FREE FEBRUARY 2014

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THE POET’S WIFE MODERN HISTORY OUR MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS FOR 2014 Krissy Kneen on Mandy Sayer’s Ali Alizadeh on the engrossing new memoir figure of Joan of Arc page 06 page 04 page 06

NEW IN FEBRUARY

HANIF BENNY MANDY BLUE BRUCE KUREISHI LINDELAUF SAYER JASMINE SPRINGSTEEN $29.99 $16.99 $33 $39.95 CD $19.95 $27.95 $29.95 CD & DVD $24.95 page 05 page 10 page 10 page 17 page 18

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

News READINGS NEW AUSTRALIAN range of projects and organisations within WRITING AWARD Victoria in 2014. The successful grant The Readings New Australian Writing recipients for this year are: Award supports published Australian RISE (Refugee Survivors and authors working in fiction, with the vision Ex-Detainees) $20,000 of increasing the promotion and sales of The Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Australian authors’ works to the wider Fellowships $20,000 community. To be eligible for entry in the VACCA (Victorian Aboriginal Child inaugural New Australian Writing Award, Care Agency) $19,760 the book must be the author’s first or second Save the Children $19,990 published work only. The shortlist will be 100 Story Building $15,100 published in the October Readings Monthly, Reading Out of Poverty $15,000 and winning titles will be published in The Stella Prize $10,000 the November issue. The winner will be awarded prize money of $4000. Please visit Readings will also continue to support readings.com.au for more details, including the Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda and full eligibility criteria. The Brotherhood of St Laurence’s HIPPY program (Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters) in Fitzroy with READINGS CHILDREN’S a $6000 donation to each. Please visit BOOK PRIZE readings.com.au/news/the-readings- The inaugural Readings Children’s Book foundation-grant-recipients-announced- Prize supports an Australian author writing for-2014 to read more on each funded project. for children aged 5 to 12. The Prize seeks to support an Australian author – who has WHITE NIGHT MELBOURNE AT published no more than four children’s READINGS STATE LIBRARY books – in establishing their position as a valued contributor to children’s literature. On Saturday 22 February, Readings’ State The winner, who matches good literature Library shop will be open until midnight with strong appeal to children, will be as part of the Melbourne White Night awarded a prize of $4000. Please visit celebrations, where Melbourne’s streets, readings.com.au for more details, including laneways and cultural institutions are full eligibility criteria. transformed into a cultural playground from dusk to dawn. Please visit whitenightmelbourne.com.au for more 20% OFF ROUGH GUIDES AT information on the festivities. READINGS ST KILDA Throughout February, Readings St Kilda TRANSITIONS FILM FESTIVAL is offering you 20% off all Penguin Rough Guides, including travel guides to more The Transitions Film Festival returns than 200 worldwide destinations, phrase to Cinema Nova this February, with an books, inspirational guides, music guides, inspiring program of world-changing and reference books on topics as diverse documentaries. The festival begins on 15 Readings Monthly as business, computers, climate change, February with free screenings on the Big Free independent monthly newspaper Shakespeare and social media. Screen at Federation Square, before moving published by Readings Books, Music & Film to Cinema Nova for a week, and concluding with an innovative weekend of Cinema by Editorial: THE READINGS FOUNDATION Demand screenings. Readings is a proud Belle Place GRANTS ANNOUNCED supporter of the Transitions Film Festival. [email protected] The Readings Foundation has announced Please visit transitionsfilmfestival.com for more information. Advertising: grants totalling $131,850 to support a Ingrid Josephine [email protected] (03) 9341 7739

Graphic Design: The Art Department Collective www.theartdepartmentau.com

Front Cover: Cover illustration by Rick Milovanovic Based on The Days of Anna Madrigal, page 5

Contributors: Krissy Kneen Ali Alizadeh

Thank you to Readings staff members and contributors for your reviews.

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

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Chiwetel Michael Lupita Sarah Benedict Paul Brad Visit the Cinema Nova Bar Matthew Jared Ejiofor Fassbender Nyong’o Paulson Cumberbatch Dano Pitt DALLAS McCONAUGHEY LETO Steve McQueen’s vivid and brilliant depiction of 1850s America BUYERS From the real-life story of an accidental AIDS activist 380 LYGON ST CARLTON www.cinemanova.com.au CLUB Oscar Nominations inc. inc. “An6 Best ambitious Actor & Supporting thriller assisted Actor Oscar Nominations Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, A film directed by 9 Best Picture, Actor & Director NOW SHOWING National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. Jean-Marc Valléeby excellent performances” EmpireFEBRUARY 13 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 3

February Events

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ROBYN BAVATI IN CONVERSATION UP ALL NIGHT RODNEY TIFFEN 2 ON PIROUETTE 11 WITH TROY 22 WITH WHITE 26 ON RUPERT Join us for the launch of BRAMSTON, NIGHT MURDOCH Pirouette, from bestselling young BARRY JONES, MELBOURNE In Rupert Murdoch: A Reassessment adult author Robyn Bavati. Adopted as SIMON CREAN & In its 2013 debut, White Night Melbourne Rodney Tiffen takes a comprehensive babies by two different families, Simone and attracted more than 300,000 people, and on look at Rupert Murdoch’s business career, Hannah have never known they are identical RALPH WILLIS Saturday 22 February 2014, Melbourne’s city the entrepreneurial strategies that led to twins, but when the two girls pirouette Join author Troy Bramston as he sits down streets, laneways, landmarks and cultural his early success and his later exercises into each other’s lives, they see a perfect with Barry Jones, Simon Crean and Ralph institutions will once again be transformed of monopoly power. Rodney will be in opportunity to make their dreams come true. Willis for a discussion on Bramston’s latest into a cultural playground from dusk-till- conversation with Eric Beecher, publisher book, The Whitlam Legacy. of Crikey. Free, no booking required. dawn. Come visit our State Library shop Launch during your wanderings. Sunday 2 February, 3pm Free, but please book on 9819 1917. Free, but please book on 9347 6633. Readings Hawthorn Tuesday 11 February, 6pm Free, no booking required. Wednesday 26 February, 6pm Readings Hawthorn Saturday 22 February, from 6pm Readings Carlton KATHRYN LEDSON Readings State Library 5 ON THE NEW LORRAINE TRISTEN HARRIS ERICA JEWELL 17 MICHAEL ON DO YOU DARE? 27 IN CONVERSATION NOVEL PIECES OF EIGHT 23 Join us to celebrate the launch WITH GRAPHIC Join us for the launch of the next eagerly Pieces of Eight: Stories of Encounter and of a new companion series to NOVELIST awaited instalment in the action-packed Tele is a collection of tales of allure and the much-loved Our Australian TIM MOLLOY Erica Jewell series from Kathryn Ledson. intrigue from Lorraine Michael’s work in Girl books! Do You Dare? presents engaging Grab your Shrivelled Homunculus, Fast-paced, funny and totally engaging, psychotherapy within acute psychiatry. Australian historical fiction for readers aged ingest that alien hallucinogen, and Monkey Business blends adventure and Join the author along with psychiatrist and 8 to 12 with fast-paced, adventure-driven delve into the feverish brain of Mr romance in an irresistible summer read. psychodramatist Neil Hucker for a reading stories. The first two books in the series Unpronounceable – or at least, into the from the book. are The Bushranger’s Boys by Alison Lloyd Free, no booking required. and Tough Times by Simon Mitchell. At the mind of his creator, Melbourne graphic Launch Wednesday 5 February, 6pm Free, but please book on 9819 1917. same event, we will also launch two new novelist Tim Molloy. Join Tim as he chats Launch Readings Hawthorn Monday 17 February, 6pm Our Australian Girl books: Meet Pearlie by with 3RRR announcer Tristen Harris Readings Hawthorn Gabrielle Wang and Meet Daisy by Michelle about his latest work, Mr Unpronounceable Hamer. All four authors will be at the event, Adventures, which collects the complete DOUG HENDRIE signing books and chatting with young adventures of Mr Unpronounceable 6 ON HOW ON SEEKING readers and fans. together for the first time. GLOBALISATION IS 19 ASYLUM Free, no booking required. Free, but please book on 9347 6633. Together with PEN Melbourne, Launch GOOD Sunday 23 February, 3pm Thursday 27 February, 6.30pm join us to celebrate the release We’re thrilled to be launching Doug Readings Hawthorn Readings Carlton of A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Hendrie’s AmalgaNations: How Globalisation Seekers. Editor Rosie Scott will be joined is Good. Part whirlwind world tour by contributors Rodney Hall, Judith through surprising subcultures, part subtle Rodriquez and Arnold Zable to talk sociological study, all immersive reportage about one of the most conflicted issues with humour and warmth, AmalgaNations facing Australians. To be chaired by Chris takes the reader across Asia, Oceania and Kremmer. Africa to discover how people are adapting For more information and updates, please visit the events page at readings.com.au/events. or repurposing ‘global’ cultures. Free, but please book at wheelercentre.com. Wednesday 19 February, 6pm Please note bookings do not necessarily Free, no booking required. Launch The Wheeler Centre guarantee a seat and some events may be Thursday 6 February, 6pm 176 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, 3000 standing room only. Readings Carlton

Digital WRITERS’ FESTIVAL CARLTON 13 – 24 FEBRUARY 2014 Presented by Every Monday 11am. 309 Lygon Street, Carlton. Phone 9347 6633 for details. digitalwritersfestival.com ST KILDA Every Saturday 10.30am commencing 1 February 2014. 112 Acland Street, St Kilda. Phone 9525 3852 for details. Please note: All children are MALVERN to be accompanied by an Every Friday 10.30am commencing 7 February 2014. adult at all times. This is not 185 Glenferrie Road, Malvern. Phone 9509 1952 for details. a child-minding service. 4 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

New Australian Writing

Mandy Sayer’s third memoir, The Poet's Wife, vividly details her marriage to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa, and their unconventional life lived across the United States and in Sydney’s Kings Cross. Here, Sayer talks with Krissy Kneen about committing her tumultuous marriage to the page.

The Poet’s Wife Krissy Kneen interviews Mandy Sayer about her third memoir.

hen reading a review of Wife, the child becomes an adult, falls in Photograph by Tanya Lake a memoir we often come love, and then struggles to retain some across a repeated set of sense of self within a relationship that is This book contains many The memoir is subtraction; the novel is related words. ‘Brave’ is ultimately destructive. thoughtful insights into the art of addition. Both are mathematics!’ Wthe first one that springs to mind, along Sayer survived her marriage writing, alongside the personal struggles The Poet’s Wife is a pacey read. with ‘courageous’, ‘fearless’, ‘bold’. But to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef of a young woman desperately trying The sentences race along, jumping from what is so brave about telling the truth (or Komunyakaa, but The Poet’s Wife begins to salvage her relationship, as well as moment to moment, leaving a reader with at least your subjective truth) about your and ends with a different ‘poet’s wife’, her own self-esteem. In The Poet’s Wife, hardly any time to wonder what has been life publicly? So many of us do it on social the woman Komunyakaa partnered with Sayer studies with some of the great subtracted, what parts of this life have media, don’t we? after Mandy had left their relationship. writers and demonstrates her own been chipped away to serve the shape of Well, not exactly. We tell a Poet Reetika Vazirani, Komunyaaka’s fascination with the process of writing, the plot. Sayer is aware of her own natural version of ourselves but much of the truth partner, tragically killed herself and and the construction of both novels and rhythms, which occur in the text. ‘As a tap is hidden. We show off our best side: our their young son. The horror of this memoirs. dancer, and coming from a musical family,’ most flattering selfies, our most humorous murder-suicide haunts the book, giving When pressed about the she says, ‘I became attuned to nuances quips and clever patter. The art of the weight to Sayer’s own struggles with architecture of her work, and the of rhythm and music far earlier than memoirist is a different job entirely. mental illness and self-harm during the differences between the two forms, those of literature. It’s also the backbeat ‘Compelling memoirs usually years of her marriage to Komunyakaa. her answer sheds light on the assembly of everything I write, including fiction, reveal the narrator’s vulnerabilities, There are two ‘wives’ in this memoir, poetry and essays.’ secrets, confusions and mistakes,’ says two women who are also writers, and The Poet’s Wife offers much to Mandy Sayer, who has just released her there is a pervading sense that the fate ‘The horror of this murder- those interested in the construction of third memoir, and eighth book, The Poet’s of one might easily have been the fate of memoir, but also provides readers with Wife. ‘Many people aren’t comfortable the other if things had gone differently suicide haunts the book, plenty of universal truths to unpack with that level of public revelation about for Sayer. giving weight to Sayer’s along the way. It is a fine balance for their so-called weaknesses, which I can ‘The framing device [of most relationships – how do you keep understand. However, it’s usually on that Vazirani’s murder-suicide] is intentional own struggles with mental the mystery of a honeymoon period alive level that a bond can grow between and so is the title. I did research a little while fostering a depth of relationship reader and narrator, and where of Reetika’s life and did find certain illness and self-harm during that only honesty and experience can identification begins.’ similarities,’ says Sayer, ‘especially once the years of her marriage to engender? The Poet’s Wife is a formidable Sayer has certainly forged a kind I read her posthumous collection, Radha lesson in this struggle associated with of bond with her own readers, many of Says. It is so full of anguish and confusion Komunyakaa.’ marriage. As Sayer says when questioned whom have followed her since her first over her relationship that some of about the plot of The Poet’s Wife, ‘In some novel, Mood Indigo, won the Australian/ the stanzas reminded me of my own ways it can be read as a kind of domestic Vogel Literary Award when she was shocking, pleading diary entries years of her latest book, echoing the same thriller, with the wife-detective trying to just 26. But it was her first memoir, ago. My heart went out to her, and of passion for craft that infuses a large part unravel the truth about a mysterious and Dreamtime Alice that gave readers an course to their son.’ of the narrative in The Poet’s Wife. ‘With unknowable husband.’ insight into her life and character. Sayer’s diary plays a central role a memoir you start off knowing all of Dreamtime Alice, which focused on her in the book: committing her thoughts to the material and the real task, in order Krissy Kneen is the author of the novel nomadic life tap-dancing across New paper is a powerful act in the memoir. In to find shapes, patterns and structure, is Steeplechase (2013), the erotic adventure York and New Orleans with her drum- fact, the craft of the writer takes centre asking yourself what to leave out of the Triptych (2011), and the memoir Affection (2009). playing father, intersects with The Poet’s stage, as the young Sayer begins to help narration. With a novel, it’s the complete She has had short fiction and essays published Wife – her newest self-revelation. In Komunyakaa with his poetry and is, in opposite: you start off knowing none of in literary journals including Island Magazine, both her previous memoirs, Sayer looks turn, encouraged by him to embark on a the material – a literal blank page – and Griffith REVIEW and Nerve online, and her back at herself as a child. In The Poet’s writing career of her own. the task is asking yourself what to include. documentaries have screened on SBS and ABC TV. READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 5 Mark’s New Fiction News and views from Readings’ managing director, Say Mark Rubbo Book of the Month

