula Artists to Rover Thomas and his The Man of networked thinking. ideas that would define his work for decades to heirs’ phenomenal achievements in the East Without a Face come. Vonnegut’s acute moral sense and knack No Regrets: Kimberley. It features the work of contemporary Masha Gessen for compelling prose are very much on display. artists Destiny Deacon, Brenda L. Croft and HB. Was $39.95 The Life of Michael Riley, as well as that of the celebrated NOW $15.95 Higher Gossip Edith Piaf Emily Kam Ngwarray, whose paintings Handpicked as a successor John Updike Carolyn Burke revolutionised Australian art. by the ‘family’ surrounding an ailing and HB. Was $40 PB. Was $39.95 increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the NOW $13.95 NOW $16.95 The Hidden Russian oligarchy. His popularity soared as John Updike began compiling In No Regrets, Carolyn Burke offers an eloquent Reality the country and an infatuated West were Higher Gossip shortly before embrace of the famed French singer-songwriter. Brian Greene determined to see the progressive leader of his death in 2009. Displaying Tracing her rise to international fame, Burke HB. Was $39.95 details her tragedies and her triumphs, her their dreams, even as he seized control of characteristic humour and insight on subjects as NOW $15.95 marriages and her music, as well as her media, sent political rivals and critics into exile varied as ageing, golf, dinosaurs and make-up as Theoretical physicist and conquest of America from Carnegie Hall to The or to the grave, and smashed the country’s well as his own fiction, this delightful collection is a celebrated author Brian Greene offers intrepid Ed Sullivan Show. fragile electoral system. wonderful legacy for fans of art and criticism alike. readers another in-depth yet accessible look

New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at www.readings.com.au for more. Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 17

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His THE THICK OF IT: SEASON 4 Award-winning role, supported by a great cast boss (Sam Waterston) has $29.95 Released 5 June that includes Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. hired a new crew in his absence, but the Released 5 June After spending eight months in a state problem is they don’t all see eye to eye. Despite Government embarrassment, institution on a plea bargain, former teacher DJANGO UNCHAINED this, they set out together on a patriotic and ministerial cock-ups, coalition Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) moves back $39.95 idealistic mission to do the news well in the face rows, backroom deals, policy in with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki of corporate and commercial obstacles, and Released 6 June U-turns, spin-doctoring, political Weaver) and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife. their own personal entanglements. backstabbing and wild media Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Pat refuses Written and directed by Quentin speculation. This can only be to take his medication, feeling that he can Tarantino and featuring an the eagerly anticipated return of manage solely through healthy living and award-winning cast, Django LILYHAMMER: SEASON 1 Armando Iannucci’s Westminster political looking for the ‘silver linings’ in his life. Things Unchained is the tale of Django $39.95 comedy, The Thick of It. In the seven-part fourth get more challenging when he meets Tiffany (Jamie Foxx), a slave who teams Released 6 June season, Nicola Murray and Malcolm Tucker are (Jennifer Lawrence), a mysterious girl with up with bounty hunter Dr King Frank Tagliano (Steven Van now consigned to the opposition benches, but problems of her own. Tiffany offers to help Pat Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to Zandt) is a former New York still desperate for power. Meanwhile, Peter reconnect with his wife, but only if he’ll help seek out the South’s most wanted criminals. As mobster who, after testifying in Mannion is the new Secretary of State for Social her out in return. As their deal plays out, an he hones his vital hunting skills, his one goal is to a trial, joins the witness Affairs, and finds himself supported by his team unexpected bond begins to surface, adding find and rescue the wife he lost to the slave trade protection program. Intrigued of special advisors and thwarted by his new what might just be a silver lining to their long ago. When their search ultimately leads to by the place after watching the coalition partners in turn. troubled lives. the infamous and brutal Calvin Candie (Leonardo Winter Olympics in 1994, he is DiCaprio), they arouse the suspicion of Stephen relocated to Lillehammer in Norway. Yet the (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s trusted house transition from being a feared and respected GALÁPAGOS with David slave. 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It doesn’t McGregor) and their three sons begin their Darwin formulated his groundbreaking theories House of Cards: Season 1, $49.95, matter what Miranda attempts vacation in Thailand, looking forward to a few on evolution. Now, David Attenborough explores 20 June in life, whether it is dating or days in tropical paradise. But on the morning of how life there has continued to evolve in Cloud Atlas, $39.95, 26 June simply dealing with her 26 December, a terrifying roar rises up from the biological isolation, and how the ever-changing Beautiful Creatures, $39.95, 26 June overbearing mother, she always centre of the earth, and the family face their landscape has given birth to species and The Paperboy, $39.95, 28 June seems to fall flat, quite literally. Miranda is over darkest hours. sub-species that exist nowhere else in the world.

