Free october 2013

ellena savage on plath, didion & sontag / belle place on john safran

Event Highlights

alexis wright david marr christos tsiolkas tim winton

Books music film events OCTOBER new releases

jhumpa lahiri $29.99 p6

KATIE COTUGNO $19.99 p11

David Finkel $29.95 p12 ky Winter Group) c h (Ja c

THE killing: Series 3 $39.95 p17 Cover illustration by Christopher Wel Cover illustration true crime from the deep south in John Safran’s murder in Mississippi wise up ghost $24.95 $21.95 p18

more inside...

CARLTON 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 HAWTHORN 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 Acland St 9525 3852 READINGS AT THE STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA 328 Swanston St 8664 7540 READINGS AT THE BRAIN CENTRE 30 Royal Parade, Parkville 9347 1749 See shop opening hours, browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au

Readings MONTHLY october 2013 3

This month’s news

PETER PORTER POETRY PRIZE 25% OFF LONELY PLANET The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of Thinking of the next big trip? Since 1973 Lonely Mark’s Australia’s most lucrative and respected awards Planet has been creating arguably the world’s for poetry, and guarantees winners wide best guide books and helping to give travellers Say exposure through publication in Australian Book amazing experiences. Throughout October, Review. The Peter Porter Poetry Prize 2014 is Readings is joining their 40th year celebrations now open, with prize money worth a total of and offering you 25% off all Lonely Planet titles. News and views from Readings’ $6500. This year ABR will be accepting and New editions for Europe, Japan and South encouraging online submissions for the first America, to name a few, have just landed, plus managing director, Mark Rubbo time. Also for the first time, international entries there are phrase books, activity guides and a will be accepted. Visit australianbookreview. wonderful array of pictorial inspiration. Sale on at I wanted to write about two cool things that are happening in Melbourne. The first is the 100 Story com.au for further information and to enter. all Readings shops and online at readings.com.au. Building, a shop front in Footscray’s Nicholson Street mall. Sandwiched between a vacant store and Entries close 20 November. the Commonwealth Bank, it opened for business a few weeks ago. It’s actually a one-story building WANGARATTA JAZZ & BLUES but Lachlan Carter, Jess Tran and Jenna Williams, the drivers of the project, claim that there are 99 ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE FESTIVAL COMPETITION stories below street level: in one corner, notices on the wall above a trap door invite people to join the 47th floor basketball team, or from the crew on the 5th floor, ask who stole their peanut butter, or PRESENTS: FEAR AND The 2013 Wangaratta Jazz & Blues festival will see who wants to join the 20th floor book group. The rest of the walls are covered with framed pages of TREMBLING music take over Wangaratta, across the city and manuscripts from writers such as Andy Griffiths, Alice Pung and Sally Rippin. The 100 Story Building at nearby wineries, from 1 to 4 November. Thanks Adapted, staged and interpreted by Layla is all about supporting young writers from culturally and linguistically diverse and marginalised to the partnership of the prestigious Lancemore Metssitane from Amélie Nothomb’s novel communities to share their creative voices through storytelling projects. Currently, there are almost Group and the Wangaratta Jazz & Blues festival, of the same name, Fear and Trembling is a 7000 students from 56 schools across the western suburbs of Melbourne who fall in the lowest one lucky winner and friend will enjoy four nights humble, funny and intelligent point of view quartile of socio-educational advantage. A key focus of the 100 Story Building is to create ongoing accommodation at the Lindenwarrah at Milawa from a young woman confronted with a new storytelling projects for these students, and to support the existing efforts of schools, families and plus a double Gold Pass to immerse themselves in world. Performances will be in French with communities in bolstering literacy, confidence and belonging among these students. Find out more some down-home blues and adventurous jazz. To English subtitles at the Village Roadshow at www.100storybuilding.org.au. The Readings Foundation is a proud supporter of this wonderful go in the draw to win this exciting prize, valued at Theatrette, State Library of Victoria (328 initiative – and the 2014 Grant Applications are now open. For more information and to download the over $2000, email your name and contact number Swanston St, Melbourne) on Thursday 17 application form and guidelines visit readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation. October, 7.30pm. Full-price tickets are $30 along with 50 words or less outlining why you’d love to attend this year’s festival to competitions@ per person or $25 per person for members, The other cool thing is the Story Box Library. The brainchild of Nicole Brownlee, a primary teacher wangarattajazz.com. The competition runs students and group bookings. Please and children’s bookseller, the Story Box Library is an online reading room for children. It’s a creative from 1 to 13 October and will be drawn on 14 visit afmelbourne.com.au for advanced approach to providing a quality educational program that keeps the art of storytelling alive while October. Only the winner will be notified. bookings (no ticket sale at the door) and embracing the technology that has become so ubiquitous in children’s lives today. The site is due to more information. Readings stocks Fear and launch soon and showcases a selection of Australia’s best children’s literature presented by a diverse Trembling and will be selling copies at the range of storytellers. The site is designed to be used by teachers and parents to stimulate interest in event prior to the performance. reading and literacy. It’s also going to be a lot of fun, too. My little granddaughter has a pretty close relationship with her mum’s iPad; she often watches animated children’s stories and I must admit I’m MELBOURNE FESTIVAL bit ambivalent about that. With the Story Box Library concept, she’ll be looking at real people reading Melbourne Festival is one of Australia’s flagship from real books, watching and sharing their reactions and seeing the stories unfold on the page. As international arts festivals and one of the major the site develops and the catalogue builds it should become a wonderful way to discover new books. multi-arts festivals of the world, in terms of My granddaughter lives overseas so it will be a great way for her to remain connected to part of her quality of work, innovation of vision, and scale heritage. I just love the idea. You can have a look at what Nicole and her colleagues are aiming for at and breadth of program. The 2013 Melbourne OSLO DAVIS CALENDAR www.storyboxlibrary.com.au – spread the word parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents! Festival kicks off on 11 October with a free event Available exclusively at Readings, Oslo Davis’s in Federation Square, TANDERRUM, where Elders 2013–2014 calendar ($20) features cartoons that of the Kulin nation will come together for a very go out of their way to celebrate the misery of life. special Welcome to Country. Running until 27 Well, not really, but Oslo’s wry take on the minutiae October, the Festival brings an unparalleled feast of existence makes this calendar a rare beast of dance, theatre, music, visual arts, multimedia indeed. Drawn from his cheeky work appearing and outdoor events from renowned and upcoming in the Age, Readings Monthly and beyond, this Australian and international artists. Please visit limited-edition calendar, titled ‘Year of Drawing melbournefestival.com.au to view the program Dangerously’, runs from December 2013 to and book tickets. Readings is a proud supporter December 2014 and features crack whores, of Melbourne Festival. cows in tights, Banksy street art and more.

Readings Monthly is a free independent monthly Graphic Design by The Art Department Collective at newspaper published by Readings Books, Music & Film. www.theartdepartmentau.com Editorial enquiries: Thank you to Readings staff members and contributors Belle Place at [email protected] for your reviews.

Advertising enquiries: Readings donates 10% of its profits each year to Ingrid Josephine at [email protected] The Readings Foundation: or call (03) 9341 7739. www.readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation Oslo Davis www.oslodavis.com

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Eighteen filmmakers adapt Tim Winton’s novel for the screen, Visit the Cinema Nova Bar featuring an unparalleled cast including Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Rose Byrne and Richard Roxburgh Tim Winton’s EVANGELION 3.0: YOU CAN (NOT) REDO Neon Genesis Evangelion continues 380 LYGON ST CARLTON A LETTER TO MOMO Hiroyuki Okiura’s heartfelt award winning fantasy “A spectacular achievement of unwavering grace” www.cinemanova.com.au 009 RE:CYBORG 3D Shotaro Ishinomori’s influential 1960s manga revisited Luke Buckmaster, Crikey GHOST IN THE“An SHELL ambitious ARISE and THE thriller GARDEN assisted OF WORDS Double-feature Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, EVENT SEASON NOW SHOWING National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. Japan’s freshestby excellent anime on the big performances” screen for a limited time fromEmpire OCTOBER 3 4 Readings MONTHLY october 2013 15 Lwa rence 24 Valerie October Events Money Volk Amazing Aussie Bastards is Lawrence Money’s Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe will launch For more information and updates, please visit the events page at www.readings.com.au. Please remarkable true tales from magnates, moguls Passion Play: The Oberammergau Tales, Valerie note bookings do not necessarily guarantee a seat and some events may be standing room only. and other Australian mavericks. Volk’s novel about a German village that stages a world-renowned Passion Play each decade. Free, but please book on 9819 1917. Free, no booking required. Matthew Vivien Tuesday 15 October, 6.30pm Readings Hawthorn Thursday 24 October, 6.30pm

1 Evans 7 Achia Readings Carlton nch 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch u

la 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.

Join Matthew Evans for a discussion about Professor John Gatt-Rutter will launch Vivien la soils, mulch and his new book, The Dirty Chef. Achia’s Marrying Italian, a memoir of a headstrong Paul Raimond This event is supported by Brown Brothers wine. Kim Kane & Australian girl and a charming older Italian man. 15 Daniels 26 $5 per person (redeemable against a purchase Free, no booking required. sara acton Academic Paul Raimond Daniels will launch of the book on the night). Please book on 9819 Dress in your favourite colour to celebrate writer Monday 7 October, 6.30pm his debut book tonight, Nietzsche and The 1917. If you have a plot in a community garden Kim Kane and illustrator Sara Acton’s picture Birth of Tragedy. your entrance to the event is free, but let us Readings Carlton nch

u book Esther’s Rainbow! There will be a reading, know by email at [email protected]. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. la Free, no booking required. drawings, games and fun for those aged less than 7 years old. Tuesday 1 October, 6.30pm Jonathan Green Tuesday 15 October, 6.30pm

Readings Hawthorn Readings Carlton nch Free, but please book on 9525 3852. u

u nch 8 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. & Maxine McKew 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. la Saturday 26 October, 10.30am Joinla Jonathan Green, the founding editor of The Readings St Kilda Jonathon Drum, and Maxine McKew, former politician and Alexis 112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182. u nch journalist, as they discuss politics, journalism and 1 Porritt 22 Wright la Green’s book The Year My Politics Broke. The World We Made reveals how it is possible Alexis Wright will be in store to read from tim Free, but please book on 9819 1917. to reach a genuinely sustainable world by 2050. The Swan Book, her new novel set in the 28 winton Paul Gilding will be there to introduce the event. future, with Aboriginals still living under the Tuesday 8 October, 6.30pm Readings and the Wheeler Centre are thrilled Intervention in the north, in an environment Free, no booking required. Readings Hawthorn to present Tim Winton for his only Melbourne fundamentally altered by climate change. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch event to mark the release of Eyrie.

Tuesday 1 October, 6pm Free,la but please book on 9347 6633. Slate Bar $50 per person (includes a signed rod hardback first edition ofEyrie ). Please 9 Goldsbrough Lane, Melbourne, 3000. u nch Tuesday 22 October, 6.30pm book tickets online at wheelercentre.com. la 9 moss Readings Carlton

309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch david Join us to celebrate the release of Rod Moss’s Monday 28 October, 6.30pm la 2 Marr One Thousand Cuts: Life and Art in Central Melbourne Town Hall Australia, to be launched by Dr Howard Isabelle de 90–120 Swanston St, Melbourne, 3000. u nch David Marr will talk on his new Quarterly Goldenberg. 23 Solier la Essay, an investigation into George Pell: Free, no booking required. Poetry leader of the Catholic Church in Australia. Andy Dawson from the University of Melbourne will launch Food and the Self: Consumption, 30 to Pages Free, but please book on 9819 1917. Wednesday 9 October, 6.30pm Production and Material Culture by Dr Isabelle A quick spread of poetry readings by ten of Readings Carlton nch

u de Solier, from Victoria University. Wednesday 2 October, 6.30pm 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. Melbourne’s finest – three minutes each! – from Readings Hawthorn la Free, no booking required. the established to the emerging and the surprised.

701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch Patricia Free, no booking required.

la Wednesday 23 October, 6.30pm

10 Edgar Readings Carlton nch

u Wednesday 30 October, 6.30pm john 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. 3 McBeath Join Patricia Edgar in conversation with Lesley la Readings Carlton

Falloon and Mary Owen, two of the ‘elders’ from 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch

John McBeath’s What Westerners Have for her book, In Praise of Ageing. Christos la Breakfast is a bittersweet portrait of moving to 23 Tsiolkas Noel King, India with the dream to open a European-style Free, but please book on 9819 1917. 31 pensione in a Portuguese villa in Goa. Together with the Wheeler Centre, Readings Constantine Thursday 10 October, 6.30pm brings you Christos Tsiolkas to talk about Verevis & Deane Free, no booking required. Readings Hawthorn Barracuda, his brutal, tender and blazingly Williams 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. brilliantu nch new novel.

Thursday 3 October, 6.30pm la Professor Tom O’Regan will launch Australian

Readings Carlton nch $40 per person (includes a signed first

u Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 1, devoted to 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. philip edition of Barracuda). Please book tickets

la mapping the transnational history of Australian 10 werner online at wheelercentre.com. film studies. Artist and activist Philip Werner believes adrian Wednesday 23 October, 7.30pm Free, no booking required. 3 deans sexual taboos need to be removed. Straight The Capitol Theatre from the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Werner,

113 Swanston Street, Melbourne, 3000. u nch Thursday 31 October, 6:30pm Tony Wilson will launch Adrian Deans’ Straight with participants, will talk on the process of nch la Readings Carlton u Jacket, a genre-twisting crime novel with dialogue putting 101 Vaginas together. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. that crackles like a Tarantino film. Michael la Free, but please book on 9347 6633. 24 Free, no booking required. Fullilove & Michael Thursday 10 October, 6.30pm Anthony Bubalo 1 Leunig Thursday 3 October, 6.30pm Readings Carlton Michael Fullilove and Anthony Bubalo of the nch Join Michael Leunig for an evening of Readings Hawthorn 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. u nch u Lowy Institute have edited Reports from a 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. la conversation on creativity, innocence and art la Turbulent Decade, pulling together the Lowy to mark the release of his new volume, Holy Fool. Paul Jennings & Institute’s best research work and reviewing Bernard 14 Andrew Weldon Australian foreign policy over the last decade. $50 per person (includes a signed first 7 cohen edition of Holy Fool). Please book tickets Come along for an afternoon with the much- Free, but please book on 9819 1917. online at www.trybooking.com. Join Libbi Gorr in launching Bernard Cohen’s loved Paul Jennings and cartoonist Andrew Thursday 24 October, 6.30pm irreverent satire of Australian politics, The Weldon, the co-creators of a fun new series for Friday 1 November, 6.30pm Readings Hawthorn Antibiography of Robert F. Menzies. young readers, Don’t Look Now. Experimedia, State Library of Victoria

701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch 328 Swanston St, Melbourne, 3000. u nch

Free, no booking required. la

Free, but please book on 9819 1917. la

Monday 7 October, 6.30pm Monday 14 October, 4.30pm GOLD COIN DONATIONS: We’re now asking people who attend our events to please make Readings St Kilda nch Readings Hawthorn u a small gold coin donation, when possible, to The Readings Foundation. There will be a tin for

112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. u nch la donations at each event and all contributions over $2 are tax deductible. Thanks for your support. la Readings MONTHLY october 2013 5

New Australian Writing

For October, the New Australian Writing feature makes a departure from its usual form to bring you our reviews of three stalwarts of local fiction: Tim Winton, Alex Miller and Richard Flanagan.

the narrow road to eyrie Coal Creek the deep north Tim Winton Alex Miller Richard Flanagan Hamish Hamilton. HB. Was $45 A&U. PB. Was $30 Knopf. HB. Signed edition. Was $40 Special price $34.95 Special price $26.95 Special HB at PB price $32.95