One of the things I’ve always liked to do is support Australian writing and publishing. THE LAST WORD Over my career, it has been a thrill to see how the local publishing industry has grown, and Hanif Kureishi how Australian readers have embraced the exciting writing being produced. However, it Faber. PB. $29.99 has always been a struggle for Australian writers to gain an audience and secure a living Hanif Kureishi is probably best known for his early work: from their works. Of course, there have been well deserved success stories where debut his screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette (made into a film by authors gain almost immediate recognition: Favel Parrett’s Past the Shallows, Hannah Kent’s Stephen Frears and starring Daniel Day-Lewis), won a New York Burial Rites and Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project come to mind, but they are very much Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay in 1986 and was the exception. A cynic could argue that there’s good reason first-time authors struggle – nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing in 1987; The they just aren’t good enough – and this might be true in some cases, but anyone familiar Buddha of Suburbia won a Whitbread Book Award (now the with the vagaries of creative recognition knows that excellent works are often overlooked Costa Book Awards) for the best first novel in 1990. Both are lighthearted works or have limited commercial appeal. I know that recently at Readings we have tended to dealing with issues of race and sexuality in Thatcher’s England. His 1998 novel, concentrate on those books we feel have the greatest sales potential. It’s been a natural Intimacy, was a much bleaker sort of work which kicked up controversy: the plot – reaction to the vicissitudes of the book trade, though this was something that gnawed the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons – closely resembled at me. I have been trying to figure out how we could give new and emerging Australian Kureishi’s own life. Kureishi’s work has raised the ire of family members writers, particularly, better attention and support. I had the thought of a Readings throughout his career for laying bare (or misrepresenting) intimate details of their award, judged by our experienced staff, which required us to seriously consider the new personal lives. Australian books published each month and commend them to our readers. I discussed Amid the buzz surrounding his new novel is discussion of the plot’s this with some colleagues who were equally excited about the concept and over a few uncanny resemblance to the story behind Patrick French’s 2008 biography of months the idea was debated and refined. Martin Shaw, our books division manager, Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, The World Is What It Is. Kureishi’s novel is about the pointed out that for many authors it was their second book that was the important one, as battle of wills between two men: Mamoon, the older, eminent writer, and Harry, if that book failed then their writing careers were often over. Children’s author and one the young up-and-comer who wants to make his mark in the world by writing of our children’s specialists, Emily Gale, also made an impassioned plea to include a prize Mamoon’s biography. In the book’s promotional clip, Kureishi describes it as a ‘sort dedicated to children’s literature. It was harder, she argued, for children’s writers to gain of English country comedy, quite light in some ways, but it’s also about some of the recognition even after their third or fourth book. A prize could make a real difference. most serious things: sexuality, passion, love and writing’. So, it is with great pleasure that I announce the inaugural Readings New Kureishi’s writing rolls out at a good clip: there are fantastic, bright lines Australian Writing Award and Readings Children’s Book Prize for 2014. The New and his prose is an enchantment – crisp, brisk and sharp as a tack. But The Last Australian Writing Award will be for a work of adult fiction that must be the author’s Word is also a curious book: Mamoon’s resemblance to Naipaul, whose misogyny first or second published book, and the Children’s Book Prize is for an author writing is no secret, means that the female characters are necessarily portrayed as objects, for children aged 5 to 12 who has published no more than four children’s books. We around which the two men play out their battle. This portrayal results in a slightly have committed to fund the two awards for the next three years – hopefully it will off-kilter reading experience, which suits Kureishi (and his characters) to a T. continue indefinitely! Ed Moreno is from Readings Carlton

Unwittingly, Harry becomes trapped in a Australian spiral of murderous violence and intimidation that he can neither From ONE BOY MISSING understand nor resist. Stephen Orr the Text. PB. $29.99 International One Boy Missing is a new departure in literary crime Books THE DAYS OF ANNA Martin Shaw, from Stephen Orr. It was a Readings Books Division Manager butcher on smoko who MADRIGAL Desk reported the man stashing Armistead Maupin the kid in the car boot. He Random House. PB. Was $32.95 didn’t really know whether $27.95 February of course is back-to-school month, but with the new Liberal government he’d seen anything at all, though. Maybe an Armistead Maupin signalling education is in need of ‘pulling its socks up’, as it were, it’s salient that two new abduction? Maybe just a stressed-out father. began writing Tales of books address issues that will surely only be perpetuated under Minister Pyne. Marion Detective Bart Moy, newly returned to the the City as instalments for a Maddox, in Taking God to School, considers the surprising impact that Christian groups country town where his ailing, cantankerous San Francisco newspaper in are having on what was once the proudly free and secular public school tradition. David father still lives, finds nothing. As far as he the seventies. Nearly four Gillespie, meanwhile, in Free Schools, considers whether the backing given to the private can tell, no one in Guilderton is missing a decades later, The Days of sector in our school system actually benefits no one, least of all the students themselves. small boy. Still, he looks deeper into the Anna Madrigal, which is his Another title certain to create a little controversy this month is a new book about butcher’s story – after all, he had a son of ninth book in the series, is said to be the last. the place of the Anzac legend in the Australian consciousness. In Anzac’s Long Shadow: The his own once. But when the boy does turn Transgender lady Anna Madrigal Cost of Our National Obsession, James Brown, a former military man himself, argues that up, silent, apparently traumatised, things is 92 years old and content. She is in close the eulogising aspects of our commemorations occlude our awareness of serving officers are no clearer. Who is he? Where did he contact with her former tenants from 28 in contemporary war zones, thereby rendering those who should be the pride of our nation come from and what happened to him? into a rather marginal position in our society. Barbary Lane; they consider her as family. This month we also have a couple of quite interesting literary autobiographies. ASKING FOR TROUBLE But a rediscovered childhood book sparks Mandy Sayer has A Poet’s Wife, a sequel of sorts to Dreamtime Alice, documenting her memories of the desert whorehouse where Peter Timms marriage to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. And the American novelist Mrs Madrigal grew up and some unfinished HarperCollins. PB. $27.99 Gary Shteyngart – of Super Sad True Love Story fame – has a hilarious but also deeply business that she feels must be put to rest. affecting memoir of his emigration to the United States from Russia as a child, and how There are things in his past Anna employs the help of her old friend, he slowly shrugged off the tag his mother only half-jokingly gave him growing up, which that Harry Bascombe Brian, and his new wife, Wren, and they provided him the title for his memoir: Little Failure. definitely doesn’t want to head off to the brothel in Winnemucca that From the fiction offerings, we have two fine novels in translation: Patrick Deville’s remember. But when a nosey she fled from as a 16-year-old boy named Plague and Cholera from the French, and Danish author Jonas T. Bengtsson’s A Fairy journalist with a taste for Andy Ramsey. Tale. Hanif Kureishi is always a singular reading pleasure, so The Last Word is eagerly scandal turns up out of the Meanwhile, another of Anna’s anticipated. And fans of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series have the ninth, and blue, he is forced to confront old tenants, Michael Tolliver, his perhaps last, instalment to devour: The Days of Anna Madrigal. Our reviewer declares it to his memories. An uncertain and diffident husband, Ben, and Brian’s adult daughter, be ‘a joy, and those of us who have followed the lives of this group of San Franciscans for so boy, Harry struggles to survive a suburban Shawna, are making their way to the many years will be genuinely touched’. upbringing in the 1950s. Family life is Nevada desert to take part in Burning Finally, two offerings of a South Pacific theme: Nancy Horan, who wrote an complicated, with an ineffectual father, a Man, the weeklong cultural and ‘radical acclaimed novelisation of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright a few years ago, has now re-created highly strung mother who is leading a self-reliance’ festival. Shawna wants Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson’s life in Samoa in Under the Wide and Starry Sky; and double life, and an older brother who is ‘not to fall pregnant at the festival but her the latest GriffithREVIEW is a New Zealand-themed issue entitled Pacific Highways – a quite himself’. School is no easier. However choice of father is far from conventional, fascinating collection of essays, memoir, poetry, visual art, fiction and reportage from hard young Harry tries to stay out of especially for Michael. trouble, it seems he is always ‘asking for it’. ‘across the ditch’. Continued on page 7 6 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

Essays Turning a new page Readings’ chief book buyer Martin Shaw looks to our most anticipated books for 2014

ell, what a bountiful year métier – the short form – with this story men and women on the vessel lead lives in the 1970s, and is described as the most 2014 is shaping up to be! collection. Already it’s being hailed as his diametrically opposite to his own, governed Proustian of all the volumes. For the There will be legions of best work to date. by service and self-constraint, and a refusal fans, these books are a drug (I admit, I’m fans awaiting new novels Emily Bitto A noteworthy debut to embrace uncertainty. No doubt as funny hopelessly addicted!), so all I can say is if Wfrom the likes of Haruki Murakami, this year, I’m sure, will be Bitto’s novel, The as it will be insightful, it seems this is more you haven’t yet taken the trip, I heartily Marilynne Robinson, Sebastian Barry, Strays (Affirm Press), loosely based on the classic Dyer. recommend that you do so. Emma Donoghue, Ian McEwan, Heide arts community of 1930s Melbourne. Chris Flynn It’s great to hear Wayne Macauley In recent Sarah Waters, David Mitchell and Siri Bitto is influenced by how the controversial there is a second novel due from Flynn, years, Macauley, author of The Cook, has Hustvedt. Short-story aficionados have artists’ lives impacted on their offspring, whose first, A Tiger in Eden (Text), well and truly arrived as one of our most new collections from Lorrie Moore and the novel explores the deep cracks in released two years ago, was so fresh exciting prose practitioners. No word and Lydia Davis to look forward to. A this utopian colony. and inventive. This time he adopts an on the content of Demons (Text), his new Gerald Murnane novel is always a Maxine Beneba Clarke Australian setting, with a tale concerning forthcoming novel, but I don’t think we cause for celebration. And towards the Clarke’s story collection, Foreign Soil a travelling fair. Apparently, Flynn was care – we’re reading it! end of the year we can await a collection (Hachette), was the first book I read for once a sumo wrestling judge at such a fair Angela Meyer From the much- of personal essays from Lena Dunham, 2014 and, to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll himself! admired writer and critic comes Captives which recalls Nora Ephron, Tina Fey and read a better debut this year. With stories Helen Garner A new Garner (Inkerman & Blunt), a debut collection of David Sedaris, and comes with quite a of migration and emigration ranging book is always the cause of much interest what Meyer calls ‘micro’ or ‘flash’ fictions, pitch: ‘I’m already predicting my future across America, Africa, the United and anticipation. Given this forthcoming in which – in the publisher’s words – shame at thinking I had anything to offer Kingdom and Australia, Clarke’s material title is another in the ‘true crime’ genre ‘Roald Dahl meets Raymond Carver’. you with this book, but also my future is compelling, and her writerly facility – detailing the tragic tale of Robert Expect then lots of rather strange things glory in having stopped you from trying an utterly extraordinary. Farquharson, convicted of killing his three going on – and Meyer tells me that they’re expensive juice cleanse or having the kind Joël Dicker is a name you children by driving them into a farm dam – also rather dark. of sexual encounter where you keep your most likely won’t have heard before, but I’m sure it will be no different. Miriam Sved Usually, if anyone sneakers on.’ this Swiss author knocked Dan Brown Eli Glasman Glasman recently had asked me to read a book of stories set There’s even a novel already from the top of the bestseller list in published on his blog a terrific piece around the game and culture of AFL, I getting touted as a Booker Prize contender: Europe last year with The Truth about about his writing journey to date, which would have tended to do a handball. But the South African writer Damon Galgut, the Harry Quebert Affair (MacLehose). left you in no doubt that he is a real the stories I have read so far in Game Day who has already been shortlisted twice Concerning a young writer who discovers writer, with all the self-doubt and hard- (Picador), Sved’s debut story collection, for the award, brings us Arctic Summer his university professor and mentor won successes involved. His debut novel, are stunning, showing that all manner of (Atlantic Books), a fictional re-creation of is accused of committing a murder 30 The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper narrative thematics and perspectives are E.M. Forster’s travels to India – and the years before, it’s enough for me to know Jew (Sleepers), concerns a homosexual possible in what turns out to be a fertile freedoms and inspiration he found there – that this literary thriller is published by boy growing up in the Melbourne and fresh literary terrain. which led to the creation of Forster’s classic Christopher MacLehose, the legendary Orthodox Jewish community. Rebecca Starford I was intrigued novel, A Passage to India. publisher who most recently brought Karl Ove Knausgaard No doubt to discover that Starford, the well-known I’ll finish with a rather eclectic Stieg Larsson to the attention of the the translator is working very hard to be co-founder of edgy literary journal Kill list of predominantly Australian titles English-speaking world. as quick as he can, but alas it’s looking like Your Darlings, has a memoir coming that are well worth keeping your eye out Geoff Dyer There can’t be a new Knausgaard will only be an annual (Bad Behaviour, A&U). It’s an account of for. Particularly pleasing is to see some many authors with a more diverse list of event in the years to come. This year we’ll adjusting to life at the Timbertop boarding fantastic young writers on debut, with publications, both fiction and non-fiction, receive Boyhood Island (Harvill), volume campus of Geelong Grammar during her significant careers ahead of them, I suspect. than Dyer. This time, in Another Great Day three of the acclaimed Norwegian’s six- high school years, and an advance excerpt Tony Birch With The Promise at Sea (Random House), he documents life part autobiographical series, My Struggle. published in the GriffithREVIEW made for (UQP), Birch returns to arguably his on board a US aircraft carrier, and how the Boyhood Island focuses on his childhood riveting reading.