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of contemporary artists. Jay-Z, Lana Del Rey, cd will.i.am, Florence + the Machine, Gotye and Sia all make an appearance, as do The xx, who recorded a song especially for the film, of the ‘Together’. Other highlights include Jack White’s cover of U2’s ‘Love is Blindness’, and The Bryan month Modern Vampires of disappear as quickly as they arrived. Amidon Ferry Orchestra’s reinterpretation of Roxy the City himself describes the album as a journey, a Music’s 1975 hit ‘Love is the Drug’ and cover of Once I was an Eagle winding path that comes from a darker, more Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’. Vampire Weekend internal place. Well, it is dark and edgy, but Laura Marling $21.95 nonetheless compelling. LF Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda Was $26.95 Vinyl $29.95 Special price $21.95 Review: Vampire Monomania Review: Twenty-three years old. I say Weekend are known for their Deerhunter Jazz again, Laura Marling is 23 years old. I don’t infectious staccato rock, and $21.95 know why this surprises me, but it does – in a this album takes some risks. Vinyl $24.95 Somewhere positive way. I guess it’s just that what I hear It’s liberally sprinkled with Keith Jarrett Trio Review: Deerhunter have come out of the speakers sounds like production effects and is musically diverse from $24.95 been throwing around something from a soul who has been around start to finish. But it all pays off, saturating you attitude and alt-sometimes- Review: This is the first the block once or twice. This is Marling’s with energetic guitar and keyboards. Joyous garage tunes for over a release in a while for the Keith fourth album in five years, and her folk track ‘Diane Young’ makes for a choppy play on decade now. Here, title track Jarrett Trio, which includes sensibilities gather a deeper and more the words ‘dying young’, while squeaking ‘Monomania’ showcases their noise-rock history, Jarrett, Gary Peacock and intriguing sense of wordplay with every new backing vocals on ‘Ya Hey’ provide the anthem with a fuzzed-out chorus that bleeds into a Jack DeJohnette. At 67, release. Once I Was an Eagle is arguably her to your next break-up. ‘Steps’ even dips a toe in thrashing finale. Opener ‘Neon Junkyard’ Jarrett retains the energy and ambition of a finest album to date. Its 16 tracks explore the the world of alternative classical music. ups and downs, the give and take, and, finally, plays to their more indie-rock side with a young man, and Somewhere has the group in a the prize that comes with new love. It is her Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton swinging (left) hook to get you in the mood, joyous, playful mood. All three turn on a dime in most coherent group of songs, seamlessly while straight and mellow track ‘The Missing’ ‘Solar’, and then there’s the fantastically flowing from one to the next. Highlights are Trouble Will Find Me feels quite beautiful in its clarity. It’s all a bit Thelonious Monk-esque stop-start feel of ‘Where Can I Go?’ and ‘Master Hunter’. The National unexpected, but if you embrace the low-key ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’. distortion you will be richly rewarded with an However, the highlight is the trance-like Marling is a refreshing albeit old-soul talent. $21.95 (occasionally) out-of-focus masterpiece. FH ‘Somewhere/Everywhere’, nearly 20 minutes of Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn Review: Trouble Will Find undulating, gospel-drenched groove that stands Me is the highly anticipated Random Access up on its own in comparison to epics such as sixth album from Ohio-by- part two of The Köln Concert. way-of-Brooklyn band The Memories Richard Mohr is from Readings Carlton Pop/Rock National. After topping many Daft Punk critics’ best-of lists for 2010 and finally achieving $21.95 American Kid relative commercial success with the stunning Vinyl $34.95 Nola’s Ark High Violet, one would think the pressure would Monique diMattina Patty Griffin Review: French music duo be on to repeat the trick, but in fact the reverse Daft Punk have long been $24.95 $21.95 is true. A