Summer Reading Guide Your trusted guide to this season’s best books, CDs and DVDs ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN 18 YOUR GUIDE TO TOP SUMMER READING ART 19 selected by Australia’s best independent bookseller BIOGRAPHY 8–9 CDS 24–25 CLASSICAL MUSIC CDS 26 WIN GREAT PRIZES SPECIALS GUARANTEE DVDS 27 Check out our fabulous deals, You can win a library of books worth more If, on inspection, you’re not happy with FICTION 2–6 than $5000 or a complete set of Text Classics exclusive offers and free gifts. a book selected through this guide, you by correctly answering the questions can return it (in saleable condition) within FOOD & WINE 15–17 scattered throughout this guide – see the CAN’T DECIDE? 14 days of purchase and we’ll exchange GIFT 21 If you’re not 100% sure about back cover for details. it for another book of equivalent value or HISTORY 10–11 what book will suit, why not for a book voucher – the choice is yours. REVIEWS give one of our gift vouchers? 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SPORT 20 STYLE & CRAFT 20 Australian fiction AFTER LOVE THE AMBER AMULET THE CONVERSATION Subhash Jaireth Craig Silvey David Brooks Vasu is an Indian architecture student By day, 12-year-old Liam McKenzie seems Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger studying in Moscow in the late 1960s. Full like an ordinary boy. To avoid any suspicion than to someone you love. That’s what of enthusiasm for the Soviet Union and its about his real identity, he sometimes Stephen experiences one night in Trieste, ways, he is blind to the hardships that many acts up at school or deliberately gets Italy. Alone in a restaurant, he notices a of its citizens face. Then he meets and falls himself into trouble at home. By night, striking woman who’s also about to dine in love with Anna, an archaeology student Liam is the Masked Avenger, patrolling the alone. A gust of wind upsets the contents of and talented cellist who desperately wants to neighbourhood and helping those in need. his table, and as the waiter cleans up, the leave the city. Uncertain that a return to India Whether it’s stepping in to help a neighbour woman invites him to sit with her. In minutes would be right for Anna, Vasu takes a teaching who has neglected to check his tyre he’s told her things it took him months to tell Transit Lounge PB job in Venice instead, where Anna can indulge Allen & Unwin pressure, or clearing someone’s congested University of his wife – and their conversation flows from $29.95 $16.99 Queensland Press her passion for music. But one day Anna goes HB garden sprinkler, the Masked Avenger, $29.95 there, accompanied by delicious food. This missing. A sensitive and moving love story, accompanied by his sidekick Richie the HB meditative book is reminiscent of Richard After Love explores the realm of emotions and Powerbeagle, is on the case. However, it’s Linklater’s classic film Before Sunrise, in music in a thought-provoking way, delving really the lady at the end of the street that which two strangers share a night of intense into the interplay and spaces between them needs his help, and the only thing that can conversation. Australian author David Brooks that cannot always be explained. help her is the Amber Amulet. But what if, by has outdone himself here, and the melancholy helping one person, you hurt someone else? and beauty of this novel linger well after the A big, heartfelt story presented in a small, last page is read. quirky package. THE HAPPINESS SHOW Catherine Deveny HAPPY VALLEY IN FALLING SNOW There are plenty of hilarious one-liners Patrick White Mary-Rose MacColl in Catherine Deveny’s first novel, but the Iris has never told her granddaughter Grace Patrick White’s first novel was released on the controversial comedian doesn’t just stick the story of when her 15-year-old brother cusp of WWII and he never gave permission with her shtick. This is an entertaining Tom enlisted to fight in France in 1914 for it to be republished, apparently fearing book about serious stuff like emotion, and she followed him across the Channel, legal action, but perhaps also because commitment and fulfilment. And lust. Can determined to bring him home. Or how this he felt it wasn’t up to the Nobel-winning 38-year-old Lizzie Quealy resist gorgeous led to her serving in a field hospital in the old standard of his later work – surely an unfair Tom, the Englishman she fell in love with in abbey of Royaumont, just north of Paris. But comparison! Now, finally, it has resurfaced as her twenties, when they meet again? She an invitation to a reunion in France unearths part of the excellent Text Classics series, an Black Inc PB loves her life in inner-city Melbourne with memories of that time and of secrets that will $29.99 initiative to bring lost or forgotten works of her husband and kids, but the temptation is Allen & Unwin PB affect Grace’s life – and that of her family – Australian literature back into the limelight. $29.99 huge. Which way does happiness lie? Lizzie Text Publishing in unimaginable ways. This is a compelling $29.99 It’s an involving tale of desperation, love and is an authentic character, with a messy HB saga about the lengths we go to for love, ambition set in the isolated Snowy Mountains life, foibles and conflicting feelings. And if as well as an inspiring story about two town of Happy Valley, a name more ironic than her dilemma is familiar, her solution to it is headstrong women torn between families affectionate. In his introduction, Peter Craven surprising. The Happiness Show will resonate and demanding careers. with many women, and plenty of men too. is right to call this novel ‘the exhilarating performance of a great writer in the making’. LOLA BENSKY LAS VEGAS FOR VEGANS LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE Lily Brett In the summer of 1967, Lily Brett travelled A S Patri´c Cate Kennedy to the UK and US, interviewing rock stars in This collection of short stories well and Cate Kennedy can write a mean short story, London and New York for Go-Set magazine truly lives up to the promise of its bleak and here she’s at her incisive and beautiful and attending the Monterey International and evocative front cover. Patri´c is based best. She writes about people who are as Pop Festival. This novel draws its inspiration in Melbourne and has been described as perfectly ordinary as any one of us – which from this experience, and its protagonist one of the country’s most exciting writers is to say absolutely extraordinary – and tells clearly has much in common with the youthful of literary fiction, but the stories here defy us about human weakness and strength, Brett – including parents who are Holocaust geographical or stylistic constraints, being set about love and loneliness, and about survivors. Lola is a curious mix of neuroses, Hamish Hamilton across the globe and within various genres. fear and bravery. Relationships between $29.99 self-deprecation and nonchalance, and her The book draws its title from the final story, people are portrayed in all their complexity: PB conversations with larger-than-life characters Transit Lounge PB $27.95 $29.95 a literary doff-of-the-cap to Chandleresque Scribe PB Kennedy can flawlessly evoke tenderness, such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Mick crime writing but with a protagonist who is scorn, impatience, protectiveness … any Jagger are far removed from the usual more vulnerable than hardboiled. It’s about of the many feelings that might rise up question-and-answer sessions of popular rock deserts – geographical and emotional – and between people. These stories are at once journalism. A lighter read than Brett’s previous is as daringly and dazzlingly original as the contemporary and timeless – finish one and novels, Lola Bensky is about rock musicians, stories it precedes. One for lovers of literary you won’t be able to decide whether to reread collective experience, self-esteem and the risk-taking. it or enjoy the rewards of the next. human condition. Australian fi ction 3 LOST VOICES THE MIDNIGHT PROMISE NINE DAYS Christopher Koch Zane Lovitt Toni Jordan Determined to pay off his father’s gambling We all love to hear about masterpieces It takes some novelists time – and a few debt, Hugh Dixon asks his wealthy, estranged and bestsellers being discovered in books – to hit their stride, and in Toni Jordan’s great-uncle, Walter, who lives in the ancestral publisher slush piles. The editorial staff at case this would seem to have occurred with farmhouse on the outskirts of Hobart, for Text Publishing came across The Midnight the publication of her third novel.