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This month’s news

WINNER OF THE 2013 WOMEN’S MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2013 Mark’s A.M. Homes has been announced as the The Melbourne International Film Festival 2013 Say winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction. is on from 25 July to 11 August. As we head Homes won for her sixth novel, May We Be into the depths of winter, cinephiles can burrow Forgiven, which chair of judges Miranda away into the heart of Melbourne to take in an Richardson described as ‘a dazzling, original, incredible line-up of features, documentaries, News and views from Readings’ viscerally funny black comedy’ and ‘a retrospectives and tributes from Australia and managing director, Mark Rubbo subversion of the American dream’. Other around the world. Catch Ginger & Rosa, a lovely shortlisted novels for 2013 included Kate and devastating look at inseparable friendship in The Australian Booksellers Association had their annual conference in Adelaide a few weeks ago. Each Atkinson’s Life After Life, Barbara Kingsolver’s 1960s London from director Sally Potter, or the year, booksellers from around the country gather together to exchange ideas, acknowledge their peers Flight Behaviour, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up twenty-first century adaptation of Henry James’s and, of course, enjoy some good company. At the gala dinner for 2013, I was very proud and chuffed to the Bodies, Maria Semple’s Where’d You What Maisie Knew, starring Julianne Moore and see Readings’ own Martin Shaw announced as the ABA Text Publishing Bookseller of the Year. Martin Go, Bernadette and Zadie Smith’s NW. The Steve Coogan. Astounding docos include Ken joined Readings over 19 years ago. I recall he was doing a Masters in German at Monash University, and Women’s Prize for Fiction, formerly known Loach’s call to arms, The Spirit of ’45, and Slavoj sent me a note saying that he wanted to become a bookseller and that he was prepared to do anything. as the Orange Prize, was launched in 1996 Žižek and Sophie Fiennes’s postmodernist ode It was an intriguing and irresistible offer. For the past 14 years, Martin has been the Books Division to celebrate the best novel written by a to cinema, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. If Manager at Readings and a major player in shaping our collection. He has been a great champion of woman in the English language. It is widely you’re a fan of Australian literature, don’t miss Australian writing, especially in his support of debut writers and independent publishers. In addition, he recognised as having had a huge impact on the all-star omnibus adaptation of Tim Winton’s has taken a particular interest in literature in translation. He first read authors such as W.G. Sebald and the promotion of women’s writing worldwide, The Turning. Visit www.miff.com.au to view the Stieg Larsson in German and became a great advocate of their work, despite the differences between including being one of the key inspirations full program (released 5 July), buy passes or them in terms of style and content. Always interested in what Australia’s small presses were producing, for Australia’s very own Stella Prize. The become a MIFF Member. Readings is a proud he became a member of the board of the Small Press Network and an editorial adviser to the journal Kill Women’s Prize is about to embark on a three- sponsor of the festival. Your Darlings. He’s been a judge of numerous awards, most recently the Commonwealth Book Prize. year partnership with Baileys, who have come In a recent conversation, Martin told me that what he admired most in a writer was a willingness to take on board as a headline sponsor. risks and try something new: ‘When they can pull it off, it’s magical.’ Martin epitomises exactly what MADMAN DVD SALE makes a good bookseller – a commitment to the writers and a commitment to the readers. ENTRIES CLOSING FOR THE To celebrate this year’s Melbourne MELBOURNE PRIZE FOR MUSIC International Film Festival, we’re holding a CEO of the American Booksellers Association, Oren Teicher, was also at the ABA conference. The annual Melbourne Prize runs on a three- fantastic DVD sale with more than 100 films Independents in the US have been struggling for the past decade or so, due at first to the rapid year awards cycle, alternating between from Madman from 1 July to 11 August. Prices expansion of chains such as Borders, and then to the rise of online retailers such as Amazon and the literature, music and urban sculpture. This year start from $9.95 and titles include Searching growth of ebook sales. The demise of Borders gave them some relief, but the huge growth in ebook sees the focus return once again to music in For Sugar Man, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, sales mitigated that. Teicher reported that in the last year, however, independent booksellers have seen support of Victoria’s vibrant local sector, with Paul Kelly: Stories of Me, Monsieur Lazhar, a bit of a turnaround. This stems from a range of factors, he said. The stabilising of the ebook market is entries closing on 16 July 2013. The Prize A Royal Affair, Eames: The Architect and the one, but there is also a growing desire in many communities to support their local bookshops. It is part consists of the $60 000 Melbourne Prize For Painter and Your Sister’s Sister. Get down of a nationwide movement to support local businesses and the contribution made by bookshops to the Music, the $30 000 Outstanding Musicians to your local Readings to check out the full community in turn. Booksellers champion writers in ways that no Amazon algorithm can. Indeed, when Award and the $13 000 Development Award. range. The sale is on at all shops and online I was at BookExpo America recently, American booksellers chose Australian novels Burial Rites and A residency at the Victorian College of the Arts at www.readings.com.au. The Rosie Project to champion in their shops during the coming fall season. It was exciting to see such and Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the enthusiasm and confidence abound. University of Melbourne will also be offered to one of the recipients of those awards. Apology and correction: In the June 2013 issue of the Readings Monthly, Mark’s Say stated that Chris Womersley’s Additionally, a $4000 Civic Choice Award will new novel, Cairo, would be published in the UK by Scribe’s new imprint. Quercus will be publishing Cairo in the UK be given to the finalist with the highest number in 2014. They have also published Womersley’s backlist there. of public votes. Readings is a proud sponsor of the Melbourne Prize For Music. Entry forms can be found at www.melbourneprize.org or picked up at any Readings shop.

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

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CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS BEN AFFLECK RACHEL McADAMS JAVIER BARDEM Visit the Cinema Nova Bar JOSS WHEDON directs WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S TO THE WONDER ‘an irresistible A film by Terrence Malick blend of mirth director of THE TREE OF LIFE 380 LYGON ST CARLTON and malice’ MUCH “An ambitious thriller assisted www.cinemanova.com.au Rolling Stone ADO ABOUT “An ambitious ‘an absorbing, thoughtful, moving meditation’ Empire Magazine Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, by excellent performances”JULYEmpire 4, EXCLUSIVE National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. NOTHING thriller assistedJULY 11 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 3

HANIFA ROBERT 17 DEEN 30 HILLMAN

In conversation with Linda Briskman Part road trip, part biography, Gurrumul July Events (HarperCollins, HB, was $65, special price $54.95) Award-winning author Hanifa Deen will discuss For more information and updates, please visit the events page at her latest book, On the Trail of Taslima. In it, Deen is the story of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, one www.readings.com.au. Please note bookings do not necessarily travels the world in search of dissident writer of Australia’s most inspirational musicians. Join guarantee a seat and some events may be standing room only. Taslima Nasreen, intent on discovering the woman Robert Hillman as he takes you behind the scenes. behind the headlines. Deen will be in conversation Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 with Linda Briskman, Professor of Human Rights at or at [email protected]. JENNIFER LAURA JEAN the Swinburne Institute For Social Research. 3 10 MCKAY SCOULLAR Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 Tuesday 30 July, 6pm Readings Carlton Join us for the launch of Currawong Creek Anna Krien will launch Holiday in Cambodia (Black or at [email protected]. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. (Penguin, PB, $29.99), a tale of heartfelt rural Inc., PB, $24.99), a bold collection of electric short romance from the author of Brumby’s Run. stories by the very talented Laura Jean McKay. Wednesday 17 July, 6.30pm LAUNCH Readings Hawthorn Free, no booking required. Free, no booking required. 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. DONNA

LAUNCH 31 MERWICK Wednesday 3 July, 6pm Wednesday 10 July, 6pm Readings Carlton Readings Carlton Come along for the launch of Donna Merwick’s 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. SUPERHEROES Stuyvesant Bound (University of Pennsylvania

309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. LAUNCH LAUNCH 20 PARTY! Press, HB, $59). It’s a compelling look at Peter Stuyvesant, the last director general of New Fly in for a super kids event featuring Chris OLIVER Netherland, a Dutch colony that would later VANESSA Owen, author of My Superhero (Fremantle Press, 11 FELTHAM evolve into the state of New York. 4 RUSSELL HB, $26.99), who’ll also be treating us to a Join us for the launch of Oliver Feltham’s An reading of his book. Suitable for all children with Free, no booking required. New from the wonderful team at Sleepers, Anatomy of Failure (Bloomsbury, PB, $39.99). magical powers (or not) ages 3 to 7. Costumes Vanessa Russell’s Holy Bible (Sleepers, PB, The book explores the concept of political are encouraged, and there will be prizes for Wednesday 31 July, 6pm $24.95) is the story of the Blooms – a raucous, action, playing its history against its philosophy. anyone who can a lift a building! Readings Carlton quietly damaging family who are part of a 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.