Review: Tom Keely, the hero Review: Alex Miller migrated Review: Richard Flanagan’s of Tim Winton’s latest novel, is a to Australia when he was only savagely beautiful and haunting fallen man. We meet him after a 16 and his first job was as a sixth novel, set in a Japanese night ‘getting off his chops on ringer in outback Queensland. POW camp on the Thai-Burma the fruit of the Barossa’ and an That early experience in the death railway, follows the life of unhealthy dose of prescription Australian outback informs a Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon who meds. The recently divorced, number of his works, including has left behind two women – the once-successful environmental Coal Creek, set in the fictional woman he is expected to marry, activist has secluded himself in community of Mount Hay. Ella, and the other, his Uncle’s his ‘seedy little eyrie’ – a Situated inland from a larger young wife, Amy. Each of these cramped tenth-floor apartment coastal town, this is the type of women knows Dorrigo as flawed overlooking the Port of place people leave to go to the – but they love him, though each Fremantle – to get blotto and coast. Miller’s formative years very differently. Returned from heap scorn on the world that he’s forsaken. also helped him develop an affinity for Aboriginal people and war he is cast as a hero, a Weary Dunlop of sorts. But he Meanwhile, Western Australia – ‘China’s establish lifelong friendships and understanding. It is this, grapples with this cast, and despite self-doubt and a restless swaggering enabler’ – continues to prosper. From Keely’s too, that enables him to write so movingly and convincingly unknowing, he had taken care of his charges with a staid apartment he can see the tankers, laden with minerals, about people and landscape around Mount Hay. dutifulness. At home, he is at once different and removed, but making their way out through the sea’s ‘brothy haze’. to others charming and elegant – a tension that provides a They’re a floating metaphor of what Keely fought to protect. simmering undercurrent to the novel. He is a man of masks, But his battle against the mining magnates, developers but not really unhappy to be misunderstood. and corrupt politicians has left him ‘skint in every possible ‘Miller constructs great tension sense’. It’s a world that he wants to forget: ‘One more in his books without ever feeling fawning profile of a self-made iron heiress and he’d mix ‘[Dorrigo] is at once different himself a Harpic Wallbanger and be done with it.’ predictable. The novel builds to and removed, but to others a sobering denouement that is charming and elegant – a tension ‘The writing is elegant and also surprisingly optimistic.’ that provides a simmering admirably true to where it’s from; undercurrent to the novel.’ Winton crafts poetry from the The narrator, Bobby Blue, is a stockman who’s worked mustering with his father since his early teens. When salty, Australian vernacular.’ his father dies he takes a job with the new constable as his After the horrors of the POW camp – cholera, beatings, offsider. Daniel Collins, a war veteran from the coast, and hunger, lice, monsoon rains – the novel navigates the post-war his wife Esme with their two children, Irie and Miriam, have trials of particular Japanese soldiers convicted of being war But Keely’s retirement plan is hijacked by his come to Mount Hay to make a difference. Neither Collins criminals. Flanagan switches our gaze so for a part we observe neighbour, Gemma Buck, and her grandson, Kai. Gemma, a nor Esme know anything of the bush and their belief that post-war life through the lens of a Japanese soldier, Major figure from Keely’s past, dredges up memories that he was it can be tamed, or understood, is misguided. They treat Nakamuru, whose justifications, and the tenuous veil he holds busy trying to drown. She also brings with her a new kind of young Bobby well, with Esme taking the man under her between his beliefs and actions, are both moving and horrifying. trouble, stirring Keely’s rescue instinct. wing and encouraging 12-year-old Irie to help him learn The Narrow Road to the Deep North is acutely In his last novel, Breath, Winton contrasted his to read. Irie is unlike anyone Bobby Blue has met before, researched. Flanagan has said that he wrote this novel ‘in the characters’ tumult with beautiful surfing passages and wilful and strong but also in tune with the bush. Bobby’s shadow of [his] father dying’, and the book is dedicated to the sweeping portraits of coastal landscapes. Set mostly in childhood friend, Ben Tobin, is wild and unpredictable but a soldier with the Japanese numeral for 335, Flanagan’s father’s Fremantle, Eyrie offers little such respite. The backdrop great bushman, setting up camp at Coal Creek with a young own roll-call number while he was on the death rail. The contrast to Keely, Gemma and Kai’s struggles is the spectre of Aboriginal woman. When Bobby takes the job with Collins it between the Australian and Japanese soldiers is particularly well environmental catastrophe caused by the mining boom. does cross his mind that one day this rigid man might clash formed. The Japanese soldier’s rationale for atrocity rests on their Cutting through the bleakness is the self- with Ben’s free spirit, and as a result he might be faced with service of honour and duty to the Emperor; for Nakamura, he deprecating voice of Keely, whose grizzled commentary on a difficult choice. They do, and in ways most unexpected. consolidates his actions as in service of a ‘cosmic goodness’. The everything from dog shit to Gina Rinehart is often hilarious. Miller constructs great tension in his books without Australians, in contrast, face their reality as just that. The writing is elegant and admirably true to where it’s from; ever feeling predictable. This novel builds to a sobering The conclusion, a twist, took me utterly by surprise Winton crafts poetry from the salty Australian vernacular. denouement that is also surprisingly optimistic. The voice – Flanagan builds to it with the precision and patience of, This, Winton’s tenth novel, is a complex, exhilarating of Bobby Blue is remarkably executed and shows Miller’s perhaps, a surgeon. Like Dorrigo, we feel an immense weight work that provides valuable insight into contemporary life in a exceptional craft. Coal Creek is a great achievement. Each of loss, but what ultimately sticks is that this, at times near compromised Australia. It’s also a ripping good read. one of Miller’s is my new favourite, but this is very special. unbearably, is a wholly human novel.

Joe Rubbo is from Readings Carlton Mark Rubbo is Readings’ Managing Director Belle Place is the editor of Readings Monthly 6 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

New Fiction From the escapes from Canberra, running at breakneck book speed across the countryside and increasing Books rapidly in size. The government can neither of confirm nor deny this is happening, but would Desk much rather talk about the economy. This premise sounds ridiculous – and the it is – but it is only one element of Cohen’s multi-layered experiment with narrative, Martin Shaw, month genre and character: littered with footnotes Readings Books Division Manager ruminating on Cohen’s thematic decisions and THE LOWLAND writing practice, the book practically reviews itself as it is being read. The Antibiography Jhumpa Lahiri Perhaps not, but if anyone was wondering whether the Australian male fiction writer had ‘gone missing’ of Robert F. Menzies (the F, ostensibly, is in recent times – after a couple of years where the likes of de Kretser, Funder, Mears and Tiffany have Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 for ‘Fucking’) also follows the voices of ruled the Australian literary roost (and how) – the month of October sees a re-assertion, of sorts. Much- Review: A confession first: shamefully I’ve a mysterious Liberal Party figure and the heralded new novels from Richard Flanagan, Tim Winton and Alex Miller are appearing, with early not read any of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work before, frustrated Antibiographer, battling to tell the readers suggesting that this may be some of their career-best work. It will be fascinating to see what the but after reading The Lowland, I’ll be seeking true story of the revenant former leader. Miles Franklin judges make of them next year – throw in Christos Tsiolkas’s new book Barracuda, out in out her Pulitzer Prize-winning short-story It’s tough going in the beginning, but once November, and we may have a short-odds literary quadrella on our hands for the shortlist! collection, Interpreter of Maladies. you settle into Cohen’s style and rhythm, Though, as ever, there are some really interesting new books released slightly in the shadows of the ‘big The Lowland is the ethically Antibiography offers biting observations guns’. A one-time Vogel winner, Bernard Cohen, returns after a long hiatus with the intriguing Antibiography complicated story of two brothers, born on nostalgia, writing and the sorry state of of Robert F. Menzies; the bookseller turned crime-fiction writer Lenny Bartulin has jumped genres into 15 months apart, who grow up together political rhetoric with a dry, absurdist humour literary fiction with Infamy, a rollicking historical fiction set in nineteenth-century Tasmania, described as like in Calcutta – but their lives separate as reminiscent of Tom Stoppard or Douglas ‘Martin Scorsese let loose in Van Diemen’s Land’. And Jenny Bond, on debut, transports us to a world of adulthood begins. Udayan, wild and Adams. By simultaneously writing and early Arctic exploration in Perfect North. charismatic, becomes part of the Naxalite not-writing about Robert F. Menzies, Cohen movement, a rebellion created to eradicate has created an astonishing and seemingly Turning to international fiction, the Booker Prize shortlist, just announced, seems to me to be a selection inequity and poverty. His brother, Subhash, paradoxical piece of literary art that shouldn’t of wide appeal for many readers. On the list, and only just released, is Jhumpa Lahiri’s Lowland. It’s great is the more conservative and dutiful son, and work, but does. to see that a writer already treasured for her exquisite short stories and novels will now find even more does not share his brother’s political passion. readers – she is undoubtedly the real deal. David Vann is another writer with many dedicated fans, and one He leaves home to pursue a life of scientific Alan Vaarwerk is a freelance reviewer of them – my colleague Jason Austin – reviews Vann’s latest, Goat Mountain, rather rapturously this month. research in America. However when Udayan On the non-fiction front, there are some much-anticipated new books. Patrick Leigh Fermor was always is killed, Subhash travels home, after years INFAMY asked when he was going to write the final volume of his remarkable trilogy, detailing his walk from Holland away, to take his brother’s wife back to the Lenny Bartulin to Constantinople in the 1930s – but in his lifetime he always claimed that he was unable. Since his death States with him. A&U. PB. $29.99 it has been discovered that he had, in fact, an early draft all along, and this has now been assembled for The complexity of this ambitious publication as The Broken Road. A retrospective of Art Spiegelman’s work, Co-Mix, will be lapped up by tale lies with questions of loyalty and custom. Review: Lenny Bartulin’s fans excited by his visit to our shores this month; and the inimitable John Safran brings us his fascinating What ideology, in either the West or the East, exuberant new novel takes take on life and death (and sex and race) in the American South in Murder in Mississippi. allows a family to move through a changing place in 1830, in what was political scene to retain the very essence of then an isolated corner of the Finally, the most astonishing book production of the year may well be Joe Sacco’s new graphic novel faith and tradition? Lahiri’s work examines British Empire – Van Diemen’s The Great War, which unfolds into a seven-metre long panorama depicting the first day of the Battle of these boundaries of philosophy and family Land. The nascent colony the Somme. It wordlessly expresses so much of the waste and madness of that day, and simultaneously ties. By illustrating two paths taken, she exists in a state of near reminds us of the values we need to hold on to if we are to consider ourselves ‘civilised’. does not resolve the question but does firmly anarchy, filled as it is with convicts, settlers, enforce how the political is personal. This opportunists and a still unbowed native is a wonderful novel of intricacy and, population, jostling for power under a thin THE FULL RIDICULOUS he puts his scenes together. The plot is action veneer of official governance. The plot is a rich overall, compassion for those caught in Mark Lamprell driven and fast paced, the novel short enough to changing times. tapestry of highly believable characters and maintain suspense without being exhausting. The Text. PB. $29.99 gripping conflicts, at the centre of which is a prose is quirky and snappy; I managed to tear Christine Gordon is Readings’ Events crazed half-English mulatto called Brown Review: After finishingThe through this book in a couple of sittings. Coordinator George Coyne, hiding out in the bush with an Full Ridiculous, it’s hard for me I’d recommend The Full Ridiculous unruly mob of disgruntled brigands and a to imagine that the phrase, for anyone wanting an entertaining, lighthearted pilfered fortune, plotting a coup against the ‘somehow it feels like the world read – it’s been categorised as being in the British regime in Hobart Town. Coyne is a is against me’, has ever been same vein as The Rosie Project and The Curious Australian wonderfully theatrical creation, reminiscent of more apt than for the character Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Joseph Conrad’s Mr Kurtz in Heart of of Michael O’Dell. While out on Ella Mittas is a freelance reviewer Fiction Darkness, and one who embodies the violence one of his daily jogs, he is hit by a car, and that’s and megalomania of the imperial project. His only the beginning. opposite in the novel is William Burr, a Although he’s fine – physically – after Perfect North The Antibiography of high-minded, seasoned pirate-catcher sent for the crash, Michael struggles to get back into Jenny Bond Robert F. Menzies from Belize by the po-faced Lieutenant everyday life. As the plot unfolds his luck gets Little, Brown. PB. Was $29.99 Bernard Cohen Governor George Arthur to capture Coyne. horrifyingly bad; a string of events trigger one Special price $25.95 The action takes place over three another like a set of dominoes, with Michael in a HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 Review: During the warm days, which, along with a bewilderingly long crumpled heap at the end of the row. His teenage summer of 1897, Sweden sent a Review: In the early years list of characters, lends the novel a dizzyingly children give him grief, his wife waits patiently for hot air balloon to the Arctic with of the Howard government, frenetic pace. Bartulin exhibits a convincing him to pull his weight financially, he’s lost his job the aim of being the first country the Liberal Party regularly command of the contemporary lexicon which and the book he’s writing is flailing – it’s a bad to reach the North Pole. By the evoked the legacy of its runs through the prose as well as the dialogue, scene all over. His misfortune, however, makes for end of summer, it was clear: the founder and Australia’s creating an immersive atmosphere of historical really enjoyable reading, and the worse Michael’s three men had not made it, and longest-serving prime minister, authenticity. The highly assured description situation got the faster I seemed to read. they had not survived. Thirty-three years later the Sir Robert Gordon Menzies. evokes a sense of the disconcerting novelty Told in the second person, an often remains of the men are found in the ice on the The Menzies era symbolised a mythical experienced by natives and settlers alike. cynical narrator reminds Michael of things like: island of Kvitøya; Knut Stubbendorff, a young ‘golden age’ of no-nonsense Australian Although some of the threads feel ‘You remember most of that year like you never journalist, is on hand to make the discovery. Along culture, which the new government sought to truncated, overall Bartulin juggles his large forget the squeal of nails down a blackboard.’ with the bodies are their effects, their notes, and in emulate. Bernard Cohen’s fifth novel, however, cast and complex plot with aplomb, and I There’s humour in Michael’s hopelessness as the case of balloonist Nils Strindberg, letters to his posits Howard’s rhetorical resurrection of particularly enjoyed an unconventional ending he assesses all of his flaws as a husband, father fiancée back home. Disillusioned with the greed of Menzies as also a literal one, returning him that refused to cave to the clichés of ‘Western’ and man, and I couldn’t help but laugh, despite his newspaper, Stubbendorff decides he needs from the dead. narratives. The novel is a panoramic vision of how terrible his situation gets. to do something the scientists will not, and, with The revived Menzies – at first little the madness and mayhem of Australia’s early Although this is his debut novel, it’s three decades lost, deliver these letters to Anna more than a shadow in the background of colonial experience and a highly enjoyable obvious Mark Lamprell has a bit of experience Charlier, their intended recipient. government press conferences – quickly raucous adventure. under his belt. Lamprell’s written mostly for the Perfect North is less the story grows, both in strength and apathy. screen; he co-wrote the filmBabe: Pig in the City, Charlotte Colwill is from Readings St Kilda of the explorers’ last days than the tale of Disillusioned with the modern world, he soon and this background really shows in the way Readings MONTHLY october 2013 7 those left behind. Anna’s entanglement way to the family property. On arrival, the group is with the Strindberg family is one that on the confronted by the sighting of a poacher on their surface seems full of delight – and to the ranch. While spying the trespasser through the lonely Stubbendorff, a relationship of almost scope of a rifle, the boy pulls the trigger. unimaginable affection – but at home, miles In the aftermath, Vann tackles away from Nils’s love letters, the Strindberg philosophical and theological themes. He peppers brothers have their own devastation to deliver. the story with meditations on the Cain and Abel This is a love story with a broken heart, during narrative and asks why we would kill, and whether a time of exploration and long distances with no we’re hard-wired to do so. Vann explores the Skype to fix any miscommunications. masculine family dynamic and the importance, With journal entries from the expedition or relevance, of tradition in our modern culture, – which, astonishingly, did actually happen – and in particular a culture that worships the gun. a liberal dose of misfortune, Jenny Bond has Alongside this, he evokes the landscape created a moving story. By the end, I couldn’t beautifully and Goat Mountain itself is as important shake the thought that from a balloon, there a character as those of flesh and blood. is no way to tell you have arrived at the North I will be recommending this brutal and Pole; their destination was as imprecise as the darkly beautiful novel wholeheartedly leading relationships they left behind. up to Christmas, although I know it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But those who do enjoy Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton it, such as myself, will find it to be masterful. Tide Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton John Kinsella Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 GHOST MOTH Michèle Forbes The coast and dreams of being Orion. PB. $24.99 by the water are never far away in John Kinsella’s surprising Review: Swimming in the stories of Australian small town Irish Sea is bound to tempt Celtic life. They summon in us both gods and mythical creatures that longing and fear at the seduce or destroy. Selkies are recollection of our own said to live as seals in water, yet childhoods, families, friends and upbringings. A shed their skins on land seeking boy builds a rocket from 44-gallon drums and those dissatisfied with life … and packing cases, a lone farmer travels to London to thus Ghost Moth opens with glimpse the snow his late mother once spoke of, Katherine Bedford almost drowning in the face of a and inseparable mates relocate to the inner city. seal – whose eyes ‘hold on her like the lustrous But the elemental mystery of place, of the black-egged eyes of a ruined man’ – that her country, of the sea, invariably draws them back. husband, watching from the shore, never sees. It is summer 1969 and Katherine is THE STORYTELLER AND married to George with four children living in HIS THREE DAUGHTERS Belfast. A council worker and firefighter, he is constantly called out to battle the increasing Lian Hearn violence and arson across the city. They are Headline. PB. $29.99 one of the few Catholic families remaining in It’s 1884 in Tokyo, and for fifty the neighbourhood and tensions are flared. years Sei, a storyteller, has been Schoolchildren are getting belted and their a master of his art, but now he is daughters – Maureen, Elizabeth and Elsa – start starting to wonder if the new to fear the world around them. It’s against this world has left him behind. Just backdrop that the narrative swings, returning to An unforgettable story of when he thinks he will never write a summer twenty years before when Katherine again, his own life and the lives of was singing in Bizet’s Carmen and young lovers betrayal, tragedy and the people around him begin to spiral downwards were courting. Here we meet Tom McKinley, the beauty of lasting love providing the inspiration for the greatest story he the master tailor, who is head-over-heels for has ever told. Set against the backdrop of Katherine – already engaged to steadfast Japan’s first incursions into Korea and a George. The stage is set for tragedy, however changing political landscape, he bears witness to the emotional punches are diffused across a love entanglement so strange and threatening characters, the strongest of which rests upon that not even his audiences will believe it. Elsa’s relationship with her mother and how she will emerge as a young woman in this new – not so pretty – world of troubled Belfast. International This is Michèle Forbes’s first novel, and it comes highly praised by her Irish compatriots – Roddy Doyle, John Banville and Anne Enright Fiction – echoing their talent for shining light upon the ordinary and domestic. The book’s imagery GOAT MOUNTAIN overshadows its plot and colours moments of David Vann sentimentality, yet it allows the lyricism to work its Text. PB. $29.99 way beneath the skin, until you are unsure who has changed and who is to blame for this difficult Review: Goat Mountain is a and desperate history of family and country. ride of a novel. It’s dark, brooding, violent, powerful and brilliant Luke May is a freelance reviewer because David Vann knows how to place the reader right alongside THE SIGNATURE OF ALL his characters, whether we want THINGS to be there or not. Elizabeth Gilbert The narrator, a young boy, transports us The stunning new novel from one of Bloomsbury. PB. Was $30 back to a Northern Californian summer of 1978. Special price $24.95 Australia’s most celebrated writers At the age of eleven he’s on a hunting trip with his grandfather, his father, and his father’s best Review: The Signature of All friend, Tom. The boy is bursting with excitement: Things is a sprawling story of this trip marks his rite of passage from boyhood botany, nineteenth-century to manhood and this year he’ll be allowed to kill scientific development, ALEX MILLER his first buck. He’s also nostalgic for a time that herbariums, sea voyages, love, isn’t his and angry that there are fewer animals death, old books and Photo credit © John Tsiavis to hunt than there were twenty-five years earlier. abolitionists. The protagonist is Itching to kill, the boy fantasises about shooting Alma Whittaker, born in 1800 and daughter of the birds as he rides in the back of the pickup on the world’s richest botanical importer; she’s a child 8 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