How do you solve a problem like Joan? Ali Alizadeh writes on the trouble with depicting the perplexing figure of Joan of Arc

have spent quite a number of I am instead mostly interested make her story relevant to literature readers, I find it fascinating that some of years reading about the enigmatic, in the portrayals of Joan that are, put in theatregoers and moviegoers of the artists’ the least memorable literary depictions engrossing historical figure of Benjamin’s terms, ‘our own concerns’. own eras. In so doing, these artists have of Joan have been offered by some of Joan of Arc, the young European According to Benjamin, instead of focusing the world’s best-known writers – such Ipeasant who ran away from home, became on ‘the way the past really was’, we must as Shakespeare, Voltaire, Schiller and a knight, led the armies of the King of realise that ‘every image of the past that Mark Twain – and many an acclaimed France against his enemies, and was burnt is not recognised by the present as one of writer has failed to produce a version of as a heretic in the early fifteenth century. its own concerns threatens to disappear the famous woman’s life that has stood Most historical accounts of the medieval irretrievably’. In other words, for a radical the test of time. Thomas Keneally’s 1974 woman’s life and persona are attempts thinker or writer, the past is not over, but it novel Blood Red, Sister Rose is one of at a purely factual representation of her is ‘time filled with the presence of the now’. the Booker Prize-winner’s least-known story, or attempts at telling her story, as Images of the past must ‘be blasted out of novels, and is currently out of print. the thinker Walter Benjamin may have the continuum of history’ to be made new; Keneally’s decision to characterise his it (according to his important essay on in my view, it is creative writers and other protagonist as some kind of gender the philosophy of history, as collected in artists, and not historians and biographers, outcast, due to her not menstruating, has Illuminations), ‘the way it really was’. who have provided us with a fascinating very little historical basis – there exists While some of these texts make array of imaginative, unsettling, inspired only one second- or third-hand statement for highly informative, persuasive historical and at times frankly weird new depictions given by Joan’s (male) squire, Jean studies and biographies of Joan – among of Joan of Arc. d’Aulon, 25 years after Joan’s death, in my own favourites being anything by Starting with her own which the attendant claims to have heard Régine Pernoud, Mary Gordon’s biography contemporary, the late-medieval poet that women who had seen Joan undress and Marina Warner’s brilliant study of and feminist Christine de Pizan’s long had not noticed signs of menstruation – Joan’s iconic image – they mostly confirm, poem La Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (1429), but Keneally’s depiction is, nevertheless, supplement and contest the existing poets, novelists, playwrights, composers, unusual, even bold, speaking to the views of the famous figure, known to her songwriters, painters and filmmakers have contemporary readers’ fascination contemporaries as Jehanne la Pucelle sought to remove Joan from her immediate indeed blasted Joan out of her historical with the body, gender, sexuality and (Joan the Maid), rather than offering new historical and political context – that is, the continuum, albeit with rather erratic levels physiology. depictions. battlefields of the Hundred Years’ War – to of artistic success and effectiveness. Continued on page 7 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 7

Continued from page 6 the greatest movies of all time. Other A far more successful and cinematic depictions of Joan, however, enduring modern retelling of Joan’s story have been far less compelling. The 1948 The news is everywhere is George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play Saint historical epic Joan of Arc with Ingrid Joan. While this text, as with most other Bergman, the 1994 two-part drama Jeanne and we check it constantly – creative representations of the historical la Pucelle with Sandrine Bonnaire, and but what is it doing to our minds? figure, entails a level of loyalty to the 1999’s bloody, star-studded Jeanne d’Arc, historical records – most scenes in the play featuring Milla Jovovich, have all been are based on rather well-known episodes in rather quickly forgotten. The latest movie the commonly accepted narrative of Joan’s based on Joan’s life, Jeanne Captive (2011), life, such as her supposedly miraculous with Clémence Poésy, seems to have recognition of the French King, Charles disappeared without a trace. of Valois, upon her arrival at his castle in Joan of Arc’s historical narrative Chinon in 1430 – Shaw used the narrative is perhaps too complex, paradoxical to offer a new and timely critique of and challenging to lend itself easily to a organised religion. In his version of the literary or cinematic mould. But I don’t above historical scene, for example, Joan’s believe that readers interested in this recognition of Charles is attributed to her remarkable figure should limit themselves common sense, intelligence and scepticism, to the works of historians and scholars. and not the workings of a divine force. Creative writers and other artists have, Shaw’s humanist depiction of in my view, mostly failed to produce Joan may be seen as a reaction against depictions that do justice to the gravity her canonisation by the Vatican in 1920. of Joan; regardless, their work can be Another powerful and arguably anti- acknowledged as projects which have religious portrayal of the medieval figure prevented the image of Joan of Arc from is to be found in a different work of this ‘disappearing irretrievably’. Even the period, Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent movie epic rap battle between the Maid and La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Here, Joan – Miley Cyrus on YouTube may help with portrayed by the actress Renée Jeanne animating the medieval figure ‘with the ‘Maria’ Falconetti – is seen as a pious presence of the now’. individual, victimised by the clergymen who intimidate and mock the young Ali Alizadeh is a Melbourne writer, and his woman during her Trial of Condemnation, latest book is Transactions. He is currently prior to sentencing her to death. Despite writing a novel about Joan of Arc, and is a being a financial failure upon release, lecturer in Creative Writing and Literary Dreyer’s film is now seen as one of Studies at Monash University. In this dazzling new book, Alain de Botton takes twenty-five archetypal news stories – from an aircrash to a murder, a celebrity interview to a political scandal – and submits them to unusually intense analysis. The ultimate manual for our news-addicted age.

Continued from page 5 how parental authority can mould a child’s The Days of Anna Madrigal is a internal world and brings to painful clarity joy, and those of us who have followed the how easy it is for things to go wrong, lives of this group of San Franciscans for despite best intentions. so many years will be genuinely touched. A Fairy Tale is not an easy read, Admittedly, I find it hard to be overly just as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is critical of any Tales of the City book; my not an easy read: the novel challenges respect for these characters runs too deep. the reader to examine the extremes of It’s said that for many readers, Tales of the familial love and the resilient bonds City marked the first time gay characters that knit such love together. The father were portrayed as normal people. That is figure in A Fairy Tale, however, is a more definitely the case personally, and picking complex character than McCarthy’s dad, up the first book in the series at the age of a man whose sole focus is the safety of 20 was revelatory. I’m sure I’m not alone his child, no matter the cost. Bengtsson’s in saying that they have been companions father is a character more prone to along the road. mistakes, delusions and human error; as a Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton consequence, the impact his behaviour has on his son is both affecting and tragic. A FAIRY TALE Bengtsson has artfully created a Jonas T. Bengtsson piece of existential fiction (fans of Knut Scribe. PB. $29.99 Hamsun or John Fante rejoice!) that tugs Do not let the title fool on the heartstrings and leaves a solid you: there are no fairies impression. – kindly godmother types or Samuel Zifchak is from Readings Carlton otherwise – in Danish author Jonas T. Bengtsson’s third PLAGUE AND CHOLERA novel. It is a narrative that Patrick Deville navigates through the Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 shadows of humanity and, like the works of I like my novels to the Brothers Grimm, eagerly throws open drop me straight into doors many would consider best left closed. events and Patrick Deville’s That being said, an undercurrent of Plague and Cholera does just tenderness and innocence is present in the that. The reader joins form of the protagonist: a young boy Dr Alexandre Yersin in desperately trying to understand the Paris, May 1940, as he is opposing forces of love and betrayal he fleeing France during World War II. feels towards his father. Moments later a second narrative is A Fairy Tale charts the nomadic introduced, taking the reader through life of this boy and his idiosyncratic father Yersin’s early life: from his medical studies who believes they are being pursued by to his induction and time spent at the what he classifies as ‘The White Men’. As Pasteur Institute and his yearning for a consequence, the boy’s life is scattered travel and adventure. into brief encounters with a variety of In this fictionalised memoir of characters and locations that shape, for the Swiss-born scientist and polymath, better or worse, the man he eventually the two narratives cleverly present the becomes. Bengtsson cleverly examines different stages of Yersin’s life. As a young 8 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

Katharina if he doesn’t return from the THE PEOPLE IN front. Such is great fortune in times of THE TREES war. Unexpectedly, or perhaps out of a Hanya Yanagihara What desperate need to give meaning to their Atlantic Books. PB. $27.99 petty lives, when Peter and Katharina I meet they fall in love. In 1950, a young doctor, Norton Perina, and the Annie Condon Returned to Russia and anthropologist Paul Tallent Loved Readings Hawthorn surrounded at Stalingrad, Peter wonders set out for a remote if he is more than just cannon fodder Micronesian island in search while Katharina climbs the social ranks of a rumoured lost tribe. They HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN of the Nazi Party in Berlin. Consumed by succeed, but also find a group of forest M.J. Hyland their individual desires, neither appears dwellers they dub ‘The Dreamers’, who turn Penguin. PB. $9.95 to fully understand the ramifications of out to be fantastically long-lived. Perina their actions, or those of the party they suspects the source of their longevity is a n 1996 I began the RMIT Professional Writing and Editing blindly obey. course, and while I didn’t share any classes with M.J. Hyland, I hard-to-find turtle, and after smuggling Leaving the specific horrors soon began to hear a lot about her from classmates. Not only was some meat back to the States, he proves his of the Holocaust out of the story, The she an amazing writer, I heard, but a talented editor as well. thesis but soon discovers that its miraculous Undertaking is an empathetic tale about I Since our student days she has published three books, one of which property comes at a terrible price. two people who can’t, or won’t, see the (This Is How, 2007) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. However it’s her first novel, truth of the war or the regime they have How the Light Gets In (2003), which I re-read every few years. SEASON TO TASTE wed themselves to – it’s this tension that The book begins with 16-year-old exchange student Louise Connor on a plane defines Audrey Magee’s debut. Covering Natalie Young from Sydney to Chicago, where she will spend a year with a host family. Louise, known the conflict in Northern Ireland for six Headline. PB. Was $30 as Lou, is terribly afraid and also excited; she is escaping a life of poverty, crime and years as a correspondent for The Times, $24.95 two older sisters who relentlessly mock her. Lou has tried to learn as much as she can Magee wanted to tell a story about people Meet Lizzie Prain. Ordinary about the habits of middle-class life and secretly hopes her host family will adopt her whose experience of war pushed the housewife. Fifty-something. so she never has to return home. But she’s not prepared for the forceful emotional issues and politics to one side: the result Lives in a cottage in the dynamics of the Harding family. is an unsettling read. Light on historical woods, with her dog Rita. From the outset, the reader knows things are not going to be clear cut for Lou. content, The Undertaking is an unlikely Likes cooking, avoids the When she asks the air hostess, ‘Could I possibly borrow some of your perfume?’, it’s romance that’s heavy on the heartstrings. neighbours. Runs a little apparent that Lou’s personal boundaries are compromised. The beauty of Hyland’s business making cakes. No Tara Kaye Judah is from Readings St Kilda writing is that she builds these small, irregular moments into a surprising crescendo. one has seen Lizzie's husband, Jacob, for a Within moments of Lou meeting her host family, the mother, Margaret, takes Lou’s few days. That’s because last Monday, on hand and holds it as they walk. Her host brother, James, stares at her, commenting each THE VISITORS impulse, Lizzie caved in the back of his time she blushes. Bridget, her host sister, is both disdainful of Lou, and jealous of her Rebecca Mascull head with a spade. And if she's going to mother’s affections. Hodder Headline. PB. $29.99 embark on the new life she feels she The ghost story has deserves after 30 years in Jacob's shadow, been rattling the chains she needs to dispose of his body. Her ‘The beauty of Hyland’s writing is that she builds these small, irregular of literary history for method appeals to all her practical moments into a surprising crescendo.’ centuries, with the likes of instincts, though it’s not for the faint- Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, hearted. Will Lizzie have the strength to and Henry James (among follow it through? Season to Taste is a Lou arrives at the Hardings’s prefabricated suburban mansion worn out, many others) all deliciously subversive treat and in the overcome with jetlag but unable to sleep. When the Hardings take a two-week road trip experimenting with the subject – Rebecca shape of Lizzie Prain, Natalie Young has before school resumes, Lou’s insomnia, a pivotal problem throughout the novel, and Mascull’s debut novel adds another created a most remarkable heroine. James’s scrutiny mean that she is exhausted and underwhelmed by the trip. She has imaginative tale to the genre. come to America to escape the close quarters of her family’s council flat in Sydney, but Adeliza Golding is deaf and UNDER THE WIDE finds herself in even closer quarters with the Hardings. blind, unable to interact with anyone AND STARRY SKY Hyland is wonderful at evoking emotionally claustrophobic situations. except the ghosts she communicates Nancy Horan The more sleepless and unwell Lou feels, the less she meets the mostly unspoken with in her head until she runs out into Hachette. PB. Was $30 expectations of her host family; things spiral downward from here. the fields of her father’s hop farm and a $24.95 In Lou, Hyland has created a wonderfully flawed narrator. The reader can stranger, Lottie, takes her hand and draws empathise with her desire to live a life other than the one she’s grown up with, shapes upon it with her fingers. Lottie In her second novel, New and her humour, intelligence and wordplay converge into literature of the finest teaches Adeliza how to communicate, York Times bestselling author form. Lou’s vulnerability, which is at odds with her fierce desire for independence, opening the world to her, and the two Nancy Horan tells the makes you want to give her a big hug at the end of the book. But of course she become inseparable. passionate and turbulent story of Stevenson – who would hate that! Set in late Victorian England, The would eventually write such Visitors explores Liza’s friendship with classics as Treasure Island and Lottie and her brother Caleb, as she travels The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from her father’s farm to the oyster beds – and his tempestuous American wife. At the of Kent, to a doctor’s office in London, age of 35, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne has man he could well be seen as fickle, unable With an enthralling blend of fact and and onward to South Africa during the left her philandering husband in San to stay put in any one career or locale. fiction, Deville’s Plague and Cholera Boer War, where the truth of the Visitors Francisco to set sail for Belgium to study art. The young Yersin is eager to learn and brilliantly highlights this wonderful ultimately unfolds. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, explore the unchartered; he is bored stuck man. A great read. As the story opened I was ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten in a laboratory doing research and gains reminded of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: the Suzanne Steinbruckner is from with the earthy and opinionated belle employment as a ship’s doctor, widening reader is led by the nose into a vivid reality Readings St Kilda Americaine, and the two begin a fierce love his thirst for exploration. As an old man of smell and touch via a lively character a affair that spans decades. leaving war-torn Europe for the sanctuary THE UNDERTAKING little out of kilter with the world, somewhat of his second home in Indochine, he Audrey Magee wild and not always likeable. The Visitors is THAT PART WAS TRUE reflects on the life he has made, fondly written in the first person, present tense – a A&U. PB. $29.99 Deborah McKinlay recalling friends and colleagues, now narrative style not to everyone’s liking – On the Eastern Front in Orion. HB. $24.99 long passed, and wonders with what luck but Mascull has utilised it well; it gives the 1941, Peter Faber, a he is still here. tale a sense of immediacy while allowing When Eve Petworth writes German soldier, is fighting Deville’s prose is comfortable the reader inside the head of her eccentric to Jackson Cooper to praise a for his country. In a not yet – almost conversational – and is vividly deaf-blind protagonist. scene in one of his books, engaging. I struggled to put the book divided Berlin, Katharina they discover a mutual love Spinell is waiting for a The Visitors is an inventive down, torn between racing through story with well-drawn characters but of cookery and food. As their it like a young Yersin eager for his conflict she doesn’t letters criss-cross the ocean understand to end. Fed up with rations and sometimes falls short by telling the next great discovery or adventure, or reader too much – the wrap-up towards that lies between them, reading at a slower pace akin to Yersin the banality of something so big it’s entirely friendship and then romance blossom incomprehensible, Peter and Katharina the end seemed unnecessary. However, in his seventies. I chose slow and steady for lovers of ghost stories and oddities, despite Jackson’s colourful love life and to best enjoy every moment of this – having picked each other from a Eve’s tense relationship with her soon-to- catalogue of photographs – decide to marry. Mascull’s tale will offer a weird and epic adventure. Yersin is most often wonderful escape into a richly imagined be-married daughter. Little by little, Eve A thousand miles apart, their remembered as the discoverer of the world peopled with some extraordinary and Jack begin to believe that they may ceremonies take place simultaneously. The bacillus bacteria responsible for the characters. have a chance to change their lives, they bubonic plague – but his life work and arrangement is a good one: honeymoon just need to actually meet. experience was far wider than just this. leave for Peter and a pension for Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 9

