Free JUne 2010 Readings Monthly

Marieke Hardy on Benjamin Law • Cate Kennedy on Robin Black detail of cover fiona MGre g or's INDELIBLE INK ( C ourtesy scribe publications) detail Christos Tsiolkas interviews Fiona McGregor

aus fiction humour fiction non-fiction non-fiction DVD jazz CD CLASSICAL $32.95 $27.95 $27.95 $32.95 $27.95 $55 $39.95 $19.95 $34.95 $32.95 $34.95 >> p5 >> p4 >> p6 >> p11 >> p10 Blu-ray $44.99 >> p17 >> p19 >> p16 June book, CD & DVD new releases. More new releases inside

June event highlights : David Marr, Benjamin Law, Lisa Miller, Nicolas Rothwell, Street/Studio, Bob Graham. More events inside

All shops open 7 days, except State Library shop, which is open Monday - Friday. Carlton 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 Hawthorn 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 Malvern 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952. Port Melbourne 253 Bay St 9681 9255 St Kilda 112 Acland St 9525 3852 Readings at the State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston St 8664 7540 email [email protected] Check opening hours, find event details, or browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au 2 Readings Monthly June 2010

From the Editor June highlights ThisTHE READINGS Month’sBLOOMSDAY News NEW LITERARY T-SHIRTS I’m excited about this issue (if FOUNDATION Bloomsday in Melbourne’s seventeenth COMING SOON IN JUNE I say so myself) – and by Applications for the Readings Foundation celebration, on Wednesday 16 June 2010, Celebrating the world's some fantastic June titles. will open in August, 2010. The Foundation focuses on the Circe chapter of James Joyce’s greatest stories through Fiona McGregor’s clever, aims to increase and formalise Readings’ Ulysses. The play and seminar dramatise the fashion, each T-shirt funny, moving novel Indelible ongoing commitment to support the local ways in which Joyce pits the New Sexology features iconic and rare Ink (Normally $32.95, Our community. The Foundation will support against the Purity Police. Performances will book covers. These special price $27.95) is quite Victorian individuals and organisations that be staged at the New Ballroom Theatre, striking works of art simply brilliant – and already wish to further the development of Literacy, Trades Hall, at 1pm and 7.30pm ($35) with acknowledge that many a firm Readings favourite. It’s set to be the Community Work and the Arts. Funds for the Seminar at 3.30pm ($20), and dinner people in different parts of most talked-about Australian novel since The the Foundation are derived from a share of at La Notte in Lygon St at 6pm ($45) (All the world don't have access to books at all. Slap. Though it’s a very different beast, it has a Readings’ profits, individual donations and three events are $90). Bookings essential. For each T-shirt sold, Out of Print will donate similar sense of engaging fully and openly – proceeds from Readings’ ‘accommodation Please phone Bob Glass on 9898 2900. one book to a community in need through and with great verve – with contemporary window’ and gift-wrapping service. Books for Africa. Readings are excited to be Australia, and the way we live now. So it Vintage Classics stocking Out of Print Clothing T-shirts at our seems appropriate that Christos Tsiolkas The Readings Foundation donated a total of Winter Offer shops in Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda and interviews her about it on page 5. Visit our $64,000 in its inaugural round last year. The online at www.readings.com.au. four selected projects were: Ward off the winter chill website to read Mark Rubbo’s rave review. with a stack of books. In Here’s a taste: ‘Every now and again a novel The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation: to June, buy a Vintage Classic WHO’S AFRAID OF just takes your breath away with its audacity provide a tailored and individual tutoring from a marvellous selection INTERNATIONAL LAW? and its perceptive take on life and the world. program to disadvantaged and isolated in- including Suite Francaise, Indelible Ink is such a book ... a powerful, LECTURE SERIES digenous children in Swan Hill ($10,000) War and Peace, Moll Flanders, The Australian Catholic University's School of assured and incredibly mature novel; it is a The Jungle Book and The Year Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company: Philosophy presents Who’s Afraid of Inter- subtle and sympathetic portrait contemporary of Living Dangerously, and to conduct a program encouraging disen- national Law?, a six-week Wednesday lecture of family life. Few readers will fail to see receive a free copy of Patrick White: A Life by gaged or marginalised rural school students series, hosted by philosophy professor and reflections of their own lives within its pages.’ David Marr – the perfect wintry read. While in Wodonga to join a creative arts program acclaimed author Raymond Gaita, beginning Marieke Hardy interviews Australia’s answer stocks last, at all shops except State Library. working with Somebody’s Daughter Theatre June 16. Each lecture will be held at 6:30pm to David Sedaris – the marvellous Benjamin artists and young people from HighWater in the Mercy Lecture Theatre at the ACU, St Law – for his first book, The Family Law LONELY PLANET: Theatre ($20,000) Patrick’s Campus, 115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy. (Black Inc., PB, $27.95) on p4. 100 MILLIONTH All lectures are free, no bookings required. For Australian short-story queen Cate Kennedy Olympic Adult Education: to provide GUIDEBOOK OFFER more information, visit http://www.acu.edu. reviews a gorgeous new American collec- literacy tuition for older-aged, long-term Lonely Planet is celebrating the publication au/61940, phone 9953 3160, or email leonie. tion, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This migrants who are extremely disadvantaged of its 100 millionth guidebook by invit- [email protected]. (Scribe, PB, $27.95) on p9 for us. There’s an because of their low-level reading and writ- ing travellers to enter an Instant Win Your enthralling, inventive new novel from David ing skills ($12,995) Way Around the World promotion in June. ALFRED DEAKIN Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Fitzroy Learning Network: to upgrade their Earlier this year, the fifteenth edition of LECTURE SERIES Zoet (Sceptre, PB, Normally $32.99, Our music studio which is used by youth from the guide to Australia was officially the 100 In 2010, the Alfred Deakin Lecture Series special price $27.95), which Readings’ Jus- disadvantaged backgrounds ($8,000) millionth book to be published in Lonely will be presented by the Wheeler Centre tine Douglas reviews at length on p6 (‘I can- Planet’s 37-year history. To celebrate this from June 6–12. Curated by Professor Tim In addition to supporting the aforemen- not imagine reading a better book this year’). milestone, Lonely Planet is giving away Flannery, noted scientist and author of The tioned projects, Readings has a long- And in At Home: A Short History of Private $50,000 in prizes to be instantly won. Enter- Weather Makers, The Future Eaters, Throwim standing commitment to donating to the Life (Doubleday, HB, Normally $55, Our ing is easy! All you need to do is purchase Way Leg and Country, 30 of Australia’s best Brotherhood of St Laurence’s Home Interac- special price $39.95), the erudite, always- a specially marked guidebook with a sealed minds will discuss, debate and share their tion Program for Parents and Youngsters entertaining Bill Bryson puts domesticity sticker revealing a unique code inside, then opinions and expertise on the issue of climate (HIPPY) literacy program and Sacred Heart under the microscope. Happy reading! enter your code on Lonely Planet’s promo- change. Keynote speakers and panellists are Mission in St Kilda. tional website to instantly win prizes from pick of the shelves leaders in policy, business, finance and new STA Travel, Canon, Catherine Manuell technologies who are working to address Please visit www.readings.com.au or email I’ve found some great, unusual reads lurking Design and of course, Lonely Planet. Lonely the climate change problem. Readings will [email protected] for more on Readings’ shelves lately (it pays to do an Planet thanks its loyal Readings travellers for be selling books during all of the events at details. old-fashioned poke around the shops). Sher- 37 years of support. Good luck! BMW Edge, Federation Square. There will man Alexie won this year’s prestigious, peer- also be the opportunity to have books signed voted PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for by authors after the events. Come be a part of War Dances (Grove, HB, $36.95), a short- the conversation, the solution and the future story collection interspersed with poetry. It’s at The Deakin Lecture Series. All events are a fantastic little book that follows Alexie’s free, but please book via The Wheeler Centre celebrated YA novel The Absolutely True website at www.wheelercentre.com. Diary of a Part-time Indian (Anderson, PB, $19.95). ‘I wanted to write a book that was Clarification: a reverse of that,’ Alexie told The Washington April Feature on Post after his win. ‘I wanted to do a weird book and re-establish my independent, Maria Tumarkin small-press roots.’ Rumours abound that a In April, we were very pleased to feature local edition is on its way – look out for it. Maria Tumarkin’s memoir Otherland (Vintage, PB, Normally $34.95, Our special I pounced on a couple of sturdy collections price $29.95) as our New Australian Writing by celebrated American short-story writers. feature. It has, however, been brought to our At a whopping 980 pages, covering four attention that there was a misunderstand- collections, The Collected Stories of Deborah ing in Rachel Power’s interview with Maria Eisenberg (PB, $36.95) is an absolute steal, Tumarkin, where it was implied in the final and will appeal to those who loved Lorrie text that her young son was left solely in Moore’s The Collected Stories (Faber, PB, the care of her mother while Maria and her $27.95) – like Moore, Eisenberg is mordant- older child, Billie, were in Russia and the ly witty and sharply poignant. The Collected Ukraine for six weeks. This was not correct; Stories of Lydia Davis (Henry Holt, HB, as Maria writes in her book, in her absence, $49.95) is the complete works (752 pages) Miguel was cared for by his father, with the of her coolly ironic short-short fiction. help of Maria’s mother and aunt. —Jo Case Oslo Davis www.oslodavis.com

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Book now, online or at THE the cinema box office. SECRET IN THEIREYES Oscar Winner: Best Foreign Language film 380 LYGON ST CARLTON New York’s four favourite women A retired lawyer turns his attention to an unsolved www.cinemanova.com.au return in one of the most highly Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, case and uncovers a two decade old secret. STARTS MAY 27 National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. anticipated films of the year. STARTS JUNE 2 Readings Monthly June 2010 3

ambition and retreat. Together with political Counsel in 1988, and chaired the ACT Law writers Michael Gordon (Age) and George Reform Commission between 1996 and Megalogenis (Australian), we promise you a 2006. The Quest for Justice (Scribe, PB, $35) night of predications and exposure. Join in! expresses his concerns about the role of the Thursday 17 June, 6.30pm, Readings Haw- law, the adequacy of our legal system, and thorn. Free, but please book 9819 1917. perceived leniency of criminal sentences, be- EventsAll our Readings book and music events in are June fore plunging into an exploration of the two free, unless otherwise stated. Bookings do not 15 ‘wars’ that threaten to make justice a casualty: guarantee a seat, but rather indicate to us the the ‘War on Drugs’ and the ‘War on Terror’. Street Art 18 number of people to expect. To see more events or With Ghostpatrol, Miso, Niels and Meggs Wednesday 30 June, 6.30pm, Readings Hawthorn. for updates on new events please visit the events and author Alison Young. For one amazing Lisa Miller Free, please book on 9819 1917. page at www.readings.com.au. night only, we bring together Melbourne’s top Car Tape 2 is the new album from acclaimed street artists to talk through their art with Ali- Australian singer-songwriter Lisa Miller – the son Young. Alison’s brilliant new book Street/ much-anticipated follow-up to 2002’s original 7 Studio (T&H, PB, $59.95) offers an exclusive Car Tape. The album made it into many Launches Jeff Daniels behind-the-scenes look at how street art has critics’ best of 2002 lists, sat at the top of the Blood on my Hands: A Surgeon at War (Wild entered the mainstream and become one of Australian independent charts for close to a Dingo, PB, $32.95) is the story of Dr Craig Director Jeff Daniels will answer questions year, and earned Miller three ARIA nomina- about his documentary The 10 Conditions of the most collectable new art forms. Tuesday Jurisevic’s experiences with the International tions. Friday 18 June, 5.30pm, Readings 15 June, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, Medical Corps during the Kosovo conflict. Love, the story of Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Carlton. Free, no need to book. leader of the Uyghur people and her cam- but please book on 9347 6633. Tuesday 1 June, 6–8.30pm, Experimedia paign for her people’s human rights. Twice Space, State Library of Victoria, 328 Swan- nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, once the ston Street, Melbourne. Free, but book on 20 [email protected] or 9523 0922. richest entrepreneur in China, Rebiya Kadeer 15 Crafty kids! has been persecuted by the Chinese govern- Nicolas Rothwell Come down to Readings Port Melbourne for Susan Hawthorne of Spinifex will launch ment, who have sought to prevent her mes- Nicolas Rothwell is the award-winning author a fun morning of craft. We will decorate a Jessica Raschke’s second poetry collec- sage reaching the world, including boycotting of The Red Highway and northern corre- wall-hanging to adorn our new kids’ section tion, The Beguilings (Gininderra PB, $18). screenings of this film.Monday spondent for the Australian. In Journeys to and we would love your help. Come ready to Wednesday 2 June, 6pm for 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no need to book. 7 June, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. the Interior (Black Inc., PB, $32), he travels draw, colour, and paste. Ages 2–12. Sunday Free, but please book on 9347 6633. deep into the northern realm of Australia. His 20 June, 10.30am, Readings Port Mel- Medine Simons and Merryl Naughton’s book book contains haunting and perceptive por- bourne. Free, but please book on 9681 9255. How to get a Pay Rise (Hardie Grant, PB, traits, of, among others, Geoffrey Gurrumul $19.95) is packed with encouragement, useful 9 Yunupingu, Ian Fairweather, Noel Pearson advice and proven strategies for working your Graeme Davison and Galarrwuy Yunupingu.Tuesday 15 June, 25 way up the salary ladder. Thursday 3 June, in conversation with 6.30pm, Readings Hawthorn. Free, but Bob Graham 6.30pm, Readings Hawthorn. Free, no need Helen MacDonald please book on 9819 1917. Drawing Workshop to book. Professor Graeme Davison and Helen Join Bob Graham for a fun drawing work- Tess Evans’s first novel, Book of Lost Threads shop for kids ages 4–8 years, drawing images MacDonald will discuss Helen’s latest book, (A&U, PB, $27.99) is about love and loss, Possessing the Dead (MUP, PB, $39.99), which 16 from his new fabulous book April Underhill, Ian Gawler Tooth Fairy (Walker, HB, Normally $27.95, mothers and children, hope and faith. explores the disturbing history of the cadaver Our special price $24.95). We will supply Thursday 3 June, 6pm for 6.30pm, Readings trade in Scotland, England and Australia. & Paul Bedson the drawing equipment and you provide the Carlton. Free, no need to book. Helen is the author of the critically acclaimed Meditation is increasingly recommended for talent! Friday 25 June, 4.30pm - 5.30pm, Gregory Milner’s Fresh Cut Flowers (Jo Jo Human Remains, which won the Victorian relaxation, for enhancing relationships and Readings Hawthorn. Bookings essential as Publishing, HB, $59.99) is the ultimate Premier’s Literary Award (History). Wednes- wellbeing, to increase performance in sport numbers are strictly limited to only 15 places. handbook for florists and floral artists. Friday day 9 June, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. and business, for personal growth, and to Cost $25 per person. Includes signed copy of 4 June, 6pm for 6.30pm, Readings Port Mel- Free, but please book on 9347 6633. assist healing. Tonight Ian Gawler and Paul April Underhill, Tooth Fairy. bourne. Free, no need to book. Bedson will explain how to build a daily To book call 9819 1917. meditation practice using their new book, The Man in White by Bill Deller (Jo Jo 10 Meditation: An In-depth Guide (Inspired Publishing, HB, $89.95) traces the complete Living, PB, $35), as a base. Wednesday 16 26 history of the AFL Umpires Association. Donna Mulhearn Emma Matthews Ordinary Courage: My Journey To Baghdad As June, 6.30pm, Readings Hawthorn. Free, Wednesday 9 June, 6pm for 6.30pm, Read- but please book on 9819 1917. Emma Matthews will be chatting with John ings Port Melbourne. Free, no need to book. a Human Shield (Murdoch, PB, $32.95) is Sheridan from 3MBS live. Manchester-born Donna Mulhearn's story of working in Iraq Emma is an Australian lyric soprano, noted Join us for the launch of Women Who Kill by as a humanitarian aid worker, setting up a for operatic roles, but also popular on the Ruth Wykes and Lindy Cameron (Five Mile, shelter for street kids and supporting refugee 17 concert stage. She is currently a Principal Art- PB, $29.95), a true crime collection. Friday families – after being a human shield in 2003. Benjamin Law ist with Opera Australia. Saturday 26 June, 11 June, 6pm for 6.30pm, Readings Haw- Thursday 10 June, 6.30pm, Readings Carl- in conversation 12.30pm, Readings Hawthorn. Free, but thorn. Free, no need to book. ton. Free, but please book on 9347 6633. please book on 9819 1917. with Jess McGuire Associate Professor Russell Grigg will launch Asialink presents a night with Ben Law, a Matthew Sharpe and Geoff Boucher’s Zizek born humourist – and a literary star in the 12 29 and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, PB, making. In The Family Law (Black Inc., PB, Jane Meredith $35), a new kind of introduction to Slavoj Bob Graham $27.95), he invites readers into the world of Zizek’s political theory. And look out for Join us as one of Readings’ his endearing yet pro­foundly eccentric family. Aphrodite’s Magic: Celebrate and Heal Your Sexuality (O Books, PB, $32.95) combines Zizek's latest, Living in the End Times (Verso, most loved authors reads from He constructs brilliantly turned essays in the personal development with a magical God- HB, $45). Wednesday 16 June, 6.30pm, his new book, April Underhill, style of David Sedaris, assembling a portrait dess spell. Tuesday 29 June, 6pm, Readings Readings Carlton. Free, no need to book. Tooth Fairy (Walker, HB, that is both universal­ and utterly particu- Port Melbourne. Free, but please book on Love and Dread in Cambodia: Weddings, Normally $27.95, Our special lar. Ben is a senior contributor to Frankie 9681 9255. price $24.95). Bob Graham magazine. His work has also appeared in The Births, and Ritual Harm Under the Khmer has written and illustrated Monthly, The Big Issue and Best Australian Rouge (Peg LeVine, PB) follows ten years of many acclaimed children’s Essays. Thursday 17 June, 6.30pm, Readings 30 fieldwork on Khmer Rouge survivors. Profes- picture books, including How to Heal a Carlton. Free, no need to book. Lily Bragge sor Emeritus David Chandler will launch. Broken Wing and Max. He has won the Friday 18 June, 6pm for 6.30pm, Readings in conversation Carlton. Free, no need to book. Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award with Louise Ryan an unprecedented three times. Saturday 12 16 Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe will launch June, 2.30pm, Readings Port Melbourne. Lily Bragge is a Melbourne-born, US-based David Marr writer and journalist who, in what feels like local poet Evan Jones’ latest poetry collection, Free, but please book on 9681 9255. in conversation somebody else’s life, used to be a writer and Alone at Last (Picaro, PB, $15). Tuesday 29 with Robert Manne performer for stage, comedy, film and televi- June, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no Age. need to book. Wednesday 16 June, 6.15pm, Wheeler sion. She is a weekly contributor to the 14 My Dirty Shiny Life (Viking, PB, $32.95), Pages to Poetry Centre. Free, but please book through the describes with verve and humour growing Wheeler Centre at www.wheelercentre.com. up with a career-criminal father, her multiple In this instalment of our monthly event addictions, clinical depression, incarceration – for poets and their admirers, we have Petra and her ultimate redemption. Wednesday 30 Coming events White, Andy Jackson and Josephine Rowe. 17 June, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, but 3 Petra's latest collection is The Simplified World please book on 9347 6633. (John Leonard, PB, $24.95). Andy’s latest David Marr Kylie Kwong collection is Among the Regulars (Papertiger, in conversation with To celebrate the release of her new book, PB, $18.95). Josephine Rowe’s collection of Michael Gordon & 30 It Tastes Better (Lantern, HB, Normally short stories, How a Moth Becomes a Boat, George Megalogenis Ken Crispin $69.95, Our special price $59.95). Kylie will was recently re-released through Hunter Marr’s latest Quarterly Essay, Power Trip in conversation with present a ‘taste and share' evening, with wine Publishers (PB, $16.95). She is the poetry (Black Inc., PB, $19.95) shows the making malcolm fraser & by Scorpo and tastes from her new book. harvest Tuesday 3 August, 6.30pm–8pm, Readings editor for , and is currently writing her of Kevin Rudd, prime minister. In Rudd’s sally warhaft first novel.Monday 14 June, 6.30pm, Read- Queensland years, Marr finds strange pat- Hawthorn. $20 per person. Please book on ings Carlton. Free, no need to book. Ken Crispin has appeared for a number of 9819 1917. Bookings essential; places limited. terns that will recur: a tendency to chaos, a high-profile defendants, including Lindy and mania for control and a strange mix of heady Michael Chamberlain. He became a Queen’s 4 Readings Monthly June 2010 New Australian Writing Feature