genius who dedicates her life to plants. We grow known, expert pacing and a flair for imagery What up with Alma, experience her childhood, make this a top read for lovers of history, education, sexual awakening, first love, sailing thrillers and just good writing. I trips, suffering and joy. It also might prod thoughts of current Emily Gale The book is a type of coming-of- political parallels – the corruption of justice Children's Book Buyer age story, but the bulk of the narrative takes in the name of security, the persecution of Loved place while Alma is in her fifties. Elizabeth minorities in the media and the cover-ups of the Gilbert foregrounds the interests, passions and power elite, for instance – shaping the century The Idea of Perfection heartbreak of a woman in her middle-age, unlike as the Dreyfus Affair did in its day. This book will Kate Grenville so many stories which position certain events, engage as much as entertain. Picador. PB. $22.95 like a characters’ first love and the negotiation of Jason Cotter is a freelance reviewer My reading of Kate Grenville’s 1999 novel, the one she says brought a little- sex, as achievements to be completed early in known Australian author international recognition (it won Britain’s Women’s life. The story is therefore refreshing and feels Prize for Fiction, previously the Orange Prize), was a signifier of several new highly particular – almost like a biography. THE PURE GOLD BABY beginnings for me. It was a gift from a close friend as I was emigrating from The Signature of All Things is Margaret Drabble London to live in Melbourne. This friend and I had shared a crush on Australia meticulously researched, which adds to Text. PB. $29.99 the sense of reality. Real-life characters like since we were at university together and, as we said goodbye, her simple act of giving me this book Review: The ‘pure gold Captain Cook and Joseph Banks populate the was suffused with meaning. I started reading it on the plane, marking the start of an adventure for my baby’ of the title is Anna, a baby text, and the story is loaded with detail of plant family, a literary crush on Kate Grenville and my newfound devotion to Australian fiction. born in the 1960s to life and botany, evolutionary theories, ancient From the beginning I relished the company of the main characters, the aptly named Harley Savage and anthropology student Jessica. texts, languages and printing processes. Douglas Cheeseman, who were destined for a pleasingly atypical romance. Spying out of the window Anna results from Jessica’s affair I enjoyed the proliferation of different of his room above a pub in the remote country town of Karakarook, Douglas first sees Harley as ‘a big with an older, married professor. types of male and female characters; men and rawboned plain person, tall and unlikely … Her head just came up out of the tee-shirt saying, Here I am, Despite the taboos of being a women alike are portrayed as crazy, brilliant, and who do you think you are?’ Meanwhile, ill-at-ease Douglas is a man who has suffered a wretched single mother, Jess commits to raising her generous, thrifty, ugly, beautiful, spiritual and childhood because of jugged ears and an awkward face, ‘a man no one would look at twice’, who’s daughter alone, and sets up a stable and loving practical. Almost all the characters are white, convinced himself he’s stopped caring but still quietly longs to be ‘another sort of man’. home. When Anna fails to meet developmental but Gilbert is highly sensitive to the issues of milestones, Jess takes her for specialist racial slavery at the time, carefully describing the Yet they become each other’s balance, slowly and awkwardly; while Douglas, an engineer, is in assessment. The novel does not make clear in shame of the white community’s attitudes and Karakarook to supervise the demolition of an old bridge, Harley is there to preserve the town’s history. The terms of diagnosis what is wrong with Anna, but it the lack of action. small-town setting is at once a microcosm, a place of oppressive heat and society, a barren landscape is clear that she is a ‘special needs child’. Despite Gilbert’s writing style is highly with nowhere to hide, but cleverly the only sort of place where a story like this, and characters like these, this, Anna is happy, and she gets on well with descriptive, and it sometimes felt as though can find room to breathe. Grenville gently pokes fun at the detail of Karakarook, like the pub serving everyone in the local playgroup and community. she was simply listing events in the characters’ ‘corned beef with white sauce and three veg’, but she also makes it a refuge for these unhappy misfits. The book is anthropological in its structure; lives to demonstrate the passage of time. I Felicity Porcelline, the banker’s wife and former beauty who’s leading a far less exciting life than she’d Jess and Anna’s life is observed in a somewhat soon realised that these moments reflected the planned, is a brilliant vehicle for what might be called ‘polite racism’. Suspecting that the local butcher, detached fashion by a couple of Jessica’s botanical taxonomies that Alma so carefully Freddy Chang, is deeply in love with her (and why wouldn’t he be, she’s a former Palmolive model) friends. The reader never hears directly from Jess builds and cherishes, and so actually mirrored Felicity finds that her gut instincts and better judgement are at odds. ‘She was no racist, and wanted him and this can be frustrating at times. Alma’s thought processes and desires. This to know that she did not count it against him, him being Chinese. The trouble was, not wanting to be Jess’s anthropological interests is a well-written and intriguing book, full of thought racist always seemed to make her too friendly.’ To her surprise and confusion, Felicity’s brand of include the (1960s term) lobster-clawed children warmth, wit, historical research and, at the friendliness eventually extends itself to Freddy Chang’s trouser fly. of Africa with whom she first became acquainted centre, an endearing main character. on an expedition to Central Africa. Her interest in For its eye-opening setting (to this Brit at least), use of humour and stunning empathy, The Idea of Julia Tulloh is a freelance reviewer difference, and its treatment, makes up a great Perfection has been a much-loved rite of passage. Life in a new country can leave you floundering, deal of the book – as Anna’s needs change but Harley and Douglas reminded me that so too can the place you call home. AN OFFICER AND A SPY and Jess furthers her studies, she examines Robert Harris residential and day treatment for children like her daughter. Here Drabble provides a Hutchinson. PB. Was $32.95 fascinating history into ‘asylums’, schools and Special price $27.95 even the language used to describe disability. Review: Labelled a traitor Jess is also called upon to assist her severely and a spy for arch enemy depressed friend Steve, and through his story Germany, Alsatian Army Officer the history of ’60s and ’70s experimental Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his psychology is examined. rank before 20,000 Parisians As much as this book is about chanting ‘Death to the Jew’, motherhood and particularly the courage of and then hastily deported to single mothers, it is also about community – Devil’s Island in French Guiana, an ocean away, namely, the way a community can band together for a life of solitary confinement. Intelligence to support the neediest. Jess and Anna remain in Officer Georges Picquart watches on, reporting the same locality for much of their lives, and as back on proceedings to the Minister of War and memories and connections resurface, this is what Chief of Intelligence, head of the unit that first ultimately sustains them. put the finger on Dreyfus. Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn When Picquart discovers the traitor is still operating but ignores official warnings not to pursue the matter, the consequences are much THE CIRCLE more than he’d bargained for, both personally Dave Eggers and for his beloved France. Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99 So begins Picquart’s long-lost- When Mae Holland is hired to but-now-found journal, and Robert Harris’s work for the Circle, the world’s re-telling of the Dreyfus Affair, the infamous most powerful internet miscarriage of justice and corruption case company, she feels she’s been that straddles 12 of the Third Republic’s most given the opportunity of a The perfect match for a good read? politically polarising years. lifetime. As Mae tours the Harris is best known for his open-plan office spaces of the A glass of Brown Brothers wine. alternative history Fatherland, in which the sprawling Californian campus, with towering Nazis won the war, and his Ancient Rome glass dining facilities and cosy dorms for novels, beginning with Pompeii. Here he’s Enter code those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled stuck closer to the facts, yet brings to vivid life with the company’s modernity and activity. ‘Readings’ turn-of-the-century Paris and the famed players There are parties that last through the night, in the scandal, including Émile Zola, writer at the checkout and receive famous musicians playing on the lawn, and * of J’Accuse, which claimed an anti-Semitic even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from $10 OFF conspiracy in the highest ranks of the military, the Marianas Trench by the CEO. But what government and Catholic Church. begins as the captivating story of Mae’s Visit www.brownbrothers.com.au Those who like to take their history ambition and idealism soon becomes a novel to enjoy our full range of wines riding alongside George MacDonald Fraser’s of suspense, raising questions about memory, Flashman might find Harris’s smarter and less history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of * Spend $120 or more and enter your special code at checkout. May not morally bereft Picquart shorter on laughs but be used in conjunction with any other offer. Offer expires 29 Nov 2013. human knowledge. longer on thrills; though the story might be Readings MONTHLY october 2013 9 in conversation THE NEW with RICHARD John Safran FLANAGAN LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER COPY IN STORE 23 SEPTEMBER Belle Place interviews John Safran about his new

true-crime novel, Murder in Mississippi, the story of Pre-order your signed, a white supremacist and his black killer. hardcover copy of The Narrow Road to the Deep North at the special price of For many readers, Mississippi typifies the Deep South and brings to mind typical associations $32.95 and receive a FREE copy of Gould’s Book of Fish* – cotton fields, slavery, the blues. Tell us about the Mississippi that you encountered, and the everyday lives of the people that live there? *While stocks last. Original RRP $39.95. I’ve heard the expression: ‘The Jews are like everyone else, only more so.’ Mississippians are like this too. Like in my hometown, in Jewish Melbourne, everyone doesn’t know that they’re slightly mad. Race and history and suspicion courses through Mississippians. Everything gets back to race in Mississippi as surely as everything gets back to AFL in Melbourne. Everyone’s a little broken. They value parochialism, not cosmopolitanism. They don’t ask you about kangaroos and Aborigines, like everyone in New York and LA does. There is extreme self-segregation, all done quietly, and only getting more pronounced. The BRILLIANT OCTOBER READS city of Jackson is black. The neighbouring Rankin County is white. from the Australian Small Publisher of the Year You first met Richard Barrett [the murdered white supremacist at the centre of the book] in 2010, while making Race Relations. What were your feelings of Barrett before he was murdered and, now without access to his testimony, how did they change as you were writing the book? Richard Barrett annoyed me when I was filming Race Relations. I thought he wasn’t good ‘talent’ for my purpose. I needed a loudmouth overt racist as my foil for the prank. He was so evasive and careful and wouldn’t quite say things. This evasiveness transformed into a positive, investigating his murder and writing a book. A man with secrets is someone worth writing about. A man with secrets is good ‘talent’ for a true crime. I didn’t learn to love him.

There’s a lot of controversy, and mystery, surrounding Barrett’s personal life – allegations over whether he was gay, and indeed whether he was in a relationship with his killer. How did you mediate town gossip, so to speak, with your fact-finding mission? The Full The Pure In Praise Goat The Story of The book digs up so much. Having said that, I learnt that people’s improvable gossip (and people Ridiculous Gold Baby of Ageing Mountain a New Name withholding what they really know) tells a story too: about the gossiping person, about small towns and MARK MARGARET PATRICIA DAVID ELENA about human beings. Even though I was infuriated by people misleading and withholding during my six LAMPRELL DRABBLE EDGAR VANN FERRANTE months research, I was pretty happy when I was typing the book in Melbourne, realising this builds a colourful and truthful world. TEXTPUBLISHING.COM.AU

‘A man with secrets is someone worth writing about. A man with secrets is good ‘talent’ for a true crime.’ OCTOBER RELEASES

True-crime documentaries, I’m thinking most recently of The Imposter, show us that people are attracted to telling a story only in their own way. In writing true crime, how do you tell a reliable narrator from an unreliable? ‘I’m urging I learnt that everyone is an unreliable narrator. Even people that aren’t trying to be. The killer’s mum says everyone I Richard pulled up to the house in a car. The killer’s aunt says it was a bicycle. A man wilfully lying tells me know to give something about his character (assuming I can pick up that he’s lying). And I’m a storyteller writing about Thank You for characters, not the district attorney. Lying, deceptive people work well for me. Possibly better than those Your Service just a few pages, a few vanilla truth tellers! minutes out of How does one engage with the pathology of a murderer, and enter a cooperation of sorts? Namely, their busy lives. The families how important was having his first-hand narrative to the integrity of the book? honoured in ‘A fascinating history … I can’t imagine this book not being personal. My conversations with the killer are organic and un- this urgent, telling the stories of the micromanaged and running on impulse, my sub-conscience and my life leading up to the conversations. important book many people who have Like most conversations. The book’s integrity comes from the reader understanding this is the framework. I’m will take it from dedicated their lives to there.’ finding out the truth as far as this method can find out the truth. I’m not pitching things as the infallible truth. making newspapers.’ KATHERINE BOO BOOKS+PUBLISHING You’ve recently launched a series on ABC radio around, in part, the ethics of investigating and writing true crime. What issues, of this sort, did you encounter while writing Murder in Mississippi? This was my least problematic creative endeavour. I suppose there’s red meat for people out to get me. You’re a white interloper! Who are you to judge people? Who are you to reveal other people’s secrets? But ultimately, the only case against investigating and telling this story is if there is somehow a problem with telling any story. I was straight with people I spoke to in Mississippi (pretty much) and straight with the reader (pretty much). I did break a few eggs making the omelette but I don’t hide these from the reader.