THE LIE New Crime Dead Write Helen Dunmore Victorian Random House. PB. $27.99 with Fiona Hardy In 1920s Cornwall, just Premier’s after the First World War, a Book of the Month young man is back from the Literary war, homeless and without DESERVING DEATH family. Behind him lies the Katherine Howell Awards 2014 terror of the trenches, but also the most intense Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 Here are the winners, each an exceptional relationship of his life, forged in a On a springtime morning in Sydney, two paramedics get a call: literary achievement – and together crucible of shared suffering. Daniel has to attend to a collapsed woman in Sydenham. The paramedics making for a robust reading list survived, but the horror and passion of recognise the address, and when they arrive their worst fears are the past seem more real than the quiet confirmed: their co-worker and friend, Alicia Bayliss, is found fields around him. He is about to step into bloody and beaten to death. Just weeks earlier, another paramedic Prize for Poetry the unknown, but will he ever be able to suffered the same grisly fate. escape the terrible, unforeseen In Katherine Howell’s latest Detective Ella Marconi novel, there is as much consequences of a lie? emotional involvement as there is procedural detail. Marconi is unnerved, sensing LIQUID NITROGEN unexpected tensions among the paramedics she interviews, while attempting to Jennifer Maiden THE KING sustain her relationship with Dr Callum McLennan as the anniversary of his cousin’s Giramondo. PB. $24 Kader Abdolah death approaches. Marconi is the one who helped find the killer – the doctor’s own Politically-charged and perverse father – and McLennan’s mother cannot forgive her for it. Meanwhile, exquisitely-structured, A&U. PB. $29.99 paramedic Carly Martens is troubled, determined to find justice for her dead friend, Jennifer Maiden’s intimate Already a bestseller in while waiting to see if her girlfriend will be able to brave her family’s bigotry and poems read like verse essays, Europe, The King follows the disclose their relationship. The emergency services – both police and ambulance – subjecting the political issues young Persian King, Shah require trust on the field, but in this case, suspicion spreads far and wide. of our time, and the figures who dominate Naser, who upon taking the Deserving Death was a revealing and tense read, and the cause of a Very Late them, to a fierce scrutiny. Maiden was also throne inherits a medieval, Night Staying Up Just To Finish One *cough* Twelve More Chapters. This is a book awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature. enchanted world. But beyond full of smart and powerful women, and the men who feel inadequate when confronted the court, the greater forces by them. Exactly the right kind of crime novel to throw us screaming into 2014. of colonisation and industrialisation close Prize for Fiction in. The Shah’s grand vizier sees only one solution – to open up to the outside world, RIPPER YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME COAL CREEK and to bring Persia into modernity. But the Isabel Allende Robert Wilson Shah’s mother fiercely opposes the vizier’s Alex Miller Fourth Estate. PB. $29.99 Orion. PB. $29.99 reforms and sets about poisoning her son’s A&U. PB. Was $30 Isabel Allende is a lyrical Charlie Boxer knows how to mind against his adviser. $26.95 storyteller, and each of her find people – he does it for a In this tenderly provocative characters is always vividly living – but when his THE WIND IS novel, Bobby Blue becomes built. In Ripper, she tells the daughter, Amy, goes missing, caught between loyalty to his NOT A RIVER tale of a mother and daughter, leaving a note that reads, You only friend Ben Tobin, and Brian Payton Indiana and Amanda Jackson, will never find me, Charlie his boss Daniel Collins, the Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 holistic healer and teenage knows that sometimes the new Constable at Mount Following the death of his sleuth respectively: they are happy, close, disappeared don’t want to be found. After Hay. Readings’ Managing Director Mark younger brother in World and heading into danger. Amanda has a years of work in intense environments, Rubbo calls it ‘a great achievement.’ War II, journalist John predilection for crime novels and spends her Charlie’s relationship with Amy is patchy, Easley is determined to find time playing Ripper, an online mystery game; and his uneven parenting means he may not meaning in his loss. Leaving when she discovers a series of deaths in their have enough insider knowledge to find her. Prize for Non-Fiction behind his wife, Helen, he beloved home of San Francisco could be heads north from Seattle to connected, she is well placed to investigate IN THE MORNING FORGOTTEN WAR investigate the Japanese invasion of further – until Indiana vanishes. I’LL BE GONE Henry Reynolds Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. While John is Adrian McKinty accompanying a crew on a bombing run, his New South. PB. $29.99 THE FARM Profile. PB. $29.99 plane is shot down over the island of Attu. Forgotten War continues the Tom Rob Smith One grand thing about the He survives, only to find himself exposed to story told in Reynolds’ Simon & Schuster. PB. $29.99 end of the January holidays is a harsh and unforgiving wilderness where seminal book The Other Side Daniel is a dutiful British son, that February means getting he must battle the elements and starvation of the Frontier, which argued pleased that his parents have my paws on a copy of this, the while evading discovery by the Japanese. that the settlement of retired to an idyllic farm in latest no-longer-Detective Alone in their home three thousand miles Australia had a high level of his mother’s homeland of Inspector Sean Duffy book. to the south, Helen is forced to re-imagine violence and conflict that we Sweden, until news comes With Duffy at a place so low who she is. Somehow, she must find John chose to ignore. Our reviewer describes it as from his father: his mother it’s close to underground, it’s the best time and bring him home, a quest that takes her ‘an intelligent, challenging work.’ has had a psychotic for MI5 to strike with a request, and he’s into the farthest reaches of the war. breakdown, accusing those around her of tasked to track down IRA prison escapee, horrendous crimes. After being released bomb builder and ex-schoolmate Dermot Prize for Writing for Anthology from a psychiatric ward she has since McCann. Said mission points him in the Young Adults vanished. Before he can leave England, direction of a locked-room mystery and Daniel gets another call: this time from his – because he’s never far from it – further PACIFIC HIGHWAYS: mother, seemingly rational, and on her way peril and utterly enjoyable reading. MY LIFE AS AN GRIFFITH REVIEW 43 to Heathrow to prove that there was a crime ALPHABET Julianne Schultz & – and that Daniel’s father was involved. THE GIRL WITH A CLOCK Barry Jonsberg FOR A HEART A&U. PB. $14.99 Lloyd Jones (eds) BIG BAD WOLF Text. PB. $27.99 Peter Swanson My Life as an Alphabet is a Nele Neuhaus Pacific Highways explores Faber & Faber. PB. $29.99 delightful novel about an Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 and maps New Zealand, in In college, George Foss has a unusual girl who goes to great the words of the country’s It’s a hot German summer relationship that ends with lengths to bring love and finest writers, including Kate and Inspectors Pia Kirchhoff drama, confusion and a laughter into the lives of De Goldi, C.K. Stead, and Oliver von Bodenstein warrant out for his girlfriend’s everyone she cares about. Our Bernard Beckett, Owen are trying to uncover the arrest; decades later, in his reviewer writes, ‘This book Marshall, Hinemoana Baker identity of a teenager brutally favourite bar, Liana Decter completely won me over, just as unusual and many more. From reports of the Kiwi murdered and washed up on reappears, asking for a favour. misfit Candice wins over everyone she meets.’ Diaspora in Australia, to a consideration of a Frankfurt riverbank. There Still in her thrall despite the intervening are no leads until they stumble upon a the growing Asian economic and cultural years and (you’d think) acquired wisdom, Prize for Drama influence, to the contribution of Pacific connection in a new case – a controversial George agrees – anything to save Liana from society to the arts and sports, this collection television personality is violently attacked what a punch in the kidneys by a hired goon With Savages, multi award-winning of original essays, memoir, poetry, fiction – and the investigation takes a turn for the shows to be a very real danger. But what will playwright Patricia Cornelius takes a and reportage will challenge the way you sickening. Complex, surprising and not for that one favour lead to? (Answer: a pretty tough look at masculinity and misogyny think about New Zealand. the faint of heart. great and twisty crime novel.) amongst a pack of ordinary young men. 10 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

New Young Adult Fiction New Non-Fiction See books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 14-15 battle over Australia’s culture brings into Australian question what Anzac means in Book of the Month contemporary Australia. Education Minister THE POET’S WIFE Christopher Pyne suggests that the review will address concerns about the history NINE OPEN ARMS Mandy Sayer curriculum ‘not giving important events in Benny Lindelauf (translated by John Nieuwenhuizen) A&U. PB. Was $33 Australia’s history and culture the A&U. PB. $16.99 $27.95 prominence they deserve, such as Anzac We see many successful adult novels translated to English Mandy Sayer’s vivid Day’. Yet here, Brown, former Australian from the Dutch (a notable release of late being Herman new memoir, set Army officer and current military fellow at Koch’s The Dinner). Nine Open Arms is welcome proof that young predominantly in New the Lowy Institute, puts forward that the adult publishers recognise the value of translated fiction, too. Orleans, Indiana, and later in Anzac legend is in no danger of slipping Originally published in 2003, Nine Open Arms has won several Sydney’s Kings Cross, details from the public consciousness. esteemed awards in its native Holland. It’s unclear whether we’ll her volatile ten-year marriage The fourth book from Black Inc.’s get the sequel (which has been compared to The Book Thief), but I sincerely hope so. to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Redback imprint, Anzac’s Long Shadow Nevertheless, this story stands alone. poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Two memoirs takes a candid look at how Australia It takes place during the 1930s, in the Netherlands, and follows the trials of a precede this work: Dreamtime Alice, which eulogises the Anzacs and why. Brown large, motherless family, always on the move because their father – a dreamer – takes detailed the years she spent tap-dancing on considers the costs and dangers of a culture risks that never pay off. In fact, they’re destitute and come to live in a dilapidated the street with her drummer father, Gerry; that reveres the Anzac story and spirit, house at the end of a dusty road, placing them literally on the edge of civilisation. and Velocity, the story of her childhood spent yet predominantly ignores our current The narrative is with the eldest girl, Fing, a wise and responsible child, on society’s fringe. In The Poet’s Wife we are military presence in Afghanistan. This is perfectly pitched to show off the more eccentric characters, such as her sister introduced to Sayer as she meets not a damning critique of the Anzac legacy, Muulke, who is dramatic and fearless, and her hard-as-nails grandmother, Oma Mei. Komunyakaa at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. but rather a considered commentary on The house has its secrets, and somehow they are linked to Fing’s family. We’re Sayer is in her early twenties, still busking the myriad ways in which the ‘sheer effort taken back to the 1860s to see how. For me, the joy was in the journey more than the with Gerry, while Komunyakaa is nearly we are expending on the Anzac centenary revelations, in the warmth and humour alongside the hardship and sadness. Highly forty, a struggling poet from the Deep South. is utterly irreconcilable’ with the marginal recommended for ages 12 and up, with good crossover appeal. Sayer positions news she place of the serving military in our society. received in 2003 of the murder-suicide of Brown writes that ‘touching the Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton Komunyakaa’s two-year-old son and then sacred is a difficult thing to do. Grabbing partner, the poet Reetika Vazirani, at the hold of it with both hands and wrestling beginning of her memoir, and it’s difficult with it can be tricky indeed.’ Brown, as notes, ‘good books are about everything’ FIND ME to shift the shadow that this situation casts. both an intelligent military theorist and and Grasshopper Jungle is a great book Romily Bernard In Sayer’s marriage to Komunyakaa, he an engaging storyteller, is able to tackle that is both a crazy, thrilling ride and a S&S. PB. $16.99 is unpredictable and dynamic, roaming such a controversial issue with humour wise and funny look at the confusion of Wick Tate and her without any real warning between and candour. A personal, challenging and being a teenager – especially when the end sister haven’t had an vehemence and tenderness. His bad informative work, Anzac’s Long Shadow of the world happens to be just around the easy life. With a mother who behavior makes for engaging reading, before has the potential to contribute a great deal corner. committed suicide and a the jolt comes that this is someone’s life to Australia’s understanding of our own drug-dealing father on the Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda story. While Sayer is capable of tremendous military service, and how we think about run, the Tate sisters have achievements they do nothing to mollify her war itself. finally been put in a loving THE INTERN shallow sense of self-worth, and she suffers Stella Charls is from Readings Carlton foster home and feel like they can start a new Gabrielle Tozer from crippling anxiety and depression. life. That is until Wick, an expert computer HarperCollins. PB. $16.99 She’s an intriguing character, one capable hacker, finds the diary of a local dead girl left When Josie Browning lands of staggering pragmatism – you root for her Biography at her front door with the message ‘find me’ an internship at the glossy while being simultaneously infuriated. written inside. As Wick starts to delve into fashion magazine Sash, she Despite the bleakness of Sayer’s the girl’s world through social media, she thinks her luck could finally domestic landscape, her writing is buoyant. LITTLE FAILURE: gets a nasty surprise to discover that the be changing. A coveted Aside their travels between America A MEMOIR person responsible is ready to strike again, columnist job is up for grabs, and Australia, the pair makes impressive Gary Shteyngart and this time much closer to home. but Josie quickly learns that professional achievements. Sayer has now Penguin. PB. $32.99 I have to admit, it took me a little the magazine industry is far from easy. This moved outside of Komunyakaa’s orbit, but time to get into this book, I think because debut novel from industry insider Gabrielle it’s impossible not to wonder about his Gary Shteyngart’s loving but I wasn’t really sure how it was going to Tozer reveals just what is behind the influence. Professionally, he encouraged her mismatched parents dreamed work and if it would be captivating enough. seeming sparkle of the magazine industry. to write and produce novels – Sayer’s first, that he would become a However, by the time I was about a quarter Mood Indigo, was published while she was lawyer, or at least an of the way in, I was hooked, and keen to TAPE married to Komunyakaa – though dually she accountant, something their distracted son was simply not find out what would happen. Find Me Steven Camden contributed editorial advice to his poetry. The Poet’s Wife would be striking simply cut out to do. Fusing English certainly isn’t literary genius, but it doesn’t HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 claim to be. Simply put, it’s a fun mystery as an account of the early careers of a and Russian, his mother created the term In 1993, Ryan records a diary that will engross teens who like a bit of significant poet and an accomplished writer Failurchka – ‘Little Failure’ – which she on an old tape. He talks about whodunnit. For ages 13 and up. – but this is, of course, a record of a deeply applied to her son. With love. Mostly. A his mother’s death, about his troubled relationship. Sayer offers a memoir candid and deeply poignant story of a Soviet Katherine Dretzke is from Readings dreams and about his love for written with clear-eyed precision, The Poet’s family’s trials and tribulations, and of their Hawthorn a new girl at school who Wife rippling as much with her measured escape in 1979 to the consumerist promised doesn’t even know he exists. prose as her generous storytelling. land of the United States, Little Failure is GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE In 2013, Ameliah moves in also an exceptionally funny account of the Belle Place is the editor of Readings Monthly Andrew Smith with her grandmother after her parents die author’s transformation from asthmatic Egmont. PB. $19.95 and discovers a tape in the spare room. The ANZAC’S LONG toddler in Leningrad to 40-something This unusual coming- tape has a boy’s voice on it, which seems to Manhattanite with a receding hairline of-age novel has been be speaking to her. But Ryan and Ameliah SHADOW: THE COST and a memoir to write. likened to the voices of are connected by more than just a tape. OF OUR NATIONAL Vonnegut and Salinger’s OBSESSION SHEILA THIS STAR WON’T GO OUT Catcher in the Rye, with James Brown Robert Wainwright Esther Earl good reason. The narrator, a Black Inc. PB. $19.99 A&U. PB. Was $33 self-proclaimed historian, Penguin. PB. $19.99 This year, many local $27.95 Austin Szerba, is a 15-year-old Polish kid A collection of the journals, books will focus on the An extraordinary woman living in the middle of a dead-end town in fiction, letters and sketches of Gallipoli centenary in 2015; unknown to most Lutheran Ohio. He’s obsessed with sex and the late Esther Grace Earl, indeed, James Brown’s Anzac’s Australians, Shelia is cigarettes and happens to be equally in who passed away in 2010 at Long Shadow offers a timely, spellbinding. Born on an love with his best friend, Robby, as his the age of 16. Photographs and biting analysis of the Anzac Australian sheep station in girlfriend, Shann. He is also recording the essays by family and friends legend – one that will most New South Wales, she end of the world, which may or may not help to tell Esther’s story, along with an likely sit outside the usual commemorative wedded earls and barons, have been caused by him and Robby, and introduction by award-winning author John milieu. As the Abbott government launches befriended literary figures and movie stars, which will definitely involve giant, Green, who dedicated his bestselling novel, a review of the national curriculum, a new bedded a future king, and was feted by sex-obsessed insects. As our narrator The Fault in Our Stars, to her. READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 11