Gold coin donation. Please book on 9525 3852 LAUNCH shrinking Christadelphian sect in Ballarat. Winnie Free, no booking required. or at [email protected]. Salamon will be doing the launching honours. Thursday 11 July, 6.30pm PHILIP Free, no booking required. Readings Carlton Saturday 20 July, 10.30am 31 BROPHY 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. Readings St Kilda LAUNCH Thursday 4 July, 6pm 112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182. Renowned art critic, performer and theorist

Wesley Anne PhilipLAUNCH Brophy will discuss his new series of 250 High Street, Northcote, 3070. JIM animations, projections and prints, as well as the LAUNCH 16 CHALMERS LES companion book Colour Me Dead, a fascinating In conversation with George 22 MURRAY work that examines how the nude has been DAVID posed, lit, depicted, rendered and transformed. 5 Megalogenis In conversation with Anna Heyward BRIDIE Free, no booking required. Jim Chalmers, former chief of staff to Treasurer Australia’s favourite poet, Les Murray, will be in Melbourne’s love affair with local songster David Wayne Swan, will chat to journalist and political conversation with Haplax founder Anna Heyward. Bridie continues with the release of his latest Wednesday 31 July, 6pm commentator George Megalogenis about Jim’s Les will also give a reading of his work. A rare treat. album, Wake ($24.95), featuring the wonderful The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Swanston new book, Glory Daze. It’s an in-depth look at new single, ‘The Shortest Day of the Year’. Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 Street, The University of Melbourne, 3010. the dramatic impact of the GFC in the hallways Come and see David and his band in-store at or at [email protected]. LAUNCH of Parliament. Readings for one night only. Monday 22 July, 6.30pm Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 MORRIS Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 Readings Carlton or at [email protected]. 6 GLEITZMAN or at [email protected]. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.

WeLAUNCH are honoured to have beloved children’s Tuesday 16 July, 6.30pm Friday 5 July, 6pm author Morris Gleitzman at our Readings Hawthorn Readings Hawthorn Readings Carlton shop, where he will discuss his work, answer 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. DIANA 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. questions and, of course, sign a bunch of books! LAUNCH 23 GREENTREE LAUNCH Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917 Arnold Zable will launch Diana Greentree’s The ALEX or at [email protected]. SOFIE LAGUNA & 16 Camros Bird, a love story set against Australia’s HAMMOND dark treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. 6 CRAIG SMITH Tuesday 6 August, 4.30pm Actor and comedian Alan Brough will launch Free, no booking required. Readings Hawthorn Much-loved children’s author Sofie Laguna and Alex Hammond’s debut, Blood Witness 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122. illustrator Craig Smith will be hosting a joyous, (Penguin, PB, $29.99), a chilling thriller set in the Tuesday 23 July, 6pm LAUNCH fun-filled reading of their latest picture book, Where violent world of Melbourne’s underbelly. Readings Carlton Are You, Banana? (A&U, HB, $24.99), the delightful Free, no booking required. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. BARBARA story about a boy, a dog and an ingenious rescue. LAUNCH 8 ARROWSMITH Gold coin donation. Please book on 9525 3852 Tuesday 16 July, 6pm YOUNG or at [email protected]. Readings Carlton BROWN BROTHERS 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. 25 WINTER POETRY Come along for a unique opportunity to hear Saturday 6 July, 10.30am LAUNCH Barbara Arrowsmith Young speak about her Readings St Kilda FESTIVAL remarkable journey, from her struggle to overcome 112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182. AARON Over a warming glass of wine, enjoy rich new severe learning disabilities, which was later LAUNCH 17 PATRICK poetry from Melbourne artist and writer A. Frances documented in the bestselling book, The Woman Johnson; visiting Sydney poet and editor Toby Who Changed Her Brain (HarperCollins, PB, ALICE In Downfall: How the Labor Party Ripped Itself Fitch; and local up-and-comer Zoe Blain, winner of $29.99), to her founding of the Arrowsmith School. 8 HUNGERFORD Apart (HarperCollins, PB, $29.99), journalist the Rabbit Poetry Journal under-21 prize. Aaron Patrick takes us behind the scenes to look $5 per person (redeemable against a purchase Come and celebrate more than 30 years of at how a once great party has been corroded Free, no booking required. on the night). Please book on 9347 1749. the Franklin River being saved with UpRiver: from within. Tonight he will talk about the ALP Untold Stories of the Franklin River Activists at both state and federal levels and ask if – and Thursday 25 July, 6.30pm Thursday 8 August, 7-8.15pm (PB, $49.95). The book features over 60 how – a party so discredited can survive. Readings Carlton Dax Centre Auditorium, Melbourne Brain interviews and fascinating archival images. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. Centre, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3010.

Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633 LAUNCH LAUNCH Free, no booking required. or at [email protected]. GOLD COIN DONATIONS: We’re now asking people who attend our events to please Monday 8 July, 6.30pm Wednesday 17 July, 6.30pm make a small gold coin donation, when possible, to The Readings Foundation. Readings Carlton Readings Carlton There will be a tin for donations at each event. All contributions over $2 are tax 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053. 309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.

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New Australian Writing Feature

Vanessa Russell’s Holy Bible is the story of the Blooms, a large, uproarious family who are part of a dwindling religious sect in Ballarat. Seventeen-year-old Tranquillity wants out; the others are waiting for the second coming of Christ. Russell herself grew up in a small Christadelphian community, leaving when she was 26. Here, she talks to Kalinda Ashton about dysfunction, dark humour and belief. The End of ‘What sometimes seems riotously was so obnoxious,’ laughs Vanessa amusing and Russell, with a mix of ruefulness and Everything affection in her voice. She’s speaking initially benign of her own days as an 18-year-old true ‘Ibeliever in a small Christadelphian community, becomes which she remained involved with until her twenties. ‘I was super holy Sister Vanessa.’ terrifying and We’re talking via Skype and it’s hard terrible in the to imagine any trace of self-righteousness As We surrounding Russell. She seems temperamentally book’s climax self-deprecating and humble, if disarmingly sincere, displaying an unflustered agreeableness ... There through technical hitches and crackling interruptions to our internet connection. are savage, Holy Bible tells the story of a tiny Christadelphian sect in Ballarat, focusing on the courageous Know It Bloom family – the dark secrets they carry and their fractious religious fellowship. Divided into moments in Kalinda Ashton interviews Vanessa Russell about seven parts, each focusing on the perspective of this fiction.’ a different character, the novel gradually reveals her debut novel, Holy Bible. patterns of dysfunction and loss that go back generations. It opens with the magnificently named Tranquillity Bloom, an ‘artless’ and unworldly teenager so desperate to train as a nurse she ‘treats’ family illnesses with M&Ms and wears hospital whites every day. She is attempting to evade baptism and contend with the apparent signs of Jesus’s return. Then there’s worthwhile and which bits [were] complete dead Violet, a stoic, sad and increasingly enraged ends’. Although the novel culminates in a series obese woman who married into the fellowship of volatile and frightening confrontations, she at 15 and has produced nine children with says, ‘I wasn’t sure when I was writing it what Horace (a man who seems comically fanatical at was going to happen.’ first but is later exposed as relentless and even After she completed her studies, Russell monstrous). Amy, the uninhibited lively ‘outsider’ was left with a 45 000-word novella. She worked who converts to the sect when she falls in love to expand each section from the economical with Reuben, is infuriated by the suffocating manuscript she’d submitted. Fearing the novella narrow-mindedness of the group. In a satirical was ‘crammed down … a little robotic in some twist, she finds herself ensnared by an equally ways’, she focused on allowing characters obsessive, unconscionable doctor determined and moments ‘more space to breathe’. Small to write a popular book on cult deprogramming. Melbourne-based publisher Sleepers accepted Reuben, a morose but kind man, will face ominous the manuscript and Russell says she ‘completely consequences for disobeying the fellowship. rewrote’ it in the editorial process. is both painfully funny and Holy Bible was initially inspired by Holy Bible autobiographical events, but ‘quite early on it ... simply painful. Wry wit gives way to a growing standards in the treatment of women and girls, She wanted to avoid caricature, kind of flew into something else,’ Russell says. sense of menace. The multiple points of view the shifting narrative allows for a richly textured fearing that ‘my novel would be completely flat’ She found her first impulse for the manuscript wrench and divide our sympathies, and unsettle and contradictory world to emerge. ‘I wanted if she failed to acknowledge the benefits of the – which was, she says, a ‘rant … my story our assumptions. What sometimes seems to be fair,’ Russell acknowledges. ‘Otherwise organisation. ‘I’ve grown up in it,’ she says, ‘I disguised as fiction’ – insufficiently interesting. riotously amusing and initially benign becomes it would be lampooning the religion without wanted to talk about that part of myself as well ‘Who wants to read about a 17-year-old girl terrifying and terrible in the book’s climax. understanding why people stay and why … So I didn’t feel complete shame about being whining about religion?’ she asks drolly, in a While the novel deals with trauma and grief and people go as well.’ that person.’ characteristically straightforward and prosaic way. loss, and the ways in which families can hand ‘There’s a thing that if you do join a Russell’s parents haven’t read the novel It was Russell’s reserve that led her into down their dysfunctional legacies from one religion, it’s because you’re stupid somehow, yet and she concedes she’s ‘worried’ about how a writing career – while studying journalism off- generation to the next, it is also underscored by or you’ve been sucked in,’ she observes. they will respond if they do; she wants to protect campus, she was too cripplingly shy to complete a generosity and complexity. There are savage, Russell expresses her frustration with the them. ‘I guess I still want their approval in some a required video interview assignment for her courageous moments in this fiction. predictable genre of memoir that simplifies way.’ The publication of Holy Bible gave her a course. When she spoke to staff, they suggested In Holy Bible, the Christadelphian the experience of leaving a religious sect as ‘burst of confidence’ and momentum for her alternative majors, including creative writing. She community is inhabited just as much by always a process of being ‘stuck … escaping current writing projects (a memoir contracted to was thrilled by this option. ‘I didn’t even know loving, genuine, unremarkable people as it is … and now I’m free’. For Russell, the process Hardie Grant and a second novel). She looks at what a major was!’ she declares, shaking her by oppressive, hypocritical, controlling ones. of leaving the Christadelphians was far more once perplexed and calm when she contemplates head at her own inexperience and good luck. Sections of the religious order provide solace and support to some characters, even as they complex and nuanced. ‘The reality is that you the reactions her debut might receive: ‘For now I’m Holy Bible has been approximately get out of it and you still miss it a lot, and you just in this stage where it’s all not quite real yet.’ eight years in the making and began as a eschew, ostracise or crush others. While there miss what you were getting out of it as well, PhD project at the University of Melbourne. is no denying the repression, self-censorship, and you’ve got to form your whole life trying to Kalinda Ashton is a fiction writer and lecturer In early drafts, Russell concentrated on ‘just hubris and manipulation of the group in this recreate that, really.’ at Flinders University. getting it out there and seeing which bits [were] novel, nor its unfailing sexism and double READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 5