Tell us about the crime novels that you’ve read in the past, particularly those that you used as reference for this project? I had only read one true crime (that I can recall) before quite recently, The Needle and the Damage Done. It was ghost written by my friend Jack Marx. I had read long ago Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer, a book about a true crime. That one canvases truth and storytelling. It’s great. Kind of like a muscle tears and grows back stronger, that’s what that book did to my brain. After Richard was killed but before it occurred to me to write a true crime, I read The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, because there was The author of The Edited by veteran Accidental Guerrilla journalist Margaret the words devil and magic on the cover, two old interests of mine. The publisher decidedly underplays it’s a The rich, vital prose, takes us out of the Simons, this is a and its profound true-crime book. So I basically accidentally read a true crime. I loved it. Amazon said if I like that I’d also like mountains, and into fascinating collection insight into the human In Cold Blood. So I bought that (from a local bricks and mortar not Amazon, so no bitching Readings! I have the complex security of stories from condition, make this the receipt!). Amazon said if I liked In Cold Blood I’d also like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. threats of the world’s Australia’s new-media wonderful novel a true Two weeks after reading that, the blobs congealed in my brain that the two most famous true-crime books coastal cities. entrepreneurs. modern classic. involved the author infiltrating a small rural American town – and my Richard story could be just that. Full interview at www.readings.com.au. 10 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

The Story of a As in Freud’s talking cure, the effect is New Name of the poems ‘working out’ their own meaning. We see the inner workings of the poem and the Dead Write Elena Ferrante New Crime poet – the subject works through intimations with Fiona Hardy Text. PB. $29.99 of ideas to illuminations. We are reminded of The sequel to My Brilliant Friend, Mallarmé’s conception of words ‘[lighting] each this is an extraordinary novel other through reciprocal reflections’. In Beesley’s Detective Sergeant Paula McIntyre is still in the about two young women, Lila ‘A1 Bakery’: ‘The noun / collection. A collection book business, and when she is put on the case of a and Elena, growing up in Naples of poems (grief) the clipped organisation / in the missing woman who looks a lot like a body that in the early 1960s. At sixteen Lila word and, working to define it, I sit down’. of has just been dumped, the investigation by her marries the shopkeeper Stefano. The title, too, with its reference to new DCI who has replaced Jordan goes She is filled with pleasure at her paper – a tool of creativity – alludes to the act seriously awry. Torn between loyalty to her new of writing, to its textures, scents and warmth. the team and needing the help of her old team, new wealth, and horror at the life she has chosen. Elena’s own attempts at romance seem to be We are always conscious of the poem being McIntyre walks a fine line that threatens to sabotaged by Lila's turbulent affairs. As she tries written, of being crafted from something rather month endanger the case and her own place in it. But to plot her way out of poverty via academic and than occurring out of nothing. Its process is as justice, as Jordan taught her, is the most literary success, her constant anxiety is that she significant as the final product. Cross and Burn important thing of all. is just a shadow of the brilliant Lila. Beesley strikes a fine balance between Val McDermid Val McDermid has created a full roster the abstract and the lyrical. As an artist and of characters that are exactly the kind of police Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 Married Life musician as well as a poet, he has a knack for team you’d want on your side: determined, cinematic and romantic narratives that offer a Review: Detective Chief Inspector Carol trustworthy, close and all utterly clever. The pain David Vogel sensual, emotional payout for the reader: ‘You Jordan’s Major Incident Team is in tatters: the suffered by Jordan and Hill – both plagued Scribe. HB. $32.95 wear your aubergine swimmers that answer to no people she counted as her closest associates by guilt – is brutal, and you feel for them: any Married Life, first published in one. I peel you.’ – both professionally and publicly – are in new headway they make seems earned, not tacked jobs, or unemployed, or in rehab. Targeted by a on. Cross and Burn is a police procedural 1929, is David Vogel’s magnum Jessica Alice Smith is a freelance reviewer opus – a sweeping portrait of a psycho who killed her brother and his partner made honest by things like budget cutbacks, doomed marriage and a in a savage display of bloodshed, she has no infighting, and real people with differing doomed city. Set in Vienna, the one: not her parents who blame her for their attitudes (and enthusiasm) for police work. novel tells of the relationship Graphic Novels son’s death, nor profiler Dr Tony Hill, whose Cross and Burn sees yet more between the penniless writer lack of insight Jordan blames for the murder. women locked in boxes (sigh), so this Rudolf Gurdweill and Baroness THE GREAT WAR Holed up in her brother’s barn, she wants to excellently satisfying English crime thriller is Thea von Takow, who treats her husband with Joe Sacco stay out of everything, including life. But perhaps best read surrounded by a crowd. cruelty and disdain. In spite of this, Gurdweill Random House. HB. Was $49.95 struggles to find the will to leave his wife, even Special price $39.95 when the devoted Lotte Bondheim offers him the Launched on 1 July 1916, Getting Warmer Murder and prospect of true happiness. Yet this is no mere the Battle of the Somme Alan Carter story of a love triangle. With decadence and Mendelssohn has come to epitomise the Fremantle Press. PB. $29.99 poverty existing side by side, Vienna is depicted Kerry Greenwood madness of the First World as a city on the brink of collapse – a haunting Alan Carter’s first book,Prime A&U. PB. $22.99 War. Almost 20,000 British prefigurement of the horrors to come. Cut, was an excellent read: soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were Phryne Fisher, the epitome of Getting Warmer sees the return wounded that first day, and there were more stylish detection, has arrived for of Detective Senior Constable BRIDGET JONES: MAD than one million casualties by the time the her twentieth outing, her Philip ‘Cato’ Kwong, out of the offensive halted a few months later. In The Great particular skills shining through ABOUT THE BOY Stock Squad and helping to find War, cartoonist Joe Sacco – widely hailed as the when the unpleasant conductor Helen Fielding the body of a 15-year-old girl creator of war reportage comics – depicts the Hugh Tregennis is roundly Jonathan Cape. PB. Was $32.95 after DSC Lara Sumich discovers blood leaking events of that day in an extraordinary, 24-foot- murdered. Out of his depth, Special price $27.95 from beneath a bathroom door in a nightclub. long, accordion-fold wordless panorama. Detective Inspector Jack Robinson calls on When Helen Fielding wrote Set in Fremantle’s searing heat, with killers and Phryne and, as always, she readies her baton to corruption almost as common as flies,Getting Bridget Jones’ Diary, charting the command her own personal band of troops. life of a 30-something singleton in Warmer is a crime read set for spring. London in the 1990s, the book Anthology He Who Kills the was quickly published in 40 The Stone Boy Dragon countries and has sold more THE BEST OF THE LIFTED Sophie Loubiere Leif G. W. Persson than 15 million copies worldwide. BROW: VOLUME ONE Sphere. PB. $29.99 With her third instalment, Bridget Jones: Mad Doubleday. PB. $32.95 Ronnie Scott (ed.) The Stone Boy was adored in about the Boy, Fielding introduces us to a new Hunter Publishers. PB. $29.95 Evert Bäckström is one of the France, and has now arrived on phase of Bridget’s life in contemporary London, more ungainly detectives Since 2007, The Lifted Brow has our shores. An elderly woman, including the challenges of maintaining sex around, though his lack of good published hot local talent like with severed family ties, arrives appeal as the years roll by and the nightmare of personal-health choices are Benjamin Law, Romy Ash and back in her old neighbourhood drunken texting, the disastrous email cc, and a more than made up for with Anna Krien alongside after years away. It’s not as total lack of Twitter followers. extensive humour and an ability international stars like Karen Madame Preau remembers, to fall into the correct solution. Russell, Heidi Julavits and and the new people next door have two lovely A murder is more than it seems, and Bäckström David Foster Wallace. The Best children – and one who is quiet and listless, who is the one to see it. A dark, realistic procedural Poetry of The Lifted Brow celebrates the last five years, she can’t keep out of her mind. Not able to care with a punchy thread of humour, it doesn’t paint presenting strange, sharp fiction from Frank for her own grandson, she takes it upon herself the Swedish police force particularly well but New Works on Paper Moorhouse, Christos Tsiolkas and Rick Moody, to care for this one. A taut psychological thriller. then, the mischievous Bäckström is not your Luke Beesley and personal essay and reportage that ranges typical police officer. Giramondo. PB. $24 wide and digs deep: Luke Ryan gets cancer Police: A Harry Hole Review: Reading Luke twice, Michaela McGuire sabotages her casino thriller job, and Alice Pung discovers just how different Beesley’s latest poetry collection Jo Nesbo Also Available New Works on Paper is akin to girls can grow up to be. Harvill Secker. PB. Was $32.95 The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon dreaming about a dream. The Speical price $27.95 Alexander McCall Smith poems are surreal yet KILL YOUR DARLINGS: Little, Brown. PB. Was $34.95. Harry Hole, one of fiction’s commonplace, cerebral yet ISSUE 15 Speical price $29.95 most readable investigators, is unceremonious and tender. In Rebecca Starford (ed.) these works, Beesley demonstrates poetry as in a coma. Nevertheless, the The Prayer Philip Kerr Kill Your Darlings. PB. $19.95 process: how a poem – ‘a picked up op-shop narrative can, and will, go on Quercus. PB. $26.95 In this issue, Michelle Dicinoski without him – and how. Police guitar, untuned’ – and its meaning comes into The Next Time You See Me Holly Goddard Jones tackles the long-overdue need officers are being killed at the being. His method is reminiscent of Freud’s Atlantic Books. PB. $29.99 psychoanalysis and Jungian dream analysis. for marriage equality in Australia, scenes of crimes they couldn’t Beesley plays with the material and symbolic Laura Jean McKay travels to solve, and where the best shot at figuring The Strangler’s Honeymoon Hakan Nesser qualities of words and makes associations from Indonesia and examines the things out is not the floundering Head of Police, Mantle. PB. $29.99 nature of cultural exchange, and Mikael Bellman, but a certain someone who homonyms and rhyme: ‘If you unable a word The Watcher Charlotte Link Sam Twyford-Moore interviews needs to wake up. But will Hole waking from from itself it becomes a sword. If you unable / a Orion. PB. $29.99 word from its shelf – feminine and utterly herself the French author Laurent Binet. With new fiction his coma cause even more blood to be shed? – it moves un- / noticed in her mouth’. from Daniel Ducrou and Melanie Joosten. Jo Nesbo, as per usual, delivers tension and Treasure Hunt Andrea Camilleri readability in spades. Mantle. PB. $24.99 Readings MONTHLY october 2013 11