London and New York society for 40 years THE SNOWDEN FILES before dying as a Russian princess. Edward, Luke Harding Prince of Wales, called her ‘a divine Faber. PB. $29.99 woman’ and his brother Bertie, the future It began with a tantalising, George VI of England, was especially anonymous email: ‘I am a close to her. senior member of the INSIDE TRADER intelligence community...’ What followed was the most Trader Faulkner spectacular intelligence Scribe. PB. $35 breach in history: the leaking As a boy, Ronald ‘Trader’ of highly sensitive secrets from the heart of Faulkner was a troubled and US power by young contractor Edward rebellious surfer and Snowden. Award-winning Guardian tearaway, and dreamed of a journalist Luke Harding spins a high- career in the Royal octane account of integrity and intrigue as Australian Navy. But he unspools the thread of Snowden’s through a series of chance narrative, one that simultaneously earned encounters, he found himself embarking him the titles of hero and traitor. on a career in the theatre — not unlike his father, the silent film actor John Faulkner, and his mother, Sheila Whytock, a Cultural Studies his comprehensive book ballerina who danced with Diaghilev’s Ttraces his business career, Ballets Russes and the great Anna Pavlova. THE ROAD TO the entrepreneurial strategies After he arrived in England in 1950, his MIDDLEMARCH that led to Rupert Murdoch’s career in the theatre soon took off, Rebecca Mead early success and his later bringing him into contact with some of Text. PB. $32.99 exercises of monopoly power. It the finest actors, directors, and dissects his political ideas, the I’ve read Middlemarch playwrights of his time. relish with which he approaches twice, once as a political campaigning, and the teenager and once as an adult. way he leverages political support Politics Although I loved it the first into policy outcomes that favour time, it was the second his business. reading that convinced me MY PROMISED LAND: this was to be my favourite THE TRIUMPH AND novel. Rebecca Mead reads Middlemarch TRAGEDY OF ISRAEL every five years and each time finds more to Ari Shavit admire. There is something truly remarkable Scribe. HB. $45 in Eliot’s ability to create an epic story that still has such resonance today, despite the My Promised Land is a fact that the characters are confined to a profoundly inspiring provincial English town during a short www.newsouthbooks.com.au and challenging book. It is period of time in the early 1830s. an intensely personal The complicated genius of the impression of a country, for author is something that Mead set out to which the writer has discover along her road to Middlemarch. intense admiration and The subtitle is ‘My Life with George Eliot’, affection but also grave misgivings. Israel and certainly Mead uses reflections from was founded on a paradox. The ideals of her own life to explore her deeply personal Zionism embodied the rights to freedom, relationship with the book, but this never to self determination, to safety and to a feels like an indulgent autobiography; it’s just society – politically and Art ClimAte ethiCs: almost as if it’s impossible to discuss the economically. The early Zionists were novel in any depth without conveying what WhAt role for the Arts? amazingly successful in creating a real it means to the reader. Nor does Mead shy living society that incorporated these 6.00–7.30pm (free entry) away from discussing criticisms of both the ideals but the creation of this society Saturday 15 February, 2014 book and its author; her research uncovers required the displacement of millions of some letters written by Eliot that she finds Deakin Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne people, often quite harshly. difficult to read for their ‘embarrassing Ari Shavit, a leading Israeli pretentiousness’. But it’s Mead’s close Art Climate Ethics will consider what Moderated by ABC’s rafael epstein journalist and a columnist for Haaretz, analysis of the book that I most enjoyed, role the arts can play in understanding with panellists including Philosopher does not shy away from any aspect of and deepening our engagement with Damon Young, Artists mandy martin and from pages and pages examining a single Israeli history or society. He speaks the challenge of climate change. fiona hall and Climate Expert paragraph to speculation about which lovingly and admiringly of the Zionist Hear what leading thinkers in art, Peter Christoff. acquaintances of Eliot’s might have science and philosophy have to say. further information at www.climarte.org movement and what it achieved in a harsh inspired particular characters. land. But he also writes of a massacre of Although I suspect the reader Proudly supported by Sustainable Living Festival, Sofitel Luxury Hotels, Palestinians in the town of Lydda, and how Cordial Creative and Melbourne Conversations will get more from Mead’s book if they the survivors were forced to leave their have read Middlemarch at least once, it homes for the refugee camps in Jordan – will certainly inspire others to revisit its he acknowledges that the Israeli soldiers pages. I think it’s time I got started on my ‘did dirty work that enables myself, my third reading. daughter and my sons to live’. MARITIME Shavit explores how the State Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton of Israel has evolved, and what it has MYSTERY become. There is much that worries THE NEWS: A USER’S him but he does not have the answers: MANUAL Why did the elegant SS Koombana ‘If Israel does not retreat from the West Alain de Botton disappear off the Pilbara coast in 1912, Bank, it will be politically and morally Hamish Hamilton. HB. $29.99 doomed, but if it does retreat, it might and why was it never found? In The News, Alain de Botton, face an Iranian-backed and Islamic the bestselling author of ‘an impressive and engagingly Brotherhood-inspired West Bank regime Religion for Atheists, takes 25 written history …’ whose missiles could endanger Israel’s archetypal news stories – The West Australian security.’ This is not a history of Israel; from an aircrash to a murder, it is a beautifully written reflection on ‘a fascinating mix … ’ from a celebrity interview to a **** a complex society by a compassionate political scandal – and Books+Publishing and intelligent participant. It is essential submits them to intense analysis. His reading. manual is sure to bring understanding and a fremantlepress.com.au Mark Rubbo is Managing Director of measure of sanity to our daily interactions Readings with the news machine. 12 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

THE TRIPLE PACKAGE excesses of the time. White’s thousands THE PERFECT THEORY demolishing the once proudly free and Amy Chua & Jed Rubenfeld of anonymous and named gay lovers Pedro G. Ferreira secular education system in favour of Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 also grace the pages here, not without Little, Brown. PB. $32.99 taxpayer-funded dogma and division, and devastation as AIDS takes hold and many the frightening implications for Australia’s The Triple Package is an From the moment Albert are diagnosed HIV positive. future as a democracy. examination of how three Einstein first proposed his At the heart of this memoir is cultural traits enable some General Theory of Relativity White’s friendship with Marie-Claude, FREE SCHOOLS groups to outperform others: a in 1915, it was received with an older French woman who is his guide superiority complex; enthusiasm alongside David Gillespie to Paris, French language and etiquette. insecurity; impulse control. tremendous resistance – and, Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 White’s observations and discoveries offer Drawing on original research for the following 90 years, In Free Schools the a mixture of cultural generalities and astute and startling statistics, Amy Chua and Jed was the source of feuds, ideological battles bestselling author of Sweet and wry reflections, while he deftly weaves Rubenfeld explore the motivational drive and international collaborations. In this Poison shows us how to get some dazzling sentences together in this that leads to the rise, and sometimes fall, of first complete popular history of the theory, the better of an education recollection of a remarkable life. cultural groups. Pedro G. Ferreira shows how it has system that is costing a Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton informed our understanding of exactly fortune in fees, yet failing to BLOCKBUSTERS what the universe is made of, and how deliver. David Gillespie was AFTERNOONS IN considering sending his six children to Anita Elberse much is still undiscovered today. ITHAKA: A MEMOIR OF private schools for an estimated cost of $1.3 Scribe. PB. $32.99 GREECE AND FINDING MORAL TRIBES million and so began to investigate what What’s behind the YOUR PLACE Joshua Greene level of advantage they would receive. phenomenal success of Shockingly, the answer he found was none Atlantic. PB. $32.99 entertainment businesses such Spiri Tsintziras whatsoever. Taking on an ingrained and Our brains were designed for as Warner Bros and MGM – HarperCollins. PB. $24.99 historical system of vested interests, his tribal life, for getting along along with such stars as Jay-Z From the first heady taste of findings are a must-read for parents, with a select group of others and Lady Gaga? Anita Elberse, tomatoes on home-baked teachers and policy-makers. Harvard Business School’s bread at her mother’s village (Us), and for fighting off expert on the entertainment industry, in Petalidi, to sitting at a everyone else (Them). But reveals why executives often spend taverna some 30 years later in modern life has thrust the Visual Arts outrageous amounts of money in search of Ithaka with her own young world’s tribes into a shared the next blockbuster, and why superstars are family, Spiri Tsintziras heads space, creating conflicts of interest and paid unimaginable sums. Required reading on a culinary journey that propels her clashes of values, along with unprecedented THE DEALER IS THE for anyone wanting to understand how the between Europe and Australia. These funny opportunities. A grand synthesis of DEVIL: AN INSIDER’S entertainment industry really works. and poignant stories explore how food and neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, HISTORY OF THE culture, language and music all help to Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes ABORIGINAL ART TRADE create a sense of meaning and identity. of modern conflict and lights a way forward. Adrian Newstead Travel Writing Brandl & Schlesinger. PB. $49.95 Psychology Personal Development Adrian Newstead presents INSIDE A PEARL the definitive exposé of ‘the Edmund White first great art movement of Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 ONE WAY AND MY AGE OF ANXIETY the 21st century’, from Writers writing in ANOTHER: NEW AND Scott Stossel pre-contact and colonial Paris – Genet, Proust SELECTED ESSAYS William Heinemann. PB. Was $35 days to the heady celebrations of the Sydney and Rimbaud – are who Adam Phillips $29.95 Olympics, to the devastating impact of the attracted me to Inside a Penguin. PB. $32.99 Drawing on his own life-long Pearl and while touched experiences with anxiety, global financial crisis. Through vivid Throughout his brilliant upon they appear Scott Stossel presents an portraits of artists, dealers and scamsters, career, Adam Phillips has lent infrequently within the astonishing history of efforts Newstead takes us deep into remote a new and incisive dimension pages of the latest memoir by Edmund to understand anxiety from Indigenous communities where to the art of the literary essay, White. An American writer, White arrived medical, cultural, dispossessed populations of tribal elders and in so doing revived the in Paris in 1983 at 43, where he lived for 15 philosophical and experiential and troubled youth play a significant role, form for audiences of the new years, penned the definitive Jean Genet perspectives. His story travels from the and on to the galleries and art institutions millennium. Collected here biography and wrote about the lives of earliest medical reports of Galen and of major cities all over the world. are 20 pieces that have best defined his Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. Hippocrates, to the investigations by great thinking – including ‘On Tickling’, ‘On Being White writes a little about his nineteenth-century scientists such as Bored’ and ‘Clutter’ – along with a selection work, his Vogue writing assignments, about Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, and Australian Studies of new writings and an introduction by Man hiring assistants and meeting friends, on to the latest research by neuroscientists Booker Prize-winner John Banville. associates or descendants of these writers, and geneticists. CHEQUERED LIVES but mostly Inside a Pearl reads like a glossy Iola Hack Mathews & Chris Durrant celebrity magazine that left me wondering Science Wakefield Press. PB. $29.95 how he ever found the time to write. Education Chequered Lives is the story Luminous characters appear out of a Quaker family from of nowhere, star in an anecdote or two UNDER THE MICROSCOPE TAKING GOD TO SCHOOL England who camped on the and are gone again. Susan Sontag, Nigella Earl Owen Marion Maddox beach in 1837 before the city Lawson, Julian Barnes, Lauren Bacall, Vintage. PB. $34.99 A&U. PB. $29.99 of Adelaide was created, but Salman Rushdie, Stephen Fry, Catherine Here, Earl Owen, one of the In Taking God to School rose to owning a 3000-acre Deneuve, Michel Foucault, Yves Saint earliest and most inventive Marion Maddox uncovers estate in the Adelaide Hills. Laurent, Martin Amis, Paloma and Claude pioneers of microsurgery, the surprising impact of Barton Hack became a merchant who Picasso, Christian Lacroix, and the King tells his story from receiving Christian groups on what owned ships, a whaling station and a and Queen of Sweden are just some of this radiation treatment as a baby was once secular public vineyard, but his family lost everything in cast of, seemingly, thousands. with a birth defect, to schooling, and examines the the crash of 1841–43. When Barton’s There is a name-dropping aspect performing the first finger ways in which governments great-great-granddaughter, journalist Iola to the writing that at times left me wanting transplant on a child and becoming the first have been persuaded to support their Hack Mathews, uncovered their letters and a little more depth, but it is the 1980s and surgeon to be able to reverse vasectomies cause. She demonstrates how our memoirs, she knew she had to write the the writing is perhaps reflective of the and complete fallopian tube ligatures. governments are systematically family’s story.