UnlawfullyMarieke Hardy interviews Benjamin Law about his hilarious funny new memoir, The Family Law(Black Inc., PB, $27.95)

low humourist David Sedaris, and there are strong thematic similarities in their work. ‘These are all Generationally they may be completely different – Ben is a child of the computer moments we’ve age – but Law says he has always related to Sedaris and how he sees the world. Both lived, or moments from large families, both are homosexuals with a migrant parent and ‘a damn quot- like them, and how able mother’. It won’t surprise anyone that Sedaris’s entire back catalogue is stacked lucky we are that neatly near Law’s desk. the pen of Ben Law There are other essayists who Ben professes to adore – Helen Garner, Zadie Smith, Mi- has taken to our chael Chabon, David Foster Wallace, Susan Orlean, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen – collective memories but he states ‘Sedaris walks that wonderful line between stand-up comedian and liter- in such a rich and ary writer, and has made the idea of “essay” evocative fashion. ’ less scary to people. That’s a good thing’. I’m a friend of Ben’s, yes, but I am also an unabashed fan. When we spoke together recently on a panel for the Williamstown because I think certain details or stories Literary Festival, I was moved by his would bore people. And I hate to bore commitment to warmth and truth in his people. It’s the attention-needy homosexual writing. He teases without being cruel, lifts in me. I like to entertain’. the lid on human frailty without sticking Benjamin Law is one of those writers who, that type of thing’. the boot in. I so admire his biting wit and when you mention his name to those in the Don’t be afraid, after all this talk of vaginas his ability to permeate slightly shocking know, evokes exclamations of warm enthu- Ben and I first became aware of each other’s and childbirth, that this gorgeous book is personal anecdotes with compassion and siasm. Within the writing community, and work when both regularly contributing to simply a glued-together collection of salty depth. That he has looked to the people among readers of the ultra-hip Frankie maga- the gorgeous ‘sharp, witty, everyday and cursing and graphic descriptions of bodily closest to him for inspiration and created zine, where Law has long been a senior writer, anecdotal’ Frankie magazine. Initially shy functions. Oh dear, you’d be missing the a piece of work that is both touching and he is, quite simply, loved. With good reason: in correspondence, our online banter soon gloriousness entirely. Beyond all, there is an deeply funny is a huge achievement. his writing is laugh-out-loud funny, deeply became freeform and relentless; a friend- easily recognisable course of adolescence, moving and razor-sharp smart. Now, his small ship blossoming through a desire to both of family affection and shared experience. There are very few Australian essayists who but devoted fan base is about to grow, with impress and shock. Through our written Being horrified by Stephen King’s fright have the ability to make one LOL – which the publication of his first book,The Family work – not only for Frankie, but also, in film It with an older brother, or holding a I believe is the correct term for someone of Law (Black Inc., PB, $27.95), a loosely linked Ben’s case publications such as The Monthly night-fill job at Big W. These are all mo- my increasingly idiotic generation – and I collection of stories about growing up with his and The Big Issue – we both enjoy a flirta- ments we’ve lived, or moments like them, feel so blessed that Ben has momentarily eccentric, lovable family. Marieke Hardy, Law's tion with what author David Sedaris refers and how lucky we are that the pen of Ben pried his talent from brief and inviting Frankie colleague and long-time fan, spoke to as ‘the illusion of intimacy’. Allowing Law has taken to our collective memories pieces in local magazines to focus on this to him for Readings' New Australian Writing readers in to a degree that – to the observer in such a rich and evocative fashion. particular collection of work. The fact that feature series about his book, his writing, and – may appear dangerous to the author’s his next project is purported to be a first- of course, his family. privacy, or lack thereof. The Family Law is a very funny book – person adventure journalism book entitled outrageously funny, in parts so devilish the ‘Gaysia’ is even more reason to celebrate. But it’s one thing for Law to reveal gasp- reader startles from the page with a guilty t is odd, after reading glorious Regardless of which subject Ben chooses to inducing facts about his own sex life and gasp – but there is also an intensely human sample after glorious sample dissect in his inimitable fashion, there is no personal bathroom habits (to say any more vulnerability pulsating beneath. Ben can of Benjamin Law’s pithy, stark, doubt he will remain indebted to his roots. would, I’m afraid, be what’s known in see the inherent moments of dark humour delightfully graphic prose (torn And indeed, in his own words: the industry as a ‘spoiler’), quite another in the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, vaginas*, anybody? Teaching altogether to drag in extended family but doesn’t shy away from the sadness, the your Malaysian migrant mother the word ‘My folks always come first. Despite all members. Law’s brothers and sisters get the frailty of those involved. In ‘Sleep Cancer’ ‘c**t’?), to find the man in person such the odds, they firmly remain my favou- full going-over in The Family Law, and his he tells us of his mother’s nocturnal habits a sweet, wholesome type of chap. Butter rite people in the world. They’re alright, I mother and father seem to fare in similarly after the divorce. ‘If she wasn’t sleeping for wouldn’t melt. Smegma might, obvi- my family’. raw terms. most of the day, she would remain awake ously, which would no doubt lead into for hours on end, watching late-night mov- The wit and wisdom of Marieke Hardy can yet another brilliant exploration of sticky Ben admits that ‘for most families, I imag- ies on SBS until the after-hours broadcast- be variously found in Frankie, on ABC TV's honesty that Ben does so well. In his debut ine discussing your parents’ divorce, your ing signal kicked in, after which, she’d tune The First Tuesday Book Club, on Triple J collection of essays, The Family Law, Ben burgeoning homosexuality and graphic into infomercials for the exercise and juli- with The Doctor, and other random quality takes the reader by the latex glove and depictions of childbirth would be off- enne machines.’ When Ben and his siblings outlets. leads them through a not entirely sanitary limits. That’s not so much with my family. complain about the lack of structure in the maze of domestic chaos, sibling battle- Anyone who’s met my mother can pinpoint house, of being late for school and con- *And no, I can’t say I ever envisaged my grounds, and the sort of intimate descrip- the exact moment she first used the words stantly disorganised, they are told solemnly first ever piece for Readings containing the tions of bodily functions that might make “uterus” and “vagina” in conversation with that their mother has ‘sleep cancer’. colourfully evocative term ‘torn vagina’ Tracey Emin pull a face and say ‘steady on, them – and usually, it was within the first either. I’m sorry, mother. – MH I just ate my supper’. few minutes of meeting each other. So she’s ‘It’s like an illness,’ she’s explained, one been a good role model for being open and hand on the wheel. ‘I go to sleep, but Law himself seems unfazed by the thought honest with people.’ when I do, it’s so hard to wake up. It’s of splashing his dirty laundry across the like cancer.’ page, and insists that nothing about the All six of Law’s immediate family mem- ‘You do not have cancer,’ I said. ‘That’s a book is exaggerated. ‘You don’t have to bers were invited to read drafts of The tasteless thing to say.’ manufacture drama in my family. Just put Family Law, yet most of the changes they ‘I didn’t say I had cancer,’ she said. any two members in the same room, and requested were apparently only to do with ‘Sometimes it just feels like I’m dying, it’s like a chemistry experiment – some- grammar and spelling. ‘Of course,’ says that’s all.’ thing will happen. Or perhaps it’s an Ben, ‘I leave some details out. But that’s experiment in zoology. Shark versus squid, not really from self-censorship. It’s more Law is clearly inspired by the work of fel- Readings Monthly June 2010 5 New Australian Writing Feature

WaitingChristos Tsiolkas interviews Fiona McGregor for about Indelible McGregor Ink (Scribe, PB, Normally $32.95, Our price $27.95)