From New Fiction the Books All the Birds, Singing tells the story of Australian Jake Whyte, a young, rather reticent woman. Desk She lives on a farmhouse on a remote island off the English coast, alone all but for her dog Fiction and a flock of sheep. But with the deaths of several of her drove, and the arrival of a strange —Jessica Au, HOLY BIBLE homeless man to the area, her isolation is Readings Monthly editor Vanessa Russell suddenly invaded, and she is forced to make Sleepers. PB. $24.95 connections to those around her that she had previously, and resolutely, rejected. Review: Seventeen-year-old The estimable Martin Shaw welcomed the lovely Marlena Teresa Shaw into the world this month, so he’s Tranquillity Bloom lives in As the mystery of the flock’s deaths kindly let me step behind the Book’s Desk for July. Of course a big congratulations to Martin and family Ballarat and dreams of moving slowly unfolds, Wyld capably interlaces Jake’s from all at Readings – we can’t wait to welcome you back, and see little Marlie out and about! to Melbourne to become a gloomy past with her secluded present. The nurse. Her family are part of a scenes shift from the harsh, hot Australian But, of course, the books. Mid-winter takes us from the speculative world of mind-bending literati to a diminishing religious sect, the landscape from which she escaped to the ragtag bunch of rural evangelists. Local house Sleepers has brought out its second debut of the year, Christadelphians, and eerie cold of the British Isles, as chapters leap Vanessa Russell’s Holy Bible – a darkly comedic, darkly savage look at growing up in a Christadelphian Tranquillity’s world is one that is zippered from one side of the world to the other. There sect in Ballarat. There’s also the second novel from London-based, Australian-born novelist Evie Wyld, All chokingly tight. Life is full of bibles and is certainly a sense of menace that lingers on the Birds, Singing. Wyld was recently named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists for the year. Brethrens, Sister-wives and Sunday School, the pages of Wyld’s novel, a menace that we Given that previous lists have spotted talents such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, it’s a Truth and scripture by rote. The ecclesia do not can’t quite place. It may be something lurking safe bet that she is one to watch. Max Barry has a new genre work out, the science fiction thriller, Lexicon. talk to Outsiders, and no one in the community amid the trees of Jake’s farmhouse property, or And short-story enthusiasts should keep an eye out for Holiday in Cambodia by Laura Jean McKay (if you is allowed to leave. Meanwhile Horace, it may be someone chasing her from the desert haven’t yet read her brilliant piece of memoir, ‘The Arrangement’, published earlier this year in The Lifted Tranquillity’s maniacal, controlling father, instils country from whence she came. Brow, please do). the fear of God into each of his nine children Wyld’s stubborn heroine remains the by comparing the events of the Gulf War to his most complete of the story’s characters; others Sad news on the international front with the passing of novelist Iain Banks from cancer in June. His first End of Days checklist to make the case that often seem too thin, their presence slightly novel, The Wasp Factory, still rises strongly in my mind with its disturbing imagery and alienated narrator, Armageddon is nigh. His overweight wife, Violet, contrived. Though this will no doubt frustrate Frank Cauldhame. His final,The Quarry, sees a group of friends gather around the sickbed of Guy, as kind-hearted and ‘round as an earth ball’, doles some, the beauty, simplicity and tension of jealousies, bickering and dysfunction ensue during his final days. out what small generosities she can to her Wyld’s prose, and her skill at reflecting Jake’s daughter despite her powerlessness. Needless moods against the weather and wildlife of her Turning to non-fiction, Henry Reynolds’ Forgotten War aims to make an erasure of mainstream Australian to say, all of this makes a break to Melbourne severe surroundings, are exquisite. history. Here, Reynolds points out the bitter irony of a nation that commemorates many military deaths about as solid as smoke. And as Tranquillity Nicole Mansour is from Readings St Kilda overseas, yet cannot bring itself to fully acknowledge the tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples nervously awaits her exam results, the wife of slaughtered at its very own frontiers. A dark horse for pop-culture fanatics this month might be Alan her favourite brother, Reuben, disappears, and LEXICON Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised, which examines the meteoric rise of TV over cinema via the fragile stumps that hold the family together favourites such as The Wire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica and Breaking Bad. begin to cave. Max Barry As a tale of family dysfunction, Holy H&S. PB. $29.99 In other news, I’ll be wrapping up at Readings after this issue, and I’d like to say a deep and wholehearted Bible is both comedic and blackly-lit. There’s Review: If you’re a fan of thanks to all the wonderful reviewers, writers, designers, illustrators, proofreaders and staff who’ve helped a kind of innocence to its tone, with its roving speculative fiction or sci-fi crime, make the Readings Monthly over the past year or so. I’d also like to extend a warm welcome to the very birds’ eye view of the Blooms and their sect, as the combination of conspiracy talented Belle Place, who’ll be taking over the reins. Thank you all, and happy reading. well as liberal doses of bawdy humour – nervous theories, figures of absolute bodily functions and rebellious masturbation to power, evil and some badass name but two. Yet the novel is also not afraid to survivor skills are reason the reason we read science fiction.Lexicon ’s Yet despite the variations in backgrounds, plough into more grotesque territory. For all its enough to pick up Lexicon. Max pace is, for the most part, captivating, though personalities and experiences, each character raucousness, there’s a darker violence that later Barry’s knack for pacey action and dialogue and I felt that it did slow down a little towards the is solid and real, and their stories gripping. steers the book into far more disturbing territory. intriguing and believable characters will draw you final third of the book. But by the end, I was The collection opens with ‘Route Some characters, like the painfully in within the first ten pages. thoroughly convinced of Barry’s ability to lay Four’. A small Cambodian boy assists three sanctimonious Sister Olive, twist into caricature. Students are recruited from around out a suspenseful, resolved, and actually rather tourists on the train; they are intent on getting Others, like Tranquillity, are a touching mix of the country to an exclusive boarding school disturbing, action-packed climax. to Kampot, and he is intent on relieving them of will and naivety. For all her religious cynicism, their luggage. Their journey is languid and slow, in Virginia, where they learn the power of Amy Vuleta is from Readings St Kilda it’s clear that Tranquillity is still painfully language, and the art and science of coercion. until something unexpected changes the tempo sheltered. She studies for nursing by reading They are taught that a person’s mind can be of the story with brutal swiftness. ‘If You Say It, through the medical dosages guide, the MIMS manipulated and their thoughts controlled. The HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA It Must Be True’ focuses on the banal give-and- Annual; with no access to actual medicine, smartest and most disciplined will graduate as Laura Jean McKay take between an unhappily married couple. she doles out M&Ms and Smarties by way of ‘poets’ and go on to work for an immensely Black Inc. PB. $24.99 Anna and Ray’s constant misunderstanding tablets – a childlike gesture of make-believe and inability to communicate was something powerful secret organisation. Review: It’s been nearly a that speaks of her shuttered world. Vanessa that really struck me. Their relationship was The novel opens with a scene of fast, week now since I finished Laura Russell herself grew up in a Christadelphian like a broken zip – the teeth that once matched sharp, unattributed dialogue as two men stand Jean McKay’s collection of short community, leaving when she was 26. perfectly will no longer meet, no matter how over a third, Wil, as he regains consciousness. stories, Holiday in Cambodia, Throughout Holy Bible, the question looms hard you pull. Something is amiss and there’s a sense of and my feelings are a jumble of as to whether Tranquillity will be able to make Choppy and unpredictable, the effect panic in the room. The action-filled sequence melancholy, pensiveness and her break or not, and the last chapter is one of of this collection is bracing and powerful, and is and chase scene that follows plunge both something else that I can’t quite incredible poignancy and quietness. one that has not left me yet. Highly recommend. Wil and the reader into a reality that exists pin down. I still feel like I’ve recently returned Jessica Au is editor of the Readings Monthly on completely alien terms. What is at first from somewhere else – somewhere sweaty, Jo Boyce is from Readings Carlton pleasurably disorienting becomes a mystery to dusty and crowded. Somewhere foreign. ALL THE BIRDS, SINGING be untangled. McKay transcribes each moment TRANSACTIONS Jump back a few years and enter Emily, from each life with a depth of understanding Evie Wyld Ali Alizadeh a street kid with a knack for card tricks. Although that is apparent and personal, and that UQP. PB. $19.95 Vintage. PB. Was $32.95 she is not immediately loveable – she’s small doesn’t diminish whether the subject is Special price $27.95 and mousy, and perhaps not so bright when it Cambodian, a fleeting tourist or a long- Review: Globalisation is comes to the company she keeps – I found myself Review: Australian-born, established expatriate. Fragmented and often referred to as a London-based writer Evie Wyld rooting for her. When a mysterious stranger shows partial, the pieces here range from the phenomenon conducive to was recently named as one of up with an offer that Emily can’t refuse, you’re not mundane to the serious. Time and chronology prosperity and progression for sure if this means anything good, but you hope Granta’s Best of Young British shift and remain unspecified – the reader anyone prepared to engage it. Novelists for 2013, and her she might just make the best of it somehow. must place themselves by picking up on The idea of a ‘level playing field’ Barry draws out the revelations second novel, All the Birds, clues from dress and dialogue. We are thrown has become a familiar concept. behind these two strands, withholding Singing, is already garnering headlong into another’s world for a brief and Yet perhaps not enough is written about its more similar praise to her much acclaimed debut, forgotten details and hinting at paths crossed. intense moment before being just as abruptly destructive ramifications and far-reaching It’s frustrating and suspenseful, and exactly After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. removed and transplanted into the next. shadows. Ali Alizadeh has said that his latest 6 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013