grueling 22-month tour followed High purveyors of exquisite house Singer-songwriter, boogie- Review: Patty Griffin is an Violet – after all, this is a band who forged their music. Their debut Homework woogie barrelhouse basher, artist I have been following reputation not overnight but over the course of a (1997) and follow-up Discovery composer, radio personality (obsessing about, really) decade, through sheer grit and increasingly (2001) are considered classics of the genre. Their and pianist – Monique ever since I heard her debut strong records. Having reached this point, they latest release, Random Access Memories, diMattina’s cred as a mature Living With Ghosts in 1996. return seemingly reinvigorated, confident, features collaborations with Pharrell Williams and versatile artist is well deserved. Her new She is quite simply one of my favourite almost relaxed and decidedly self-assured. The (The Neptunes and N.E.R.D) and Nile Rodgers album, Nola’s Ark, was recorded in New Orleans at singer-songwriters; her lyrics and voice speak mood suits them too. They’ve produced another (Chic), among others. This highly anticipated the famed Piety Studios with an all-star line-up of to me like very few others. American Kid is glorious piece of work. release will not disappoint, appealing to the Daft musicians, including trumpeter Leroy Jones (Harry Griffin’s first album of original songs in six Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda Punk faithful and new converts alike. It is a funk, Connick Jr.’s band) and bass/sousaphone player years, and it’s reminiscent of her earlier work. soul and house musical celebration that serves as Matt Perrine (Dr John, Jon Cleary). The album That is, it’s acoustic in nature, with stripped a testament to the genre. features original songs written on Monique’s 3RRR back instrumentation that allows her incredibly ... Like Clockwork segment Shaken Not Rehearsed, alongside powerful voice to shine. An extra treat for fans Queens of the Stone Age Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from well-loved standards such as ‘Young at Heart’ and is the presence of her beau (some say $21.95 Readings Carlton Fats Waller’s ‘Numb Fumblin’. husband) Robert Plant, with whom she Review: What have we records as The Band of Joy. Their duet ‘Ohio’ done without Queens of the Love Has Come For You is a beautiful thing. Welcome back, Patty. Now Stone Age over the past five Steve Martin & Edie Brickell how about another tour? World/Folk years to rock our little socks $21.95 off? The answer, for my Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton Review: There has long money, is filled the void with much lamer Beyond the been a tradition of actors- comparison bands, Nickelback and Creed Ragasphere Departures turned-singers and vice versa, aside! There is, however, a striking change of Debashish Bhattacharya & Friends Bernard Fanning and actor, comedian, novelist direction on ... Like Clockwork. While still and expert banjo player Steve $24.95 Released 7 June brimming with all the muscle and thunder you’d Martin is no stranger to swapping genres. On his Review: Kolkata-based Was $26.95 expect from this band, it also features rather fine third album, Love Has Come For You, he teams guitarist Debashish Special price $21.95 balladry and some of the greatest guitar work up with Edie Brickell of New Bohemians fame Bhattacharya has already Josh Homme has ever produced. Old boys Nick Review: Powderfinger (who you may remember found success with made several very fine Oliveri, Dave Grohl and Mark Lanegan are back fans beware! You should the song ‘What I Am’ in 1988). Martin’s deft albums of Indian ragas. His on board, as are guest luminaries Elton John expect the unexpected. The accompaniments blend well with Brickell’s lyrics, guitar is a highly modified one, with extra strings and Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears. Pretenders grunge guitars are gone, as is creating an exquisite record and a real treat. MAS capable of producing all the nuances of beware. DM the melancholy of Tea & traditional instruments. Beyond the Ragasphere Sympathy. Departures is just that – a departure is a breakthrough album and features leading from all expectation and a freedom to express Bright Sunny South Soundtrack musicians from several traditions, including Indo the joys and sorrows and fears and hopes of Sam Amidon Jazz pioneer John McLaughlin (Shakti and life’s journey. In this case, life took Bernard $19.95 The Great Gatsby Remember Shakti), flamenco player Adam del Fanning to Madrid, where he lived for a couple Monte, dobro player Jerry Douglas and Review: Singer and of years and wrote this album. Synth sounds Various nylon-string guitarist Nishad Pandey. Other more multi-instrumentalist Sam wash over songs of rhythm and blues and soul. $21.95 mellow tracks show off the considerable vocal Amidon steers away from his Of course, with a voice as distinctive as talents of Bhattacharya’s daughter, Anandi. This usual folk roots and throws Review: The soundtrack Fanning’s the journey may not seem as far from is an adventurous step from one of the world’s up jazz-tinged, quirky sounds to Baz Luhrmann’s 3D film one release to another but, as a Powderfinger great guitar players that takes him well out of the on an experimental album that juxtaposes with adaptation of F. Scott fan, I’m just happy to hear it again. strictly raga-based themes of earlier albums. his deadpan vocals. Sounds come and go, at Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn times rushing like a bull at the gate only to Great Gatsby, is a theatrical Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton compilation of originals and covers from a range Readings MONTHLY JUNE 2013 19 Special classical of the cd of the month Plácido Domingo: Verdi Learning to Howl: month Plácido Domingo Music by Andrew Ford Nicola Benedetti Decca. 4791168. 2CDs. $29.95 Jane Sheldon, Sydney Mediterraneo plays Vaughan Review: This remarkable Chamber Choir, Daryl Pratt Christina Pluhar & L’Arpeggiata Williams & Tavener celebration of Verdi’s music is & Marshall McGuire Virgin Classics. 4645472. $29.95 presented over two discs and ABC Classics. 4810188. $24.95 Review: I’m already a big fan of Christina Nicola Benedetti, London features performances from Review: Jane Sheldon’s Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata and I was not Philharmonic Orchestra tenor Plácido Domingo over pure, graceful voice will disappointed when I heard Mediterraneo. & Andrew Litton the years, from 1972 to 2001. One listen and capture your ear in Learning Their effortless virtuosity breathes life into this DG. 4766198. Was $26.95 you’ll truly understand why Domingo’s name is to Howl, from the ethereal latest release, which features mainly Greek Special price $14.95 (for a limited time only) known across the globe. KR ‘Snatches of Old Lauds’ for and Turkish traditional tunes. The engaging The sound of English composer Sir John bass clarinet and drone to ‘Elegy in a Country vocals will draw you into a world of ancient Tavener is often described as ‘ethereal’, Percy Grainger: Graveyard’, a special piece of music that gods and enchanting music. If you’re a fan of possessing an otherworldly, spiritual quality Works for Large deserves a good, quiet listen. If you know Jordi Savall, then it’s likely Mediterraneo will that strikes deep in the soul. Meanwhile, Chorus and Orchestra someone who’s in need of a good dose of rarely leave your CD player. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending Australian voices and stories, then this album Melbourne Symphony Orchestra & Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton has regularly been voted as one of the most would make the perfect gift. KR popular classical pieces in history. Now, Sir Andrew Davis classical violinist Nicola Benedetti takes on Chandos. CHSA5121. $24.95 David Garrett: 14 both in this stunning album. Review: I’m glad Percy David Garrett group of five friends or family members Grainger has been coming gathering together to play them. KR DG. 4790933. Was $26.95 back into vogue recently. His Special price $21.95 (for a limited time only) Dvorák & Smetana innovative pieces blend Pieter Wispelwey: contemporary twentieth- Review: These J.S. Bach: 6 Suites Tokyo String