*Includes travel and phrase books and business and computer books. Valid on in stock items in store at Readings St Kilda only from 1 – 28 February 2014, 112 Acland St, 20% off all Rough Guides St Kilda. Ph 9525 3852. at Readings St Kilda* www.readings.com.au READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 13

Art & Design years and take a variety of forms – critical Food & Gardening Meet essays, reviews, short reflective texts, interviews, transcriptions of lectures – the the with Margaret Snowden with Chris Gordon combination of which seeks to analyse Bookseller Taylor’s impact on Australian art history In the last few years, RELICS: DAMIEN HIRST in the early 1980s, when he founded Art & cookbooks have become Francesco Bonami (ed.) Text and curated the landmark exhibition Samuel Zifchak more glamorous, more Skira. HB. $95 POPISM at the National Gallery of Readings Carlton tactile, more suited to the This richly illustrated Victoria, and the subsequent ripples that coffee table as we spin retrospective catalogue continue to encircle us in his wake, 30 Why do you work in books? around the world with traces Damien Hirst’s years on. tremendous cookbooks Books have always been an instrumental career from his from UK chefs writing on part of my life. My grandfather was emergence on the art LIVING WELL IS THE India, beautiful images of mosaic tiles heavily involved in bookselling and both scene in the Young BEST REVENGE from Turkey and gourmet sliders from my parents are voracious readers. We British Artists Calvin Tomkins New York. This trend of international used bookshelves for wallpaper. I would movement to his Museum of Modern Art. PB. $19.95 cuisines and artisans will continue in 2014, rarely raise my head from a book as a present status as one of the most First published in 1971 and of course. Expect more wonderful Asian child. Books inspire me, entertain me and controversial and highly regarded artists of now available for a younger cookbooks as Australia takes note of who gently encourage me to examine my own his generation. The catalogue gathers over generation with a new its geographical neighbours are. beliefs about everything: from water usage 100 works, combining historic oeuvres with introduction by the author, Phaidon have a wonderful ode to authentic to love. It’s a joy to work among such more recent projects, and is a complete Living Well Is the Best Thai home cooking in the aptly named instigators of change. overview on the artist’s wide-ranging Revenge is Calvin Tomkins’ Thailand: The Cookbook (pictured), What’s something new you’ve observed practice, which includes installation, now-classic account of the coming out in May. It’s a beautiful in bookselling? painting, sculpture and drawing, and lives of Gerald and Sara collection with recipes from simple A bookshop, despite a world of efficiency challenges the boundaries between art, Murphy, American expatriates who formed street food to elaborate palace cuisine. and the quick fix, remains a sanctuary science and popular culture. where time slows. I’ve observed people an extraordinary circle of friends in France Another theme heading from spend hours engrossed in browsing shelves during the 1920s. First in Paris and then in the outskirts to your kitchen table is THE BOOK OF TREES: the paleo effect. As more people look to while ignoring the attention-seeking VISUALIZING BRANCHES the seaside town of Antibes, they played whines of their mobiles. It’s a place where host to a cast of some of the most roll their eating habits back hundreds you can put your world aside for a while OF KNOWLEDGE memorable artists and writers of the era, of years, more on-trend cookbooks will and leave with another world under your Manuel Lima including Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, surely emerge. Look out for Paleo Café arm. I hope that never changes. PAP. HB. $47.95 Fernand Léger, Ernest Hemingway and owner Marlies Hobbs own collection Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It was in Paris on healthy living in Paleo Cafe Lifestyle Describe your own taste in books. The author of Visual that Gerald Murphy first encountered & Cookbook. Stephen King once described books as Complexity, Manuel Cubist painting, which prompted him to And my challenge for you this ‘uniquely portable magic’. I like books that Lima, here examines the embark on an all-too-brief career as a year? Celebrate your local chef in your have enough magic to evoke a reaction more than 800-year painter – roughly from 1922 to 1929 – local restaurant as much as you might a in me. I want to finish a book feeling that history of the tree during which he produced 15 works, seven British chef on your television. Let’s buy something indescribable within me has diagram. Lima presents of which survive, and every one of which is local in both food and books. I hope to see been satiated. 200 intricately detailed tree diagram a unique American modernist masterpiece. more books from Melbourne chefs who Name a book that has changed the way illustrations on a remarkable variety of understand our particular needs you think, in ways small or large. subjects, from some of the earliest known BEFORE THEY and desires. There’s a title called The Gift by Lewis examples from Ancient Mesopotamia and PASS AWAY Hyde. It’s a gorgeous exploration into the manuscripts of medieval monasteries market-driven societies and the role and Jimmy Nelson to contributions by leading contemporary importance of creativity in a money- teNeues. HB. $320 designers. Tree diagrams suggest fuelled world. It’s a gentle and well- In his landmark project, strategies for representing data across researched book with a powerful message. Before They Pass Away, many disciplines, including science, law, I’d strongly recommend it to both artists Jimmy Nelson captures genealogy, linguistics, economics and and non-artists alike. the lives and traditions of sociology. Sign up the last surviving tribes What book would you happily spend a weekend indoors with? DESIGNING PATTERNS who have managed to I’d happily spend a weekend indoors preserve their traditional Lotta Kühlhorn to our engrossed in a Haruki Murakami novel. ways and customs within DGV. HB. $79.95 Kafka on the Shore is an obvious choice, but our increasingly globalised world. The Dance, Dance, Dance was one of the few From whom should we British photographer’s epic portraits enews for novels that I had to read from start to finish learn how to design present these dignified inheritors of noble without pause. timelessly elegant patterns and age-old traditions in a proud spirit and if not from a Swede? in all their glory – a unique visual Your job entails recommending good Leading Scandinavian the latest reads: how do you balance personal taste experience. This exquisitely photographed with customer nous? pattern designer Lotta showcase for world tribal culture is not I think you can get a pretty good idea of Kühlorn explains the ins only a joy to look at, but also an important someone’s taste through a simple enquiry and outs of how to design patterns – for historical record. Nelson’s large-plate field in books, about what books they’ve enjoyed in the everything from wallpaper designs to tea camera has captured the wide variety of past. From there it’s just a matter of going services. Readers are shown how to use the human experiences and cultural through an internal catalogue and finding most common techniques for creating expressions across the ages. music a match. patterns and the best ways to combine colours and forms. An included CD features THIS IS DALÍ & What’s the best book you’ve read lately? 10 sample projects to get you started, and THIS IS WARHOL and film. I really enjoyed The 100-Year-Old Man who the author also shares personal anecdotes, Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared Catherine Ingram & photographs and inspirations. by Jonas Jonasson. It’s a humorous and Andrew Rae (illus.) insightful novel about a centenarian who IMPRESARIO: Laurence King. HB. $19.95 decides to break out of his nursing home These are the first in a on his birthday. From that premise, it PAUL TAYLOR, THE new graphic-novel style gets wilder and wilder as you realise that MELBOURNE YEARS, series of artist throughout his life the protagonist has, 1981—1984 introductions (This is Dalí albeit unintentionally, shaped the modern Helen Hughes & Nicholas Croggon pictured here). They are world. There are gangsters and elephants Surpllus. PB. $30 an excellent format for as well. What’s not to love? This book brings together a presenting the artists’ Who has the best book cover? diverse body of texts focused lives, and have a fresh perspective, which is It’s a hard question, but Alexis Wright’s The on Paul Taylor, the very engaging. Starting with formative Swan Book certainly caught my attention. Australian editor, writer, childhood experiences, the text follows the It’s a stark cover where the coloured type curator and impresario, and multi-faceted careers of both within a readings.com.au offsets the sombre, detailed bird in the in particular his important cultural and social framework. Great background. It’s alluring and draws you and influential early years in illustrations by Andrew Rae make the Free delivery on everything, in. Dorothy Porter’s Collected Works uses a Melbourne between 1981 and 1984. The books delightful, even if you are already anywhere in Australia. similar strategy and is just as striking. dates of the texts included span some 30 very familiar with this famous pair. 14 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

with the added attraction of a different culture that is in Picture Books tune with the sea and the land. Lena reminds me of a modern-day Pippi Longstocking, and Trille, who fears ALONG THE ROAD TO GUNDAGAI Lena doesn’t consider him her best friend, is her trusty Jack O’Hagan & Andrew McLean (illus.) sidekick. However when needs must, Trille can be bold Omnibus. HB. $24.99 and brave enough to save someone or something he cares ‘There’s a track winding back, to an old- deeply about. Simply told Waffle Hearts is thoroughly fashioned shack / Along the road to Gundagai enjoyable and would suit children aged from 6 to 10. AD ...’ Musician Jack O’Hagan wrote the song in 1922 and it became a well-known folk tune. THE VANISHING OF BILLY Andrew McLean’s illustrations bring to life BUCKLE: WINGS & CO. 3 the story of the men who went to the Great Sally Gardner & David Roberts (illus.) War, many of them never to return home. Hachette. PB. $14.95 The Wings & Co detectives are in A BOOK IS A BOOK Puddliepool-on-Sea. The giant Billy Buckle Jenny Bornholdt & Sarah Wilkins (illus.) is missing. His daughter Primrose is Gecko. HB. $19.99 desperate to find him – and so are the I gasped with delight on my first detectives, because Primrose is growing encounter with this whimsical bigger every day and living with a giant isn’t marriage of words and pictures, and I half as fun as it sounds. There’s also a reverently turned the cream-coloured pages murdered pianist and a vanished fortune-teller to deal with their delightful illustrations. Obviously with. It’s up to Emily, Fidget and Buster to get to the talented creators had fun celebrating bottom of it! With marvellous illustrations from David everything to do with the wonder that’s the Roberts, creator of Dirty Bertie. book. You too will be inspired to have lots of fun exploring with young readers what a book is, what it’s for, how to use PRANK ALERT: DOUBLE it and what to do with it. TROUBLE BOOK 1 My favourite observation is that, ‘Some books Fiona Regan & Louis Shea (illus.) are small because some writers are very tired.’ And of Scholastic. PB. $3.99 course, ‘A book can never run out of power.’ Hark, book Meet Thomas and Cooper: identical twins lovers! This beautiful little treasure is for you. Highly and master prankers! The best thing about recommended. being twins is that you always have twice Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern the fun (but get into double the trouble!). Story Tommy and Coop can’t help themselves, FIRE they just love pranking. But what will Jackie French & Bruce Whatley (illus.) happen when their school prank gets Time Scholastic. HB. $24.99 completely out of hand? Will they get Fire, everyone’s nightmare if not stuck with the worst punishment ever ... more recorder Readings Carlton contained in a fireplace, is something practice? The second book in the series, Skateboard Stars, Mondays 11am – 11.30am Australians are all too familiar with, and this is also available. moving picture book hauntingly conveys the THE CATIER EMERALD: KITTEN Readings St Kilda sheer immensity of bushfire. The succinct urgency of the verse captures the spark that ignites the KABOODLE MISSION 1 Saturdays 10.30am – 11am landscape in all its terrifying ferocity and the atmospheric Eileen O’Hely & Heath McKenzie (illus.) pictures bring it all to life. Walker. PB. $14.95 Readings Malvern While bush and properties are destroyed by ‘Your mission,’ said the chief, ‘should you Fridays 10.30am – 11am nature, it is the unwavering courage of the firefighters choose to accept it, is to penetrate DOG and the preciousness of our loved ones that is quietly Fortress, disguised as a pedigree kitten.’ Each week, Readings’ staff championed. And then, nature, which took so much away, Kitten Kaboodle is no ordinary cat. He’d will read their favourite will slowly give back and new growth will appear among rather chase a Rottweiler than a ribbon picture books – new or classic the blackness, and birds, animals and hope will return. This and prefers kung-fu to cuddles. He is the – for pre-school children (0 book captures it all brilliantly. For ages 5 and up. number one secret agent at CAT – the to 6 years old). The emphasis Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Clandestine Activity Taskforce. When is very much on providing a pedigree kittens start disappearing, Kitten Kaboodle is on relaxed environment and on MY TWO BLANKETS the job. Who could guess that this mission will lead him reading being fun. Story Time straight to DOG – the Disaster Organisation Group – and is free and there’s no need to Irena Kobald & Freya Blackwood (illus.) the priceless Catier Emerald? book. For half an hour after Little Hare. HB. $24.95 Story Time, Readings offers Cartwheel arrives in a new country, and a 20% discount off all full- feels the loss of all she’s ever known. She priced children’s books. creates a safe place under an old blanket Middle Fiction made out of memories and thoughts of Please note: all children must be home. As time goes on, Cartwheel weaves OPHELIA AND THE accompanied by an adult as this a new blanket, one of friendship and a MARVELLOUS BOY is not a child-minding service. renewed sense of belonging. It is Karen Foxlee different from the old blanket but eventually just as Five Mile. PB. $14.95 warm and familiar. A beautiful tale about friendship and Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy has it culture, paired with award-winning Freya Blackwood’s all: a magical realm embroiled in a stunning illustrations. battle between good and evil; a council of wizards pitted against an evil Snow Queen; a 300-year-old boy and a pragmatic, Junior Fiction rational girl caught in a peculiar museum; a delicious juxtaposition of magic and logic; WAFFLE HEARTS: LENA AND and a quest to save the world. Our heroes, Ophelia and the ME IN MATHILDEWICH COVE Marvellous Boy, are endearing characters, vulnerable yet Maria Parr strong, ultimately courageous in the face of adversity, Walker. HB. $19.95 their fates inextricably linked. Certainly, Ophelia’s quirky They say opposites attract and the mannerisms and adroit observations inject a touching two main characters of this charming humour. I cared for both of them deeply and shed a few Norwegian novel couldn’t be more tears when the going got tough! different. Lena and Trille live next door to In this enchanting story, which skilfully draws each other and where Trille is sensitive and from a number of sources, fantasy kingdoms collide steadfast, Lena is a resilient daredevil who and merge with the real world and parallels are artfully gets them into all manner of scrapes with drawn and explored. A wonderful adventure, perfect for her impetuous and questioning nature. This is a gentle independent readers 9 years and up, and an ideal read- and magical book about friendship and loving families aloud for the whole family. AC READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 15

Book of the Month A VERY GOOD IDEA: THE TINKLERS THREE M.C. Badger Egmont. PB. $12.95

Fresh material for those growing in confidence with their reading is always welcome, and I think this new series will be popular with parents as well as children. The Tinkler children (one boy, two girls) fend for themselves while their parents work in a travelling circus. Their lives are both recognisable and deliciously far-fetched. In A Very Good Idea they decide to see if they can get across town without once touching the ground. Such a simple and familiar challenge (who hasn’t tried to do this across a room as a child?), but the Tinklers are allowed to take it further than boring old reality.

The siblings are nice to one another and realistically mischievous, while the humour is gentle and doesn’t try too hard. Short sentences and illustrations make this an ideal step up from Sally Rippin’s Billie B books. A lovely new addition for ages 5 to 8. The second and third books in the series, An Excellent Invitation and The Coolest Pool, are also available.

Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton

KEEPER OF THE PHOENIX: ASH ROVER BOOK 1 Activity Books Aleesah Darlison & Nicole Onslow (illus.) THE FLYING MACHINE KIT Walker. PB. $14.95 Nick Arnold & Brendan Kearney (illus.) Can Ash and his friends rescue the village New T&H. HB. $29.95 and break the evil wizard’s spell in time? A spectacular interactive guide to Ash Rover wants to do something aerodynamics that has five fabulous important with his life. When he discovers flying machines to make. There are two a phoenix egg, he gets his wish. But the specially designed paper planes, a magical bird brings trouble to Ash’s village. rubberband-powered single-prop plane, Soon Ash is not only the unlikely Keeper of Kids’ a unique, superspeedy twin-prop plane and a vertical the Phoenix, he is also on a desperate quest to save his take-off helicopter. Flying hints and tips suggest how to family and friends. manipulate your machine’s speed, distance and flight direction, demonstrating the basic aerodynamic principles SHAMANKA and helping you to understand the forces that affect flight. Jeanne Willis Books Walker. PB. $16.95 What is magic? What is illusion? What is real? Step into the extraordinary world of Non-Fiction Classic of the Month Sam Khaan, who has just discovered a witch THE CHILDREN OF GREEN doctor’s notebook in her attic. Convinced that THE OPEN OCEAN KNOWE COLLECTION it belongs to her long-lost father – the son of a Francesco Pittau & Bernadette Gervais Lucy M. Boston witch doctor – she sets out on a journey to Hardie Grant. HB. $34.95 discover the answers to these questions. In Faber. PB. $15.99 Guess a sea creature from its silhouette, her encounters with diviners and healers, conjurers and shell, or scales – and lift the flap to discover It was such a delight to mystics, Sam learns the truth about magic the hard way. the answer! This lush, oversized book about re-read this past favourite Here is your chance to take a far easier route. marine life features a variety of guessing for this review and find it still as spellbinding and full of QUINCY JORDAN: CRYSTAL BAY games and special features, and provides hours of educational entertainment. With enchantment as I remember. GIRLS BOOK 1 elegant, graphic illustrations, plus intriguing Tolly, the young hero, is Jen Storer facts about each animal, learning about ocean life has never such a quiet, introspective boy, Puffin. PB. $16.99 been so fun and interactive. Also available in this series: Out and his holiday with his great- One of the things I recall about being of Sight (mammals) and Birds of a Feather. grandmother at the old farm Green an avid pre-teen reader was my love Knowe promises to be slow-paced and solitary. But of Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High LONELY PLANET WORLD the house – with its ancient furnishings, half-tame books, that widely criticised series – soap SEARCH SERIES birds and old topiary gardens – is full of mystery, and opera in book form – that nobody approved Lonely Planet Tolly is used to being on his own and listening to the house around him. of apart from the millions of tweens who Lonely Planet. PB. $19.99 each devoured them. What Melbourne writer In this place, where the line between past and Fancy riding high in the saddle with a group Jen Storer does with her new series is to create the warm, present is very thin, his great-grandmother seems of gauchos in Argentina? Or strapping on easy feel of SVH but with lots of improvements: more unsurprised that he mysteriously meets other children your rollerblades and zooming through the realism, more attention to cultural diversity, rounded who have also loved the manor. Like them, Tolly fears streets of Paris with the police? Get ready for characters. I think she gets the balance right. In the first the overgrown Green Noah, lurking for generations an adventure around the globe with loads of book, Quincy’s life is ruined when her father walks out, in a corner of the garden. A world not to be missed cool jobs to try. Aimed at readers aged 5+, and a new life on the coast is difficult to adjust to. Quincy for imaginative readers aged 10 and up, or as a shared this fun series, including Amazing Jobs (pictured), Busy is likeable but not perfect, and although romance is a family read-aloud. Jobs and Incredible Animals lets kids lift the flap on scenes theme it is only part of her journey, rather than the from around the world to see what’s happening inside. Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton destination. Quality escapism for ages 10 and up. EG 16 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

MASTERING THE MY IDEAL THE VOICE IS can be traced to the dogs themselves. His ART OF SOVIET BOOKSHELF ALL: THE LONELY book is also a study of how the various dog breeds have been depicted from colonial COOKING Jane Mount & VICTORY OF times until the present. Anya Von Bremzen Thessaly La Force JACK KEROUAC PB. Was $24.95 HB. Was $29.99 Joyce Johnson LOVE AND Now $12.95 Now $12.95 HB. Was $56.95 CAPITAL: KARL In this tragicomic memoir, Anya Von In My Ideal Bookshelf, one hundred leading Now $15.95 cultural figures reveal the books that matter AND JENNY Bremzen reconstructs her family history Joyce Johnson peels away layers of the to them most. This gorgeous book includes MARX AND THE spanning three generations through Kerouac legend to show how, caught excerpts of interviews with editor Thessaly stories of cooking and food. Her narrative between two cultures and two languages, BIRTH OF A La Force, alongside original paintings is embedded in a larger historical epic: the young man forged a voice to contain REVOLUTION by artist Jane Mount that showcase the Lenin’s bloody grain requisitioning, World his dualities. She looks deeply into how Mary Gabriel selections, with colourful, hand-lettered War II starvation, Stalin’s table manners, Kerouac’s French Canadian background book spines and occasional objets d’art from HB. Was $39.99 Khrushchev’s kitchen debates, Gorbachev’s enriched his prose and gave him a unique Now $15.95 disastrous anti-alcohol policies and the the contributors’ personal bookshelves. outsider’s vision of America. Drawing upon years of research, acclaimed ultimate collapse of the USSR. THE CHEMISTRY biographer Mary Gabriel brings to light the PERMANENT story of Karl and Jenny Marx’s marriage. THE NAKED LADY BETWEEN US REVOLUTION: He follows them as they roam Europe, on WHO STOOD ON Larry Young & Brian MIKE BROWN the run from hostile governments amidst a HER HEAD Alexander AND THE secret network of would-be revolutionaries, Gary Small & Gigi Vorgan HB. Was $41.95 revealing Karl not only as an intellectual, Now $13.95 AUSTRALIAN HB. Was $41.95 but as a protective father, loving husband Now $15.95 All manners of ‘love’ – physical AVANT-GARDE and a man of tremendous passions. attraction, jealousy, infidelity, The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head 1953-97 mother-infant bonding – are is a spellbinding record of psychiatrist Richard Haese WE OTHERS: under scrutiny by social Gary Small’s most bewildering cases, HB. Was $49.99 NEW AND neuroscience. In The from shrinking penises and hysterical Now $19.95 SELECTED Chemistry Between Us, blindness to fainting schoolgirls and self- In 1961 the 22-year old expert Larry Young STORIES amputations. Small takes you on a tour Mike Brown joined the and journalist Brian Steven Millhauser of his career that moves from the halls of New Zealand artist, Alexander place the HB. Was $39.95 a crowded inner-city Boston emergency Ross Crothall, in an old influx of revelations Now $14.95 room to the multimillion-dollar ski lodges Bargain terrace house in inner into historical, political of the nation’s elite. Sydney’s Annandale, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven and social contexts, and over the following Millhauser writes fiction that consistently, touching on everything THE HANDMADE two years the artists filled and to dazzling effect, dissolves the from gay marriage to why Table boundaries between reality and fantasy, the house with a remarkable LOAF single-mother households body of work. Their work waking life and dreams, the past and the Dan Lepard might not be good for society. launched the movement they future, darkness and light. The stories HB. Was $35 called Imitation Realism which introduced collected here unfurl in settings as Now $15.95 THE MAGIC collage, assemblage and installation to disparate as nineteenth-century Vienna, Dan Lepard presents a collection of TOYSHOP Australian art for the first time. the corridors of a monstrous museum and recipes, personal stories and photographs Angela Carter Thomas Edison’s laboratory. that capture the breads and home bakers HB. Was $27.99 AN UNLIKELY of Europe. The blend of history and Now $12 HALFWAY TO innovation will appeal to the experienced PRINCE: THE With a stunning cover design HOLLYWOOD: baker, but also to a generation ready to LIFE AND TIMES by Jacqueline Groag and an introduction by discover the simple pleasure of baking their DIARIES Carmen Callil, this special edition of Angela OF MACHIAVELLI first crisp loaf at home. 1980—1988 Carter’s 1967 gothic novel is a must-have. Niccolo Capponi Michael Palin After her parents are killed, a young girl is HB. Was $44 VAGINA: sent to London to live with her tyrannical Now $15.95 HB. Was $39.95 Now $14.95 A NEW uncle, a toy-maker whose creations are Acclaimed historian Niccolo Capponi is a BIOGRAPHY uncannily life-like. direct descendant of Machiavelli, and here Halfway to Hollywood follows Michael Palin’s torturous trail through seven movies Naomi Wolf he analyses his relative in the context of CULINARY his own times. Capponi’s intimate portrait and ends with his final preparations for the PB. Was $29.99 documentary that was to change his life, Now $12 VIETNAM of Machiavelli shows how the famous political theorist’s behaviour was utterly Around the World in 80 Days. His life with This astonishing book from Naomi Wolf, Daniel Hoyer un-Machiavellian, and how his vision of Helen and the family remains a constant, as the author of The Beauty Myth, will HB. Was $57.95 the world was limited by his own, very the children enter their teens. radically change how you think about, Now $19.95 provincial outlook. talk about and understand the vagina. Daniel Hoyer teaches how the aspects of ARMY OF EVIL: Wolf combines cutting-edge science with flavour, aroma, texture, colour, contrast, THE LANGUAGE A HISTORY cultural history to explore the role of balance, and even the sound a food makes, female desire and how it affects identity, should be taken into consideration in the OF PASSION OF THE SS creativity and confidence; the result is planning of a Vietnamese meal. Opening Mario Vargas Llosa Adrian Weale revelatory and exhilarating. the door into the world of Vietnamese & Natasha Wimmer HB. Was $46.95 cooking methods and theories, Culinary (trans.) Now $15.95 THE HOUR Vietnam shows the astounding breadth of PB. Was $25.95 Adrian Weale delves into materials not BETWEEN DOG this cuisine. Now $12 previously available, including recently AND WOLF: RISK Internationally acclaimed novelist Mario released intelligence files as well as rare TAKING, GUT INTO THE Vargas Llosa has contributed a lively and never-before-published photographs, looking beyond the myths to reveal the FEELINGS AND SILENCE: THE and fascinating column to Spain’s major GREAT WAR, newspaper El País since 1977. In this reality of the SS as a cadre of unwavering THE BIOLOGY OF collection of his columns from the 1990s, he political fanatics and power-seeking BOOM AND BUST MALLORY, AND weighs in on some of the burning questions opportunists who slavishly followed an John Coates THE CONQUEST of the last decade, makes a pilgrimage to Bob ideology that disdained traditional morality. Marley’s shrine in Jamaica, and celebrates HB. Was $42.95 OF EVEREST the sexual abandon of Carnaval in Rio. Now $15.95 Wade Davis SOUTH WITH A successful Wall Street trader turned HB. Was $39.95 THE SUN Cambridge neuroscientist reveals the Now $16.95 DOGS IN Lynne Cox biology of boom and bust and how risk In this magisterial work of history and AUSTRALIAN HB. Was $44.95 taking transforms our body chemistry, adventure, Wade Davis vividly recreates ART Now $15.95 driving us to extremes of euphoria and Britain’s epic attempts to scale Mount Everest Steven Miller Roald Amundsen left his risky behaviour, or to stress and depression. in the early 1920s. With new access to PB. Was $39.95 mark on the Heroic Era as one of the While Coates’s research concentrates on letters and diaries, Davis recounts the heroic Now $19.95 most successful polar explorers ever. traders, his conclusions shed light on all attempts of George Mallory and his fellow Steven Miller looks at the story of Here, adventurer and swimmer Lynne types of high-pressure decision making, climbers to conquer the mountain in the face Australian art through the lens of dogs, Cox presents a full-scale account of the from the sports field to the battlefield. of treacherous terrain and furious weather. showcasing over 150 masterworks and explorer’s life and expeditions, and how presenting the argument that all major reading about ‘the last of the Vikings’ New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at readings.com.au for more. shifts which have occurred in this story inspired her to follow her own bold dreams. READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 17

New Film & TV arisen from this arrangement as staid Bordeaux winemakers struggle to Release of the Month with Lou Fulco embrace a new clientele whose sensibilities do not always align with BLUE JASMINE SCATTER MY ASHES French tradition. Was $39.95 AT BERGDORF’S $29.95 MONTY DON’S $34.95 Woody Allen hits another home run with this funny, startling re- It’s the most mythic of all FRENCH GARDENS imagining of Tennessee Williams’ seminal stage play A Streetcar American emporiums – $29.95 Named Desire. Positing the titular Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) in the featuring interviews with Released 5 February role of Blanche DuBois, Allen uses Williams’ paradigm to frame his Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio In this three-part series, own devastating but blackly funny vision of the social effects of the Armani, Candice Bergen and Monty Don, the much-loved global financial crisis; in particular, the fall of New York’s elite after Joan Rivers to name but a presenter of BBC television indictments for insider trading. few, Scatter My Ashes at series Gardeners’ World, Having had the carpet quite literally pulled from under her feet, Jasmine jumps Bergdorf offers a rarified chance to peek visits historical gardens in on a plane to San Francisco to stay with her adoptive sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) into Bergdorf’s fascinating inner workings. France. Through his in her modest home filled with cheap knick-knacks and rowdy children. Unwilling to explorations, Monty reveals park her Chanel-covered derriere for too long, Jasmine makes plans to work in interior KEATING: THE how these gardens have been used to design, and takes on employment as a dentist’s receptionist in the meantime. INTERVIEWS express both money and power, and the Determined to help Ginger by insulting her lifestyle as well as her choice in $29.95 myriad ways French food and art are men, Jasmine puts one awkward designer-clad foot in front of the other until the stress reflected in the country’s horticulture. Paul Keating is one of the of pretending to be who she thinks she is, socially and emotionally, finally becomes too most significant and much. Discovering a few home truths about how her excessively privileged lifestyle contentious figures in ANDREW MARR’S came at the cost of ordinary folk like her sister, Jasmine’s realisation is one of the Australian political history. HISTORY OF THE greatest dramatic moments recently captured on film. In this candid four-part WORLD Comfortably cushioned by an excellent supporting cast including Andrew Dice interview series with Kerry $34.95 Clay, Bobby Cannavale and Alec Baldwin, Blanchett gives an incredible, heart-stopping O’Brien, he reveals the Released 5 February performance that will have you gasping for breath under the weight of its gravitas. As always with Allen, the city plays its part too and San Francisco is nicely poised as the forces that shaped his ambitions, and Andrew Marr presents this colourful and lively alternative to steely NYC. A dramatic delight, this is Allen at the shares the inside stories of a tumultuous incredible series that brings top of his game. period of economic and social reform. 70,000 years of human history to life, though Tara Kaye Judah is from Readings St Kilda RICK STEIN’S INDIA dramatic reconstructions $29.95 and gripping storytelling. Released 5 February This epic series tells the THE RETURNED FRANCES HA Determined to track down story of civilisations, cultures, successes $39.95 $39.95 the perfect curry, Rick Stein and crashing failures, a story that charts Released 5 February Frances (Greta Gerwig) lives embarks on a spectacular progress and development through the A stylish take on the zombie in New York, but she doesn't journey though the Indian centuries, exploring crucial turning points genre that verges on really have an apartment. sub-continent to trace the in history. Lynchian, French drama Frances is an apprentice for origins of dishes, ingredients series The Returned looks at a dance company, but she's and spices that are celebrated THE LOOK how an idyllic French not really a dancer. Frances the world over. His series offers viewers a $29.95 village is thrown into has a best friend named feast of delights, alongside captivating This biographical study of emotional turmoil when a Sophie, but they aren't really speaking cultures and religious communities. legendary actress Charlotte crowd of dead people, seemingly alive and anymore. Frances throws herself headlong Rampling is told through normal, return home. As the returned into her dreams, even as their possible RED OBSESSION her own conversations with attempt to resume their lives, their arrival reality dwindles. Frances wants so much $39.95 artist friends and coincides with a series of gruesome more than she has but lives her life with With the fierce purchasing collaborators, including murders which bear a chilling unaccountable joy and lightness. Frances power of its elite class, Peter Lindbergh, Paul resemblance to the work of a serial killer Ha is a modern comic fable that explores China has become the Auster and Juergen Teller, and intercut from the past. New York, friendship, class, ambition, biggest importer of wines with footage from some of Rampling’s failure and redemption. from the Bordeaux region of most famous films. This ‘self-portrait France. Red Obsession through others’ is a revealing look at one examines tensions that have of our most iconic screen stars. 18 READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014