book, Transactions, is an attempt to expose brought them together. Midnight Blue and LIGHTNING Endlessly Tall is an original and unpredictable globalisation’s dark secrets. Yet this collection Felicity Volk is not so much a critique of globalisation as it novella about the relationships that consume us Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 is a scenic view of our modern world, and the when we’re least expecting it. Winner of the cultures that exist within it. 2013 Viva La Novella Prize. Amid the chaos of sweeping Transactions is Alizadeh’s first major bushfires, Persia gives birth work since his acclaimed book of poetry, THE BOOKMAN’S TALE: A alone at home with tragic Gotland Ashes in the Air, which was shortlisted for the NOVEL OF OBSESSION consequences. Traumatised and By Fiona Capp Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in 2012. It is grieving, she travels north and $24.99 a collection of short stories heavily shaped Charlie Lovett encounters Ahmed, a refugee Shy and idealistic, Text. PB. $29.99 Esther Chatwin is by his personal experiences as a migrant fleeing deportation and his past australia’s reluctant from Iran, with many of the pieces set on the Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Shattered in Pakistan. So begins a road trip to the dead First lady. She longs to return to the fringes of Eastern and Western society. There by the death of his beloved heart of Australia, a journey that explores anonymity of her old is a Ukrainian prostitute in Amsterdam and wife, Amanda, Peter Byerly has continents and centuries, identity and connection, life. But her husband’s sudden political her reclusive neighbour who has escaped the relocated from North Carolina all cloaked in a glorious haze of magic realism. success has turned tyranny of Iran, a Liberian woman desperately the media spotlight to the English countryside. on her and her only escape is to Gotland, seeking asylum, and a rich Emirati girl whose There, the young antiquarian the fabled island in the Baltic Sea that she father’s wealth has made her indulgent and loves. a special place, it’s also home to the bookseller hopes to rediscover International enigmatic sculptor Sven, another idealist cruel. These are just some of the characters in the joy he once took in collecting and restoring with a troubled past. Transactions, many of whom are testaments rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth- Gotland is a startlingly evocative and Fiction timely portrait of the cost paid by those to globalisation’s unnerving capacity to inflict century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is who are drawn into the public spotlight human suffering in forgotten regions of the shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles against their will. THE QUARRY world. Some are excessively wealthy and out. Of course, it isn’t really her. The watercolour extravagant, while others are hopelessly poor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is Iain Banks Little, Brown. PB. Was $29.99 and vulnerable. uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with With only a handful of pages to craft learning the picture’s origins. As he follows the Special price $24.95 each story, Alizadeh manages to cultivate trail back to the Victorian era and Shakespeare’s Review: Scottish writer Iain powerful themes and compelling characters, time, Peter communes with Amanda’s spirit and Banks first appeared on the provoking strong emotional reactions with each learns the truth about his own past. literary scene in 1984 with his thE FirE new turn. A remarkable work. novel The Wasp Factory. He WitnESS went on to write 26 more By lars Kepler Dexter Gilman is a freelance reviewer TRACES OF ABSENCE books, often crossing genres to $29.99 Susan Holoubek he is the tall, silent, GOTLAND Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 write science fiction under the Finnish–Swedish man name of Iain M. Banks. with the grey eyes. Fiona Capp When Dee’s daughter, Corrie, he sees and records The Quarry is set in the north of everything. his name HarperCollins. PB. $24.99 decides to spend her gap year England during the present day, as a group of is Joona linna and he in Argentina, it seems like the is the Chief inspector Review: In 2009, Fiona friends gather at the house of Guy, who is dying at the national Police perfect solution to their strained in Stockholm. one of the most proficient Capp spent part of a summer of cancer. The Quarry is narrated by Kit, Guy’s relationship. That is, until Corrie police investigators, Joona linna is also at the Baltic Writers and son, who lives with and cares for his father. someone with a painful past that constantly goes missing. Facing every drives him to seek justice in cases that reflect Translators Centre in Visby on ‘Your average person has a pair of parents,’ Kit mother’s worst nightmare, Dee his own major trauma, especially where the Swedish island of Gotland. remarks in the opening paragraphs, and, as the families are involved. boards a plane from Australia to launch a frantic Her time there has provided story unfolds, we learn that Kit is neither average although a highly respected and professional search. Four years later, Dee returns to Buenos police officer, Joona linna is not afraid to an exotic and compelling nor in possession of two parents. The identity use unconventional methods to solve crimes. Aires for what she concedes may be the last in the Fire Witness, he enlists the help of backdrop for her new novel. of his mother preoccupies Kit greatly, and Guy time. But on this visit, a fresh lead triggers a new a medium to further understand the truth Esther is a primary school teacher, uses this mystery to torment his son. Guy also behind brutal killings. search – one where Dee must place her trust in confident and sure in her profession and her takes perverse pleasure in torturing his friends, strangers to help her navigate the vibrant but ability to relate to her pupils. Yet this confidence particularly rising Labour Party hero Paul, about often threatening city. belies a long-standing social reticence. Esther the existence of a certain video they made in their has married her lover from her university days, student days. The friends search frantically for it, David, a charismatic student politician who went MR WIGG fearing the consequences should it be uncovered on to forge a successful academic career. David Inga Simpson after Guy’s death. was later persuaded by his old friend and mentor, Hachette. PB. $26.99 There is very little to like about most Gerald, the leader of the country’s opposition of the characters in The Quarry, several of whom It’s the summer of 1971. Mr party, to embark on a political career. When seem to have barely matured since university. Kit SavaGE tidE Wigg lives on what is left of his Gerald suddenly dies, David is seen as ‘the is the most endearing, and it is his relationship By Greg Barron family farm, not far from the $29.99 honest broker’ who can cut through the political with Holly, one of Guy’s friends, that makes for the stone-fruit capital of New South the second race- cant and lead the party out of its wilderness. most interesting reading. She is the closest thing against-time thriller Wales. Mrs Wigg has been While pleased for David, Esther is apprehensive that Kit has to a mother, and it is her advice and from the author of gone a few years now and he rottEn GodS, in about his ability to maintain the values that they encouragement that ultimately help shape him. the tradition of le thinks about her every day. He Carre, ludlum and share. Moreover, she’s doubly anxious about Banks announced in April this year spends his time working in the orchard, cooking Clancy. taking on a prominent public role. The polls point that he was dying of gall bladder cancer, and his intelligence officer and preserving his produce. It’s a full life. Things to a certain win for David’s party, a victory that publishers brought forward the release date of Marika hartmann are changing though, with his new neighbours captures an extremist will no doubt result in even more pressure. Then The Quarry so that he might live to see it hit the foot-soldier guilty of a massacre of school planting grapes for wine, and his son on at him Esther’s older sister Ros, a successful UK-based shelves. Very sadly, the novelist passed away in children and aid workers in Southern Somalia. to move into town. But Mr Wigg has his fruit renditioned to a Cia ‘black site’ in djibouti, criminal lawyer, invites her to spend a few weeks early June, just days before the book’s release. the prisoner hints at a terror plot in the trees and his chooks to look after, and a special making. on the remote island of Gotland. For Esther, it is project he has yet to finish... Sharon Peterson is from Readings Carlton Marika and ex-Special Forces colleague PJ a chance to grab some anonymity and reassess Johnson team up to investigate, uncovering a cold-blooded conspiracy that will decimate her future. the cities of the West. Gotland is a lovely, gentle novel that THE PAGODA TREE THE HIVE From the refugee camps of East africa to the nevertheless confronts some pretty big ideas. A Claire Scobie Gill Hornby azure waters off the iranian coast, the marshes of iraq to Syria’s parched eastern desert, very rewarding read. Penguin. PB. $29.99 Little, Brown. PB. Was $29.99 SavaGE tidE is a manhunt, a quest for Special price $24.95 truth, and a desperate search for the legacy of Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director Tanjore, southern India, 1765. a cruel regime bent on dominating the world. Like her mother before her, Review: The hype around MIDNIGHT BLUE AND Maya is destined to become a Gill Hornby’s The Hive has set devadasi, a dancer for the the publishing world abuzz ENDLESSLY TALL temple. She is instructed in the (pun intended). The novel is a Jane Jervis-Read mystical arts and it is expected social comedy that focuses on Seizure. PB. $14.99 that she will be chosen as a a year in the life of a small When Jessica, a recently courtesan for the prince himself. But India is on English primary school and its divorced mental-health carer, the cusp of change: British dominance has main powerbrokers – the mothers. We love a good story meets her new patient, Eloise, risen to new heights and the city is sliding into There is of course a complex social their lives quickly become war. Maya is forced to flee to Madras, where network of characters. Bea (short for Beatrice) entangled and the boundaries East and West collide. There, she meets is the Queen Bee in the school hierarchy, and of their roles begin to dissolve. Thomas Pearce, an ambitious young the chair of the fundraising committee. Until Questions from the past are Englishman who is entranced from the moment now, Rachel had always been her offsider, but uncovered, revealing the fractured histories that he sees her. But their love is forbidden and recently separated from her husband, Rachel comes at enormous cost. finds herself abandoned by Bea and forced to READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 7 watch from the sidelines. Heather, previously THE LIST OF MY DESIRES dowdy and overlooked, is swept up by Bea Gregoire Delacourt and her crowd, made-over, included in the W&N. HB. $24.99 daily exercise regime and awarded the role of secretary of the committee. Heather increasingly Review: This sweet and sad becomes Bea’s PA: running errands for her, novel has been one of the top picking up and feeding her children, and ten bestselling books in France pandering to her every need. since its publication in February This particular school year brings 2012, and really, this makes three newcomers. One is the dishy school perfect sense, for here is a principal, Mr Orchard. Another, Melissa, confidently told story about is described by Rachel as ‘the promising possibilities. Jocelyne is 47 years old. Her newbie’. And then there’s Deborah Green (‘call children have left home and she runs a me Bubba’) – the main threat to Bea – who dressmaking shop as well as a related sewing introduces herself to the group: ‘We’re so blog. She is ordinary in the sense that we all are Saroo Brierley became lost on a train in India at the age Tanjore, 1765. Maya is instructed in dance, the of five. Not knowing his name or where he was from, mystical arts and lovemaking. It is expected she will glad we chose St Ambrose. Perfect. Gad. The ordinary: she dreams a little and wants a little, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before be chosen as a courtesan for the prince himself. But private sector! Escapees. Never again.’ Bubba but overall she loves her life. As for us all, it being adopted by a couple in Australia. Twenty-five India is on the cusp of change and British dominance years later, using the new invention of Google Earth, has risen to new heights. The prince is losing his volunteers for the committee and makes prolific could be better. Or could it? Saroo miraculously rediscovered his home town. power and the city is sliding into war. Maya becomes suggestions based on her self-proclaimed Jocelyne wins the EuroMillions Then he set off on a journey to find his mother. involved with a young Englishman, but their love is forbidden, and comes at enormous cost... extensive experience in marketing and PR. lottery, 18 million euros to be exact, but does Needless to say, this incurs the wrath of Bea, not tell anyone. She needs time to examine the who plots Bubba’s downfall. possibilities, to make a list of what she really Who will triumph as Queen, and wants. She thinks about being happy, and what will poor Mr Orchard survive the year? If that means. Will purchasing a new television you’ve ever been entertained by schoolyard for her husband make his life better? As she politics, this lighthearted winter read is for deliberates, she draws up a list of desires you. Hornby has four children herself and and contemplates the true meaning of worth. was inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Gradually, her blog takes off and she becomes Bees and Wannabees, a book that looks at the famous, her shop a popular destination. Still, relationships between teenage girls. She felt the she tells no one of her win. dynamics were equally applicable to playground Exquisitely written, this story at mums. The Hive is an easy, enjoyable read times reads like a modern fable in disguise. It peppered with humorous insights into parenting, does seem like there is a lesson to be learnt. friendships, marriages and small communities. Will money make you happier? Will giving the money away make Jocelyne richer in soul? Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn Thankfully, the ending has an acidic twist that Defence lawyer Will Harris is reluctantly drawn into The discovery in 2008 of unmarked mass graves, a bizarre murder trial. A terminally ill man claims to holding the remains of hundreds of Australian takes the novel away from being too sugar- have witnessed the brutal crime – in a vision. More soldiers who died in the Battle of Fromelles in France AMERICAN DREAM coated, landing it smack-bang in dark reality. So than just a media circus, the trial is Will’s first big in WWI, sparked a mission to reclaim their identities. case since the tragic death of his fiancée. With the Key players in the identification project tell how they MACHINE French, one could argue … or simply so real it pressure mounting, Will finds himself torn between pieced together fragments of information from relics, Matthew Specktor hurts. A treat to read. following the law and seeking justice. military records and family histories in their quest to A dark powerful thriller from a talented new voice. tell the diggers’ untold stories. Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 Chris Gordon is Readings’ events Review: At the beginning of coordinator Matthew Specktor’s second novel, American Dream THE CASUAL VACANCY Machine, a young Beau J.K. Rowling Rosenwald is given a copy of Little, Brown. PB. $19.99 Coriolanus and some parting Released 19 July words of advice from his A brilliant, charming and mentor: ‘The story of one bloodbath can The little town of Pagford prepare you for the next.’ Beau, an aspiring is a place seemingly heart-warming novel about illicit love, talent agent, is leaving New York for Hollywood, brimming with English idyll – where ‘slow fucking is what they do best’. But picturesque lanes, a cobbled sewing, blackouts and Belfast. Los Angeles is also the spiritual homeland of market square and a beautiful any talent agent worth his salt, and Beau, son of ancient abbey. Yet Pagford a Queens shoemaker, is hungry for success. is not what it seems. Behind Narrated by Beau’s illegitimate this pretty facade lies a parish at war: rich at son, Nate, American Dream Machine is an war with poor, teenagers at war with parents, epic, freewheeling romp through Hollywood. wives at war with husbands. What’s more, Spanning two generations, it tells of Beau’s rise Barry Fairweather’s unexpected death, and to become one of Tinseltown’s elite, and Nate’s the local council seat that he leaves behind, struggle to find himself in the tumultuous wake is set to bring it all to the fore. Who will win in of his father. It also charts the changes in the an election fraught with passion, duplicity and movie business, from the decline of the Golden unexpected revelations? The Casual Vacancy Age in the late 60s through to the corporate- is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults, now driven blockbusters of the present day. As the available in paperback. son of a successful Hollywood agent and a former film executive himself, Specktor knows THE AFTERMATH this history well. Rhidian Brook LA is lovingly rendered through Viking. PB. $29.99 descriptions of Sunset Boulevard, Santa Ana winds and massive film lots. Stars are equally Hamburg, 1946. Thousands part of the geography, and Specktor weaves remain displaced in what is now Jack Nicholson, ‘Marty’ Scorsese and ‘Bob’ the British Occupied Zone. De Niro into his narrative, often with comedic Charged with overseeing the results. The opening features a younger, not- rebuilding of this devastated so-famous George Clooney cavorting around city and the de-Nazification of You'd think that mending clothes would be an uneventful, town, smoking joints and singing soul classics its defeated people, Colonel uncomplicated occupation. No drama, no unnecessary in the bottom of an emptied swimming pool. The Lewis Morgan requisitions a fine house on the explanations, no personal involvement. But people love to fictional characters in turn are a ragtag bunch of banks of the Elbe, where he will be joined by his talk, and as they make their excuses to GoGo Sligo they actors, agents, washed-up beauties and stoners, grieving wife, Rachael, and only remaining son, reveal the holes in their stories as well. It doesn't take long but Specktor does well developing them beyond Edmund. But rather than force its owners, a for GoGo to get to the truth behind the rips and tears they've the stereotypical. German widower and his traumatised daughter, brought her to fix. to leave their home, Lewis insists that the two As a novel, American Dream Machine reads almost like a product of Hollywood itself: families live together. In this charged and often overly sentimental, glamorous and brash. claustrophobic atmosphere, all must confront their true selves as enmity and grief give way to Joseph Rubbo is from Readings Carlton passion and betrayal. 8 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013