a writer and the world. I need that, because written about family – because middle-class I can be solitary and anti-social. I need to white Australia (which I come from) is the get my hands dirty. Performance gives me most fervent believer in the myth of egalitari- humanity, and writing is nothing without anism. It’s very hard to own one’s privilege. humanity.’ I think the great weeping wound of this coun- try is the genocide and war that have still not Her answer resonated strongly with me. I am been fully recognised. Why isn’t there a four- not a performer at all but I have worked in metre-high statue of Pemulwuy on the Hume theatre and found that in studying actors and Highway? Instead we have giant prawns for their craft, their immersion into character, I god’s sake. We can’t admit how rich we are was able to break a prejudice I had in my own because we’re guilty about how we got it.’ head that writing was somehow only cerebral and cleaved from the actual physical body. ‘For me, living in Sydney through the What actors taught me was that imagination Howard and Carr eras were my starkest is not only resident in the mind; characters lesson in what occurred here – the heart- and stories can also emerge from the body. breaking destruction of our Dionysian spirit. The relentless price hikes and policing and Two years ago McGregor wrote a splendid regulation. The meanness of spirit all that Strange Museums non-fiction book called , induces. I wrote the last drafts of this book in a record of her time touring Poland as a Berlin which I think must be one of the freest Strange performance artist with Ana Wojak. places in the world. I could see from there Museums is a memoir and a history, an educa- how tightly controlled in Australia we have tion on art and performance, and what strikes become, especially in Sydney. The tyranny the reader is the manifest joy, confidence and of the Stasi was based on such petty things. I maturity in the writing. If it weren’t for the saw so many disturbing parallels with what is happening in Sydney and Australia.’ ‘I’ll keep it simple: I tell her that I could see, smell, see, touch, hear Sydney when I read Indelible Ink. For a Christos Tsiolkas, much-loved author of The work from her first novel, Au Pair, and in it’s a tremendous Melburnian such as myself, it is a novel I have Slap, is an outspoken fan of Fiona McGregor's the short story collection, Suck My Toes. Her been waiting for, one that can literally possess new novel Indelible Ink (Scribe, PB, Normally talent seemed self-evident at the time but her book. I loved it.’ me and guide me through a city I think I $32.95, Our special price $27.95), which he youth, her gender and her toughness saw her know but I don’t really. I wonder how impor- calls 'absolute f***ing gold'. He spoke to Fiona work caught up in the marketing spin-cycle fact that so many of us here on this (over) tant a sense of place is for her writing. about the book for Readings' New Australian called ‘grunge’. In retrospect it might seem sun-drenched continent have cloth ears, the Writing Feature series. Indelible Ink is now that ‘grunge’ was not coined to identify some- book should have been celebrated in every lit- ‘Central. Alice Munro called herself an anach- available at all Readings shops. thing new in Australian literature but rather erary page of our newspapers, on every book ronism because she’s a writer of place. Not to corral and quarantine this ‘something new’ show on radio and television. It indicated true. She’s a living genius and it’s gratifying from the world of Aus. Lit. proper. It wasn’t t the centre of Fiona that we can write out of ourselves, that our to see that being recognised. I’m a believer in literature that was to prove a safe haven for Australian language and consciousness allows cultural custodianship. I love the intellectual McGregor’s wonderful new McGregor. One escape – and not only an novel, Indelible Ink, is Marie, for possibility, not only limitation. Clearly and spiritual belief system of indigenous escape, but also a renewal – proved to be the her work as a performer is central to thematic Australia – what I understand of it anyway. a divorced grandmother in Dionysian ecstasy of queer celebration (which North Shore Sydney who one and narrative drive of the book, but also to its It’s very simple common sense. You are born she writes about in her novel chemical palace). expression. into something and you take care of it accord- day drunkenly wanders into a parlour and Another was the challenging of her body and demands a tattoo. From this startling premise ing to your craft, your talent. Sydney is my its limitations/possibilities through body- ‘Writing non-fiction helped unlock things flesh and blood, it’s been central to nearly all Awe are introduced to Marie’s children, to her based performance art works: the spilling of like that. Strange Museums was a blissfully my books. I grew to hate it over the years, and friends, to a brutally and lovingly detailed blood, both literal and metaphorical; endur- easy book to write. Weirdly, I am much world of Sydney bourgeois society. From the to feel alienated by it. But after ten months ance; the blurred lines between suffering and more confronted emotionally by fiction than away, I’m so looking forward to coming home first burst of ink flowing from the tattooist’s exaltation, ritual and performance, these have non-fiction. And I’m not a fudger in my non- needle underneath Marie’s skin, she experi- to Sydney, I feel like weeping. Even while I all been explored in McGregor’s increasingly fiction – it’s straight up. My can of Catholic gnash my teeth I crave it like a lost lover. I ences the beginning of a liberation that will sophisticated performances. I asked her how worms was opened by Strange Museums and I lead to a reconsideration of the meaning of poured all that love and all that hate into the the knowledge she gained from these works found so much humour in there that helped book – I owed it to Sydney to write it at its family, of affluence, of the very meaning of influenced the writing of Indelible Ink. with the anger and fear. It was also the first being a woman in contemporary Australian worst too. It’s just my Sydney, mind you – book I finished and felt fully satisfied with, so who knows if it will resonate with others? I society. ‘I’ve been making performance art for almost I gained confidence in myself as a writer.’ 20 years now. First in the more theatrical, hope it does.’ Marie is astoundingly human and engaging, burlesque area and now with pared-down, The critical eye that I think McGregor gained naïve but alive, an Australian character who is It does. It really does. In Indelible Ink conceptual, body-based endurance per- through her working on her performances McGregor proves herself to be one of our as powerfully communicated as the Edith of formance. That gamut has influenced my and on Strange Museums has allowed her to Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days or the Austra- cultural custodians. I am happy to be in her writing both stylistically and in what I’ve unselfconsciously gaze upon the contempo- hands. The book feels like it has been a long- lian women lost in the ‘old world’ in Patrick Indelible learnt about discipline in craft. It’s helped me rary Australian world and write, in time coming and it is absolutely what we have White’s novels. She is a character who sticks understand the distillation of ideas: how to Ink, what has been sorely lacking in our to you long after the reading; she becomes a waited for. I’ll keep it simple: it’s a tremen- stoke them into a fully realised work. People literature: a the-way-we-live-now novel that dous book. I loved it. friend. I asked Fiona who the inspiration for are often agog at what I put myself through explains ourselves to ourselves. She does this Marie was. in my performances, but I consider that sort nakedly, honestly, intelligently, abrasively, sa- Christos Tsiolkas’s most recent novel is The Slap ‘She was inspired by a woman I met twice, of duress to be nothing next to the long dark tirically, humanely. Through tattooing herself (A&U, PB, $32.95). from the lower north shore, mother of six or slog of writing a novel.’ Marie tears a rent through the safe, cosseted and indulged world of her middle-class family seven children. I knew her eldest daughter. ‘Apart from enriching my writing as a Years after I met this woman, I heard she had and friends. Through it, we see the anxieties practice, being body-based, performance and fears that really animate us, as well as the divorced, fallen into heavy drinking and got- art has given me a lot of knowledge that I ten tattooed. Then she died. This was in the possible ways through which we can honestly guess could be classed roughly as medical/ liberate ourselves. I ask Fiona how conscious early nineties and the transgression and cour- biological/anthropological. I’ve worked a lot age and pathos of the story fascinated me. Of she was of writing a novel about, let’s call with the breaching of the skin — there is them, ‘the Howard Years’. course, when I sat down to write it, I realised something quite shamanistic about that sort I didn’t know her at all, and had to make it all of performance. It taps into traditions much ‘You know I’m sadly not well enough read to up … the tree does not resemble the seed.’ more ancient than writing, and is global. It is judge what Australian fiction is doing now The love of words and a playful, irreverent so vividly human, it is like hydrochloric acid as compared to before. I think I myself have game with language has marked McGregor’s on that membrane that can grow between shied away from class – although I’ve always 6 Readings Monthly June 2010 Book of the Month New Special Price The Thousand Autumns of Fiction Jacob de Zoet David Mitchell Sceptre. PB. Normally $32.95 Australian Guest Review Fiction Our special price $27.95 Back in 2003, Granta Known Unknowns included David Mitchell as Emmett Stinson one of the Best of Young Affirm. PB. $24.95 British Novelists and since The Long Story Shorts series then he has proven himself a by Affirm Press just took a worthy nominee. He has giant leap forward. I mean no been shortlisted for the Man disrespect to either Barry Booker prize for two Divola or Bob Franklin, who subsequent novels. Mitchell is one of a preceded Emmett Stinson’s in handful of contemporary writers I unreserv- the series. It’s just that on edly adore, not least because every novel is reading Known Unknowns, a brave reinvention of a form he seems to you are reawakened to the endless possibilities have effortlessly perfected, from the of the short form. Stinson originally won the ambitious, avant-garde Cloud Atlas to his Age Short Story competition in 2005, and the endearing coming-of-age story, Black Swan stories featured here prove it was no fluke. Set Green. Thankfully, there is nothing self- primarily in post-September 11 Baltimore, conscious about each incarnation, yet they the author showcases searing prose, characters all demonstrate an unyielding mastery of struck dumb by their own desire, and friends language and narrative. that are equal parts desire and disaster, connected and yet only seconds from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is self-destruction. Through it all, we see a quiet the story of a young Dutch clerk, com- desperation as people grasp for something to pelled to leave Zeeland to earn his fortune hold on to. It’s as if September 11 has with the Dutch East Indies Company in ruptured Baltimore in its wake, with collater- order to marry his sweetheart, Anna. Jacob ally damaged characters trying desperately to arrives in Dejima eager to prove his worth step away from both history and themselves. but unwilling to relinquish his Psalter or his Contrary to popular belief, good stories do principles. But by the end of the eighteenth not necessarily give you what you want. At century, corruption is rife amongst his their best they are a slap in the face, ideas rambunctious countrymen and the veiled collapsing in on each other, and the last dying alliance between East and West is precari- gasp of humanity as it struggles to the surface. ous at best. Jacob manages to make his first Laurie Steed regularly reviews short stories on successful trade with the help of a shady his blog The Gum Wall cook, Arie Grote – to a samurai, Lord Eno- moto. Life on Dejima seems manageable for the astute clerk. Jacob finds a mentor in Guest Review Dr Marinus, an elegant renaissance man, who teaches Japanese students Western Houdini’s Flight medicine. Soon, Jacob proves himself to the Angelo Loukakis administration. Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 Terry Voulos is a man in Love unexpectedly blossoms between Jacob crisis. He’s sick of driving and one of Dr Marinus’s students, a beauti- buses, of seeing the increasing Marie King — a recently divorced grandmother from Sydney’s ful but disfigured midwife, Orito, who is contempt of his wife and affluent north shore — gets a tattoo. And another. And then also an object of interest to the mystical wonders whether his own son another. Her children are horrified, her friends are baffled, Lord Enomoto. Beleaguered by earthquakes even notices him or not. but Marie’s journey to the seedier side of Sydney is, ultimately, and foreign interest, Dejima becomes a When the highlight of his a journey to self-acceptance. prison. Jacob lingers, promethean-bound, week is performing some very isolated from his homeland with no prom- basic magic tricks to a bunch of disinterested ‘Indelible Ink addresses our world and our time with an ise of a passage home, as rumours abound pensioners, he grasps this as the only chance acute and ferocious acumen. This is a superb book by — of the collapse of the Dutch East Indies to escape his gloomy reality. Hal Sargeson, an undeniably now — one of our finest writers’ Christos Tsolkias Company; unable to penetrate into the ill-kempt, scrawny gent who lives in an interior of Japan, ‘the land of a thousand abandoned hall in Chinatown, sees Terry’s autumns’, to save the woman he loves. performance and offers to teach him the skills indelible ink Not content with delivering this epic por- that he learned decades earlier from his father, trait of Jacob de Zoet, Mitchell peoples the assistant disciple to the world famous Harry novel with an astonishing cast of auxiliary Houdini. Terry’s life unravels further as he’s Fiona McGregor characters. A personal favourite is the unfairly blamed for a tragic death, is rejected English captain Penhaligon, whose leader- by his own father and wonders just why this ship is compromised by agonising attacks of strange old man wants to share the mysteries gout and the ensuing gruesome treatments, of escapology, disappearance and transforma- which include the insertion of maggots into tion with him. Crossing the boundaries of a flesh wound. The heroine of the novel is cultural differences, historical fact, unhappy Orito. Defined by her family’s poverty and childhoods and repressed memories, Terry the scar that marks most of her face, she discovers the truth behind secrets never shared emerges a brave, intelligent woman who and finds strength and meaning in the most accepts her fate in order to save the lives of unlikely of places. Is magic just an illusion or others. a lesson to be learned? Kath Lockett is a freelance reviewer At the end of the novel, I felt as though I had been reading a great ancestor’s diary, an undiscovered classic that has languished in Guest Review THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE IF I LOVED YOU, PLENITUDE an Amsterdam attic. Mitchell’s portrait is so Milk Fever Ken Crispin I WOULD TELL YOU THIS Juliet Schor intimate; Jacob, such a good man. It is dif- ficult to express the distance travelled and Lisa Reece-Lane Accessible, clear, and Robin Black A revolutionary strategy for Pier 9. PB. $32.95 compassionate, this important positive change, at a time it’s the many years one feels as though one has Luminous, wise, and unerringly Melbourne author Lisa work explores fundamental never been so clear that we’re journeyed with these characters. In writing humane, these stories from one questions about law and justice. degrading the planet far faster this review, I am once more transported Reece-Lane’s first novel Milk of America’s brightest new voices into Mitchell’s exquisite, exotic narrative Fever is named after a will delight lovers of short fiction. than we’re regenerating it. realm. I cannot imagine reading a better condition that befalls dairy book this year. cows shortly after they calve. Left untreated, it can be fatal. www.scribepublications.com.au Also available as eBooks Justine Douglas is from Readings Narrated in turn by ethereal Port Melbourne dairy farmer Tom and young Readings Monthly June 2010 7 mother Julia, a former ballerina married to don’t get saved, brothers and sisters, you get dor. Salvador has for many years been work- Staff Review new age zealot Bryant, Milk Fever explores the reassigned.’ His canine observations reveal ing on his opus – a brilliant novel that will legacy of family secrets, motherhood, fleeting glimpses of the real Marilyn, but expose the weakness and corruption of his Sex and Stravinsky marriage, and the heady complications of love highlight the world she lived in – the sharp country. Ilustrado opens with the discovery of Barbara Trapido and attraction. Wife and kids in tow, Bryant intellectuals of New York, psychotherapy, Salvador dead in the Hudson River, expected Bloomsbury. PB. $32.99 throws himself into establishing a yoga centre Frank Sinatra’s view of the presidential suicide. Unconvinced, Miguel becomes I have a huge literary crush on in the fictional hamlet of Lovely, where the campaign and the techniques used by the obsessed with the missing manuscript and Barbara Trapido – one of my preferred form of healing is hitting the pub. legendary teacher Lee Strasberg. Maf is in embarks on a biography of this difficult and all-time top five authors. Her He has two students: Tom, whose genuine thrall to his beautiful owner ‘who always outspoken man, returning to the Phillipines books are deliciously light and ability to hear the earth’s vibrations rivals any carries a book in her handbag’ and does his to meet Salvador’s family and compatriots. In- razor-sharp clever; spiked with crystal healing Bryant is capable of, and best to ease her through her enforced stay at terspersed with his journey are excerpts from a fierce (often dark) wit. They Summer, the local butcher’s wife. Julia soon the Payne Whitney clinic and her recupera- Salvador’s poetry, interviews, novels and essays usually borrow themes from suspects Bryant is doing more than aligning tion afterwards in Mexico. Marilyn is that build a rich narrative of a nation and its canonical texts (here, it’s Summer’s chakras but she has unforseen depicted as someone trying her hardest to troubled history. And it is a story that forces Stravinksy’s ballet Pulcinella), but the characters problems of her own: she’s obsessed with earn respect among people who often Miguel to confront his own unhappy past. are always the focus, making the novels an hunky Tom. If plot twists are your thing, regarded her otherwise – and the little dog’s Michelle Calligaro is a freelance reviewer absolute delight to read. The novel opens with there’s no shortage of them in this tree-change narration pays a quirky and loving tribute. a meet-cute in a 1970s share house between drama: car accidents, affairs, murders, Kath Lockett is a freelance reviewer weedy, arty Josh and impossibly beautiful suicides, ghosts, wicked mother-in-laws and a Staff Review ‘Wonder Woman’ Caroline. They quickly little bit of old fashioned romance thrown in. marry – and their happiness is soon thwarted Staff Review Singularity Sally Keighery is Program Coordinator Charlotte Grimshaw by Caroline’s passive-aggressive mother and of CAE Book Groups ridiculously favoured younger sister. Mean- Midnight in Random NZ. PB. $32.95 while, in South Africa, Josh’s childhood a Perfect Life Here in Australia, we are sweetheart Hattie, a retired ballet teacher often slow to discover great Guest Review Michael Collins turned novelist, is bored in her marriage to New Zealand authors.(Think: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. PB. $32.99 Herman, a dominating architect marked by How a Moth Lloyd Jones, Emily Perkins.) Karl is in the midst of a ‘master-race charm’. The two couples, and their Becomes a Boat Perhaps our Pacific neigh- mid-life crisis in a less than teenage daughters, are caught up in a contem- bours are too close to be Josephine Rowe perfect life. He has been porary family farce, along with Hattie’s exotic, but too far to exert the Hunter. PB. $16.95 masquerading as a writer mysterious lodger, who has intricate past lure of the familiar. Charlotte This commercial reissue of based on an early successful connections to both her and Josh. Trapido Grimshaw has been up for (and winning) the poet Josephine Rowe’s novel, now long forgotten. explores the enduring hold of family dynamics, top awards in her native New Zealand for self-published story collection The last few years have been the mysteries of attraction and the changing years; this year Singularity was shortlisted for is filled with bittersweet spent trying to eke out a politics (domestic and national) of post-apart- the Commonwealth Prize. These interlinked moments of unbridled living ghost-writing crime novels and heid South Africa. A wonderful read. stories are masterful and evocative; their humanity. With all stories teaching creative writing, but his publisher Jo Case’s retrospective on Barbara Trapido will subject matter spanning death, loss, isolation, clocking in at under 1000 won’t return his calls and he can no longer be published in Kill Your Darlings 2 (July). words and bearing single- stomach his student’s successes. Karl hasn’t revenge, and family ties. In ‘Opportunity’, an word titles, How a Moth Becomes a Boat fits divulged his impending ruin to his wife, Lori, undercover cop working a rural drug ring neatly in the pocket whilst quietly sidling up nor has he admitted to refinancing their courts danger in more ways than one. In Staff Review to nuzzle under the chin. Here we have such apartment in order to pay for his elderly ‘Parahara’, two siblings, aged ten and seven, tales as a blind girl staring at the moon, a man mother’s care home. Their apathetic marriage take a five-year-old on a remote bushwalk. The Lessons apologising to the dying fox he has trapped is being put to the test by Lori’s desire to have When they take a wrong turn, they are Naomi Alderman and a lover tracing a map of the world on his a child. Midnight in a Perfect Life is a plunged into a frightening unknown, as are Viking. PB. $32.95 girlfriend’s body. Each glowing story seems compelling portrait of a desperate man with a the two sets of parents awaiting their return. Naomi Alderman, a promis- dipped in gold, at times devastating in its shocking secret. There are moments of David Grimshaw brilliantly brews an atmosphere of ing young writer who was comprehension of what it is to be human, but Lynch-inspired surrealism involving transves- beautiful menace; a landscape threatening in lauded with many UK literary somehow life affirming. Richard Brautigan tites and virtual realms, but the novel’s its very ambivalence to human life. And so prizes for her 2006 debut once said he wrote poetry in order to learn strength lies in its devastating portrait of alien: intense heat, black sand dunes, cabbage Disobedience, returns with her how to write short stories in order to learn familial and romantic relationships. trees ‘sharp as knives’. Grimshaw is good at second novel The Lessons. how to write novels. Based on these achingly Justine Douglas is from Readings Port Melbourne disquiet, at precarious relationships and Drawing from rich traditions beautiful, momentous shorts in which Rowe situations; at mirroring the isolation of her and myths surrounding life at imbues so much life and feeling, we not only characters with equally stark – and beautiful Oxford University, Alderman weaves an have an inheritor to his throne in our midst Guest Review – landscapes. These are brilliantly carved, intriguing tale of friendships, failures and all but a writer truly destined for greatness. A The Dead Fish Museum utterly gripping stories, with intriguing, the decadent soirées in between. The tragic rare, unforgettable collection that will be Charles D’Ambrosio complex characters. Well worth discovering! hero of the novel, James, is the quintessential talked about for years to come. Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly outsider and naïf, struggling both with his Text. PB. $32.95 Chris Flynn is the editor of Torpedo Physics papers and the culture shock of the The Dead Fish Museum continues the Ameri- musty Oxford environment. Adrift, he meets Book of Lost Threads can short story tradition of perfectly rendered Staff Review Jess, a talented violin student, and she tethers character interactions, combined with Charles him to a hedonistic, rag-tag group of Tess Evans D’Ambrosio’s flair for the slightly surreal. Spooner A&U. PB. $27.99 Pete Dexter privileged bright young things. In the And it is these surreal moments that make ultimate share-house fantasy, the group all Tracking a man she knows only by name, Atlantic Books, $32.99. the stories so haunting. A man watches a move into a crumbling Georgian mansion, Moss leaves Melbourne for Opportunity. Warren Spooner is a trouble ballerina set herself ablaze in ‘Screenwriter’. among wild gardens hidden in the heart of There she meets the reclusive but brilliant magnet. The worst of A young boy tries to understand God and Oxford. Its owner, Mark – raconteur and mathematician Finn; elderly knitter Lily; situations find him without divorce while looking for a Sasquatch in ‘The theology student – is seductive and generous and Sandy, the town buffoon. All three have so much as trying. His twin High Divide’. Each of these stories is unique, with the fruits of his trust-fund and for a been holding onto secrets that are disturbed brother died at birth, and all of them are complete and beautiful in while the group live a charmed dream-like by Moss’s arrival. robbing his mother of her themselves. Testimony to his skill is shown in existence until the sparkle surrounding their favourite child. Calamities ‘Up North’, where the characters are gently lives dims; leaving them bereft and broken. pile up from there, from fracturing in a marriage that is ‘a constant Echoing Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and freezing urine inside people’s shoes to a halving of distance’. His characters and set- Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, The Lessons is near-death encounter with a tyre-iron in a tings are skilfully created, and his proficiency a beguiling and sensitively written novel. International wild bar brawl. But Spooner has an ally in with language enables him to perfectly render Ingrid Josephine is marketing assistant at Readings his arresting scenes. Foundation powder in his kind-hearted and tirelessly patient Fiction Guest Review a compact mirror becomes ‘flesh dust’. A stepfather, Calmer Ottosson. Ottosson woman’s knees in faint blue light look ‘as guides Spooner as best he can through life’s Guest Review The Life and Opinions though they’d been carved by water from a vicissitudes, a lifelong task that wickedly of Maf the Dog and bar of soap’. In this collection, D’Ambrosio tests but ultimately does not defeat him. Imperfect Birds of his friend Marilyn shows us stories with a tenderness that can There is a strong autobiographical streak to Anne Lamott Monroe only come from a genuine love for writing. this novel, with Spooner’s ascent to success- UWA Publishing. PB. $32.95 Andrew O’Hagan Rafael SW is a freelance reviewer ful newspaper-man and his geographic Anne Lamott may be best wanderings following Pete Dexter’s own life. Anne known in Australia for her Faber. PB. $32.99 LAMOTT The bar brawl is a true tale also, an episode Imperfect Birds instructional book on Maf, short for Mafia Honey, Guest Review that landed Dexter in hospital early in his writing, Bird by Bird, but she is a Maltese terrier given to wanderings. Dexter is in marvelous form is also a writer of essays, Marilyn Monroe by Frank Ilustrado here, mining the darkest aspects of our ÔHeartwarming and heartbreakingÉ Lamott at her most witty, observant, memoir, and novels. In this and psychologically astute.Õ Sinatra as a cheer-up gift publishers weekly Miguel Syjuco humanity with a kind of malicious glee, novel, Lamott revisits the following her separation from Vintage. PB. $32.95 lending Spooner the authenticity and hilarity family she first created in playwright Arthur Miller. Illustrado, winner of the Man Asian Liter- of a life lived to its fullest. The novel also Rosie, and continued with Crooked Little Marilyn’s world is revealed ary Prize, is a remarkable debut novel that passes my most important test, and I urge Heart. Imperfect Birds works (perfectly) as a through the eyes of a dog weaves poetry, stories and interviews with you to try it. Turn to any page, begin stand-alone novel, however. During the with generations of breeding, lofty knowledge the lives of two men and the history of their reading, and you will encounter a gem. It summer before her daughter’s final year at of all the great philosophers, and several lives. beloved homeland. Miguel is a young student really is that good. school, recovering alcoholic Elizabeth ekes As he tells us: ‘God is not in his place of work studying in New York under the tutelage of Robbie Egan is from Readings Carlton out her existence day by day; still attending and is not answering his phone – get it? You the ‘Lion of Phillipine Letters’ Crispin Salva- 8 Readings Monthly June 2010