Quartet century musical ideas with those rooted in the recordings are from a very Harmonia Mundi. HMU807429. $29.95 traditions of Bach and Beethoven. What’s young David Garrett, when for Cello Solo Pieter Wispelwey Review: In anticipation of more, the use of evocative poetry within his he was just 14 years old. His Evil Penguin. EPRC012. CD/DVD. $39.95 their forthcoming disbandment orchestration is truly exciting. KR surety of technique is in late 2013, the Tokyo String incredible for someone of his age, and there is Review: Creating a Quartet have released a new Bach Re-invented an obvious joy underlining his playing of these recording like this is the work gorgeous violin songs. KR recording that pays tribute to Kristjan Järvi, Simone Dinnerstein of a lifetime and I love that two famed Czech composers: Antonín Dvorák & Absolute Ensemble Pieter Wispelwey has and Bedřich Smetana. Despite often being Sony. 88691941682. $22.95 Mozart: Overtures included a DVD where he regarded as polar opposites in their homeland, La Cetra & Andrea Marcon talks about the scholarly ideas associated with Review: In their latest together Dvorák and Smetana came to represent DG. 4779445. Was $26.95 the project. It doesn’t matter if you already have album, Kristjan Järvi and the the quintessential sound of nineteenth-century Special price $14.95 (for a limited time only) a recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, or indeed six Czech music. Interestingly, Smetana’s Quartet Absolute Ensemble rework different recordings. This is one worth having on Review: I wasn’t familiar No. 1: From My Life, featured here, was written Bach into a strange but the shelf simply because Wispelwey is such an with all the works on this disc as the composer began to lose his hearing. An exciting version of a piano accomplished musician. KR but I certainly wasn’t amazing album. concerto. While Bach is ever present, this kaleidoscope of music is interwoven with ideas disappointed. The playing The Australian Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton from Klezmer, jazz, hip-hop and more. There is from La Cetra under the some terrific playing on show here with each astute direction of Andrea Marcon is energetic Chamber Orchestra Spheres musician given moments to shine. KR and concise, while an added attraction is the presents The Reef Daniel Hope memorable sound of the period instruments. PR Richard Tognetti, Jon Frank, Mick DG. 4790571. Was $26.95 Chopin: The Nocturnes Sowry & Iain Grandage Special price $21.95 (for a limited time only) Maria João Pires Eduard Franck: ABC Classics. 0762850. $26.95 Review: I got very DG. 4779568. 2CDs. Was $24.95 String Quintets Review: If you’re a fan of excited when I saw the Special price $14.95 (for a limited time only) Edinger Quintet films such as the seminal Audite. AUD92578. $24.95 selection of composers Review: These Baraka, then you will be included on Daniel Hope’s performances from 1995 and Review: Back when transfixed byThe Reef. Richard new album, from Einaudi to 1996 are some of the finest chamber music was in high Tognetti teamed up with Faure, Prokofiev, Jenkins and beyond. What is examples of Chopin’s demand, Eduard Franck was directors, photographers, particularly sumptuous about these Nocturnes ever recorded. Maria the king of the musical world, musicians and locals to explore arrangements is the magical way Hope weaves João Pires seems to have that unique ability to composing as well as how sound and nature intersect. The music was in and out of each work, demonstrating exactly always give the listener something different, even if working as a concert pianist. Here, his string originally presented at a woolshed in Western why he’s famous. I’m hooked on Spheres and they have heard the work many times before. quintets are gathered together – Op. 15 and Australia and was later performed at the Sydney often have it on repeat as I travel to and from Op. 51 are both grand in musical ideas yet Opera House. KR Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton work each day. KR have an intimate feel. You can easily imagine a

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