APPLE TREE YARD has never met. She is beautiful, urbane, witty and damaged. And as they email, chat and Skype, Louise Doughty Leila becomes enveloped in Tess’s world, learning Faber. PB. $29.99 Growing up with Jane Eyre every single thing she can about the other woman Yvonne Carmichael has the – because soon, Leila will have to become her. picture-perfect life: a high-flying Kiss Me First is a chilling novel of stolen identity, MICHELLE LAW RECALLS HER FIRST READING ADDICTION, career in genetics and a impersonation, naivety and desperation. ESCAPING INTO JANE EYRE AS A SUNSHINE COAST TEEN. beautiful home complete with loving husband and two grown- PERFECT up children. Then one day she Rachel Joyce meets a stranger and begins a Doubleday. PB. $24.95 passionate affair. As the relationship deepens, her careful plans begin to spiral into greater In 1972, two seconds were deceit, leading to a life-changing act of violence. added to time. This was in order Apple Tree Yard is a psychological thriller about to balance clock time with the the values we live by and the choices we make. movement of the earth. Byron Hemming knows this because 2121 James Lowe, the cleverest boy in school, told him. Then Susan Greenfield IMAGE DETAIL: FROM COVER OF JANE EYRE (RANDOM HOUSE, 1943) IMAGE DETAIL: Byron’s mother, late for the school run, makes a Head of Zeus. PB. $27.99 devastating mistake, and Byron’s perfect world is Back in the early thousands, Christopher Lee was interviewed about his role as Saruman in the Lord of In the near future, humanity has shattered. Were those two extra seconds to the Rings films. ‘How did you prepare?’ asked the journalist. Lee replied that he did little preparation. He experienced a great schism. One blame, and can what follows ever be set right? was already familiar with the character from re-reading the trilogy every year. I allowed Lee’s response to group, known simply as the sink in. Wouldn’t you get bored of reading the same books? What could you gain from those readings? Others, are ruled by instinct and And would no 12-page Elven song stop you? I could only conclude that Lee had lost his mind in his THE STORY OF MY PURITY pleasure. They are ageless and old age. Back then, I didn’t realise that Lee – an expert fencer, multilinguist, Dracula, former Nazi hunter Francesco Pacifico beautiful, wholly dependent on and past Guinness World Record holder for ‘tallest leading actor’ – is a badass who should be taken Hamish Hamilton. PB. $27.99 technology to sustain them. Into seriously. Because sometimes, a book will come along that changes your life forever. this hyperreal community walks Fred, the first Thirty years old and trapped in a I’ve read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë countless times since discovering it six years visitor from a far-off land. His people are the N-Ps, sexless marriage, Piero Rosini ago. Over time, it has become gospel to me, possibly because I’m a religionless toad, but probably governed only by logic. Initially revolted by the has decides to dedicate his life because it’s a damn fine book. It’s special to me because it came at a time in my life when I needed it mindless solipsism of the Others, Fred finds to Jesus. He moves to an most, and because it helped me understand the significance of books and reading. himself drawn slowly into their world. He begins to unfinished housing development As a teenager, I saw books as escapism. I grew up on the Sunshine Coast, something I’d change, and to affect the minds of those around on the outskirts of Rome and recommend to any youngster with a penchant for the sun, surf and tank tops, and not for any youngster him in ways that may not be to their benefit. throws himself into his work at who is Chinese, myopic and bookish, like me. I was different to my peers in every way and I desperately an ultraconservative Catholic publishing house, wanted to fit in. I tried swimming (failed) and buying Billabong board shorts (failed). I wanted to go editing books that highlight the decadence and to parties where I could wear make-up and kiss boys, but I was prohibited from attending any due to CHILDREN OF THE degradation of modern society. Yet still Piero is my mum’s belief that they resulted in drunkenness, lewdness and pregnancy. (To her credit, most of JACARANDA TREE suffocating. He can’t get his beautiful sister-in-law these assumptions were true.) It was, she assured me, best to stay home. She needn’t have worried, Sahar Delijani out of his head and temptations, both physical as throughout most of my adolescence I was a willing prisoner. At the start of high school, all my hair Orion. PB. $29.99 and intellectual, are breaking down his religious fell out from alopecia. I had few friends, I was bullied, and I couldn’t bear being stared at when I left the resolve. He decides to flee to Paris. A move house. So I was content to stay indoors and live vicariously through books. Deep in Tehran’s Evin Prison, which, as it turns out, might not be the best way At night, after Mum fell asleep, I would make peanut butter on toast and some black tea Azar gives birth to a baby girl. of guarding his purity. and sit at the kitchen table under the brightest light and read until dawn. I loved the different worlds Corridors away, Amir is making in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Harry Potter was important to me because I was around the same a bracelet out of date stones. He age as Harry upon each book’s release. The Virgin Suicides reinforced my growing sense that the hopes that one day his daughter THE UNKNOWNS suburbs were both thrilling and oppressive. Maus taught me history when I struggled to understand will hold it in her hands. From Gabriel Roth it in dusty tomes. I loved books, but I didn’t feel much towards them besides the dull recognition this time of revolution, Sahar Text. PB. $29.99 that they were entertaining. To me, they only helped pass the time. Delijani‘s epic novel leaps outwards to follow the Eric Muller has been trying to In my final semester of Grade 12, my English teacher – a vivacious American woman whom lives of three children, all of whom will go into solve the girlfriend problem I loved, who baked us pumpkin pie on Halloween, who pissed herself laughing when we all thought exile, find love and, finally, return home to Iran to his whole life, but the truth is West Egg and East Egg in The Great Gatsby were literally giant eggs – handed me a faded library copy confront the terrible legacies passed from one he’s better at programming of Jane Eyre and told me to read it. It was a withered paperback with torn and yellowed pages. On the generation to the next. computers than interacting with cover, a cartoon Jane rendered in purple and teal stood in a dark hallway illuminated by candlelight. human beings. So when he falls I practically disappeared during the fortnight it took me to finish the book. I spoke little. I THE ILLUSION OF for Maya Marcom, a beautiful moved little. I forgot to eat and drink. Mum would make hourly stops at my bedroom door to check SEPARATENESS and fiercely opinionated young journalist, that I was still alive, bearing nuts and juice for sustenance. I read Jane Eyre on the car ride to and Simon Van Booy and – miraculously – she falls for him too, from school, and on trips to Woolworths on the weekend. When I brushed my teeth, I held my Text. PB. $22.99 he’s in uncharted territory. But his perfect new toothbrush in one hand and the book in the other. When I flossed, I held the book down with my girlfriend’s past is troubled by something dark foot on the basin. All that mattered to me at the time was Jane and what happened to her. And as I Inspired by true events, The and unresolved, which sends Eric’s obsessive read, it became apparent, however vaguely, that I was growing up. Illusion of Separateness tells the mind spiralling into confusion. Can he reconcile In Jane, I saw traits that I admired and coveted. Here was a strong, independent, kind, interwoven stories of characters his need for order and logic with the mystery intelligent woman who persisted despite being mistreated, friendless and plain. I liked that she was who, at their darkest moments, and chaos of love? an outsider with a personality and sexuality, and it was because of these things, and not despite discover that they were never them, that she found happiness. It was important to me that she stayed true to herself, and that others alone. There’s a lonely British valued this quality in her. As a 17-year-old with all of my frustrations and vulnerabilities seemingly child on the brink of starvation, magnified and acutely felt, I clung toJane Eyre like a beacon of hope. I was astounded that a stranger a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Science Fiction who lived centuries ago had created someone with whom I could empathise so profoundly, and Santa Monica, and a deformed German moreover, that there were readers who had lived and died before me who felt the same way. Jane infantryman. Through seemingly random acts of THE LONG WAR Eyre showed me that writers could do magic things: they could make you feel less alone. selflessness, each has a part to play in the Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter At present, I own four copies of Jane Eyre. There is one for reading (a Vintage Classic), others’ lives, lifting the veil to reveal the Random. PB. Was $32.95 connections we cannot always see. one to lend (a Popular Penguin), one to treasure (a Random House hardback with engravings from Special price $27.95 the 1940s), and one to bring to the toilet (a shabby Reader’s Digest edition I found at a Lifeline Bookfest). I read many different authors and genres each year, but time and time again I find myself KISS ME FIRST A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has returning to Jane Eyre. Each re-reading draws from me new responses to characters and events; Lottie Moggach the book acts as a centre point for who I am and how I am changing. spread across the new worlds Picador. PB. Was $30 I have no idea why The Lord of the Rings is important to Christopher Lee, but I like to opened up by Stepping. A new Special price $24.95 think it’s because he connected with the story so strongly that when he read it he spoke little, ‘America’, called Valhalla, has moved little, ate little and spent most of his waking hours thinking about it. I like to think on how we When Leila discovers the website emerged more than a million return to these books like a security blanket, or the company of a good friend. We seek them for Red Pill, an online forum for steps from Datum Earth, but is comfort, familiarity, insight and the reassurance that we aren’t as alone as we once thought. ethical debate, she feels like she growing restless under the control of the Datum has finally found people who government. Meanwhile, back on the Long Earth, By Michelle Law understand her. And when Red the trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s Pill’s founder, the brilliant and thoughtless exploitation. Joshua, now a married Michelle Law is a Brisbane-based writer and screenwriter whose work has appeared in elusive Adrian, invites her to be man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with the Women of Letters, Destroying the Joint and Meanjin. She works at Avid Reader Bookshop part of the mysterious ‘Project Tess’, she’s both gathering crises, all of which threaten to plunge and is currently developing an ABC documentary called Keep Me Safe Tonight. flattered and thrilled. Tess is a woman whom Leila us into a war unlike any seen before. READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 9