AA meetings, and taking her anti-depres- sants. But she cannot stop worrying about 17-year-old Rosie – after reading Rosie’s journal, Elizabeth knows her daughter has Feature Review experimented with drugs and sex. And when they catch Rosie telling lies, Elizabeth and with Cate Kennedy husband James are alarmed, particularly given that one of Rosie’s best friends has just if i loved you, returned from rehab. With narrative from i would tell you both Elizabeth and Rosie’s perspectives, this secrets are spilled early in the book. But this Robin Black doesn’t detract from the mounting tension. Scribe. PB. $32.95 Imperfect Birds demonstrates the desire to love and protect a child, and how that must ‘There was a reckoning sometimes result in difficult decisions and of some kind to come,’ ‘tough love’ strategies. The book contains one of Robin Black’s Lamott’s usual warmth and humour ... but characters realises in may be too life-like for parents of teens. this new collection, Annie Condon is a freelance reviewer ‘there always seemed to be.’ The reckoning to come, the shifts of Special Price emotional retribution laying in wait – The Breaking of Eggs these are the building blocks of the finely-constructed stories in If I Loved Jim Powell You, I Would Tell You This, by this new Weidenfeld and Nicolson. HB. Was $29.99 US author. Our special price $24.95 With the collapse of commu- Black’s storylines seem deceptively nism, long-time communist simple at first, but as each unfolds, sympathiser Feliks is forced to it reveals her meticulous attention Freedom Fighter. Hedonist. reappraise his life. He has to plotting. The stories are complex, been working as a travel richly-detailed and never predictable, Terrorist. Hero. Discover writer for Iron Curtain and her characters instantly countries, and has always understandable and familiar. They the man behind the myth. prioritised politics over try and fail to keep secrets from each relationships. Now is his chance to reinvent other, but the insights they gain from himself, and rebuild his connections with his hiding are often unwelcome and brother and a long-lost love. Booklist's verdict: uncomfortable. In Divorced, Beheaded, ‘by turns winsome and moving ... a book that Survived, an unexpected death recalls YOUNG MANDELA thoughtful readers won’t soon forget’. another long-ago death of the narrator’s DAVID JAMES SMITH brother, and the realisation that she Private Life can only helplessly watch her grieving, Jane Smiley numbed son go through the same Faber. PB. $32.99 pain she had herself years before, Available June 10th hachette.com.au From a Pulitzer Prize-win- remembering things ‘that make only an ning author, this vibrant and intuitive kind of sense. Silences, agreed intimate novel explores a to. Intimacies, put away.’ woman’s life from the 1880s Black’s resolutions are as delicate and to World War II. When knotty as real life, stopping characters in Margaret Mayfield marries their tracks with unexpected turns. The the most famous man in her reader is surprised too, as she refuses Missouri town, a naval officer to let these stories end in comfortable and astronomer, her mother calls it lucky. or conventional places, often revealing But it soon turns out that Margaret’s another, more masterfully-realised ace husband cares more for science than love. up her sleeve. Occasionally we are left With little choice but to stand by him, with a metaphor alone – a bundle of Margaret only starts to question her ‘kindling and roots’ on a porch, which marriage when World War II approaches, will soon unfurl as rose bushes, a single and her husband’s obsessions grow darker. chair left at a soccer match, a tapestry of flowers taking the place of an urn of ashes – with which to unpick the real underpinnings of the story’s meaning. Poetry Most unerringly of all is the author’s Guest Review compassion for her characters which makes them so memorable, and these A Local Habitation: scenarios so vividly real. In ‘A Country Poems and Homilies Where You Once Lived’, two estranged Peter Steele parents united in grief share this: ‘“I’m Newman College. HB. $39.95 so sorry, Jeremy,” Cathleen says, a hand This delightful book contains on his arm. “Me too.” Small words to 53 poems and 62 homilies cover a lifetime of all they might be composed over the last decade sorry for, symmetrical, like wedding by Peter Steele SJ, professor vows, like confessions. I do. I do. I did. emeritus of English at the I did.’ The moments that reveal Black’s University of Melbourne and characters seem almost throwaway in long term scholar-in-residence their simplicity, but resonate all the at Newman College. more strongly for it. An assured, subtle Abundant photographs, both old and and satisfying collection. contemporary, help to capture the splendour Cate Kennedy is one of Australia’s most of Steele’s college dwelling, designed by cherished and critically acclaimed short Walter Burley Griffin, and the rhythmic ritu- story writers. Her collection is Dark Roots als of his life as creative writer, scholar, priest (Scribe, PB, $27.95). Her most recent and educator. Steele articulates the wonders book is the novel The World Beneath of his local environs – be it the college or the (Scribe, PB, $32.95). shops and restaurants of Lygon Street – and the diverse dedications of his poems conjure up the lives and faces of his many friends. His response, however, to the physicality of his immediate surrounds is anchored in an extraordinary breadth of knowledge. It links the familiar with the mysterious, and is fuelled by a spirituality expressive of hope and love that excludes no-one. Margaret Manion is Emeritus Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. Readings Monthly June 2010 9

New Crime Fiction Dead Write with Kate O'Mara The laid-back elegance and Seemingly random immola- horror that the sister she loves and trusts may based ballet dancer falls in love with a low-key humour of Adrian tion is also the subject of Leah not have her best interests at heart. troubled tango dancer, following him to his Hyland’s prose is rarely Giarratano’s latest, Watch the home country to find an explanation for his found in crime fiction, and World Burn (Bantam, PB, Zoe Ferraris’s City of Veils (Little Brown, PB, strange behaviour and odd disappearance in this is perhaps why the $24.95). The horrific murder $32.99) is a bleak, gritty drama set in Jeddah, Wolfram Fleischhauer’s Fatal Tango (Mac- higher brow literary rags of a woman in a Sydney where the life – and death – of a radical film- millan, PB, $32.99). swooned over his first Emily restaurant is the first in a maker intersects with the lives of an expatriate Tempest novel, Diamond series of deadly and disfigur- American couple in frightening ways. Ferraris’ If you’ve ever picked up a Dove. Follow-up Gunshot Road (Text, PB, ing arson and acid attacks holding the city to debut Finding Nouf, also set in Saudi Arabia, cheap true crime encyclopae- $32.95) is likely to send the critics into ransom. Even closer to home, Leigh Red- won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum dia you’ll probably be similar paroxysms of delight. But while the head’s Thrill City (Allen & Unwin, PB, Award for First Fiction. familiar with the name Sir mystery itself – a seemingly cut-and-dried $22.99) combines St Kilda, a writer’s festival, Bernard Spilsbury, the drunken murder that is (of course) not that poets and crystal meth into a smart PI Stuart MacBride is a rising star of Scottish forensic tour de force of simple – is enough to keep the pages mystery tailor-made for Readings customers. hard-boiled crime fiction, a larger sub-genre post-Victorian Britain. turning; the real drama is in the landscape than you might think. DS Logan McRae Spilsbury’s fame and prestige itself. Hyland’s outback is a place of magic New Australian publisher is reluctantly drawn into helping a violent came before and during World War I, when and hostility, a place that can feel claustro- Pantera Press offer up Sulari rapist settle in Aberdeen after his release from his seemingly infallible and revolutionary phobic even in some of the widest open Gentill’s A Few Right Thinking prison, and isn’t convinced by the felon’s methods for collecting and analysing space on earth. Tempest is a fantastic Men (PB, $27.99), a mixture born-again Christian posturing in Dark Blood evidence sent a string of skinny, mousta- character, and her attempts to solve the of murder mystery, depres- (HarperCollins, PB, $32.99). Moving slightly chioed gentlemen to the gallows for murder- riddle are well worth your time. sion-era social drama and south to Dublin, and a few decades back to ing their usually plumper better halves. political conspiracy set in the fifties, Benjamin Black’s new Quirke novel Perhaps the most famous of these heartless The imaginative premise of 1930s Sydney. Gentill has Elegy for April (Mantle, PB, $32.99) finds cads was serial murderer and bigamist Jeffery Deaver’s The Burning already been longlisted and shortlisted for the newly sober pathologist attempting to George Joseph Smith, a debonair chap with Wire (Hodder, PB, $32.99) several grants and awards, and methinks we solve the disappearance of his daughter’s best a mischievous streak who drowned three of is somewhat terrifying and will be seeing more of her on our shelves in friend, a young woman with an unconven- his ‘wives’ in the family bathtub. The whole bleakly plausible. The New the years to come. tional and perhaps seedy secret life. sordid affair is recounted with pace and York electricity grid is panache in Jane Robin’s The Magnificent attacked with horrific results A bestselling author in her Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the – high-voltage arcs destroy a native Holland, Simone van Investigates: The Singapore Bath (John Murray, PB, $35). And those city bus, innocent citizens are electrocuted der Vlugt’s latest, Shadow School of Villainy (Little, who like their crime a little grittier may and set on fire in their homes. Fundamen- Sister (Text, PB, $32.95) is, Brown, PB, $22.95) is the enjoy Nicolai Lilin’s Siberian Education: talist terrorists are immediately blamed, but like her 2008 novel The third of the eccentric and Growing Up in a Criminal Underworld Lincoln Rhyme isn’t sure that’s the case. Reunion, a well-executed chubby investigator’s Asian (Text, PB, $34.95), the author recounting Regular readers of this column will know psychological thriller. Lydia jaunts – this time, he’s at his experiences growing up with the Russian I’m not normally a big fan of slick, com- and Elisa are identical twins home in Singapore with his Mafia in the tight-knit and paranoid Sibe- mercial thrillers like this, but The Burning with completely dissimilar personalities: Lydia nagging wife and unsympathetic superiors, rian town of Transdniestria. Wire is a ripper, with future Hollywood responsible, Elisa flaky. When threats are unravelling the murder of a hotshot lawyer. In blockbuster written all over it. made against Lydia’s life, she discovers to her another exotic locale, Argentina, a Berlin-

AnthonyQ& MorrisA interviews with Nicolai NicolaiLilin about Siberian Education Lilin (Text, PB, $34.95)

continue to live on in your book and in the fancy cars and mobile phones are more im- thoughts of many people.’ ‘I have not told a story portant than respect, honour and dignity. Your youth seems to have been extremely What advantages do you think your upbring- dangerous and yet remarkably secure thanks to of criminality: mine ing had over a more Western childhood? the many codes and rules you were bound by – is a story of resistance do you think it’s possible to have one without Even if I grew up in a difficult situation, I the other, or does the danger of a criminal life to the regime that believe that I had a normal experience for require the tight connections of family and suppressed us. the situation in which I was born and grew community to make it survivable? ’ up. What is important is having a direct rela- tionship with the elderly, listening to them Although it could seem ‘extreme’, my child- up, joining these stories with my own per- and learning from them how one stands in hood instead appears to me full of good sonal experience, with the experience of men the world. When the elderly are abandoned memories and I remain a happy person my- I knew, friends and relatives. In the book, to aged-care facilities and the young people self. Like many humans, I too have nostalgia the community appears as if it still existed think they are more intelligent than every- for my childhood, for the people I knew, for and as if it were still powerful. In truth, one else, that’s when the problems begin, the Nicolai Lilin’s memoir old friends, for past times. I have not told I was born at the moment when the last country’s politics go bad, the economy de- Siberian Education (Text, PB a story of criminality: mine is a story of resis- generation still bound to the old community teriorates, everything goes to pieces because $34.95) tells the story of tance to the regime that suppressed us; all and the old rules was dying out. I was 9–12 one cannot manage life without the experi- growing up in a tiny, tightly opponents were defined as ‘criminal’ by the years old; they were 85–90. My book is ence of someone who has lived it. I believe knit community of ‘honest’ and authority of this regime. In resistance it is based on the memories elderly people shared that the whole world today needs to listen to ‘dishonest’ criminals in very important to have a foundation of rules with a child. I know nothing of the history; the elderly and to discuss its very future with Transdniestria, a remote region which help to create an alternative system to it doesn’t interest me to conduct an analy- them; in this way, we will attain salvation. between Moldovia and the the dictatorship. Every human society has sis of the situation, to judge or to justify Ukraine. Crime buff and screen critic Anthony rules, and every rule somehow links the fam- someone. I believe that the community has Russian criminal tattoos are known for their Morris (Empire, The Big Issue, Kill Your ily nucleus with society, protects it but also died out because it had to happen this way, ability to tell a story. Are there similarities Darlings) spoke to him for Readings. demands its input. This schema is present in because their rules were too inflexible and no between your work as a tattooist and a writer? every human society, from primitive society longer answered to the needs of the younger through to modern society. generations. My grandfather once said of In Russia, there are different traditions of What was the reaction to your book from the tattoos, some of which are also linked to people you grew up with? the disappearance of the Siberian commu- Is it fair to say that your community developed nity: ‘When summer arrives, the stoat must criminal societies. If you see a tattooed Rus- My mother says that I speak too much and its strict bonds to aid their resistance – to com- change its coat, even if it likes the old one.’ sian, it doesn’t mean that he’s a criminal. He that in describing many situations I got little munism and the tsarist regime before it? And if could be a Siberian hunter or a pagan or a right. Before he died, my grandfather knew those bonds had helped the community survive Are there any remnants of the Siberian commu- member of some old Christian community. that I was going to publish my book and was so much, why did it die out? nity in Transdniestria today? The tattoo is a mode of communication and happy. In the telephone call I placed from is very important to me personally. With Italy to Transdniestria a few days before his In my book, I sought to bring back what The elderly have died or are about to; literature it is very similar, the fact that in death he told me: ‘I am happy that you have was once the Siberian criminal community. everything has disappeared because there writing a novel you present your own life to written this book and that I am also present I based all my accounts on stories I heard are no longer young people interested in the others, just as when you get a tattoo. in the story. In this way, after my death I will from the elderly people from where I grew ancient rules. In Transdniestria today money, 10 Readings Monthly June 2010