New Young Adult Fiction Writing Like See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 16. Punching Somebody The moment Sawyer and Reena kiss, their lives change forever. Their whirlwind romance comes book Ellena Savage on stylised confessions and self-curation crashing down when one day Sawyer leaves in the diaries and essays of Joan Didion, Susan Sontag of without a word and a devastated Reena finds herself pregnant and alone. and Sylvia Plath. Skip forward almost three years the and Reena has her life somewhat sorted out. The main problem with feelings is that nobody wants to hear about yours. Except for me. And maybe She has her beautiful daughter, a supportive the other literary voyeurs, whose preference is to read about your raw and pained inner life, but only if month boyfriend and plans to get the hell out of her this pain of yours is elegantly expressed. For me, the best of these stylised confessions are contained town as soon as possible. But once again her in the notebooks of three great modern writers: the diaries of Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) and Susan How to Love life is interrupted when Sawyer returns just Sontag (1933–2004), and the essays of Joan Didion (b.1934). as quietly as he left, wanting Reena and his Katie Cotugno Plath, patron saint of the pained confessional, kept a journal from the age of eleven until her death. daughter to be a part of his life. Quercus. PB. $19.99 They are powerful reading, with episodic narratives and astutely observed characters (‘Linda is the sort I abso-freakin’-lutely loved this of girl you don’t remember when you meet her for the second time’). But they also document Plath’s Review: What happens when the boy you’ve book. The characters are flawed and realistic, unstable mental health: ‘I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual’; ‘I love been in love with your whole life finally notices tackling a hard situation most teens will never people. Everybody’; ‘I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself’. Her husband, Ted Hughes, you? You kiss him, of course, followed by experience. But on top of the pregnancy is a fun, burnt her final journal because he ‘didn’t want her children to have to read it’. romantic dates, sneaky make-out sessions and captivating love story, which hooked me in and a life full of love and happiness … well, that’s had me pushing the book into my friends’ hands Like Plath, Sontag kept a journal throughout her teenage years and beyond, arbitrating her intellectual what Reena had always hoped for but when her once I had finished. Ages 14 up. growth rigorously. She is hard on herself, setting boundaries about her eating and reading habits, and one true love, Sawyer LeGrande, finally notices about feeling lovelorn, often: ‘It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any her, life doesn’t go the way she had planned. Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.’ Sontag’s journals are also full of delightful lists, of things she likes (‘fires, Venice, tequila, sunsets, babies, silent films, heights, coarse salt’), and things she dislikes (‘sleeping in an apartment alone, cold weather, couples, football games, swimming, for dedicated readers of dystopic and post- Vango anchovies’), and of the qualities she aspires to. And while Didion’s not primarily a diarist, her essays apocalyptic fiction 14 years plus. Timothée de Fombelle frequently meditate on the fashioning of oneself through the act of writing. Walker. HB. $24.95 Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda In the safety of my own (unpublished) journal, I reflect on profound topics, such as: The nature of Review: I’ll admit it, I had love! The fear of rejection! Unfounded and unreasonable complaints against me! Weight gain! Being misgivings about this book; I All the Truth That’s a grown-up person! and, Wondering who might have a crush on me! Compared with Sontag, and the couldn’t see how the story of a in Me immortal diary entry: ‘[t]alking like touching/Writing like punching somebody,’ there is very little in novice priest’s ordination Julie Berry defence of my own efforts; very little punch in my prose. would be relevant to a young HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 adult. But from the moment our Review: Four years ago Judith hero nimbly scales the heights ‘What it doesn’t say is: when you write three pages of whatever in a snuck out to meet up with her best of the Notre Dame Cathedral, I was hooked. friend who was to reveal to Judith notebook every day, your journals will not read like Plath’s. Strange Vango is a compelling adventure that who she was secretly having an begins in Paris in 1934 and sweeps across and boring entries are hazards of this habit.’ affair with. But while Judith waits, Europe, Russia and South America, weaving she witnesses something horrific real historical characters, places and events and then disappears. Two years later she returns, I began writing a journal consistently a few years ago after Mum forced Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s into a young man’s quest for the truth. Pursued but instead of elation from her friends and family, Way on me. Despite its off-putting self-helpish tone, this book offered a morsel of the best advice I’d by sinister figures for a crime he did not she is met with scorn and forced to live a life of ever received: write three pages of whatever in a notebook every day. What it doesn’t say is: when you commit, Vango must uncover the secrets of his silence; Judith has come back mutilated. write three pages of whatever in a notebook every day, your journals will not read like Plath’s. Strange and mysterious childhood by seeking out a cast of As time goes on, Judith creates a quiet boring entries are hazards of this habit. In one bizarrely self-aggrandising entry, I write that ‘my supervisor cryptic characters. life for herself, invisible to her family and townsfolk, believes I am a career liability’, and in another, that ‘I have measured out my life in emotionally unresponsive As I breathlessly raced through the until one day word of an imminent attack rushes boyfriends.’ There are notes on some of my daily happenings, and profiles of people from my life, but only final pages I realised this story was far from through the town and people are advised to flee. really if they bring about some kind of self-revelation. This is to say, these journals are all about me, me, me. over. Vango’s quest for answers left me with Now Judith needs to decide whether to remain even more questions. But I know one thing In her essay, ‘On Keeping a Notebook’, Didion writes that she imagines ‘the notebook is about other silent or return to the person who permanently for sure: when the sequel is published in people. But of course it is not.’ She goes on to write that her ‘stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned silenced her, a risk that will expose herself and the 2014, I will have no such misgivings. Highly girl in the plaid silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.’ And it is the point, even person she loves to the rest of the town. recommended. if Didion neglects to name it: those of us who are obsessed with our own secret business are desperate to Set in what feels to be the seventeenth see inside other people’s private lives as well. This desire is not predicated on a need to uncover the true or eighteenth century, Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern All the Truth That’s in Me nature of the other, but to imagine what it might be like to inhabit the other’s self-narrative. is remarkably unconventional for the young The Last Girl adult genre. Written in three parts – set before There is so much artifice involved in writing one’s own narrative, in even describing one’s cognitive state and after the event, and also in the present – at any given moment. Diaries are the ultimate bastard child of truth and fiction, bridging that unspeakable Michael Adams the reader is exposed to Judith’s musings, or postmodern dilemma: whose truth? Just because you feel something doesn’t make it empirically true. A&U. PB. $19.99 perhaps letters to her childhood friend, which And just because something’s not empirically true doesn’t make it false. Sontag writes, ‘In the journal I Review: When Danby begins are haunting and raw, making this a thoroughly do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.’ That each of these to hear everyone else’s compelling read that I finished in one sitting.KD writers diarises in crisp, considered prose is also important. They are using their notebooks to sharpen thoughts at a party, it their tools, to train for work. Plath writes: ‘I will be stronger: I will write until I begin to speak my deep self immediately makes her The Eye of Minds: … Every day, writing. No matter how bad. Something will come.’ Considering the curatorial role of the extremely unpopular. But a few Mortality Doctrine diarist – Which truth to reflect on? What to omit? – to what extent are these diarists considering posterity? days later everyone can hear Book 1 A few years ago, flirting with the idea of a relationship, a now ex-boyfriend and I exchanged a series everyone else’s thoughts too and chaos of erotically charged emails. He and I were trying to impress each other, of course, but the thought James Dashner immediately ensues. Strangely, no one can also crossed my mind that, you know, we could make history. What if we became like de Beauvoir and Doubleday. PB. $19.95 hear Danby’s thoughts, which becomes both a Sartre? The question seemed pertinent at the time, and if this had actually happened, it would have been blessing and a curse. Unable to handle the From the author of the bestselling historically negligent to leave behind a trail of boring emails. So, I worked hard on them, just in case. teeming sea of voices in their heads, people Maze Runner series, this is the Plath, whose journal entries capture her lived moments as though they were discrete short stories, begin killing one another, and themselves first book in a series set in a describes this phenomenon best – this consideration of posterity – in writing that her life ‘will not be – and the body count is high. world of hyperadvanced lived until there are books and stories which relive it perpetually in time’. Her journals are, for the most Danby needs to get her little brother technology, cyberterrorists and part, composed in polished, confident prose. Could it be that everything a writer like Plath puts to to the only potential safe place, her mother’s gaming. Michael is a gamer who paper is brilliant? Or are we reading the careful self-curation of the self-conscious diarist? As Didion mountain retreat 100 kilometres away, but she spends more time on the VirtNet famously wrote in The White Album: ‘we tell ourselves stories in order to live.’ Few other artforms so must battle violence, chaos and death to get than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total deftly expose the curation of private selves as journals do. Reading them, then, is thrilling not only there. Like having hundreds of voices in your mind and body immersion and the more hacking because they allow us access to great artists’ interiority and self-fashioning, but because they show head, the narrative of this novel is chaotic skills you have, the more fun. But some us something about our own. As Sontag writes: ‘I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own and confusing, making it sometimes hard to technology is too dangerous to fool with. The edification. I live my life but I don’t live in it.’ read. Set in Sydney, this is a dark vision of a government knows that to catch a hacker, you society gone mad and is the first in a trilogy need a hacker. They’ve been watching Michael Ellena Savage is the arts editor for The Lifted Brow, politics editor for SPOOK Magazine, and by Australian author Michael Adams. Suitable and they want him on their team. writes a monthly culture column for Eureka Street. You can find her at ellenasavage.com. 12 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

how Australia is faring as it enters the Abbott era, Under a Mackerel Sky with explorations of multiculturalism, the future for Rick Stein Labor and the politics of climate change. New Non-Fiction Ebury. PB. Was $35 Special price $29.95 One of Britain’s best-loved billion. Now, he’s gearing up to hand his empire Biography chefs, Rick Stein enjoyed a on to his children, none of whom seem inclined Australian typically idyllic childhood in to accept the challenge. My Mother, My Father 1950s rural Oxfordshire and Susan Wyndham (ed.) Non-Fiction North Cornwall, yet the Quarterly Essay 51: A&U. PB. $29.99 unpredictable moods of his Murder in Mississippi The Prince: Faith, Review: A collection of bipolar father were ever-present – a man who ended up killing himself when Rick John Safran abuse and George Pell essays by fourteen Australian writers, My Mother, My Father was 18. In his memoir Rick traces his journey to Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99 David Marr Australia, Mexico, America and back to Cornwall. Black Inc. PB. $19.99 responds to the universal When filming his television question of how to make sense Following up the explosive series Race Relations, John of the death of a parent. Edited Carry a Big Stick Political Animal, David Marr now Safran spent an uneasy couple by Sydney Morning Herald investigates Cardinal George Tim Ferguson of days with one of Mississippi’s literary editor Susan Wyndham, this suite of Pell, a prominent Catholic leader Hachette. PB. Was $35 most notorious white memoirs comes together around the premise that in Australia and, also, confessor Special price $29.95 supremacists. A year later, he though much has been written about loss and of Tony Abbott. Coming at a time heard the man had been grief, personal stories speak directly to Together with Paul McDermott when the Church’s handling of murdered and, deciding to seize his Truman experience or, at least, provide evidence that one and Richard Fidler, Tim sexual abuse is being closely investigated, Marr Capote moment, Safran jumped on a plane to is not mad or alone. Ferguson was a member of the examines key questions about the Cardinal’s cover the trial. Over the next six months he While the collection’s value as a kind of proactive musical comedy power and influence: What is the source of his travelled deep into the South, meeting literary self-help book should not be underplayed, group, the Doug Anthony All authority? How did he rise to prominence? And campaigners, neighbours, even the killer himself. My Mother, My Father also represents a collective Stars, and in 1994 they were at just how deep does his political influence go? In Murder in Mississippi Safran paints a revealing endeavour to recover lost time. Helen Garner the height of their powers. portrait of a dead man and his murderer. observes in typically direct prose that, ‘I set out to Then, Tim was diagnosed with multiple State of the Nation: write about my mother, but I am already talking sclerosis. With trademark wit and humour, Tim Breaking News Essays for Robert about my father.’ The struggle to recover the lost details life before and after the diagnosis, while Paul Barry Manne object not only after, but also during a lifetime, is telling the story behind DAAS’s rise to fame. A&U. PB. Was $40 expressed by a number of writers. Reflecting on Gwenda Tavan (ed.) her disinterested father, Kathryn Heyman writes, Special price $34.95 Black Inc. PB. $32.99 ‘He doesn’t ask me any questions, not one. Politics Walkley Award-winning journalist In early 2013, La Trobe Curiosity about my life, about anything, is beyond Paul Barry takes a look at the University held a conference at him.’ Grief that existed before the death is utterly Thank You For Your decline of the Murdoch Empire which papers were presented entwined with the grief that follows. Service and asks who will take over from from thinkers who’d previously Not unexpectedly for a collection of Rupert once he dies. At the age worked with, or argued with, memoirs by established writers, this book also David Finkel of 82, Rupert is living through Robert Manne. State of the forms a biography of the writing life. Whether Scribe. PB. $29.95 turbulent times – scandal, divorce – yet is thriving, Nation compiles these original they tried to snuff the spark of inspiration or fan Review: David Finkel can having recently doubled his fortune to US$9 papers, offering an ideal way to get a sense of the flame, parents of writers have much to do write – and how. Thank You For with why their children write, and each story is Your Service is his second alert to clues of influence and approval. non-fiction book delving into Detailed, candid and deeply personal, the lives of soldiers who were this collection explores the final secret, death, on the front line in Baghdad (his without sentimentality and without finality. With first book was the incredible contributors also including Thomas Keneally, The Good Soldiers), but this time he’s Gerard Windsor, Susan Duncan, David Marr and documenting their lives back home, where post Mandy Sayer, My Mother, My Father shares what traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain it means to lose a parent through stories that are injury are the battles du jour. feisty, funny and moving tributes to the lives that A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, inspired them. Finkel’s non-fiction reads like a gripping story, Lucy Van is a freelance reviewer and actually, the lives of these soldiers have all the elements of great fiction: drama, conflict, tragedy – the lot. Returned from combat the I Am Malala soldiers can’t settle: they feel guilty and they’re Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb angry. They can’t remember stuff, or they W&N. PB. $32.99 remember too much stuff. Their wives can’t deal In 2009 an anonymous blog with them, and they can’t deal with themselves. about life in the Swat Valley as Walls are punched. Shotguns are placed into the Taliban gained control mouths. Children watch on from the sidelines appeared on BBC Urdu. Malala and wonder if this is normal behavior. Yousafzai was soon identified as Finkel’s writing style is immediate. It’s ill Garner reminds us that the blogger and began to appear hard to believe he wasn’t in the basement beside BAustralia was settled as a in the media, campaigning for Saskia as Adam had his finger trembling against campsite – the nation was born easy access to education for everyone. Then in the shotgun trigger. That he wasn’t watching Tim in a tent. But while Europeans 2012, Malala was shot at point-blank range by a Jung write his suicide note. That he wasn’t in the brought tents, they did not bring member of the Taliban. Remarkably, she therapy session as Tausolo – always so good camping. Australia had been survived. I Am Malala is her story. with maths before he went to war – tried to figure a camping place for millennia. out the simple logistics of buying roses for his And so it continued to be. For Bonkers: My Life IN wife to apologise for his crazy behaviour. more than a hundred years, As Finkel notes, the army is aware settlers – women as well as men Laughs of the problems, but struggles to give tangible – colonised the country by living Jennifer Saunders assistance to these guys. There are programs under canvas. Viking. HB. Was $40 set up to help them, but even after participating Special price $34.95 the soldiers still go home and wreak havoc on either themselves or their family. As Finkel Jennifer Saunders’s comic writes, the number of soldier suicides ‘is creations, from Bolly-swilling exceeding the number of combat deaths and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous to averaging almost one a day.’ Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!, are Thank You for Your Service is an household names and now she unflinching and honest depiction of life inside shares her own story with this the heads of these returned men, and an acute www.newsouthbooks.com.au funny and honest memoir, from account of the new battle they now face. her childhood on RAF bases, to her life- changing encounter with a young Dawn French. Gabrielle Williams is from Readings Malvern Readings MONTHLY october 2013 13

The Mad Marathon: Russian Roulette is a fascinating and neighbours couldn’t help but discuss it. Here work of non-fiction and a fast-paced account of Michaela McGuire describes how, as the story The Story of the 2013 an historical development often forgotten and continued to unfold, it wove itself through the Election overshadowed by World Wars and the Russian fabric of the city. A Story of Grief is a deeply Mungo MacCallum Revolution. Its significance lies perhaps in its moving examination of the act of grief and how the Black Inc. PB. $29.99 central theme: the unmistakable importance of death of someone we don’t know personally can intelligence when playing dangerous games in still consume us. With the 2013 race for the Lodge the global arena. now run and won, who better than Mungo MacCallum to make Dexter Gillman is a freelance reviewer The Kraus Project sense of it all? With wit and Jonathan Franzen insight, Mungo documents the One Summer: HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 ups and downs of this longest of In The Kraus Project, Jonathan campaigns. He dissects Labor’s America 1927 Franzen presents his definitive self-destructive leadership war, the Coalition’s Bill Bryson new translations of writing from cheap and nasty Broadband Lite, and the plight Doubleday. HB. Was $49.95 Viennese satirist Karl Kraus, with of our billionaire battlers, doing it tough on Special price $39.95 supplementary notes from the $250K. This incisive account follows Canberra’s Bill Bryson travels back to Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and finest as they speed around the country, taking 1927, to the summer when the Austrian author Daniel selfies, kissing nuns and generally saying America came of age. This was Kehlmann, and his own spectacular annotations. anything to get your vote. The Mad Marathon is the summer that saw the birth Painstakingly wrought, strikingly original in form, an essential chronicle of the 2013 election year. of talking pictures and the The Kraus Project is also a deeply personal thrilling return of a wheezing recollection of Franzen’s first year out of college, out of the mountains: baseball player named Babe when he fell in love with Kraus’s work. The Coming Age of the Ruth. Yet, this same summer also saw the Urban Guerrilla bombing of a school in Michigan and the Stop Press: The last ill-conceived decision that led to the Great David Kilcullen Depression. Spinning a tale of brawling dayS of newspapers Scribe. PB. $32.95 adventure, Bryson describes how America Rachel Buchanan In his third book, David Kilcullen changed the world in these five eventful months. Scibe. PB. $24.95 takes us out of the mountains: There is a story that no one in away from the remote, rural the media seems willing to tell: guerrilla warfare of Afghanistan, Psychology the death of newspapers. and into the marginalised slums Traditionally known to break the and complex security threats of Far From the Tree biggest headlines, to chase the the world’s coastal cities, where rumours to their source, and to Andrew Solomon almost 75 per cent of us will be living by mid- undertake the most in-depth Chatto & Windus. PB. $32.95 LOVE century. Kilcullen projects a future of feral cities, reporting, newspapers are now grappling with the urban systems under stress, as well as greater Review: I heard Andrew most formidable challenges since the advent of overlaps between crime and war, internal and Solomon talk about his book print. Investigating one of the fundamental READING? external threats, and the real and virtual worlds. earlier this year at the Jaipur transitions in the Australian media today, Rachel Informed by Kilcullen’s own fieldwork in the Literature Festival. He was so Buchanan exposes the brutal cost-cutting Caribbean, Somalia, Afghanistan and India, Out of inspirational that I had to buy it. measures of companies intent on squeezing the Mountains presents on-the-ground accounts of In 1993 Solomon was asked by every drop of profit from print before they turn to the new faces of modern conflict. the New York Times to write a digital, and examines the consequences for those story on deaf culture, and that experience affected – not only the journalists and editors, but Start or Join a started him thinking about parenthood and what also printers, paper-makers and distributors History he calls ‘horizontal identities’. We have vertical whose livelihood is disappearing. CAE Book Group identities that are passed on genetically from our Russian Roulette parents – but what happens when our child is David and Goliath: Wherever you are in Giles Milton not like us, is not born in the image that we had Underdogs, Misfits conjured up for her, is far from the tree. mainland Australia Sceptre. HB. Was $40 and Rules for Facing Special price $34.95 We don’t expect to have a child we deliver books and who is deaf or autistic or schizophrenic, or Giants Review: Giles Milton has a who is severely disabled. How do we come to Malcolm Gladwell discussion notes, reputation for writing historical terms with that? How do we come to love that Allen Lane. PB. $29.99 books that are both entertaining child – or do we? Solomon is gay, and it was on loan. In David and Goliath, Malcolm and readable and, to this end, hard for his parents to come to terms with his Gladwell draws from Russian Roulette is no exception. sexuality, but they did, and loved him deeply. remarkable stories of true We have over 1000 Milton’s latest work is the However, they probably would have preferred it underdogs to uncover the compelling tale of Britain’s if he wasn’t gay, so for Solomon, establishing a books to choose from, hidden dynamics that shape ambitious plan to infiltrate Russia in the infancy of ‘horizontal identity’ of gayness enabled him to the balance of power between and when you join an Lenin’s Bolshevik regime. The story sheds light on come to terms with his self, so much so that he the small and the mighty. He a fascinating chapter of twentieth-century history, can’t imagine a different or heterosexual self. existing group your demonstrates how terribly we misunderstand culminating in the birth of MI6 and the blueprint of Many of the stories in this book are the true meaning of advantage and the modern spy agency. profoundly moving, and some are very sad, but first meeting is free! disadvantage, examining such questions as why Scattered across what became you won’t come away from it without being deeply a traumatic childhood can be a good thing, or a the Soviet Union lay a handful of amateur affected and thinking differently about the world. British spies, growing in adeptness with each disability improve quality of life. Visit www.cae.edu.au daring move. Their objectives were to gather Mark Rubbo is Readings’ Managing Director for details intelligence, thwart Soviet incursions into Central Asia and India, and most importantly to stay alive. Travel Guide Milton details their elaborate exploits, from the Cultural Studies meticulous methods employed to ensure their Melbourne Precincts anonymity, to the infiltration of the Bolsheviks’ Dale Campisi inner sanctum, and ultimately a nearly successful A Story of Grief: attempt to assassinate Lenin and his deputies. Penguin Specials Explore Australia. HB. $34.95 CAE Book Groups Drawing upon recently disclosed Michaela McGuire Melbourne is an eclectic city, E [email protected] documents from the archives of MI6, Milton Penguin. PB. $9.99 and Dale Campisi’s book portrays this period in history with a remarkable picks out the very best of its Ph 03 9652 0620 When Jill Meagher went missing narrative skill. He weaves together a host of shopping, eating and drinking and was then found murdered in cunning and audacious characters, shedding new experiences for locals and 2012, the city of Melbourne was light on some of Britain’s most famous espionage tourists alike. Interviews with shaken to the core. Emotional figures. Among them is the elusive and eccentric Melbourne locals who represent the city’s responses ranged from grief to Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the inaugural director creative community also highlight favourite guilt to rage to defensiveness. The of the Secret Intelligence Service, and Sidney haunts, and the extra accommodation tips media coverage was unrelenting Reilly, Britain’s master spy, sometimes referred to thrown in make this a handy guidebook, and overwhelming, constantly updating readers as the inspiration behind James Bond. as well as a beautiful keepsake. and viewers on the latest awful details, and friends 14 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