until his expertise is called upon by his old deputy, Mike Burden. Additionally, the reverend book New Crime Dead Write in question was Sarah Hussain, a single mother with Fiona Hardy of mixed heritage. Not the usual type to be seen of on the pulpit, Hussain was unfortunately not universally adored in quaint old Kingsmarkham. the But who would hate her enough to strangle her? BLOOD WITNESS LIGHT OF THE WORLD month Alex Hammond James Lee Burke THE FIRE WITNESS Lars Kepler Penguin. PB. $29.99 Orion. PB. Was $29.99 THE DYING BEACH Special price $24.95 HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 Will Harris is still reeling from Angela Savage the death of his beloved Louisianan detective Dave Lars Kepler’s third book in this Text. PB. $29.99 fiancée when his law firm Robicheaux is having a series sees Detective Joona Review: Australian-born private investigator takes on a murder trial, with vacation in picturesque Linna at a home for troubled girls, Jayne Keeney now lives in Thailand and is him as the primary solicitor. Montana with his family and looking into a strange murder enjoying a holiday in Krabi, along with her There’s a teenage girl dead in partner when all hell breaks and a missing patient. His business partner and lover, Rajiv. The country a river, and it’s Will’s job to loose. A prison truck investigation into the case opens continues to seduce her with scenic tours and defend the man suspected of killing her. Then transporting serial killer Asa up more questions at every turn. locations, until she requests another trip with her the case takes on a bizarre twist, with a hit to Surrette collides with an oil tanker. Surrette is Plus there’s Flora Hansen to deal with, a psychic favourite guide, the affable Pla, only to discover Will’s personal life. Soon, he has more than presumed dead by the authorities, but who is not always a purveyor of truth, but knows that Pla’s lifeless body was discovered floating in a just paperwork to deal with. Blood Witness is Robicheaux’s daughter, Alafair, swears she more about the case than she should. The Fire cave that morning. The cause of death is found to a true Melbourne thriller, replete with violence, sees him in Montana. With Alafair on Surrette’s Witness is instantly exciting, and it twists and turns be drowning, but Jayne, ever enmeshed in the drugs, justice and redemption. to-do list, the safety of everyone is towards a nail-biting finish. compromised. James Lee Burke is a master of lives of others, is suspicious. It’s a hunch that gets literary crime and rightly so – his writing is THREE GRAVES FULL some traction when someone else close to Pla is DEAD CAT BOUNCE summarily killed, and thus Jayne, another crime relentlessly tense, making him an author to Jamie Mason Peter Cotton adore if you don’t already. protagonist doomed to never enjoy a vacation, Scribe. PB. $29.95 Scribe. PB. $29.95 rolls up her sleeves and dives into Pla’s past. Days before a federal election, NO MAN’S NIGHTINGALE Mild-mannered Jason Getty is The Dying Beach is a detective story sitting on a secret – namely, a rich in Thai culture. It touches on the environmental a generally admired Ruth Rendell government minister is found body he’s buried in the effects of tourism and the impact of economic Random. PB. Was $32.95 dead on the banks of Lake backyard, and one that won’t progress on a country famed for its natural beauty. Special price $27.95 Burley Griffin. The murder has give him any respite. Unable to Foreigners fly in, wanting to change the world, yet been carefully orchestrated, Inspector Wexford’s twenty- face the idea of gardening, he they are unable to help bringing their own values and how it is handled could fourth escapade shows not only hires a landscaper to fix up the and expectations with them, something even change the outcome of the election and the that detectives can’t relax on front and side lawns, unearthing two more bodies, longtime residents Jayne and Rajiv can be guilty future of our hero, Detective Darren Glass (who, holiday, but also that they neither of which Jason knew about. Three Graves of. Jayne, who can speak Thai and knock about as it happens, isn’t shy around ministerial shouldn’t bother retiring. When Full is teeming with Hitchcockian suspense, and with the best of them, is an endearing character to royalty or particularly lovely lady journalists). But Wexford’s housekeeper finds a with a madcap storyline involving a killer, a follow, even when her determination brings about it soon turns out that the crime is just the body in the vicarage – that of grieving widow, a police dog and a tangle with a dangers, both physical and emotional, that she beginning of a very rough campaign ... the reverend, no less – he remains uninterested decomposing corpse. An unexpected delight. may not be able to survive.