‘A wonderful New Non-fiction novel, acute, Vintage Keating: compassionate, Australian Studies His Wit and Wisdom Special Price Brian Carroll unsparing— 3'$$731 .1#(- 18 Rosenberg. PB. $19.95 -$6-.5$+%1., Death or Liberty: In the pre-Howard 1990s, a classic Rebels and Radicals few would have predicted the # 5(#,(3"'$++ Transported to success of Keating! The with startling Australia, 1788–1868 Musical. But considering his .-$.%3'$&1$ 3$23 Tony Moore dramatic career and reputa- relevance to 61(3$12 +(5$3.# 8 Pier 9. PB. Normally $34.95 tion for dominating Parlia- Our special price $29.95 ment with cutting ripostes, Australia today.’ Although many Australians it’s not really surprising that Duplicity and integrity, love are descended from convicts, Paul Keating is the only Australian prime JOAN LONDON and lust, guilt and faith, cold few would know the details minister to have inspired a musical comedy. of their ancestors’ crimes. This collection of Keating’s wit, balanced murder and strange immortality with his wisdom, will make some chuckle stalk the stage in this enthralling While some convicts were true scoundrels, many and others cluck their tongues – but, like the novel that rivals Cloud Atlas were victims of overly musical, it is certain to entertain the full Between in its ambition, scope and harsh penalties, and others scope of the political spectrum. sheer storytelling skill. were political prisoners, transported for taking radical action. Tony Moore takes Something to Declare: s an in-depth look at these rebels and the The Memoirs of Sky & Sea British authorities who feared them. Sir James Gobbo Most importantly, Moore explores the James Gobbo impact of dissenters on colonial life and MUP. 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PB. $32.95 on his involvement with Australia’s rise in ‘Writers can see what other cultural diversity, as Founding Chairman of writers are up to,’ says the Australian Council of Multicultural Chester Eagle, ‘because they Affairs, Chair of the Australian Multicul- face the same problems and tural Foundation, and President of Co.As. use the same tricks.’ In these It, Australia’s largest Italian community essays, Eagle – a writer of organisation. novels, essays, portraits of Australian life and opera librettos – explores the writings of other Special Price Great new titles Australians, including Miles Franklin, Patrick White and Helen Garner. Each of Betrayal from Hachette these entertaining essays takes a look at Simon Benson what it means to be an Australian writer, Pantera. PB. Normally $49.99 Introduced by and involves thought-provoking insights Our special price $39.95 THE BREAKING into our country’s literature. With the election coming up soon, this ex- ARNOLD ZABLE OF EGGS plosive book is a must-have. Simon Benson, Jim Powell Staff Review the national political reporter for The Daily Price: $29.99 Telegraph, offers a media insider's view of Weidenfeld &Nicolson Quarterly Essay 38: Australian politics. An expose of epic pro- AUSTR Trade Paperback Power Trip: The portions, putting politicians from Rudd to ALIAN Feliks has spent Political Journey Keating under the microscope, this is going SOCIETY his life producing of Kevin Rudd out to the public at just the right time. of LITERA a travel guide to David Marr TURE Iron Curtain countries. But following GOLD MEDAL Black Inc. PB. $19.95 the collapse of Communism in 1989, WINNER Feliks finds himself tipped into a Ah, David Marr. No wonder maelstrom which he cannot avoid. he is the darling of the Biography of 1948 A beguiling debut, dryly funny and political left. The man can Special Price incredibly moving, about self- not only write, but entertain. realisation, identity and the forces And he doesn’t just analyse Hitch 22: A Memoir that shape our lives. politics in terms of a horse Christopher Hitchens ‘As Australia holds race (or any other sporting A&U. PB. Normally $35 MIDNIGHT IN A analogy). He gets deep into Our special price $29.95 national debates PERFECT LIFE the marrow of his subject, finding the Hitch knows a lot of words Michael Collins intrinsic human element at its heart. 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Hitch knows a lot of people: his past in this dark and subtle novel driving force between Rudd’s politics, values, like Nelson Mandela, James Fenton, Ian BOOKSELLER + about the modern battle of the sexes, blistering work ethic and drive to succeed. In McEwan and Salman Rushdie. Hitch the disengagement of males, social PUBLISHER Canberra, he says, Rudd is seen as ‘a weird dislikes a lot of things and people: like Bill disintegration and questions about guy and a failing prime minister’. As a child, Clinton, Henry Kissinger, God and Islam. how we want to be remembered. he was ‘a fussy little dreamer’. A former Hitch’s parents were lower middle-class. His colleague says Rudd is a ‘formidable father had been forced out of the navy and hachette.com.au bureaucrat’ with a ‘computer-like mind’ but his mother, Yvonne, was Jewish with lacks political ‘feel’. This is a nuanced, aspirations. Yvonne did everything she layered portrait, finely analysed. And it’s an could to turn Hitch into an upper-class TEXTPUBLISHING.COM.AU absolute page-turner. Really. Englishman and although they could only Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly afford a second-rate public school, Hitch Readings Monthly June 2010 11 did manage to get into Oxford. At Oxford, he was immediately drawn into the politics of the left – it was the sixties – and in History between manning the barricades and Special Price studying history and philosophy, he started going down to London and hanging At Home: A Short around the New Statesman. With his biting, History of Private Life uncompromising prose, he became the Bill Bryson darling journalist of the left and no cow Doubleday. HB. Normally $55 was too sacred. Eventually, tiring of Our special price $39.95 London, he managed to get himself invited When we search our family to Washington to write for The Nation. trees online for famous When his adopted home was attacked in ancestors, we usually discover 2001, his attitudes changed and his support people who quietly went for the invasion of Iraq outraged many of about their daily business. his admirers. Christopher Hitchens is a Such ordinary people shaped complex and highly intelligent writer; his the ordinary things in life – opinions are often confronting and from our use of electricity, to What happens when a family stops As floodwaters rise in a remote Victorian talking to one another? Over the course goldfield, the disappearance of a digger unsettling and he writes with the evange- food preservation techniques, to the invention of one week, events will threaten to tear – and a priceless relic of British naval lism of the Trotskyist left that formed him. of the toilet. Following his prize-winning A this family apart – but also bring them heroism – threaten to uncover the dark Hitch 22 is an enthralling, and sometimes Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson from the brink of darkness towards pasts of the addled young Commissioner galling, portrait of one of the great com- has put domesticity under his microscope. In a kind of redemption. and his stoic sergeant. mentators of the late twentieth and early these delightful digressions, he discovers that twenty-first centuries – well worth a read. our homes are where history begins and ends. Mark Rubbo is managing director of Readings Special Price Special Price Parisians: An Adven- Nomad: A Personal ture History of Paris Journey Through the Graham Robb Clash of Civilisations Picador. HB. Normally $49.95 Ayaan Hirsi Ali Our special price $39.95 HarperCollins. PB. Normally $35 Fleeing the Louvre, Marie- Our special price $29.95 Antoinette becomes lost in After speaking out about her the unmapped streets of the experiences as a Somali Left Bank, an easy prey for revolutionaries bent on her Muslim in her courageous In McCrum’s analysis, the cultural revolution A wide-ranging survey of the many memoir Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi execution. Young lieutenant of our times is the emergence of English, challenges boys face growing up in the Ali became a target. Her Napoleon Bonaparte has his a global phenomenon as never before, that early 21st century, with useful ideas to criticisms of life as an first sexual experience with a has become the world’s language. And in help their parents and teachers guide courtesan. Prize-winning author Graham the twenty-first century, writes the author, them to happy adulthood. orthodox Muslim woman ‘English + Microsoft = Globish’. were met with death threats Robb brings these and other famous that drove her to 24-hour security measures. Parisians to life, telling a 400-year history of In this honest and personal follow-up, she their city from their fascinating experiences. covers her life since Infidelestranged her from her family and country, forcing her A Short History penguin.com.au into an often lonely freedom – but she’s not of the Jews afraid to keep analysing Islam and its Michael Brenner treatment of women. Princeton University Press. HB. $49.95 In Western debates, Christi- With Stendhal anity is often tied to all Simon Leys religious experience. For those Black Inc. PB. $19.95 interested in each unique part Towards the end of his life, of the so-called Judeo-Chris- Henri Beyle reflects on the tian-Islamic tradition, this supernatural powers he fascinating and beautifully wishes to possess. He is the illustrated volume offers nineteenth-century novelist valuable insights into the Jewish people, with Stendhal – one of the breathtaking scope. A professor of Jewish world’s greatest authors. history and culture, Michael Brenner delves Here, Stendhal’s whimsical into diverse tales of exodus and return, and list of powers has been introduced, anno- traces the major events, developments and tated and translated into English for the personalities that have shaped Jewish history. first time by multi-award-winning author Simon Leys, along with a set of memories Colossus and amusing anecdotes about Stendhal B. Jack Copeland et al. (ed.) written by Prosper Mérimée, a famous OUP. HB. $32.95 friend. Together, these texts form a charm- This book provides a wealth ing and insightful book. of insight into the origins of a device we now take for Public Enemies: granted. Looking at the iPad, Duelling Writers Take it’s hard to imagine the size, on Each Other shape and function of the Colossus, the first electronic and the World computer, used exclusively for Michel Houellebecq code-breaking during World War II. & Bernard-Henri Lévy Atlantic. PB. $29.99 Translated from the French, this provocative publishing sensation follows the Food & Wine exchange of letters between Special Price two rival intellectuals, each Medium Raw infamous in his own way. Anthony Bourdain What begins as a secret corre- Bloomsbury. HB. Normally $35 spondance full of bitter Our special price $29.95 enmity quickly progresses to a lively and Britain’s Gordon Ramsay freewheeling literary and political discussion. breaks the mould of the The remarkable and controversial authors polite, charming celebrity meditate on whether they seek disgrace or chef, as does New Yorker positive attention, their writing experiences Anthony Bourdain, a former and their views on heroism, amongst other drug addict and gonzo food musings – including fascinating and journalist. With several intimate words about God and family. bestsellers and two TV shows 12 Readings Monthly June 2010

under his belt, and after consuming every- the developing world. Lauded by everyone thing from a preserved shark to a cobra, from Harvard Magazine to Angelina Jolie, Bourdain asks – ‘Why cook?’ – or, the this is filled with positive tales of rehabilita- Finance tougher question – ‘Why cook well?’ Here, tion, transformation and economic process, The Rational he shares his journey from travelling cook to all achieved by unleashing women’s potential Optimist: How ENTER THE famous chef, while tackling the food with the help of aid organisations. Prosperity Evolves industry in his no-holds-barred style. Matt Ridley KINGDOM A Brief History HarperCollins. HB. $35 of Nakedness For those dreading the Philip Carr-Gomm apocalypse, zombie-fuelled or Reaktion. HB. $59.95 otherwise, Matt Ridley may WCulturalar Studies Since the Garden of Eden, deflate your pessimism Sebastian Junger we’ve been preoccupied by somewhat. He argues that HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 nakedness. Philip Carr- rather than sinking into the abyss of forgotten civilisa- The Hurt Lockertells the Gomm plucks the fig leaves tions and extinct species, our story of a gung-ho soldier from this topic, examining world is actually improving at an accelerated who gets a kick out of the ways in which religious rate, and this prosperity is due to our defusing bombs in Iraq. But teachers, politicians, protest- long-fostered habit of exchange and speciali- what about the reality of war, ers and cultural icons have sation. According to the Los Angeles Times, with its terror and moral used nudity to enlighten or empower Ridley writes with ‘panache, wit, and humor, uncertainty? ‘War is insanely themselves. Lady Godiva and Lady Gaga, St and displays remarkable ingenuity in finding exciting … Don’t underesti- Francis of Assisi and the Puppetry of the ways to present complicated materials for the mate the power of that revelation,’ warns Penis are all brought in. According to lay reader’. Sebastian Junger, quoted in Publishers sexologist Annie Sprinkle: ‘[This book] Weekly. Junger should know – he spent makes me want to rip off my clothes for a 2007–08 with a US-army platoon in Eastern good cause immediately.’ Building Social Afghanistan, and this is his gripping, honest Business: The New Kind and intense narrative about combat. Survival City: of Capitalism that Adventures Serves Humanity’s Half the Sky: Among the Ruins Most Pressing Needs Turning Oppression of Atomic America Muhammad Yunus Into Opportunity for Tom Vanderbilt PublicAffairs. HB. $39.99 Women Worldwide University of Chicago Press. HB. $27.95 Rather than ditching Nicholas D. Kristof The Cold War threatened the capitalism to overcome & Sheryl WuDunn end of the world as we knew poverty, Muhammad Yunus Vintage. PB. $26.95 it – and although the end has come up with a new way A stunningly hopeful, never came, the United States to do business. Founder of inspirational and pragmatic spent years preparing for the the Grameen Bank in call to arms, now available in worst. Tom Vanderbilt travels Bangladesh, Yunus received a paperback edition. The the Interstate to uncover sites the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize authors – a husband and of American Cold War for pioneering ‘microcredit’ – the extension wife, and both Pulitzer Prize architecture, from the bunkers of Greenbier, of mini-loans to encourage grassroots winners – make a passion- West Virginia, to the ‘proving grounds’ of entrepreneurship in poverty stricken fuelled appeal to stop the Nevada, where model cities were vaporised. communities. His third book is concerned widespread oppression of women and girls in This is a revised, updated edition of Vander- with the implementation and maintenance bilt’s in-depth look at the fantasies and fears of social business, an increasingly popular that drove America for half a century. practice intended to create employment, tackle social ills and supply decent working conditions. New from