Meet Popular Science Art & Design Food & Gardening with Kate O’Mara from with Margaret Snowdon from with Christine Gordon from the Readings at the Brain Centre Readings Carlton Readings Carlton Bookseller The Big Questions The Monocle Guide to Asian After Work Adam Liaw Ed Moreno in Science Better Living Hachette. PB. Was $39.99 Readings Carlton Mun Keat Looi, Hayley Birch & Monocle Colin Stuart Die Gestalten Verlag. HB. $95 Special price $34.95 Hardie Grant. HB. $29.95 Monocle is one of the most Asian After Work takes the trend Why do you work in books? of fast, healthy family food and What are the great scientific successful magazines to be runs with it. I tried the chicken As soon as I was able to read, Dad made a chart questions of our modern age developed in the past decade. with garlic and crispy lime leaves which involved a specific reward for each book and why don’t we know the Armed with an unmistakable – honestly this was quick (10 on the chart; I’d receive the reward once I’d answers? The Big Questions sense of aesthetics and minutes) and it was delicious (my read the book and told Dad what I thought of it. in Science takes on the most journalistic tenacity, it’s an kids thought I was a magician). This is an The reward usually involved more books, which pressing mysteries we have intelligent publication that approachable, appetising and necessary (for fresh we’d pencil into the chart, and so on, and so on. yet to crack and explains how continually inspires a global readership ideas past the traditional stir fry) cookbook, Later, my first real job was at a bookstore. tantalisingly close science is to solving them (or interested in everything from diplomacy to suitable for the shared house and the family table. how frustratingly out of reach they remain). design. This first-ever book looks at one of their Which book would you happily spend Some are eternal questions – others are core themes: how to live well. a weekend indoors with? essential to our future survival. This book will Eat: The Little Book of On a recent trip to Rio, I found myself torn ignite the inquisitive scientist in all of us. Studio Life: Rituals, Fast Food between reading or seeing the sights. I chose Collections, Tools and Nigel Slater my book and kept the curtains drawn until Science in the Fourth Estate/HarperCollins. HB. Was $45 I’d read the final word. The book was Zola’s Observations on the Special price $39.95 The Drinking Den and even though I’d read Twentieth Century Artistic process it previously, I couldn’t bear to tear myself and Beyond Sarah Trigg British bloke Nigel Slater is a no fuss type of cook. He is not away from Zola’s heartrending descriptions Jon Agar PAP. PB. $52.50 of nineteenth-century Paris, and the tragic Polity. HB. $32.95 a chef and has no restaurant or Artist and writer Sarah Trigg Gervaise, with her dreams of rising out of commercial connections. This A compelling history of science embarked on an ambitious the slums. makes him completely from 1900 to the present day, field expedition across the refreshing in the world of this is the first book to survey How would you describe your own taste United States, interviewing illustrious chefs – a cook modern developments in in books? more than 200 artists in their without pretention. This collection of 600 recipes science during a century of studios. From painters to I’m drawn to the dark, stark nature of the is an ode to all things easy, obtainable and quick unprecedented change, conflict performance artists and nineteenth-century Russian realists and – recently, I’ve enjoyed fried chorizo with potatoes and uncertainty. Science’s claim investigating a wide range of art-making practices, French naturalists and to the American and shallots with a cold beer. Eat is also to access universal truths about the natural the result is a fascinating photographic and written Southern- or Appalachian-Gothic writers beautifully and practically presented. world made it an irresistible resource for account of 100 of her most illuminating visits. who follow on from that particular branch industrial empires, ideological programs, and of storytelling. These days, this lives on in environmental campaigners during this period. Fast, Fresh and Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, Ron Rash Balthus and Cats From Einstein’s new physics to the Manhattan Unbelievably Delicious and their ilk, stuff which I love. Alain Vircondelet Project, from eugenics to the Human Genome Matt Preston Flammarion. HB. $39.95 Name a book that has changed the way Project, or from the wonders of penicillin to the Plum. PB. $39.99 promises of biotechnology, science was at the Alain Vircondelet was a close you think, in ways small or large. Mr Preston, of so much fame, heart of the twentieth century. friend of the late Balthus and Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a offers a collection of recipes that originally wrote this text in Song of Despair prompted me to move to are light and breezy and then, intimate collaboration with the Central America to study Latin American The Outer limits of ladies and gentlemen, there is artist. He explains the literature. It changed the way I thought about the sealed section. My favourite Reason: What Science, symbolism within Balthus’s everything: it gave me goosebumps and made things: the insidious pleasures Mathematics and Logic paintings and draws parallels between the sleepy, me fall further in love with the world and with of cream, butter and duck fat. The richness of the Cannot Tell Us languishing forms of the girls and cats he language. I had heard that people recited food will not overwhelm, the recipes will not take painted. Balthus, who referred to himself as the Neruda’s poetry from memory on street Noson S. Yanofsky long to complete, and as Mr Preston says: Thirteenth King of Cats, regularly featured the corners all over Latin America, something I MIT. HB. $53.95 ‘Welcome to the Pleasure Dome.’ feline form in his art. had to see for myself. Many books explain what is known about the universe. This Maggie’s Christmas What’s something new you’ve observed Marian BanTjes book investigates what cannot Maggie Beer in bookselling? be known, studying what Pretty Pictures Lantern. HB. $49.99 I started in bookselling before computers and science, mathematics and Marian Bantjes book databases were around, so a lot has reason tell us cannot be T&H. HB. $85 We love her, don’t we? We love changed since then. Customers are more clued her recipes, farm, gardens, revealed. In The Outer Limits of An ambitious publication in in to authors, publishing and literature news television show, verjuice, pâté Reason, Noson S. Yanofsky considers what scope and specification, this these days, although I have noticed a growing and burnt fig ice-cream. Now we cannot be predicted, described, or known, and book presents the total trend of people wanting Kindle assistance! can love her Christmas, too: what will never be understood, discussing the design output of one of the joyful table settings, perfect limitations of computers, physics, logic and our world’s most talented and What’s the best book you’ve read lately roasts, seafood plates, fruit own thought processes. sought-after graphic designers. and why? dishes. Here is a collection of recipes for the This large-scale publication festive season, but why wait, I say! I seriously loved Margaret Atwood’s 1001 Ideas That reveals the journey from Bantjes’s early work as a MaddAdam for the simple reason that Changed the Way typesetter to her adoption of digital technologies sentence-by-sentence, line-by-line, it’s that push conventional print production to the limit. Garden Voices: incredibly funny and smart. Every sentence We Think Australian Designers is another wry observation. I honestly loved Robert Arp The Anatomy of Fashion – their stories every word in the book and couldn’t wait Murdoch. HB. $49.99 to pick it up again; I took it everywhere I Colin McDowell Anne Latreille 1001 Ideas That Changed went. The characters and the story are all Phaidon. HB. $110 Bloomings. HB. $59.95 the Way We Think offers a so entertaining, and the narrative plays on wealth of stimulation and Why do we dress the way we Garden Voices provides a concepts of storytelling and mythmaking. amusement for any reader do? How has fashion glimpse into 23 garden and with a curious mind, changed and evolved over landscape designers working Who has the best book cover? showing how once-radical the centuries? How did the creatively with Australian natives, I’m a little partial to Kenneth Mackenzie’s The propositions have become three-piece suit come about? including Anne Latreille’s own Young Desire It which is available as a larger accepted truths. It also includes a host of Why have hemlines risen wonderland, Cruden Farm. Other format Text Classic. I’m not sure if I’m so taken hypotheses that are remarkable for their sheer and fallen over time? Going gardens are situated in lush tropical forests and with it because of the text between the covers audacity – from the concept of the beyond standard fashion chilly mountains, deserts and countryside, in inner or not, but I love the illustration on the front transmigration of souls to parallel universes histories, this fabulous book is divided into body cities and the spreading suburbs. The perfect with its bright colours, and the larger format and the theoretical paradoxes of time travel. parts and styles – taking the reader from top to book for inspiration and a greater knowledge of gives it a bit of class. toe and through time to the very latest trends. our own landscape and heritage. Readings MONTHLY october 2013 15

All Things marriage and stifled by the banality of provincial or on historical styles, he considers the design Country life. Seeking escape in fantasies of high romance, of the interior as a whole. Shining and eventually, in adultery, her affairs only serve to Gardens, Hubert Dreyfus & Sean bring her further disappointments. Re-Use Country Dorrance Kelly Architecture Hospitality HB. Was $30 On Canaan’s Chris van Uffelen Holly Kerr Forsyth NOW $14.95 HB. Was $49.95 Side HB. Was $140 Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly NOW $15.95 Sebastian Barry NOW $29.95 re-envision modern spiritual life through an From subtropical and temperate regions HB. Was $45 Economic and societal examination of literature, philosophy and religious to alpine and arid, from newly established NOW $14.95 transitions have left many buildings and testimony. Their journey takes them from gardens to those that have evolved over Mourning the loss of her structures redundant and waiting to be put to Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante, generations, Holly Kerr Forsyth’s account of grandson, 85-year-old Irish émigré Lilly Bere new uses. Re-Use Architecture presents unique from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds her visits to gardens around Australia is a revisits her past, going back to the moment she projects on this issue: churches transformed of Melville, and then onto modern authors such heart-warming foray into the nation’s culture. as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert. was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First into restaurants, multi-storey car parks into World War with a new husband she barely knew. apartments, and more. Cured The Bascombe Spanning nearly seven decades, Sebastian Barry’s fifth novel is an extraordinary and The Andy Lindy Wildsmith Novels heartbreaking read about memory and love. HB. Was $39.95 Richard Ford Goldsworthy Project NOW $12.95 HB. Was $49.95 Venezia: Food Cured presents all the NOW $19.95 & Dreams Molly Donovan guidelines, recipes and In this trilogy of novels (The HB. Was $70 Tessa Kiros ingredients any home cook will need to create Sportswriter, Independence Day, NOW $13.95 intense flavours and delicious specialities HB. Was $69.95 The Lay of the Land) Richard Ford charts the life The Andy Goldsworthy Project presents through salting, spicing, marinating, drying, and times of the ever laconic and observant Frank NOW $19.95 an illustrated catalogue of smoking, potting and pickling – all slow In Bascombe. Capturing the nuances of the human Venezia: Food & Dreams Goldsworthy’s permanent techniques for enhancing meat, fish, fruit and food lovers are presented condition, Ford transforms this ordinary man’s installations between 1984 vegetables. actions into a riveting, moving parable of life. with more than a hundred and 2008 in over three amazing recipes hundred photographs, Return to the Death Comes to focusing on Venice including his 2013 and its famous fare. Readings Hundred Acre Pemberley commissioned work Sharing not just these for the National Gallery Wood P.D. James recipes but also Bargain of Art in Washington, David Benedictus & PB. Was $49.95 stories and memories DC. This volume Mark Burgess (illus.) NOW $13.95 of her travels, Tessa closely traces the HB. Was $29.95 Crime author P.D. James re- Kiros has created development of this NOW $12.95 a love letter to this Table envisions the world of Pride and Prejudice as a project from conception With his authorised sequel to A. A. Milne’s murder mystery, complete with lurid trial and red fascinating city. to completion, unveiling original Winnie-the-Pooh stories, David herrings. Darcy and Elizabeth have been happily Goldsworthy’s personal Benedictus transports readers back to the married for six years and are preparing for their The struggles and methodology. Hundred Acre Woods for even more adventures annual autumn ball when chaos descends after Great with the Best Bear in All the World. This edition is there's a murder. Empires of Asia The Memory complete with illustrations by Mark Burgess in the style of the original E. H. Shepard illustrations. In The Shadow Jim Masselos (ed.) Chalet Of The Sword HB. Was $49.95 Tony Judt NOW $14.95 HB. Was $39.95 And So It Goes: Tom Holland In this illustrated volume, Jim Masselos brings NOW $15.95 Kurt Vonnegut: HB. Was $55 together a host of art and history specialists Struck down by a fatal motor A Life NOW $19.95 to analyse the Asian imperial enterprise with neurone disease, historian Tony Judt used the Charles J. Shields Tom Holland’s panoramic and an emphasis on the cultural and creative. The time before his death to create a series of essays HB. Was $39.95 timely account of the rise of collected essays challenge standard myths about which chart some experience or remembrance of NOW $15.95 Islam portrays the evolution of the Arab empire as European dominance relative to Asia and show his past. His youthful love of a particular London While the twenty-first century has seen interest in one of the supreme narratives of ancient history. instead the polycentric nature of world power bus route evolves into a reflection on public and scholarship about Kurt Vonnegut’s writings As Holland describes how the Arabs emerged during the past five hundred years. civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of grow ever stronger, And So It Goes is the first-ever to carve out a vast dominion in a matter of mere the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through biography of the man himself and the culmination decades, a story rich in drama and character the divergent sex politics of Europe. Foods and High Heels: of five years spent researching and writing. emerges. Fashion, long-lost smells all compete for Judt's attention; but for us, he has forged his reflections into an The Landmark Femininity and elegant arc of analysis. The Great Xenophon’s Seduction Divide: History Hellenika Ivan Vartanian & Stella 1493: How the and Human Robert B. Strassler Bruzzi Ecological Nature in the (ed.) HB. Was $60 Collision of Old World and NOW $14.95 HB. Was $69.95 Europe and the the New The high-heeled shoe conjures allure and erotic NOW $29.95 intoxication like no other article of clothing. Here Americas Gave Peter Watson The editor of the widely praised The Landmark displaying a diverse selection of images from Rise to the HB. Was $49.95 Thucydides and The Landmark Herodotus contemporary photography, High Heels explores NOW $15.95 now brings us a new edition of Xenophon’s Modern World this distinctive item as a space where art, fashion The Great Divide compares the development of Hellenika. Hellenika covers the years between Charles C. Mann and fetish converge. humankind in the Old World and the New between HB. Was $49.99 411 and 362 B.C.E., a period during which the 15,000 BC and AD 1,500, combining the most up- alliances among Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and The Poetic NOW $16.95 to-date knowledge in archaeology, anthropology, Persia were in constant flux. Over 200 million years ago, geological forces split geology, meteorology, cosmology and mythology. Home: Designing apart the continents, developing different suites Madame the Nineteenth- of flora and fauna. When Columbus came to the The Captains Bovary Century Americas, he ended that separation, accidentally setting off an ecological convulsion as European Malcolm Knox Gustave Flaubert Domestic vessels carried thousands of species to new HB. Was $35 HB. Was $39.95 Interior environs. Charles Mann traces why there are NOW $12.95 NOW $16.95 Stefan Muthesius tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates From Dave Gregory through ’ Flaubert s erotically charged and PB. Was $80 in Switzerland and chili peppers in Thailand, to Ricky Ponting, The Captains psychologically acute portrayal of the beautiful NOW $19.95 showing how the creation of this worldwide tells the colourful story of how Australian cricket but bored Emma Bovary is now translated by has evolved since its earliest days, investigating Stefan Muthesius examines domestic interiors network of ecological and economic exchange Adam Thorpe bringing readers closer than ever how each new captain has influenced or stood from the nineteenth century, yet rather than is the germ of today’s political disputes, from to the original text. Emma feels trapped in her apart from this evolution. concentrate on individual types of furnishing immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at www.readings.com.au for more. 16 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