New Music release, revealing a departure from their debut album The Fool. Most of the tracks Album of the Month were reportedly born of free-form jamming Pop/Rock sessions on stage and the result is exquisitely HIGH HOPES brooding, intricately layered and Bruce Springsteen exceedingly chilled-out. DIZZY HEIGHTS CD $19.95 Neil Finn CD & DVD $24.95 $21.95 Jazz & Soul The American myth gets a reboot! On Springsteen’s eighteenth studio album (if this could indeed be called a Finn travelled in two bursts GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT studio album) we are introduced to a collection of covers, outtakes and re-workings of to producer Dave THEY WANT collection of tracks from past albums. Fridmann’s Tarbox Road Alongside guest guitarist Tom Morello, this album features the E Street Band, studio in upstate New York, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, but its genesis is centred on Springsteen’s to record songs composed $22.95 relationship with the former Rage Against the Machine guitarist, Morello. His soaring at his Auckland studio, Roundhead. With and at times strange and bizarre guitar play on politically charged numbers juxtapose Fridmann (The Flaming Lips), and with Album number five nicely with more laid-back tracks, which include a couple of great cover versions of contributions from New Zealand musician from the inimitable Suicide’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’ and ‘Just Like Fire Would’ from Australia’s own the Saints. SJD, and wonderful string arrangements by Ms Jones and her Dap- Long time live favourites ‘High Hopes’, ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ and the Victoria Kelly, Finn has assembled a Kings was slated for rebooted ‘Ghost Of Tom Joad’ (with an out of control Morello soaring through an textured, heady sound, elevated by woozy release last August, though amazing lead guitar break) all stand out, but it’s the wonderfully optimistic ‘Frankie strings and soaring vocals. these plans were put on Fell In Love’ that sits right in the middle of this collection and gets you thinking, ‘Yeah! hold when Jones was diagnosed with That’s the classic Springsteen right there!’ THE BRINK cancer in June. With the cancer now This is not the most cohesive of albums, but as a Springsteen fan, I am – as thoroughly licked, it’s time for soul sister The Jezabels always – happy to hear any release from the Boss. Is this a new direction or just an number one and her crack band to get back $24.95 interim before he goes back into the studio to write the next great American songbook? to doing what they do better than anyone: Well, firstly he will have to get off the road, but not before touring Australia again for namely, being the slickest, most bad-ass Following the outstanding the second time in a year. soul-funk outfit on the planet. success of Prisoner, The DVD extra is a live performance of Born in the U.S.A., which was recorded Album opener ‘Retreat!’ is a Australian band the in London in 2013. By the time you get to ‘Downbound Train’ (one of my favourite statement of intent if ever there was one Jezabels settled in London Springsteen songs), ‘I’m On Fire’ and ‘No Surrender’, you remember what made this and a song which has surely taken on new to work on their such a massive seller and took Bruce to another stratosphere in the consciousness of meaning since Jones’s grapple with illness. sophomore album, a sweeping blend of existing and new fans alike. This DVD is a great companion to the CD, serving as a It’s classic Motown with a twist – all echo, alternative-rock and pop that was seemingly reminder that maybe, just maybe, the next Born in the U.S.A. is just around the corner. big horns and bigger drums, and as Jones summoned from a very dark place. The wails, ‘I’ll chew you up and spit you out’, Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn result is an utterly fearless record of consider yourself warned, be you an errant youthful optimism, taut with gleaming man or insidious disease. hooks and indelible melodies, all hammered changing motion, like a boxer circling his Other highlights include the BLUE SMOKE out by a group of young musicians during opponent looking for an opening that never Northern soul stomper ‘Stranger To My Dolly Parton dark days in a strange new city. presents itself. Happiness’, and ‘We Get Along’, a message Was $24.95 song which perhaps best encapsulates what Extended Circle is a document of a $19.95 FLESH & BLOOD group at the tipping point, perfecting a way makes these guys so damn special – the To coincide with her Blue John Butler Trio of working sans formula or template – may ability to draw on a form so firmly rooted in Smoke World Tour, Dolly $24.95 there be much, much more to come. the past and place it smack bang in the here Parton has released an

and now with complete authenticity. Richard Mohr is from Readings Carlton album of new music, Blue Flesh & Blood is the sixth Sharon Jones had her final Smoke. Dolly is arguably studio album release from chemotherapy treatment on New Year’s KIN () the most successful female country singer, Australian roots and jam Eve and will soon return to performing live. Pat Metheny Unity Group well known for both her musicianship and band led by guitarist and If that ain’t soul I don’t know what is. $24.95 stage presence, as well as her philanthropy. vocalist John Butler. Declan Murphy is from Readings Carlton Over the course of more Blue Smoke sits with some of her very best Recorded at The Compound, Butler’s than three decades, recorded work and includes duets with studio in Fremantle, the album took a mere EXTENDED CIRCLE guitarist Pat Metheny has long-time collaborators Willie Nelson and 20 days to record and though beautifully Tord Gustavsen Quartet set himself apart from the Kenny Rogers. structured in sonic terms, there is a $24.95 jazz mainstream, blurring rawness and honesty to the tracks that The superstar boundaries between musical styles. Now he reflects the brevity of its laying down. The presents the Pat Metheny Unity Group World trio will tour with the album in early 2014. Norwegian pianist’s sixth album is his most which features Metheny together with diverse and yet cohesive Chris Potter on sax and bass clarinet, EVE TALES FROM THE REALM Antonio Sanchez on drums and Ben musical statement yet: it’s Angelique Kidjo OF THE QUEEN OF Williams on bass, as well as multi- full of circular motifs, $24.95 PENTACLES instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi. Their first such as the way the album-closing ‘The Rich with melody and Suzanne Vega release, Kin (), is a shifting, explosive Prodigal Song’ recalls opener ‘Right rhythm, Eve is Angelique $24.95 There’, as if inviting you to continue album that provides ever-changing opportunities for each musician to shine. Kidjo’s tribute to the With her first new studio playing the album forever. The quartet women she grew up with album in seven years, Tales (with Tore Brunborg on tenor saxophone, in her West African from the Realm of the Queen Mats Eilertsen on bass and Jarle Vespestad Country homeland of Benin. Kidjo performs in an of Pentacles, Suzanne Vega on drums) has matured into a unit able to array of native Beninese languages has crafted a stunning follow every musical thought to its alongside an eclectic line-up of talents, collection of songs that showcase the conclusion and develop a wider variety of THE RIVER & THE THREAD including women’s choirs from African singer-songwriter’s trademark wit and sound-worlds than before. The tunes are Rosanne Cash villages in Benin and Kenya, as well as mainly gospel pieces and ballads, but there poetic language. The new album taps into 2CD deluxe edition $24.95 Rostam Batmanglij from the indie rock Vega’s broad range of musical tastes, classic is a directness and slow-burning fire to band Vampire Weekend. folk to soul-packed background vocals, from pieces like the immensely stirring ‘Staying lush orchestral strings to hip-hop sampling. There’, which harks back to the classic Rosanne Cash’s first album seventies quartets of Jan Garbarek and of original songs in eight OUT ON VINYL years is sweeping in its WARPAINT Bobo Stenson, and Keith Jarrett. New Orleans Funk: Volume 3 breadth, capturing a Warpaint As the group’s mutual Various multi-generational cast of $44.95 $21.95 understanding has grown, so has the characters such as a Civil War soldier off to freedom allotted to the players. Witness Pet Sounds The self-titled sophomore fight in Virginia, and a New Deal-era farmer Brunborg’s ravishing intro to ‘Devotion’; The Beach Boys album from American indie in Arkansas. Together with her husband, $39.95 the way Eilertsen supports and counters rock band Warpaint was musician and producer John Leventhal, Satan is Real the melody of ‘Right There’; or the way one of the most eagerly Cash draws inspiration from swampy Delta The Louvin Brothers Vespestad bubbles under the propulsive, anticipated early releases blues, gospel, Appalachian folk, country and $34.95 syncopated arrangement of the Norwegian for 2014. Produced together with Flood, the more, as she tackles the delicate orchestral A Love Supreme folk tune ‘Eg Veit I Himmerik Ei Borg’ (‘A John Coltrane all-female quadrant let loose new and passages of ‘Night School’, to the ghostly Castle in Heaven’), the drummer as ever- $24.95 exciting experimental sounds on this keyboards of album closer ‘Money Road’. READINGS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2014 19

New Classical Music BEETHOVEN: CELLO Opera Highlights Series SONATAS Steven Isserlis & Robert Levin These are the first six titles of Opera Classical Album of the Month Hyperion. CDA679812. $49.95. 2CD Highlights in the Virtuoso range – an excellent In this new chamber opportunity to delve into the world of opera. DESTINO MEXICANO recording, Steven Isserlis, La Compañia together with his regular VERDI: LA TRAVIATA LCR. LCR4632. $24.95 collaborator, fortepianist Joan Sutherland, Carlo Bergonzi & In 2012, the Melbourne-based Baroque group La Compañia Robert Levin, presents a John Pritchard released their album, Ay Portugal. An homage to fifteenth- magisterial and long-awaited compendium Decca. 4786410. $11.95 century Portuguese music, it was a triumph – and I still enjoy of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and ‘... a Traviata of beautiful listening to it. So it was with great excitement that I received their most recent release, piano, including Beethoven’s arrangement of voices all right ... and John Destino Mexicano. Subtitled ‘Baroque Rhythms from the New World’, it’s a fusion of his Op. 17 horn sonata. The use of the Pritchard conducting with classical Baroque as we know it and the rhythms of South America. When the Spanish fortepiano opens up a wealth of sonic real sympathy.’ Gramophone invaded Mexico there was a melding of two worlds, not just in culture and peoples, but possibilities for these works. The five cello also music. In Destino Mexicano, La Compañia have focused on a particular song style sonatas span Beethoven’s compositional VERDI: RIGOLETTO from this melding, the villancico, a repetitive, secular song that uses dance rhythms with epochs and comprise the most important Renato Bruson & Neil Shicoff cycle of cello sonatas in the entire repertoire. a sense of three beats, and in doing this have given cohesiveness to the whole album. Decca. 4786408. $11.95 Although the liner notes are detailed with interesting background on each INCANDESCENCE ‘Bruson ... does more than work, I found this recording was more something I put on just to listen without produce a stream of velvety Michael Duke needing any academic knowledge. It was terrific to have on in the background as I tone ... responding to the Saxophone Classics. CC4002. $26.95 cooked, finding myself cutting up vegetables and moving around the kitchen in time conductor and combining to their sprightly percussive dance rhythms. Lotte Betts-Dean and Daniel Thomson Australian saxophonist beauty with dramatic bite.’ soar as the singing soloists, expertly accompanied by the rest of La Compañia. In the Michael Duke presents his The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music few instrumental moments, La Compañia acquit themselves with great aplomb, but second CD on the it’s when the singers join in that the toes start tapping. Their harmonies blend so Saxophone Classics label, PUCCINI: LA BOHÈME effortlessly that sometimes it seems like there are three solo singers, rather than just this time with long-time Renata Tebaldi & Tullio Serafin the two. If you’re a fan of Baroque music, but looking for something beyond Bach and collaborator pianist David Howie to form Decca. 4786406. $11.95 Handel, this is a must. On the other hand, if you’re just a fan of some good rhythmic HD Duo. Opening and closing this CD are ideas, this will be extremely pleasing to the ears. two polar opposite trio works by Pulitzer ‘… astonishingly vivid, with a very convincing theatrical Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon. While ‘Dash’ leaps off the page with atmosphere.’ The Penguin unceasing high energy, ‘Lullaby’ sings with Guide to Recorded Classical C.P.E. BACH: were all composed before Schubert had a calming beauty. Revelling in the harmonic Music WÜRTTEMBERG turned 20, though they nevertheless influences of Debussy and Ravel are the demonstrate the composer’s astonishing BIZET: CARMEN SONATAS FOR two compositions of Fernande Decruck. command of the orchestral medium. HARPSICHORD Stacy Garrop’s ‘Fragmented Spirit’ shows Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras Schubert doesn’t seem to have taken much why she is such a powerful force in new & Herbert von Karajan Mahan Esfahani interest in the works after having composed music; the deeply emotive work truly runs DG. 4786400. $11.95 Hyperion. CDA67995. $24.95 them; however, today it is hard to imagine the gamut. Commissioned specifically for ‘... a sophisticated traversal Iranian-American being without the irrepressible tarantella- this project, Australian composer Katy of the piece that doesn’t harpsichordist Mahan finale of the Third Symphony, the dramatic Abbott’s ‘Undercurrent’ juxtaposes exclude a realisation of its Esfahani has recorded tension of the opening of the ‘Tragic’ No. 4, everlasting, lyrical phrases with potent more intimate side.’ C.P.E. Bach’s six or the Mozartian minuet of the Fifth. rhythmic energy. One of the most prolific Gramophone ‘Württemberg’ sonatas, contributors to the saxophone repertoire, published in 1744, and his thrillingly intense ESSENTIAL TAVENER Ida Gotkovsky’s work presents a tour de MOZART: LE NOZZE performances make the best possible case Various force of lyricism and virtuosity with the DI FIGARO for this dramatic, endlessly imaginative but Decca. 4786424. $16.95 premiere recording of ‘Incandescence’. Anne Sofie von Otter & for some reason under-performed music. This compilation was James Levine The sonatas range stylistically from initial originally created to VIVALDI: A TALE DG. 4786402. $11.95 stirrings of Sturm und Drang in keyboard celebrate the composer’s OF TWO SEASONS ‘Levine scores with one of music to sublime imitations of the human 70th birthday in January; Adrian Chandler & La Serenissima the most attractive voice, with nods to the High Baroque and the however, with his passing AVIE. AV2287. $25.95 Cherubinos on disc in Anne idiom of C.P.E. Bach’s more famous father. in early November of last year, it is now a Adrian Chandler and La Sofie von Otter, nicely tribute to his profound musical voice. John Serenissima, with virtuoso palpitating in both arias.’ SCHUBERT: SYMPHONIES Tavener’s unique composing career has soloist mezzo-soprano Gramophone NOS. 3, 4 & 5 featured some surprising and dramatic Sally Bruce-Payne, Thomas Dausgaard & Swedish spiritual and stylistic changes since the early continue their enlightening MOZART: DIE Chamber Orchestra success of his cantata, ‘The Whale’, in 1968. exploration of Vivaldi. Focusing on two BIS. BIS1786. $24.95 Famously, it was ‘Song for Athene’, ZAUBERFLÖTE Venetian operatic seasons of 1717 and 1733, performed at the funeral of Princess Diana, Christoph Strehl & Claudio Abbado Working their way the program juxtaposes the work of an that secured his international reputation. DG. 4786404. $11.95 backwards through the eager young man with that of an older, more Alongside the original choral version of the ‘Anyone who loves Die symphonic output of Franz cunning composer. Vivaldi specialists, work, which opens this recording, he later Zauberflöte should hear this Schubert, Thomas Chandler’s and La Serenissima’s hallmark arranged the work for violinist Nicola performance, especially as Dausgaard and his Swedish qualities of erudition have made them one Benedetti and this is presented as the closing preserved in DG’s crisp and Chamber Orchestra have now reached of the most acclaimed period-instrument track on the album. full sound.’ AllMusic Symphonies Nos. 3, 4 and 5. These works bands performing today.

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