Welcome to the Melbourne underworld, where tensions are MJournalseanjin, Volume 69, building between dangerous Number 2 Philosophy criminals and equally dangerous Sophie Cunningham (ed.) Loneliness as police. It’s the Wild West, MUP. PB. $24.99 a Way of Life played out on the city’s streets. As always, this is a cover-to- Thomas Dumm Animal Kingdom is Stephen cover showcase of Australia’s Harvard University Press. PB. $29.95 Sewell’s (Chopper, The Boys) best new writing, with no There are many forms of adaptation of the most dull moments. Non-fiction loneliness, but perhaps the anticipated Australian movie of highlights include Michael most poignant is experienced 2010. Ackland’s look at whaling after the loss of a loved one. and Katherine Wilson’s Thomas Dunn writes of his AVAILABLE JULY lowdown on Steampunk. loneliness following the There’s fiction from the likes of Karina death of his wife, linking it Granting extraordinary access to their private world, Osama’s wife and son reveal the frightening Barker, Chris Flynn and Zoe Dattner, as well not only to his other transformation of a loving husband into a hardened as the final extract of Caroline Lee’s novel, experiences with loneliness, but also terrorist; his disapproval of modern conveniences, Stripped. juxtaposing it with sharply intelligent including electricity and medicine; his strategies PRAISE FOR THE FILM: for toughening up his sons by taking them into the interpretations of iconic texts, from Moby desert without food or water; and his decision to Dick to King Lear. As modern individuals, move his wives and children from an orderly life to Dunn argues, we are all fundamentally ‘Stunning … compelling …’ one of extreme uncertainty. lonely – but rather than overcoming this $25.00 Pb, 9781851687565, Oneworld ROLLING STONE PossessingScience the Dead: condition, we should strive to reinhabit it. The Artful Science of Anatomy ‘Immaculate’ Helen MacDonald LOS ANGELES TIMES MUP. PB. $39.99 Psychology Grave robbery has become The Mindful Therapist: associated with Frankenstein, A Clinician’s Guide to ‘Ambitious and powerful’ but generally graves weren’t Mindsight and Neural VARIETY robbed to construct mon- Integration strous super-humans. In fact, Daniel Siegel grave robbery wasn’t always W. W. Norton. HB. $37.95 committed with shovels and Forget Dr Phil and other picks at midnight. Delight- pop-psychology gurus – this For nearly two decades, the US and its allies have ing in the unexpected, award-winning prosecuted war and aggression in Iraq. Erasing Iraq is the insightful work of an shows in unparalleled detail the devastating human historian Helen MacDonald draws on a vast internationally recognised cost. Western governments and the mainstream collection of material to explore the Scottish, expert on mindfulness and media continue to ignore or play down the human English and Australian cadaver trades. In a therapy. Daniel Siegel, a costs of the war on Iraqi citizens. Featuring in-depth time when select officials were given interviews with Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan and clinical professor of psychia- Western countries, Erasing Iraq is a comprehensive ownership of the dead, corpses in workhous- try at UCLA, provides clear and moving account of the Iraqi people’s tragedy. es, asylums, hospitals and gaols were and practical information on promoting $35.00 Pb, 9780745328973, Pluto frequently meddled with. www.mup.com.au mental health. Although the title is ad- dressed to therapists, this isn’t a jargon-laden Readings Monthly June 2010 13 volume for professionals only, but instead an wanted to know what was in the middle), engaging read for anyone interested in and early manuscripts, texts and paintings. mental health and the interconnections Encompasses science, history, poetry, art and history of Introducing a great new talent within our brains. design, fashion and production. MS A the world without 59 Seconds: Think a Woodblock Painting leaving Miguel Syjuco Little, Change a Lot of Cressida Campbell home Miguel will be a guest at the Richard Wiseman John McDonald 2010 Melbourne Writers’ Festival Pan Macmillan. PB. $24.99 Public Pictures. HB. $130 27 August – 5 September In recent years, corporations At last, a reprint of this have become obsessed with gorgeous book – demand for self-help coaches and the first edition far out- Winner of the motivational speakers. But stripped supply. Cressida 2008 Man Asian while some employees may Campbell is a gifted artist Literary Prize actually enjoy workplace who depicts the essence of her retreats, team-building familiar subjects in water- exercises and brainstorming colour, painted woodblocks sessions, most will probably be relieved by and woodblock prints. Conscious of the NE W from the aptly-named Richard Wiseman’s legacy of Margaret Preston, Campbell BRYSON well-researched argument for their ineffec- portrays beauty in everyday scenes such as tiveness. In fact, this fresh wisdom from the domestic still-lifes, industrial maritime scenes Keep in touch with great book news by visiting bestselling author of Quirkology will be a and rooftops overlooking Sydney Harbour. www.randomhouse.com.au rewarding read for anyone interested in com- Her work is given depth through solid ing up with creative ideas, managing time composition and vivid colour. A fine effectively, communicating well, and draughtswoman and strong designer, her maintaining a positive outlook. works show graphic elements reminiscent of Japanese prints. MS SKIING, Container Atlas SAND AND Spirituality Slawik, Bergman, Buchmeier Meditation: & Tinney (editors) SHOPPING An In-depth Guide Gestalten. HB. $135 Shipping containers are IN THE Ian Gawler & Paul Bedson modular, affordable and Inspired Living. PB. $35 virtually indestructible. More WORLD’S Mindfulness, now advocated and more often, they are by many leading psychothera- being used to build tempo- WEIRDEST pists, is essential to many rary structures such as forms of meditation, pavilions, offices, galleries CITY including the mindfulness- and bars that can be easily based stillness meditation moved if necessary. Container Atlas presents introduced in this book. If a wide range of contemporary projects, along you’re interested in building with an in-depth investigation into the an effective daily meditation practice or background and evolution of this topical teaching others to do so, this is a comprehen- field. The book illustrates how containers are OUT NOW sive guide based on modern science, ancient being used as building blocks to accommo- Eastern traditions, and the authors’ years of date the daily lives and special events of experience as teachers and practitioners. urban nomads. MS The Selby Is in Your Place Art & Design Todd Selby & Lesley Arfin Nomad The Rational Art of the Middle Abrams. HB. $69.95 BY AYAAN HIRSI ALI East: Modern and Todd Selby began taking portraits of Optimist Contemporary Art dynamic and creative people – authors, 9780732289775 | $35.00 BY MATT RIDLEY of the Arab World musicians, artists and designers – in their Infi del caused a worldwide sensation and 9780007378906 | $35.00 and Iran home environments and posting them on his now, in Nomad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells of Matt Ridley, acclaimed Saeb Eigner & Zaha Hadid website. Nosy by nature, he wanted to see coming to America to build a new life, away author of the classics Merrell. HB. $99.99 how personal style was reflected in private from the death threats made against her Genome and Nature Artistic expression in the spaces. Lucky for us, he found his answer by European Islamists. via Nurture, turns from Middle East is experiencing in the colour-rich and eclectic quarters of This is the story of her investigating human nature to something of a renaissance. a diverse group of subjects. Each profile is physical and emotional investigating human progress. In accompanied by Selby’s watercolour portraits Domestic patronage is journey to freedom and The Rational Optimist Ridley offers a of the subjects and objects from their homes, flourishing, and an impres- the diffi culty of reconciling counterblast to the prevailing pessimism and illustrated questionnaires, which Selby sive array of new museums the contradictions of Islam asks each sitter to fill out. MS of our age, and proves, however much and art fairs across the region with Western values. we like to think to the contrary, that is helping to stimulate things are getting better. international interest in an increasingly Henri Cartier-Bresson: influential movement. Art of the Middle East The Modern Century is an accessible overview of modern and Peter Galassi contemporary art of the Middle East and Thames and Hudson. HB. $140 Arab world from 1945 to the present, with Henri Cartier-Bresson an emphasis on artists active today. The (1908–2004) is one of the 2 STANDOUT TITLES FROM 2 STANDOUT SMALL PUBLISHERS featured works are divided into seven most influential and beloved themed sections – including literature, figures in the history of The World According to Monsanto: portraiture and the body, and politics, photography. Released to Pollution, Politics and Power (Spinifex Press) conflict and war – while extended captions accompany an exhibition at Marie-Monique Robin; translated by George Holoch, $34.95 provide an engaging commentary on each The Museum of Modern artwork and the artist behind its creation. Art, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Winner of the Rachel Carson Prize, and the result of a three-year Margaret Snowdon is art and design buyer The Modern Century is the first major investigation, this exposé tells the shocking story of the agribusi- at Readings Carlton publication to make full use of the exten- ness giant Monsanto. sive holdings of the Fondation Henri Pearls­ Cartier-Bresson in Paris, including thou- Hubert Bari & David Lam sands of prints and a vast resource of Many-Coloured Realm Skira. HB. $135 documents relating to the photographer’s This book has been published to coincide life and work. The heart of the book (Wombat Books) with an exhibition at the Museum of Islamic surveys Cartier-Bresson’s career through Anne Hamilton, $19.95 Art in Doha, Qatar. It’s the most complete 300 photographs, divided into 12 chapters. One nice girl, two bad boys, three tortuous tasks, four strange am- and beautiful book available on pearls, and While many of his most famous pictures bassadors, elves, goblins, demons - all converging on the goblin king. full of fascinating and exquisite facts (for ex- are included, a great number of images will Can Robby and Chris discover the goblin king’s name and rescue ample, many lovely shells produce pearls, not be unfamiliar even to specialists. MS Stephen before time runs out? just oysters) and images. The over 350 photo- The Small Press Network graphs include exquisite jewellery, cross-sec- tions of many varieties of pearls (I’ve always SPUNC spunc.com.au 14 Readings Monthly June 2010 Younger and Why does this creepy symbol keep appear- Middle Readers ing in unrelated places? And why does the clown statue in the garden enclosure seem Astroblast! Code Blue to be beckoning to Max, as if it has a secret? Bob Kolar Perhaps the answers lie at the bottom of the Kids’ Booksdifferent ways of dealing with his absence are Scholastic. PB. $12.99 Picture Books ocean in a mysterious sunken ship, or could explored. Peter Carnavas says that ‘It’s about Guess what? Astroblast is a blast! It’s a bril- the lighthouse keeper be hiding something? Seasons remembering. It’s about parents. It’s about liant early reader that has nifty rhyming The vivid detail conjured by the Prince of Blexbolex absence. It’s about the joy of understand- text and fun activities that sneakily involve Mist will leave you spellbound. Gecko. HB. $29.99 ing between a mother and son. And, most simple literacy and numeracy, as well as Sonja Meyer is from Readings St Kilda Everything about Seasons is importantly, it’s about slippers.’ shape matching and the always fun maze enticing. It’s a gorgeously puzzle. From its cool endpapers, colour is The Sky is Everywhere presented book with thick Queen Victoria’s abounding, and retro-style illustrations make Jandy Nelson art-paper pages, rich colour Underpants this a physically appealing book. As a read- Walker. PB. $24.95 and superb illustrations. One Jackie French aloud picture book or as a reader, I doubt At 17, Lennie is a bookworm for artists, book designers & Bruce Whatley (illus.) few children will not love Radar and his with no dating experience. and oh yeah, I forgot, space mates’ world, while learning a thing She likes to hide in her older children! At the start we are HarperCollins. HB. $24.99 or two along the way. What more could you sister Bailey’s shadow. But offered the four seasons in four double-page Popular kids’ author Jackie French has done want from a kids’ book? AD then Bailey dies, and Lennie depictions, and from then on the seasons are it again with this entertaining and educa- suddenly has two boys to represented with a word and an image in no tional look at underpants. Lizzy’s family The Kane Chronicles: deal with. One is Bailey’s particular order. So settle down with your works in the clothing industry, so she knows The Red Pyramid boyfriend, Toby, and the child or your children and let them guess more about clothes than most people. For Rick Riordan other is a new kid in town, Joe. Dealing with which picture is what season; make up a example, very few people know that Queen Puffin. PB. $19.95 love and loss isn’t easy, as Lennie finds out. story with them about the picture; or get Victoria made underpants popular – al- I can’t even begin to tell you arty painting their own seasons. All this in though at the time, underpants involved how excited I am about the one book? Seasons is everything a book tartans, perambulators and chloroform! Spirit Bound (Vampire new Rick Riordan series. should be. Long live the book! Academy Volume Five) Riordan wrote the Percy Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Classics and Novelty Richelle Mead This Little Puffin Jackson series, which is one Penguin. PB. $19.95 of the funniest and most This series has it all. Vam- Special Price Elizabeth Matterson (ed.) thrilling series that I (even at Puffin. PB. $12.95 pires, boarding school, April Underhill, 29-ish) have ever read. The forbidden love, best friends This modest little book is Kane Chronicles veer off into the world of Tooth Fairy worth its weight in gold. A and mean girls. Action, Egyptian mythology and start with a certain romance, intrigue and Bob Graham valued resource for preschool character accidentally blowing up the British Walker. HB. Normally $27.95 and early primary teachers despair. If, like me, you’re Museum. Wowser. Just. Can’t. Wait. often late to catch onto a Our special price $24.95 for over thirty years, it is full Callie Martin is from Readings St Kilda In one sense, this lovely picture of the rhymes, songs and series, and if you’re also a book is a classic tooth fairy simple games remembered little bit overwhelmed by all the teenage The Strange Case of vampire books, then you may not know the story; it tells how the fairies and treasured from our early Origami Yoda come to young Daniel’s years. Being a small paperback, it will also be Vampire Academy series. I didn’t until three bedside to swap his tooth for a a useful book for parents to tuck in a bag for Tom Angleberger weeks ago. Now that I’m more than hooked, coin, and are nearly discov- moments of spontaneous entertainment. Abrams. HB. $19.95 I’ve been counting down the days till the ered. But it’s much more than This is a revised and updated edition. KK Dwight is a loser, but his release of Spirit Bound, the fifth book. In the that: it’s a celebration of loving origami finger puppet is first book, Vampire Academy, we got to know families, of growing up and being trusted to ABC Book of mystically wise. When Rose: quick-tempered, snarky and on the take risks. It’s fairy April and her sister Esme’s Australian Poetry Dwight uses Origami Yoda to run with her best friend Lissa from St first delivery, and their parents are worried talk to his classmates, the Vladimirs, the academy for vampires and the Libby Hathorn (ed.) puppet predicts the date of a dhampirs (half vampire/half human) who they’re not up to it. They have to fly over the & Cassandra Allen (illus.) M24 with all its rumbling trucks for one thing test, guesses who stole the protect them. Rose is a dhampir and Lissa a ABC Books. HB. $29.99 – and do they really understand that they are classroom Shakespeare bust, living vampire, and after they are caught and Treasures from the best ‘spirits of the air’ and must never be seen? Such and gives good popularity advice. So Tommy, sent back to St Vladimirs (the vampire Australian poets have been adventure, such heart-stopping tension, and one of Dwight’s classmates, has compiled a academy) the action and intrigue, not to brought together in this such parental pride when the mission is case file – this delightful book – to figure out mention the romance, heats up. Three books beautiful book. These famous accomplished. A book to share again and what’s going on. later and I am completely enamoured by the wordsmiths – such as A.B. again, poring over the pictures. (The fairies' world of Rose and her friends – highly ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Les A. bathroom is my favourite!) Special Price recommended! Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton Murray and Mary Duroux – Marie Matteson is from Readings Port Melbourne lovingly explore the Austra- Older Readers lian landscape. If you don’t want your kids Non-fiction Norris, the Bear to be introduced to poetry at school, where The Cardturner Who Shared it might seem like a chore, then this is a Louis Sachar Ned Kelly and Catherine Rayner fantastic way to get them into it. Bloomsbury. HB. Normally $24.99 the Green Sash Orchard. HB. $28.99 Our special price $19.95 Mark Greenwood and Franc From the winner of the 2009 Louis Sachar’s publisher, Special Price Lessac (illus.) Kate Greenaway medal, this is agent and wife all tried to Walker. HB. $27.95 a gorgeous tale about Norris, Thomas the Tank dissuade him from writing a As a kid, my mum worked in a wise, kind bear. He loves to Engine (Sixty-Fifth book for young readers about the museum where Ned eat plorringes, a kind of fruit, Anniversary Edition) playing bridge. But he loves Kelly’s cell was exhibited. and one afternoon he spies a The Reverend W. Awdry the game, his pleasure is Inside this cell were his ripening plorringe. While he infectious, and he is a master Green Sash and gun – items I waits beneath the tree for it to Egmont. HB. Normally $34.95 storyteller who made digging Our special price $29.95 became highly familiar with drop down, pesky Tulip and Violet scamper holes in the desert fascinating (Holes). as my dearest big brother up to see if they can get to it first … Written to entertain the Reverend’s sick son, Seventeen-year-old Alton becomes a these tales of adventurous steam trains have used to attempt to lock me cardturner for his rich Uncle Lester, a in said cell with said sash on a regular basis. Yellow is My become treasured classics. This is an exquisite- brilliant player who has gone blind. With an ly packaged anniversary edition of the original Although that experience was slightly Favourite Colour eye on inheritance, Alton’s mother is traumatic, this lovely informative book has stories, which inspired the Ringo Starr-narrat- embarrassing in her encouragement. Despite Judy Horacek ed TV show and many spin-off books. It is a helped me think about Ned Kelly’s Green Puffin. Board. $14.95 himself, Alton becomes fascinated by both Sash in a different light. It’s a fascinating must for anyone wanting to collect, share and his uncle’s life and the competitive world. A celebration of the fun preserve these childhood favourites. story about a fascinating man. CM activities that kids love to do. Together with his attractive cousin Toni, a With rhythmic rhyming text former cardturner, he begins to unravel the Sam Stern’s Yumi mysteries surrounding their families. This and brilliant, vibrant Annelore Parot Eat Vegetarian illustrations, this latest from mixes a coming of age story and a romance Egmont. HB. $24.95 in a surprisingly rich setting. KK Sam Stern the acclaimed illustrator of The youngest of the Walker. PB. $24.95 Where is the Green Sheep? is a joyful read for Kokeshi dolls, Yumi is Prince of the Mist Even if you’re not a preschoolers. As the title suggests, the main vegetarian, these recipes are adventurous and clever. She This fast-paced and exceed- character is a child who loves the colour yellow. healthy, delicious and styl- works hard, but also loves ingly well-crafted book ish. Sam Stern is 18 years dressing up and going to delivers the kind of chill on The Important Things old, but he’s not inexperi- parties. In this beautifully your neck that keeps you Peter Carnavas enced – his first cookbook bound book, with fun lift-the-flap pages, tucked well under your New Frontier. HB. $24.95 was published when he was children can help Yumi with activities from blankets. Strange things start With his father gone, Christopher and his just 14. It’s fantastic to see a choosing a kimono to deciding on the best happening when Max and mum live together. When they give away young chef helping other young people learn sushi, all while learning some Japanese his family move to their new some of the father’s old possessions, their to cook and think about nutrition. phrases. seaside home to avoid the threat of war. Readings Monthly June 2010 15 Last Night In Twisted River John Irving PB. Was $32.95. Now $14.95 Readings Bargain Table In 1954, in the cookhouse of Bargains on the web: New books are regularly added to our website. Click on the Bargains tab at www.readings.com.au. a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New A Culinary Voyage Remembered Gardens Diary of a Bad Year Hampshire, an anxious, Around the Greek Holly Kerr Forsyth J.M. Coetzee gun-carrying, 12-year-old Islands PB. Was $45. Now $14.95 HB. Was $37.95. Now $16.95 boy mistakes the local Theodore Kyriakou Remembered Gardens is the In this brilliant work of constable’s girlfriend for a HB. Was $55. Now $19.95 story of Elizabeth Macarthur, fiction, J.M. Coetzee once bear. In this book, Theodore Edna Walling and six other again breaks new literary Kyriakou embarks on a women whose passions for ground with a book that is, Plato and a Platypus gastronomic voyage around their gardens and for in the words of its main Walk into a Bar: the Greek islands, capturing garden-making have shaped character, ‘a response to the Understanding the intensity of the experi- our relationship with the present in which I find Philosophy Through ence that interweaves sea and Australian landscape. myself’. Diary of a Bad Year Jokes takes on the world of politics – a new topic sky – simple living and Daniel Klein unchanged traditions. St Petersburg: The First for Coetzee – and explores the role of the Three Centuries writer in our times with an extraordinary HB. Was $29.95. Now $13.95 moral compass. Here’s a lively, hilarious, Carluccio’s Complete Arthur George not-so-reverent crash course Italian Food HB. Was $70. Now $19.95 Enclosure through the great philosophi- Antonio Carluccio This award-winning narrative Andy Goldsworthy cal traditions, schools, PB. Was $49.95. Now $19.95 history chronicles what is concepts and thinkers; it’s HB. Was $90. Now $49.95 Here, Antonio Carluccio, perhaps the greatest story of Philosophy 101 for everyone Andy Goldsworthy has ambassador for Italian food, any modern city anywhere, who knows not to take all created artworks in Northwest aims to distil a lifetime’s from its foundation in a this heavy stuff too seriously. England in sheepfolds: stone knowledge and experience swampy war zone in 1703 to Big Ideas include the philosophy of religion enclosures found across the into one book. Divided into its leading role in overthrow- (a priest and a rabbi are stranded on a desert countryside that have been 11 chapters by type of ing Soviet power. island ...), existentialism (what do Hegel and used for assembling, shelter- ingredient, each begins with Bette Midler have in common?), ethics and ing and washing sheep for an introduction describing Paintings of aesthetics (a dog and a cat are sitting in this hundreds of years. agriculture and production, and then the Louvre tree ...), language (‘It depends what your features an A–Z of ingredients, including Lawrence Gowing Frida Kahlo: definition of is is’), and much more. Finally varieties and specialities. Over 200 recipes HB. Was $135. Now $39.95 – it all makes sense! are included. Groundbreaking in its The Still Lifes comprehensiveness and its S Grinberg Bottersnikes and Surf-O-Rama: Treasures reproduction quality, HB. Was $69.95. Now $19.95 Other Lost Things: of Australian Surfing Paintings in the Louvre The Mexican painter Frida A Celebration of Murray Walding includes 900 full-color Kahlo (1907–1954) is one of Australian Illustrated PB. Was $45. Now $16.95 illustrations from the greatest the most famous artists of all collection in the world. time. However, while much Children’s Books From the dawn of Australian Juilet O’Connor surfing at Boomerang Camp, has been written about HB. Was $59.99. Now $39.95 Freshwater Beach in Sydney Kahlo’s striking self-portraits Bottersnikes is beautifully in the summer of 1915, when London: The (of which some 80 are illustrated and includes Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku Autobiography known), her still-life works from some of Austra- gave the first demonstration Jon Lewis paintings (of which 40 or so are document- lia’s best known and loved of surfboard riding on his ed) have not been subjected to such close HB. Was $73. Now $19.95 writers and illustrators: Mem solid timber board, to the scrutiny until now. From Roman times to the Fox and Patricia Mullins, turn of the millennium, Surf-O-Rama twenty-first century, London- Bob Graham, Libby Hathorn celebrates Australian surfing culture. Botanical Riches: ers and visitors to the city Stories of Botanical and Gregory Rogers, Gary have recounted the extraordi- Crew and Shaun Tan, Pamela Allen and old Uncommissioned Art: nary events, everyday life and Exploration Richard Aitken favourites such as May Gibbs and Ida An A–Z of Australian character of this unique and Rentoul Outhwaite. Graffiti influential city. PB. Was $49.99. Now $29.95 Christine Dew Century after century, Mirrors: Stories of PB. Was $35. Now $16.95 intrepid plant hunters and botanists travelled to exotic Almost Everyone This illustrated A–Z com- The Middle East Eduardo Galeano bines beautiful colour images Bernard Lewis climes, collecting seeds and specimens. Searching for PB. Was $35. Now $14.95 from Australia’s thriving PB. Was $39.95 Now $15.95 plants with economic value, An exhilarating single-vol- graffiti and street-art culture, Beginning with the two great medicinal benefits, or purely ume history of the whole interviews with some of empires, Roman and Persian, for lavish display, these world, from the Iron Age to Australia’s most important this book charts the successive botanical explorers carried their treasures the Information Age, by one graffiti and street artists, transformations of the Middle home to their own lands. of Latin America’s greatest analysis of the history and East. It covers the growth of living writers. evolution of the scene and discussion of Christianity, the rise and urban planning, community and freedom of spread of Islam, and the speech. changing balance of power.