explorer, renowned for leading an expedition into the Forbidden Lands, but now he’s locked away owing to some bizarre behavior said to be a result Book of the Month of his adventures. When he escapes, arch-nemesis Kissed by the Moon Davidus Kyte believes that Jennings’s son, also Alison Lester called Alex, is the key to tracking him down. And so Viking. HB. $19.99 begins Alex Junior’s adventure into strange, unknown places. Highlights include a dry- humoured talking dog with a faint French accent Review: What a magical, perfect picture book. Alison Lester has done it again and this children quiz a magical parent, for as they poke and a girl with fantastically sharp teeth. The tone must be her most tender and lyrical. Part poem, part lullaby, it celebrates the natural world holes in his story, he fills the gaps with still more and a growing baby’s place in it. Her artwork is deceptively simple; clear colours and clean sits somewhere between David Walliams (the fantasy. But I’d expect no less from this perfect outlines create children and animals who are alive and self-assured in their inherited natural fastest-growing children’s author in the UK) and marriage of award-winning creative minds: world. Beaches, farms, bushland, family homes and gardens are all the rightful habitats of the far more bonkers and hilarious Mr Gum author Neil Gaiman and illustrator Chris Riddell. Lester’s children and Kissed by the Moon tells the story of a loved baby learning to belong. books by Andy Stanton. A fun and daft read, Fortunately, the Milk… introduces us to with heart, for ages 8 and up. EG From the rich, grey-blue endpapers of quiet trees by a night lake, to the gentle, moonlit a bizarre menagerie of characters, one of whom sleeping babies on the first and last pages, and to each of the lovingly detailed pictures of I suspect is the author himself. This is a perfect the baby’s year throughout, everything is so right. I don’t know how else to express the next step for children ready to move beyond early Flora and Ulysses wonder of it. But I defy anyone to pick up this book and try not to think of a baby to school readers and an ideal read-aloud for the Kate DiCamillo & K. G. Campbell whom it should be given – every baby’s life will be enriched by it. family, best summed up by six-year-old Charlie’s (illus.) Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton reaction – gasps of delight, shock, wide-eyed Candlewick. HB. $19.95 wonder and belly laughs. Highly recommended. Review: After Flora Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern rescues a squirrel sucked up by a high-powered vacuum WeirDo cleaner, she soon discovers Anh Do the squirrel is now in possession of amazing Scholastic. PB. Was $12.99 superpowers, understands New Special price $9.95 English and writes poetry. Sound good so far? His parents could have given Oh yes, and not only does the squirrel have an him any first name at all. arch-nemesis who wants him dead, he must Picture Books Instead he’s stuck with the also battle ignorance, cynics, an aggressive cat worst name since Mrs Face and big hair during his adventures. Written by Hannah’s Night Kids’ called her son Bum. Meet Weir Newberry Award-winner Kate DiCamillo, who Komako Sakai Do, the new kid in school. With always depicts her animal characters with great an unforgettable name, a Gecko. PB. $16.99 empathy, and with illustrations by K. G. crazy family and some seriously odd habits, Campbell that capture some of the more Review: This charming fitting in won’t be easy, but it will be funny! hilarious incidents, this is a wonderfully warm picture book depicts Hannah and funny story of an unusual friendship waking to find it is still night Books between a girl and a squirrel. It also depicts the time. Her sister and parents are Middle Fiction complications of modern family life with a light sound asleep so her only course, the colours of a rainbow. With Sara touch. Highly recommended for readers aged companion during her nocturnal Acton’s delicate watercolour illustrations, this Jane, the Fox and Me 9 and up. AC wanderings is her cat. They picture book is practically perfect and will be Fanny Britt & Isabelle Arsenault have a snack together, they peer at the moon and thoroughly enjoyed by children aged 3 to 6. (illus.) Hannah cheekily plays with her sister’s things. As Angela Crocombe is from Readings morning dawns Hannah and her cat are finally Walker. HB. $24.95 St Kilda sleepy. As typical of Gecko books, the illustrations Review: I hardly know Classic of the have a cultural sensitivity and understanding of Sugarlump and the where to begin with this Month childhood’s intrinsic moments. Young children will exceptional graphic novel love following Hannah’s gentle adventure and be Unicorn about bullying. It hardly makes Lillipilly Hill: Text reassured by her happy acceptance of the night. Julia Donaldson & Lydia sense to describe the style as Classics Monks (illus.) both elegant and crude, but Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn that’s how it appears to me; the Eleanor Spence PanMac. HB. $24.99 sadness in the eyes of the main character is Text. PB. $12.95 Review: My daughter and I The Rules of Summer immediately affecting. Hélène, who is permanently Review: Eleanor Spence love a good unicorn story and Shaun Tan ostracised and cannot confide in anyone, finds was one of my favourite this one definitely does not Hachette. HB. $24.99 herself in every bullied child’s nightmare: school authors when I was young, so disappoint. Written by the camp. Things pan out as she expects them to – I was excited when I heard Text The eagerly awaited new brilliant Julia Donaldson, author she’s alone, finds solace only in the pages of her were re-issuing Lillipilly Hill. book from Shaun Tan is a of , this is a wonderful story of a The Gruffalo current read, Jane Eyre, and is the object of The spirited Harriet has moved scrapbook of images and rocking horse that wishes for a better life and the derision – until a glimmer of hope that she’s not in with her family from England captions relating how two unicorn with the power to grant those wishes. fact repellent turns up in the form of a beautiful red to Australia at the end of the boys spend their summer. Sugarlump is given the opportunity to try out fox. Although the fox doesn’t stay, it signals a 1800s and while she has immediately fallen in Each spread tells of an event different lives, including farmer’s horse, racehorse positive change for Hélène. Bookworms and love with the house they have inherited and the and the lesson learned. By turns, these events and circus pony, before finding her true calling – loners of all ages will identify with Hélène. Readers surrounding countryside, not all of her family become darker as the boys push their games with help from the unicorn, of course. With of 9+ will love her idiosyncratic voice, but this is a shares her enthusiasm. Her headstrong ways further. Moments of humour and surreal fantasy rhyming text, delightful illustrations by Lydia book not just for children. often land her in trouble and her mother is leaven the tone in typical Shaun Tan fashion. Monks and sparkles on every page, this story is worried that her children will turn into uncouth, sure to bring joy to unicorn lovers of all ages. AC Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton undisciplined savages. A return to civilised Esther’s Rainbow England appears unavoidable but Harriet is Kim Kane & Sara Acton (illus.) Alex, the Dog and the desperate to stay. How can she achieve this in an A&U. HB. $24.99 Junior Fiction Unopenable Door era when young girls should be biddable and constrained? Harriet is a gutsy, likeable girl who Review: What a delightful Fortunately, the Milk… Ross Montgomery has to walk the fine line of her parents’ picture book! After spying a Neil Gaiman & Chris Riddell (illus.) Faber. PB. $13.99 expectations and her own less restrictive rainbow hiding under her chair, Bloomsbury. PB. $17.99 yearnings. Spence appeared regularly in CBC Esther begins to look for it Review: In the tradition of Roald Dahl’s child-led awards and was a highly regarded author, so it is everywhere. In her search, she Review: When Dad returns adventures that feature a great to see Text offering her to a new generation. finds all the colours of the late from a simple trip to the range of stupid and/or Lillipilly Hill is still a compelling read and the rainbow in unusual places, but it takes a rain corner shop, the children horrible adults comes this characters are well developed. Though the odd shower to eventually bring the magic back. demand an explanation. What story about a very likeable word may be a little dated, girls who have loved Esther’s Rainbow deftly manages to tell a follows is a fantastic tale of boy and how he battles the Our Australian Girl series will find plenty to captivating story and be a subtle learning tool at globby aliens, monsters, pirates, through a range of wacky enjoy here. For ages 9 to 12. AD the same time. It engages all the senses, time-travel and even a run-in with the galactic adversities. Alex J. Jennings is a famous incorporating the days of the week and, of police. In a delightful reversal of roles, sceptical Readings MONTHLY october 2013 17

husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). It is Aurora. When Aurora takes a turn, a strange thus that Nick is drawn into the captivating world man arrives at her side. But Gian-Luca is no NewDVDs of the super rich, their illusions, loves and stranger, as we will all soon see... with Lou Fulco deceits. As Nick bears witness, within and without the world he inhabits, he pens a tale of THÉRÈSE DESQUEYROUX impossible love, incorruptible dreams and $39.95 high-octane tragedy, holding a mirror to our own Released 9 October DVD modern times and struggles. Thérèse (Audrey Tautou) has Direct from London’s West End THE RELUCTANT married less for love than for of convenience, but it is not long The classic, award-winning FUNDAMENTALIST book by Michael Rosen before the casual disinterest $34.95 and illustrated by Helen the shown her by her arrogant Oxenbury comes to life. Released 2 October husband, Bernard (Gilles month Based on the bestselling novel, Lellouche), sets her mind in motion. In order to break free from the fate Wade through swishy The Reluctant Fundamentalist swashy grass, the imposed upon her, Thérèse decides to apply THE KILLING: SERIES 3 is a riveting international splashy splashy thriller. It follows the story of a her poisonous outlook in literal terms ... but $39.95 river and thick oozy, young Pakistani man, her extreme measures will bring extreme Released 2 October squelchy mud, on our Changez, chasing corporate consequences. quest to find a bear. Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) success on Wall Street, who It’s going to be a big returns in the long-awaited third and final ultimately finds himself embroiled in a conflict THE ROLLING STONES: one…we’re not scared! series of The Killing (Forbrydelsen) trilogy. The between his American Dream, a hostage crisis, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL financial crisis is raging and the number of and the enduring call of his family’s homeland. $14.95 bankruptcies and repossessions is on the rise, In the vein of The Constant Gardener and Tinker Released 16 October “A perfect but Sarah has a newfound sense of peace in Tailor Soldier Spy, this is an electrifying film mini-adventure... the form of a new job, a new home and the based on the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by Sympathy for the Devil was recognition of achieving 25 years of service in Mohsin Hamid. filmed in 1968, when the ingenious” the police force. While struggling to maintain a Rolling Stones were at the Daily Mail, UK relationship with her teenage son, Lund finds TAB U peak of their creative powers, herself thrown together with a former lover, who by Jean-Luc Godard, the $29.95 now works for special branch. A kidnapping, legendary French New Wave Released 2 October multiple murders, an apparent suicide and Director. For many the main a government on the verge of collapse all Deftly moving between attraction of Sympathy for the Devil is seeing conspire to make this series of The Killing contemporary Portugal, the band take a loose outline of a song and absolutely essential viewing. colonial Africa and the turn it into a stirring, fully realised creation. landscape of dreams, Tabu Beginning as a ballad, the track gradually weaves a story of obsession, acquires a pulsating groove, which gets Jagger INSPECTOR MONTALBANO memory and dangerous into a rousing vocal display of soulful emotion. VOLUME 6 forbidden romance in two This DVD features the fully restored version of distinct parts. In the first chapter we meet Sympathy for the Devil plus the director’s edit of $39.95 Pilar, who spends her days consoling and One + One and Voices – a documentary on Released 2 October supporting her increasingly crazed neighbour, Godard filmed during the making of this movie. After five collections, we reach the end of the novels written by Andrea Camilleri. Could this be FAMILY SHOW FOR AGES 9-90 Inspector Montalbano’s last stand? For nearly a decade, Luca Zingaretti has played the gruff yet stylish police inspector from Sicily. As always, there is crime detection, Few Australian productions take exotic locations, and unbelievably good dining. New York by storm, and fewer are Montalbano has always believed that nothing created especially for young people. Ages needs to be rushed so much that a good lunch The Book of Everything has 3 - 7 on a balcony should be missed. Buon appetito! changed all that. Don’t miss this award winning HYDE PARK ON HUDSON production when it comes to $39.95 Melbourne for a limited season, Released 9 October just in time for Christmas. Bill Murray and Laura Linney star in this delightful look at one of the 27 NOV most pivotal meetings in history. In June 1939, President Franklin – 8 DEC D. Roosevelt (Murray) and his wife Eleanor host the king and queen of Great Britain for a weekend at Hyde Park on Hudson in upstate New Tickets York. With Britain facing imminent war with from $24* Germany, the royals are desperately looking to FDR for support. But international affairs must Arts Centre Melbourne be juggled with FDR’s complex relationships, as THE Show Times: wife, mother and mistresses all conspire to 10.30am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm make the royal weekend an unforgettable one. Duration: 55 Minutes BOOK OF THE GREAT GATSBY BOOK NOW! artscentremelbourne.com.au $39.95 EVERYTHING 1300 182 183 Fitzgerald-like, would-be writer *Transaction fees may apply Nick Carraway leaves the by Guus Kuijer, adapted Midwest for New York City in the spring of 1922. Chasing his own by Richard Tulloch American Dream, Nick (Tobey