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elements feel like safer territory and the book romance is barely there. Teenage hero Danika Glynn is brave of and considerate, with hardly a chink in her armour. Orphaned under King Morrigan’s deadly reign – his army uses alchemic bombs to keep the order – Danika lives on the streets. One night she seizes the opportunity to escape the city month walls and tag onto a team of youngsters, all with different reasons for risking their lives in the CHASING THE VALLEY pursuit of freedom from tyranny. Skye Melki-Wegner The crew’s focus is the Valley, the only place safe from Morrigan’s weaponry. They Random. PB. $17.95 have giant creatures called foxaries on their orgotten War continues the Review: From young Australian author side and are each developing a ‘proclivity’ – a story told in Henry Reynolds’ F Skye Melki-Wegner comes another addition to magical power connected to a specific aspect seminal book The Other Side of the the dystopian-fantasy genre. Yet there’s more of nature, such as Beast, Darkness or Fire. But Frontier, which argued that the alchemy than brutality to Chasing the Valley, after Danika inadvertently shoots down one of settlement of Australia had a high and I’d recommend this one to a range of the king’s bomber planes, they also have a price level of violence and conflict that we chose to ignore. This powerful younger readers, from the keen 9-year-olds on their heads. Action-packed and entertaining. who love Percy Jackson right up to Hunger book makes it clear that there Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton can be no reconciliation without Games fans in their early teens. The fantasy acknowledging the wars fought on our own soil. THE BIG DRY The Accident is about families – how Tony Davis they hurt and how they are mended. It explores how random events can spur crucial changes and HarperCollins. PB. $15.99 how one pivotal moment can transform your life. Review: George and his younger brother Beeper are Kim Gruschow is from Readings Hawthorn home alone, desperately hoping their father will return THE KEY TO THE after he went to the shops and GOLDEN FIREBIRD www.newsouthbooks.com.au never came back. It hasn’t Maureen Johnson rained for years and times are Hot Key. PB. $19.95 tough for everyone. The landscape is getting increasingly more arid: buildings have cracked Review: After their dad dies, and collapsed, the electricity tower has the lives of May and her sisters NOW PLAYING crashed and the phones have stopped are changed forever. The family working. Dust is also everywhere – getting in have been left with little money, through cracks in the windows and doors, and and May’s mum has started MTC infiltrating water, throats and lungs. In such a working night shifts to help climate, people have reverted to a survivalist keep them financially afloat. mentality, remaining distrustful and violent. May is left to look after her sisters, Brooks and Some disappear and are never seen again. Palmer, but to do this, she needs her licence. SOLOMON This is where Pete, an annoying prankster and The boys make one attempt to venture out in search of their father, but then a strange girl family friend, comes in – he’s the only one lets herself into their house and threatens around who can teach her to drive and help her AND MARION what little security they have left there. pass the one test she has failed in her life. With an atmosphere similar to that of While May is busy trying to keep by Lara Foot The Road, but of course for young adults, this everything together, Brooks is slowly and is a dystopian world where climate change has destructively falling apart with the help of her sort- wreaked havoc on lives and landscapes. Tony of-boyfriend, Dave. Meanwhile, Palmer is quietly Davis is an experienced writer who is admirably watching and trying to cope with the loss. in charge of his material. Suitable for readers This is Maureen Johnson’s first ever aged 12 and up. novel. Originally published in the US in 2004, it is finally being released here in Australia. Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda Told from the perspectives of the three sisters, The Key to the Golden Firebird tackles family, THE ACCIDENT loss and love, and is a perfect example of why BEST NEW SOUTH Kate Hendrick Johnson has been crowned the Queen of Teen. AFRICAN PLAY Text. PB. $19.99 If you love Maureen Johnson (and boy I do!), Fleur du Cap Award (2011) then you will love this. For ages 13 and up. Review: Kate Hendrick’s A powerful story of race, debut traces the butterfly effect of Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn hope and friendship a fatal car crash on a stormy night, following the lives of three STRAY Much loved television and stage favourite teenagers who each narrate a Monica Hesse Gillian Jones, known for her roles in Love My part of the book. Sarah is Way, Packed to the Rafters, and The Slap, joins Hot Key. PB. $16.95 recovering both physically and Pacharo Mzembe in an intimate and moving For 23 hours a day, children portrait of post-apartheid South Africa. mentally from the accident. She is attending a new school and trying to move ahead, but her family like Lona, who’ve been has suffered a terrible loss and her home life has abandoned by their original 7 June — 20 July been irrevocably changed. Will’s family is troubled families, experience a happy Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio too. His mother suffers from a depressive illness childhood life virtually, through Book at mtc.com.au or artscentremelbourne.com.au and his older sister has returned from time away the eyes of Julian. But for just noticeably different. Eliat is attending high school one hour a day, Lona can think for herself. When she meets a group of young MTC is a department of the University of Melbourne and raising a young child. She grew up without a family and is struggling to learn how to be a part of rebels and uncovers a deadly secret, her life will one herself. never be the same again. READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 11