VWC Club Writers Lunchtime Series Good readers make great writers. Join the club - it’s FREE! A partnership event with The Wheeler Centre.

Friday 4 June, 1–2pm Book Talk. Friday 2 July, 1–2pm Book Talk. Host NICK GADD and authors KIRSTY Host NICK GADD and guest reviewers MURRAY and SONIA ORCHARD review the JARAD HENRY and CATE KENNEDY provocative book The Good Man Jesus and discuss Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin. the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman. Be A controversial book that promises to take prepared for lively debate! readers to places they’ve never been. Friday 25 June, 1–2pm In Conversation. Friday 30 July, 1–2pm In Conversation. Author DAVID CARLIN talks with host Author ADRIAN HYLAND talks with host SARAH L’ESTRANGE. SARAH L’ESTRANGE.

Victorian Writers’ Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne bookings & info: vwc.org.au 16 Readings Monthly June 2010 New Release DVDs DVD OF THE MONTH THE BIG BLUE a stylish minx, while she is unimpressed by TRUE BLOOD: SEASON 2 his poetry. The poetry, though, soon IN THE LOOP Released 2 June. $34.95. Blu-ray $39.99 $59.99. Blu-ray $69.99 The Big Blue has endured as a becomes a romantic remedy that works not Welcome back to Bon Released 2 June. $34.95. Blu-ray $44.99 cult classic for its gorgeous only to sort out their differences, but also Temps, home to mystery, The US president and UK photography and dreamy to fuel an impassioned love affair. Southern sensuality and prime minister fancy a war. ambience. Luc Besson’s first dark secrets. For Sookie But not everyone agrees that English-language film feels BRAN NUE DAE Stackhouse, life is more war is a good thing. The US more like an undersea $39.99. Blu-ray $49.99 dangerous than ever after General Miller doesn’t think documentary than a drama In this lively musical she and Bill become more so and neither does the about free divers, but the comedy-drama set in the late deeply involved. Meanwhile, British Secretary of State for lush images create a fairytale dimension to 1960s, Willie is a 16-year- Tara, Sam, Jason, Eric and Maryann have International Development, Jacques’ story. Besson has expanded the film old living in Broome. He is problems of their own. To top things off, Simon Foster. But, after Simon accidentally by 50 minutes for his director’s cut. This has an easygoing kid who after making a shocking discovery, Sookie, backs military action on TV, he suddenly has restored his original ending, which leaves the doesn’t ask for much from Bill and Sam must form the last line of a lot of friends in Washington, DC. As story floating in inky blackness of ambiguity. life beyond enjoying his defence against a diabolical plan that raises timely as a fake expenses form, this is friends and getting a date this award-winning series to bloody new political satire so cutting-edge you’ll bleed. INVICTUS with Rosie – until his mother transfers him heights. The foul-mouthed advisor Malcolm Tucker’s to a Catholic boarding school in Perth. It face-off with James ‘Tony Soprano’ Gan- Released 2 June. $39.95 Blu-ray $49.95 His people needed a leader; doesn’t take long for Willie to run afoul of KEN BURNS dolfini’s US General is a riot of alpha-male Father Benedictus and he runs away. Uncle invective: ‘f***ity-bye!’ he gave them a champion. DOCUMENTARIES Nelson Mandela, in his first Tadpole offers to help Willie get back Released 3 June term as the South African home, and they hit the highway, hitch- These new documentaries, THE ROAD President, initiates a unique hiking back to Broome. But Father by a master in documentary venture to unite the Benedictus is in hot pursuit, determined film-making (and creator of $39.95. Blu-ray $49.95 not to let a truant slip from his grasp. A father and his son walk alone apartheid-torn land: enlist the brilliant Civil War, the national rugby team on among others) have never through a burned-out America. EMPIRE OF THE WORD Nothing moves in the ravaged a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World before been released in Released 2 June. $29.95 landscape, save the ash on the Cup. Stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Australia. Titles include Eight years in the making, wind and water. The sky is Damon. Brooklyn Bridge ($19.99); Empire of the Word is a dark. Their destination is the Frank Lloyd Wright ($29.99); Lewis And compelling look at reading warmer south, although they NURSE JACKIE: SERIES 1 Clark ($29.99); Statue Of Liberty ($19.99); and traces its impact on more don’t know what awaits them Released 2 June. $49.99 Thomas Jefferson ($29.99) and The West than 5000 years of human there. They have nothing: just a pistol to defend ‘Life is full of little pricks.’ ($49.99). history. The series explores themselves against the lawless cannibalistic Edie Falco stars as Nurse reading’s origins; examines bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are Jackie Peyton who struggles PSYCHOVILLE how we learn to read; exposes wearing, a rusting shopping cart of scavenged to find a balance between the Released 3 June. $39.95 censor’s attempts to prevent our reading; and food – and each other. demands of her frenetic job ‘I Know What You Did’: a at a New York City hospital finally, proposes what the future might hold chilling message that draws MAD MEN SEASON 3 and an array of personal for this most human of creative acts. five seemingly disparate dramas. characters into a dark tale of Released 2 June. $49.95. Blu-ray $69.95 TINTIN FILMS COLLECTION Returning for its third season, blackmail and desire. All are Mad Men bursts with one BRIGHT STAR Released 2 June. $49.99 affected in different ways by scandalous surprise after Released 3 June. $39.95. Blu-ray $49.95 These full-length animated the letters – and as more another. Jon Hamm and the London 1818: a secret love films are based on the classic chilling messages are rest of the award-winning affair begins between a graphic novels by Hergé. received, the five are forced to confront ensemble continue to 23-year-old English poet, Follow Tintin, Snowy, their past and the secret that binds them captivate us as they contend John Keats (Ben Whishaw), Captain Haddock, Professor together. From the team behind cult classic with a world on the brink of and the girl next door, Calculus and detectives The League of Gentlemen, this cliff-hanging great change. Welcome to Mad Men – a Fanny Brawne (Abbie Thomson and Thompson in comedy thriller weaves a tale of intrigue, shocking portrait of a time that was anything Cornish), an outspoken world-spanning adventures, mystery and suspense. but innocent. Nothing is so sexy. Nothing is student of high fashion. This investigating the mysterious and the so provocative. Nothing is as it seems. unlikely pair begin at odds: he thinks she is unknown! CANNES CLASSICS

Savour the magic of Cannes with these acclaimed masterpieces, winners of the coveted Palme d’Or.

Influential Cinema from Around the Globe

DIRECTORSSUITE.COM.AU Readings Monthly June 2010 17 EDGE OF DARKNESS ITALIAN FOOD SAFARI Released 3 June. $24.95 Released 2 June. $29.95 Escorting his daughter home Presented by Maeve O’Meara from college, Detective and chef Guy Grossi, Italian Inspector Craven watches Food Safari is a celebration of New Release CDs helplessly as she is gunned the incredible hard work of down in cold blood. the Italians who settled in Hell-bent on revenge, his Australia over a generation Where Did the search for her killer leads ago and have kept their food Night Fall him on a terrifying one-way traditions intact. Mercifully, JCDasmine of the Month Unkle trip to the heart of the nuclear state. they have shared their food and culture with $24.95 Finally, this brilliant 1980s BBC drama the rest of us. Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden Heavy on the female vocals, makes it to DVD. $32.95 Where Did the Night Fall is Even by the lofty standards another masterful step AMERICAN FUTURE: of Keith Jarrett, this is forward in the evolution of New releasE Golden something special. After 35 A HISTORY BY Age movies of the 1960s James Lavelle’s Unkle. The years, it’s a heartfelt reunion hybrid of electronica and SIMON SCHAMA with Charlie Haden, the Released 3 June. $39.95 groove-rock is always a sure bet under the bassist in Jarrett’s first trio supervision of Lavelle and his ability to craft Historian Simon Schama and in his great ‘American Quartet’ of the takes us on a journey in this something special. While most of the vocalists 1970s. Following 25 years of admittedly are relative unknowns, Mark Lanegan pops four-part series to discover superb standards albums by Jarrett’s Stan- deep America: an America up on the end of the album, his unmistakable dards Trio, the duets comprising Jasmine are gravelly tones giving Another Night Out a which on four critical issues an invigorating new format. Recorded at – war, immigration, moral delicious darkness. There’s lots to like here. Jarrett’s home, Haden plays with tremendous Dan Gries is from Readings Hawthorn fervour and the difficult gap power for a man of his age, asserting his between expectations of seniority, and never allowing Jarrett to stray plenty and the reality of limited resources – High Violet too far from the path. This dignified sojourn The National has arrived at the moment of truth. BUONA SERA, through the tin-pan alley canon has the gravitas and unaffected directness of Jarrett’s $24.95 THE 10 CONDITIONS MRS. CAMPBELL now-classic solo standards disc, The Melody at The most rewarding musical experiences rare- OF LOVE Released June. $14.99 Night With You. ly come without something being required of the listener, some emotional investment. $29.99 Richard Mohr is a friend of Readings NEVER ON SUNDAY Ohio outfit The National are a band whose The 10 Conditions of Love Released 9 June. $19.99 music swells and swirls through the darkest follows the struggle of Transcontinental I highly recommend these two great mov- and murkiest of waters, while always gasp- Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the ies from the Golden Age of the 1960s. Hustle ing for the clean air and light above. Their Uyghur people, the op- Based in Italy and Greece respectively, Gogol Bordello previous two records Alligator and Boxer were pressed Muslim population these romantic comedies star two of the $19.95 enough to have them considered by many, in- of China’s Xinjiang prov- most stunning actresses to walk the earth. They’re back! Woo hoo! cluding myself, to be one of the bands of the ince. Kadeer now lives in Gina Lollobrigida (mama mia!) and Melina This is the fifth studio decade. Now comes High Violet, which may exile in the US, where she is Mercuri (holy moly!) lead all-star casts that album from the wonderful yet prove to be their defining work. This is quickly gaining influential friends and include Peter Lawford, Telly Savalas and Gypsy-punk band Gogol brooding and evocative rock music. It’s lyrical. media coverage to help her campaign for Jules Dassin. Fantastic locations and sharp Bordello and, quite frankly, It’s intense. It’s hopeful. But above all else, it’s her people’s human rights. As a result, her comedy abound in these movies, which I couldn’t be happier. Once deeply human and ultimately moving. This is children are in prison in China. highlight cultural and ethnic divides while again we are knocked about with their The National, they are magnificent, and I for fast-paced, frenzy-filled sounds and feelings BREAKING AWAY never once resorting to political correctness. one am glad they’re out there. of being at an all-night festival party, Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda Released 9 June. $29.99 dancing and singing until the sun comes up One of the best-loved baby (which is pretty much what happens at their Together boomer films ever, this live shows!). The passion from front-man New Pornographers 1979 Peter Yates film is not Eugene Hütz is always present, giving us $24.95 only tons of fun, but listeners the feel for a love for music that is Another beautifully crafted centres around cycling. A never ending. Once again, Gogol Bordello pop-tastic record from this small-town teenaged boy has pleased me beyond belief! Canadian/US co-operative, obsesses about the Italian Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn cycling team. He and his masterminded by A.C. friends are desperate to ride away from Everlasting Newman and Neko Case. their restrictive town, and to avoid the With such stellar talents to Rebecca Barnard draw from, you’d expect the songwriting to college snobs. It’s a passionate cry for $25.95 freedom that all teens feel, resonating be top notch – and it is. The fact that there The difficult second album are three fine singers in the band doesn’t hurt today more than ever – and featuring great syndrome does not apply in cycling footage to boot! either when it comes to laying down the this case. Rebecca Barnard honeyed harmonies that abound on their LITERARY LANDSCAPES has penned captivating records. The New Pornographers have always lyrics and delivered them had an uncanny ability to produce unasham- Released 9 June. $34.99 with thoughtful arrange- edly pop records that draw heavily from There has always been a ments and lovely vocals. She recorded this their influences, while never roaming connection between the album in New York with the help of Barney dangerously into derivative territory. great writers of English McAll, a talented producer, arranger, pianist, Together is another fine addition to an literature and the country- guitarist and long-time friend of Barnard. impressive body of work. DM side, with the best-loved The talent of these two just shines with this classic works of the past still wonderful recording, and they simply Dark Side of the Moon providing us with the most capture and unite the moment in a very evocative images of English Flaming Lips & Stardeath profound way. & White Dwarfs with country life to this very day. Step back in Explore the creative Alice Bisits is from Readings Malvern time and enter the landscapes of such Henry Rollins & Peaches legendary authors as the Bronte sisters, Jane genius behind Edward Half Man Half Woman $22.95 Austen and Charles Dickens, to follow in Scissorhands, Batman Deborah Conway In which the Lips join a their footsteps and discover the places, & Willy Zygier couple of fellow Oklahoma events and people who inspired them. and Alice in Wonderland. bands and a couple of more $29.95 well-known guests for a OF TIME AND THE CITY �� June – �� October ���� These two creative people re-imagining of one of rock and their music are never $34.99 Open daily ��am – �pm music’s most iconic of Special late night Thursdays until ��pm predictable. From a long-players. Sound intriguing? Having spent Celebrated director Terence beautiful, sculptural ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne some time touring together recently, the Davies takes a trip back to package for the CD comes his childhood city of www.acmi.net.au participants discovered a mutual love for Pink an enclosed pop-up orchid Floyd – and this record in particular – and Liverpool in this beautiful and a collection of songs that are as pleasing and personal documentary, decided to pay homage. The results are to the ear as the artwork is to the eye. Even something more akin to Syd Barrett-era made up largely of archival their three daughters get to harmonise on a footage. At once a joyful Floyd, as you might expect given the minds lullaby featuring Willy’s banjo playing. With behind the project, but the great thing about remembrance of Davies’s lots of acoustic strings to accompany a voice childhood home and a eulogy of what is the Flaming Lips has always been how of quality that we all know, it’s a lovely predictably unpredictable they are. This is a now lost, Of Time and the City is a dream- album. AB like reminder of how you can never return bizarre trip but ultimately worth the ride. to the perfection of your memories. DM 18 Readings Monthly June 2010