Maguire) lands next door to a 27 Nov – 22 Dec A Belvoir and Kim Carpenter’s Theatre Production Media of Image co-production mysterious, party-giving Southbank Theatre Partner Partner millionaire, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Book at mtc.com.au or call 0868 0800 across the bay from his cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and her philandering, blue-blooded 18 Readings MONTHLY october 2013

has passed whatsoever since the band was Another Self Portrait Aventine performing and recording together in the ’90s. Agnes Obel Mazzy Star, without a doubt, still has it. (1969–1971): The CDs Bootleg Series Vol. 10 Was $24.95 New Miranda La Fleur is from Readings Special price $21.95 Bob Dylan St Kilda Was $34.95 Review: Aventine is the Get Happy Special price $27.95 eagerly awaited follow-up to cd Vinyl available the critically acclaimed 2010 Pink Martini debut album Philharmonics Review: Cast your mind Was $21.95 from Danish-born, Berlin- of the back: it’s 1970 and the ’60s Special price $19.95 based songstress Agnes Obel. This ravishing first are over, the radio waves are album justly made Obel a star across Europe and Review: Get Happy is a buzzing with some great month on the equally gorgeous Aventine she has again swirling, exotic affair with a sounds – The Rolling Stones, written, produced, arranged and provided vocals distinct Pink Martini sound; Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young – and Wise Up Ghost and and piano. Classical influences are once more to the full orchestral every other week an earth-shattering album is the fore with cello and violin colouring the sparse Other Songs arrangements conjure released. Bob Dylan, in an act of what must have sound of a beautifully intimate record, ensuring Elvis Costello and The Roots fantasies of couples gliding across a dance floor been total perversity, releases Self Portrait, an Obel’s star will continue to rise. DM Was $24.95 à la Ginger and Fred. As usual, it’s a multilingual album of other people’s songs. The Special price $21.95 collection of songs including the Spanish, condemnation was swift and at least one major French and Brazilian, and the assortment of music magazine likened it to excrement. What Live In San Francisco Review: Both Elvis Costello and American guests (Rufus Wainwright is one) complement was he thinking? At the time I didn’t hear the Ry Cooder & Corridos Famosos hip-hop band The Roots are no strangers to the singer China Forbes’s towering vocals. Although album but enjoyed the haunting tune ‘Wig Wam’. Was $21.95 collaborative process; their mix of funked out it takes a while for the tempo to build, Get Happy So what would two CDs of outtakes from this era Special price $19.95 music and socially aware lyrics is reminiscent of is moody, graceful and heartfelt. MK be like? Thankfully, it’s really good and covers the punk scene of the ’70s. The Roots founding Review: Getting to see Ry two other related albums, Nashville Skyline and member, spokesman and drummer Ahmir Cooder live is a rare event New Morning, where Dylan was exploring country ‘Questlove’ Thompson co-produced this album The Diving Board nowadays, so he’s sounds and singing well. with longtime Roots producer Steve Mandel, Elton John thoughtfully released what is There are 35 tracks here – many of and it was recorded secretly at Feliz Habitat Was $24.95 surprisingly only the second them unreleased. Dylan’s singing on the gold- Studios. The record features vintage session Special price $21.95 live album in his storied career. Proceedings mining tune Days of 49 and the version of Copper bass guitarist Pino Palladino and singer La have a strong Tex-Mex feel, courtesy of star Review: For his first Kettle, an ode to moonshine, are gutsy and very Marisoul from Mexican group La Santa Cecilia. accordionist Flaco Jiménez, and the 10-piece studio album in seven years, down to earth. What I like most about this project brass section brings a truly joyous spirit to this Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from Elton John teams up with is the warmth and intimacy of a few guys in a room relaxed and congenial session. Touching on old Readings Carlton master producer T-Bone playing music acoustically and with heart. Dylan classics and new favourites, Cooder’s playing is Burnett to create The Diving covers rhythm, Dave Bromberg delivers loose but freewheeling and assured, and the energy of his Board. Featuring 12 new songs written with sparkling acoustic lead, and the great Al Kooper performance is indisputable. TP longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin, as well as is busy with keyboards, arranging and some Pop/Rock three piano interludes, it sees something of a production. What a music sponge Dylan was, and back-to-basics approach for Elton, returning to his love of the old-time music is all over this, as the stripped-back piano, bass and drums line well as his command of multiple musical styles. FOLK/COUNTRY Dream River up with which he found fame so many years Bill Callahan ago. Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton This Side of Jordan Was $24.95 Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda Mandolin Orange Special price $21.95 Imitations $26.95 Vinyl available Mark Lanegan Review: Mandolin Orange And I’ll Scratch Yours Was $24.95 Review: Over the past 20 Peter Gabriel & Various is a North Carolina duo of years or so, Bill Callahan Special price $21.95 Was $24.95 guitarists and songwriters has quietly matured into one Vinyl available Special price $21.95 Andrew Marlin and Emily of the finest singer- It’s been a prolific year for the Frantz. The two met at a gig songwriters we have. About three years ago Peter former Screaming Trees front in 2009 and discovered a Comparisons to Leonard Cohen or Willie Gabriel released an album, man. Only a couple of months musical interest that blends gospel and Nelson don’t seem so far-fetched when you Scratch My Back, on which ago he released the beautifully country; four years later, this is their third album he covered songs by some discover Dream River is his eighteenth album, laid-back collaboration with release. This Side of Jordan blends and when you hear just how rich, wry and of his favourite artists. The Duke Garwood, Black Pudding. Never one to shy Appalachian styles and beautiful harmonies, nuanced it is. Gently raising an eternal record included tracks by David Bowie, away from cover versions, Imitations is exactly not unlike those of Civil Wars. The wealth of eyebrow to the beauty and the tedium of Arcade Fire and Bon Iver, among others, and that; equal parts tribute to his parents and the quality musicians on this beautiful record existence, this album contains some of his he had intended to follow this up shortly after music he grew up with, and a nod to current affirms its quiet command.MAS most soulful and sensual songs, which might with their take on his songs. After many delays contemporaries. He takes on an eclectic mix of also be some of his best. it is finally here, and well worth the wait. Other tracks from the likes of Nick Cave, Nancy Sinatra, artists that have joined the original line up Man & Myth Tam Patton is from Readings Carlton John Cale, Andy Williams, even The Twilight include Feist, Brian Eno and Paul Simon. It all Singers and Gérard Manset. If you’re a fan of Roy Harper equals great listening. Lanegan’s whisky-soaked, cigarette-stained Was $21.95 Seasons Of Your Day baritone then this one is for you. Special price $19.95 Mazzy Star Mechanical Bull Review: Of all the great Was $29.95 Kings of Leon Fanfare 1960s London acoustic Special price $27.95 Was $25.95 Jonathan Wilson performers that included Bert Review: With 15 years of Special price $19.95 Was $24.95 Jansch, John Renbourn, silence between their last Vinyl available Special price $21.95 Sandy Denny, Davey Graham album from 1996, Among My and John Martyn, the enigma that was Roy Review: After an extended Released 11 October Swan, and their singles Harper has never received his due. All that may hiatus, during which time releases, Common Burn and Review: Jonathan Wilson’s be about to change as several of the freak-folk there were many doubts as to Lay Myself Down, in 2011 – which both appear debut album Gentle Spirit was contingent, like Joanna Newsom, are now touting whether there would even be on this new album – it seemed probable that one of 2011’s absolute best, a his influence. Harper, who has lived in rural another record due to some dream-pop legends Mazzy Star had vanished record drenched in Laurel Ireland since the ’80s, has been busy writing and highly public in-fighting for good. Lead singer Hope Sandoval Canyon-esque sunshine and remastering his back catalogue. Early work among the band, the rock juggernaut that is released two beautiful and noteworthy solo harmony. That album deservedly reached many features Harper’s own beautiful acoustic guitar Kings of Leon once again rolls into town with albums in this period with her band, The Warm critics’ end-of-year lists and now the multi-talented playing (plus amazing 12-string acoustic playing Mechanical Bull. Their sixth album sees the Inventions (Bavarian Fruit Bread and Through Wilson returns with some expectation resting on from an uncredited Jimmy Page, and Followill boys looser and louder than on the Devil Softly), but it’s an absolute delight to Fanfare. Here, he once again shows an ability to orchestrations by David Bedford on Harper’s previous efforts: their cited influences, as have the original Mazzy Star line-up back in capture a grandiose sound, delivering a wonderful early ’70s opus, Stormcock), loads of gentle love diverse as Queens of the Stone Age and Sly & action. Seasons of Your Day was co-written collection of songs borrowed from a bygone era songs and biting social comment, as well as help The Family Stone, are evident in an eclectic set and co-produced by Sandoval and David yet still utterly authentic. The depth and quality of from rock star heavies Led Zeppelin, Paul of tunes. Having apparently rediscovered the Roback in California and Norway, and features guest musicians on board for Fanfare is too long McCartney and Pink Floyd. The album has been sheer love of playing rock and/or roll, it’s a contributions from the late Bert Jansch and to go into here but speaks volumes of the esteem produced by Renaissance man Jonathan Wilson move that suits them, and is sure to please their My Bloody Valentine’s Colm Ó Cíosóig. In in which this man is held. Great stuff. DM at his Laurel Canyon studio and in County Cork, legions of fans. DM listening, it’s marvellous to feel as if no time Ireland. This should be one to watch out for. PB Readings MONTHLY october 2013 19

undone, but not Ottensamer – his tone and Britten: Songs control are impeccable. There are also works by Ian Bostridge, Antonio Pappano & Debussy, Amy Beach, Cimarosa and Louis Xuefei Yang New CLASSICAL CDs Spohr, which are all played beautifully. PR EMI. 4334302. $24.95 Dvořák: Cello This release is one of many Bach: The Art of Fugue Concerto, Silent recordings issued in 2013 in classical Les Voix Humaines Woods & Brahms: honour of Benjamin Britten’s ATMA. ACD22645. $30.95 100th birthday. Ian Bostridge, Academic Festival the internationally acclaimed cd of the Review: Bach’s The Art of Overture tenor whose ‘attention to the text always ( ) Fugue Die Kunst der Fuge Li-Wei Qin, Lan Shui & Singapore matches Britten’s own scrupulous word setting’, composed a series of fugues month Symphony Orchestra has recorded this album of Britten songs. on the same subject but Featured are works he has never before Decca. 8898529. $21.95 Bach: Sonatas & curiously didn’t specify which recorded, including: Seven Sonnets of Partitas Vol. 1 instruments should play them – as a result, Review: With every new Michelangelo, Hölderlin Fragments, Songs from there have been performances on solo piano, Chris Thile recording from Li-Wei Qin the the Chinese and Winter Words. organ, strings, saxophones and synthesisers. quality of playing just gets Nonesuch. 7559795864. $21.95 So, when this recording by the Montreal-based better. Working beautifully Mysterious Boundaries viol consort was released it certainly piqued my Review: It’s always interesting when non- with Lan Shui and the SSO, Tony McManus classical musicians tackle classical music, as you interest, and what we have here is beautiful and Li-Wei gives a masterful reading of this great Greentrax. CDTRAX376. $24.95 never know what you are going to get. Fortunately magical. The music of Bach can expose work. It’s all here: excellent technique and in Chris Thile’s case, what we get is an technical deficiencies in a musician very quickly beautiful tone and it is wonderfully expressive. Review: Where do you go astonishing performance of some of the greatest but this is not the case with Les Voix Humaines; This is a very mature performance and Li-Wei when you’re the top Celtic pieces for solo violin played on the mandolin. from the opening notes to the very last they carries this through to his playing in the next fingerstyle guitarist in the world Thile is a master musician who honours the music perform with great skill. Some purists may not piece, Silent Woods; this small but significant with several albums that have of Bach with these sublime readings of his works. like this interpretation, but it’s hard not to like work is played beautifully. The CD is rounded already broken new ground for Speaking about the recording, Thile says: ‘This something that gives so much pleasure. PR out with the SSO giving a rousing rendition of interpreting fiddle and pipe tunes with only the record to me is not about this iconic violin music Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. PR sound of six steel strings? Tony McManus took up played on the mandolin – like, “Oh boy, what fun, Vivaldi the challenge from a mandolin-playing friend and he’s playing a weird instrument!” It’s about Bach Richard Galliano Franz Schubert: learned some classical tunes. Untrained and being one of the greatest musicians of all time, the DG. 4810350. $24.95 Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 unable to read music, McManus has done some solo violin music being some of his best work, serious woodshedding and delivered another Review: Three years ago and the mandolin having the potential to cast it in Freiburger Barockorchester & beauty. Of course, using steel strings and Richard Galliano performed a new and hopefully interesting light.’ And if you Pablo Heras-Casado alternative tunings and harmonics has put a new the music of Bach to great are still not convinced, check out Thile playing the Harmonia Mundi. HMC902154. $24.95 twist on these pieces. His versions of Bach’s success and now he returns Partita for Violin No. 2 and mysterious rendering of presto movement from the first sonata on On his first recording for with his second recording on Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1 are particularly YouTube. It’s amazing. Harmonia Mundi, conductor the iconic Deutsche Grammophon label, playing outstanding. This CD is a real attention-grabber Pablo Heras-Casado – whose Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. You are probably whenever it’s playing at Readings Carlton. career encompasses thinking ‘not another Four Seasons’ but there is historically informed merit here as Galliano has produced a very Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton performance and cutting-edge contemporary Sven Helbig: Pocket worthwhile performance, arranging the work for scores – offers a fresh look at the symphonies of Symphonies accordion and string quintet. This arrangement is Benjamin Britten: Schubert. Leading the period-instrument simple but it also brings out the purity in Vivaldi’s Fauré Quartett, Kristjan Järvi & ensemble Freiburger Barockorchester, Heras- War Requiem writing, and Galliano’s playing is delicate and, of MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Casado pairs the light-hearted Symphony No. 3 of Benjamin Britten & Peter Pears course, technically superb. The CD concludes DG. 4810398. $24.95 1815, which ends with a Rossinian tarantella, with Decca. 4785433. $39.95 with four arias from Vivaldi operas, also arranged the darker Symphony No. 4, written one year later Review: German by Galliano for accordion. The time of the Review: In Britten’s and looking more towards Beethoven. composer-producer Sven accordion has arrived. PR centenary year we have been Helbig has worked with inundated with many re-issues Rammstein, Pet Shop Boys, Portraits: The Shostakovich: and new recordings of his Snoop Dogg, Polarkreis 18 Clarinet Album Symphony No. 10 works; however, this reissue of and German rapper Sido, and his music has Mariss Jansons & Royal the famous recording from the Decca label – with Andreas Ottensamer Britten conducting – is a great tribute to the man been compared to Ludovico Einaudi, Reich, Concertgebouw Orchestra Richter, Glass and other accessible contemporary DG. 4810131. $24.95 and musician. Britten was a committed pacifist RCO Live. RCO13001. $29.95 composers. On this new recording, what we get Review: On his debut and this work is the response to the brutality and is 12 symphonic pieces in the form of songs. recording Andreas ‘My aim was to convey human inhumanity of war. The texts from the Latin mass They range in length from two to five minutes and Ottensamer, principal feelings and passions in this for the dead and the poems of Wilfred Owen, are really aimed at people who haven’t ever clarinettist with the Berlin work,’ Shostakovich said of his who died in the First World War, are given weight delved too deeply into classical music. What I like Philharmonic, has selected a newly completed Tenth by Britten’s powerful score, played with great most here is that Helbig manages to bring a lot of program that shows off the expressive range of Symphony in 1953. And it is commitment from the LSO and the Melos emotion and depth to this music in a very short the clarinet and also his own versatility. Opening clear exactly what it was that he wanted to relate: Ensemble, and sung magnificently by Peter time span: this in itself is a great skill. He benefits with an arrangement of Gershwin’s Prelude No. Stalin was dead, and after his music had been Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Galina greatly from the sure hand of Kristjan Järvi, the 1 for piano, Ottensamer sets the bar high and publicly denounced for being too abstract in 1948, Vishnevskaya, The Bach Choir and the LSO Fauré Quartett and the MDR Leipzig Radio maintains this standard throughout. My favourite Shostakovich had finally plucked up the courage Chorus. If we ever need to be reminded of the Symphony. One review I read recently said: ‘Sven work on this excellent disc is Aaron Copland’s to write another symphony. Ever since, the RCO futility of war then we should take some time to Helbig has made a classical music album for the masterly Clarinet Concerto; the beauty of the has astonished audiences and record buyers with listen to this music. This version comes with a iPod generation.’ I wholeheartedly agree. PR first movement could easily bring a lesser player their level of refinement in this repertoire. bonus rehearsal disc and Blu-ray audio disc. PR

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