The Jayhawks Aka about another live album (his third in five Bunkhouse Sessions years), they have all been wonderful at shining This Way Out The Jayhawks a light on his brilliant catalogue of songs. His Peter Petrucci Quartet voice is still sounding great, and the simplicity $25.95 $29.95 of the arrangements and tremendous sound After listening to the A sonically relaxed but emotionally pro- make this a very welcome release. Bunkhouse Sessions, it’s found new statement from four of Aus- Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton clear why the Jayhawks tralia’s top jazz musicians. Guitarist Peter Petrucci, a long-time Readings favourite, became a catalyst in the Tides Of Time evolution of what would has a mellifluous, round tone and relaxed eventually be termed Liz Stringer approach, concealing one of the finest tech- alt-country. The early album has more in $24.95 niques in the world. He’s joined by Sam common with Gram Parsons and The Flying One of Australia’s finest, Brunswick singer– Anning (bass), David Jones (drums) and Burrito Brothers than it does with later songwriter Liz Stringer releases her third Jamie Oehlers (saxophone) in a free but Jayhawks classics Tomorrow The Green Grass excellent album Tides of Time. A unique proj- tuneful journey of modern standards and and Hollywood Town Hall. It is quite evident, ect, in that Liz played all the instruments and originals. Admirers of Pat Metheny, Jim Hall though, where those milestone albums grew recorded the album onto a vintage eight-track or John Abercrombie will love this. RM out of. This Jayhawks reissue will include an with a lone engineer in a converted church eight-page booklet with new photos and a over a couple of days. It has a beautiful, inti- new essay by co-founder Mark Olson. mate feel and her wonderful stories are given Sid Grane is from Readings Carlton plenty of space to unfold. Touching, tender and beautifully realised. DC WFolkaltjim & B atWord Matilda Court Yard Hounds Ali Mills Court Yard Hounds Made The Harbor Skinnyfish. $29.95 $19.95 Dixie Chicks sisters Martie Maguire and Mountain Man O Hele Le Emily Robison couldn’t wait for the third $21.95 Ego Lemos sister Natalie Maines to come back to the The three women who Skinnyfish. $29.95 fold, so they formed a side project to tide make Mountain Man Fledgling independent label Skinnyfish, them over till the next Chicks album. But describe themselves as ‘a based in Broome, has become a mover without Maines’s uniquely identifiable creature growing from the and shaker in Australia since the massive vocals, what were we expecting? Well, I mouths of’ Molly Erin success of the Gurrumul album over the for one didn’t care about her absence and Sarle, Alexandra Sauser last two years. In its own quiet way, Skin- was pleasantly surprised to hear Robisons’s Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath. Their nyfish has sporadically released some very (and Maguire’s) vocals lend themselves to haunting, harmony-laden music combines fine indigenous albums, with Tom Lewis’s great alt-pop songs that are well-crafted and elements of folk, country and traditional Sunshine After Rain being an overlooked gem expertly played. As always, the harmonies are American music, while setting up camp of spoken word and music. This year sees top shelf, and there’s no denying great hooks alongside the likes of Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver the release of two new CDs. Darwin-based and melodies. It’s an album that deserves to and Joanna Newsom. Quietly beautiful. DC singer Ali Mills has already had a career as a be heard, and I look forward to a new Dixie member of The Mills Sisters. Mills has made Chicks album with all three ladies taking up Lucy & the Wolves a splash with the title track, a Kriol version the vocal duties in the future. Martha Tilston of our unofficial national song Waltjim Bat Lou Fulco is from Readings Carlton $24.95 Matilda, thanks to ABC airplay. Ego Lemos Following on from the critical success of Of is an East Timorese musician and permacul- Australian Milkmaids & Architects, English folk singer ture advocate and composed the beautiful Ghost Story Martha Tilston returns with the record Lucy theme song to the award-winning Balibo The Paradise Motel & The Wolves. This is a softer sound than soundtrack. Both albums feature the musi- $24.95 Milkmaids. The first track, Cape, is particu- cians and production crew from Gurrumul. Ten years ago, The Paradise larly haunting; reminiscent of Wuthering Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton Motel left the comfort of Heights. Martha Tilston evokes the style of Melbourne for London and classic folk singers such as Vashti Bunyan and Air Hadouk the promise of greatness, Sandy Denny. With her new record, she ce- Hadouk Trio before almost immediately ments her already enduring reputation. $34.95 disbanding. An Australian Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from Readings This CD took me com- ghost story indeed. Dealing with the Carlton pletely by surprise. It’s disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain (thirty world music meets jazz years ago this year), this album is something Love and its Opposite with playing of the very only The Paradise Motel could pull off. Tracey Thorn highest calibre, featuring Drawing from the Motel’s well-stocked $24.95 reeds, doudouks and all arsenal of haunting melodies and stunningly On Tracey Thorn’s second solo record after kinds of exotic percussion, and underpinned eerie arrangements, these songs are executed her brief hiatus from recording, she is with- by the warm, deep tones of an African with the confidence and skill of a band who, out her long-time partner Ben Watt, but has three-string bass. Those familiar with ECM after all these years, know what they do well recorded this new record on his label. These ethnic jazz crossover albums by Jon Hassell – something impressive and utterly unique. songs are beautifully written and remind me or Jan Garbarak, or the moving doudouk It is great to have this local treasure back. of her early work with Ben in Everything playing of Levon Minassian, will be right at Evan Meagher is from Readings Hawthorn But the Girl. You could do well to look up home here. This music is guaranteed to take some older records, such as Love not Money you places. The album closer, a five-plus Infinite Arms or Idlewild. MAS minute mood piece with doudouk, is as Band Of Horses beautiful as music can get. PB $21.95 When independently released bands move to Love and Reason major labels, you often hear the sound of the Mary MacMaster grab for dollars in the music. Not so with RJazzemembrance & Donald Hay this, the band’s third release. These personal Ketil Bjornstadt $30.95 songs are still aimed at finding the heart of Mary MacMaster was one $32.95 the story and storyteller. Ben Bridwell’s vo- half of Scottish harp duo A stellar first release, and cals sweep through these aural masterpieces Sileas, who produced some a return to a more jazz- with sensitivity and reverence. Wonderful outstanding celtic harp and oriented sound after hooks and melodies abound, and although gaelic song albums some years of ambient/classical the songs give off a sense of melancholy, time ago. For this CD excursions, from another there is much joy. Part Americana, part pop MacMaster has teamed up with Donald Readings regular. Ketil and part hymn, sit down and enjoy this fine Hay, who adds extremely subtle, imaginative Bjornstadt, a classically-trained pianist South Carolina band. LF percussion and samples to her electro and turned moody jazz maven, hooks up with steel-string harp playing, and her vocals on his on-again-off-again drummer of four de- Love Is Strange contemporary folk and eerie gaelic songs. cades, the great Jon Christensen, and keen- Track six, Pibroch, composed by a piper after Jackson Browne ing sax player Tore Brunborg, who seems seven of his eight children died of fever, is a & David Lindley to be ECM’s go-to guy for 2010, having mighty atmospheric bagpipe piece, wonder- 2CD set $29.95 already played on Manu Katche and Tord fully translated for harp and percussion, Recorded live during their Spanish tour of Gustavsen’s albums this year. Brunborg has interspersed with a child’s laughter and 2006, this is a beautiful document of two clearly heard a lot of Garbarek albums, and voice with sound effects. PB careers interwoven over 30 years. They’re ac- that’s no bad thing. This is a great modern companied by the great flamenco percussion- jazz album, with a cleansing and – dare I ist and producer Tino di Geraldo, as well as say it – truly Nordic sensibility. RM other well-known Spanish musicians. While some fans of Jackson Browne might complain Readings Monthly June 2010 19

NewClassical CD Classicals Rosso: ItalianCDs Bach Classical Specials of the Month Baroque Arias Richard Galliano of the Month El Nuevo Mundo: Patricia Petibon, Venice DG 4803341. Our special price $21.95 Folias Criollas Baroque Orchestra, Andrea (While stocks last) Who would have thought Jordi Saval Marcon DG 4778763. $21.95 that there could ever be a & Montserrat Figueras new way of playing Bach? Alia Vox. AVSA 9876. $34.95 This is French soprano Patricia Petibon’s second Richard Galliano has found The very prolific Jordi recital CD for DG. Her it! Performing a whole Savall has managed to first album Amoureuses won mixture of Bach’s repertoire produce, once again, a 2009’s BBC Music – from the solo flute partita to the double recording that will take the Albinoni & Vivaldi: Oboe Concertos Magazine Award for Best concerto for oboe and violin – he has listener on a musical Paul Goodwin, The King’s Consort, Opera Album. And this one is likely to rearranged them to fit on his instrument of journey that transcends Robert King Helios. CDH 55349. receive similar acclaim. The voice, artistry choice, the piano accordion. With lovely mere aural pleasure. Exploring the rich Was $19.95. Now $9.95 and accompanying musicians are all in fine balance in the chamber sections and an interplay of music and culture that occurred form here. But it’s the choice of repertoire impressive display of technical mastery, this Monteverdi: Sacred Vocal Music when Europeans first crossed the Atlantic that really helps to make this CD stand is a fascinating recording for those who are Emma Kirkby. Helios. CDH 55345 and came under the influence of the many out against a strong field of sopranos looking for something a little different. KR Was $19.95. Now $9.95 varied musical styles of Latin America, Savall currently releasing recital CDs. Its success has recorded a selection of pieces from Spain Tartini: Violin Concertos lies in the way it combines much-loved Volupté: Music to Peru to Mexico, playing for the first time Elizabeth Wallfisch Handel arias with lesser-known repertoire for Viola & Piano with virtuoso Mexican musicians. As on Helios. CDH 55334. Was $19.95. Now $9.95 by Handel’s contemporaries. Some of the MR 301126. $29.95 every Savall recording, the performances are Glinka & Tchaikovsky: Piano Trios stand-out gems on offer here are Sartorio’s Once again Melba Record- nothing short of perfect and the Alia Vox The Moscow Rachmaninov Trio Quando voglio and Porpora’s Morte amara, ings has come up with the sound is stunning. Whether this music fits Helios. CDH 55322. Was $19.95. Now $9.95 but there is never a dull listening moment unknown and interesting. into what the world defines as classical is on this CD. Bravo! This time the viola takes Chopin: The Complete Waltzes. irrelevant, because the simple fact is that Catherine Koerner is from Readings Hawthorn centre stage with music Garrick Ohlsson. Helios. CDH 55381. music this good cannot be defined. from the early twentieth Was $19.95. Now $9.95 Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton Haydn: Concertos for century and music that seems oddly This month we are featuring five titles from Dvorak: Harpsichord & Violin nostalgic – as if seeking something not remembered. It is surprising that these works the Hyperion Helios range. First up is the Violin Concerto Ottavio Dantone, Accademia recording from Paul Goodwin of the Albi- Bizantina by Frenchman Charles Koechlin and Belgian Richard Tognetti, ACO, Joseph Johgen are not better known. The noni and Vivaldi Oboe Concertos. These Christian Lindberg Decca. 4782243. Our special price $21.95 performances are beautifully performed and (While stocks last) sonata Koechlin is a massive work full of BISCD 1708Was $34.95. Now $29.95 drama and longing, and the four pieces by recorded with immaculate support from With this new recording, (While stocks last) Johgen are delightful and evocative of a Robert King and the King’s Consort. Ottavio Dantone and The beauty of Dvorak’s passing or passed era. However, the real Next up is Monteverdi: Sacred Vocal Music. Accademia Bizantina once orchestral writing is the star gems on this disc are Koechlin’s all-too-short Emma Kirkby is at her very best on this again show that in the world on this new recording. The pieces for viola, horn and piano. This trio recording. All pieces are performed with of period performances this consistently stunning combination has a wonderful haunting vigour, intelligence and a sense of sheer ensemble is one of the best. Richard Tognetti is the quality, which Koechlin is able to use to enjoyment. It continues the Haydn anniversary celebra- soloist with Christian great effect. Violist Rodger Benedict and tions with a compelling reworking of his The recording of the Tartini Violin Concer- Lindberg at the helm of the Nordic pianist Timothy Young obliviously enjoyed concertos for the violin and harpsichord. tos, as performed by Elizabeth Wallfisch and Chamber Orchestra. Featuring the Legends the challenge of doing something different Beautifully recorded and performed, these the Raglan Baroque Players, is one of the Op. 59 and Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, it and bringing something unknown into the works take on a new life in the hands of best to come along in a long time. Wallfisch shows off the best of chamber orchestra open, for they play with great conviction skilled musicians. I have always enjoyed the has earned a world-wide reputation for her writing. This album will give you a warm, and musical understanding. This CD is a works of Haydn, and I sometimes feel that his panache and perfection in this repertoire. fuzzy feeling that will keep you snug in real delight. skills as a composer are overlooked in the These concertos add to an impressive survey these wintery days. Maurice Smith is a guest reviewer of the music that lies at the heart of the Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton classical world. Hopefully this new recording will change that perception. PR golden era of this golden instrument. The next CD will appeal to lovers of chamber music. The lyrical charm of these two lamenting trios is all-encompassing of Romantic Russian chamber music, and the performances by the Moscow Rachmaninov Trio are outstanding. Both trios are perhaps musical manifestations of the saying: ‘When a Russian is sad, he is very sad: when a Rus- sian is very sad, then he is at his very best.’ The final disc is Garrick Ohlsson’s recordings of the Chopin Waltzes. Originally recorded on the Arabesque label, it’s very nice to have these performances at a budget price. Ohlsson’s playing is persuasive and in his Literary t-shirts coming soon to Readings hands the waltzes are given new life. Highly recommended. Out of Print’s t-shirts available soon at Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda and at www.readings.com.au All titles are in limited quantity at these prices.

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