One refreshing but sure-to-be- controversial point she raises is that ‘feminists are very good at telling other feminists what they should think – almost as good as men’. New Non-Fiction Thankfully, Goldsworthy has no such intentions. See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 15. Effortlessly researched, Goldsworthy’s essay is a clever conversation starter to mark this JULY RELEASES fauna is as tremendously tropical, outlandish election year and QE’s fiftieth issue. and bizarre as its residents. And therein lies the Emily Laidlaw is a freelance reviewer book beauty of the book, because, for all its utopianism, gentrification and bogans, it’s clear that the hills around Byron Bay still retain the FOR GOD’S SAKE of contradictions and harmonies that have earned Jane Caro, Antony Loewenstein, it a place in our hearts. Simon Smart & Rachel Woodlock the Through more than 60 short vignettes, Pan Mac. PB. $32.99 each only a few pages long, we encounter Review: Religion, in its month prehistoric koalas, meat-eating ants, ghost various forms, has delivered dogs, dung-beetles, swamp-hens, legendary both immeasurable joy and bulls, horny echidnas, paralysis ticks, yowies, FORGOTTEN WAR terrible conflict throughout thylacines and drongos. But of course, in this Henry Reynolds history. Currently, many ‘Kidnap, murder and part of the world, snakes and toads prevail. New South. PB. $29.99 ‘neo-atheists’ predict the mayhem ... Canberra’s In fact, the number of times we see these corridors of power become death of organised religion Review: There is a violence in Australia’s ubiquitous reptiles makes you wonder if the the mean streets of crime within a generation. In For God’s Sake, four history that few are prepared to acknowledge, photo of the Snake Man that accompanies the fiction.’ — LAURIE OAKES prominent thinkers address and debate the argues Henry Reynolds, for the country that book’s epigraphs isn’t some ironic self-portrait. differences and commonalities between their venerates the Anzac also fails to recognise the However, this overlapping is far from tedious. various faiths (or non-faiths), and the place of Aboriginal Australians who perished fighting for Stories and characters intersect, creating a religion in the modern world, both in relation their traditional homelands. sense of community and return. One particular to the self and to society. In Forgotten War, Reynolds local’s trouble with his Russian bride is Journalist Antony Loewenstein is discusses the numerous conflicts that took especially heartfelt. But, as Drewe writes, ‘what’s culturally Jewish but spiritually an atheist. place on the continent between the 1790s an animal story without a sentimental finish?’ For him, the conflation of politics and religion and 1920s. Conservative estimates suggest In many respects, this collection (particularly the tendency to view criticism of that approximately 30 000 people died on could be what Drewe calls, in ‘The Attraction of Israel as anti-Semitic) is particularly troubling. the Australian frontier – 90% of whom were Crocodiles’, his ‘annual round-up of Australian Atheist commentator Jane Caro writes in a Indigenous. From the systematic annihilation stupidity’. After all, these characters are style that is often blunt but always deeply of the Tasmanian Aborigines under Governor quintessentially Australian, caught in the lens personal. For Caro, there is great peace in George Arthur to the customary killing of ‘native of a master with an eye for the absurd. If we the idea of a logical but indifferent universe. pests’ by pastoral frontiersmen, Reynolds weren’t watching closely enough, we might think For Simon Smart, a Christian, there is no argues that Australia is a nation founded on it all almost normal. With his dry and humble ‘A fabulous story, brilliantly dichotomy between science and faith – they violent and bloody warfare, and that these wit, Drewe starts with one anecdote and lands told ... I couldn’t have merely answer different questions. Smart, events – and the people involved in them – us somewhere else, making us laugh when we enjoyed it more.’ — BILL while perhaps the most defensive in tone, should no longer remain officially ignored. least expect it. This is pleasant coffee-time stuff. BRYSON highlights the charity and compassion Considered by many to be the emphasised by Christianity as pivotal to the current leading historian on ‘the great Australian Luke May is a freelance writer freedoms of modern society. Perhaps the silence’, Reynolds has written Forgotten War most moving contributions are from Muslim with a remarkably straightforward and erudite QUARTERLY ESSAY 50: academic Rachel Woodlock, who writes with pen. Unlike Manning Clark’s History of Australia UNFINISHED BUSINESS: passion, clarity and humour on the joy (as or Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore, Forgotten SEX, FREEDOM AND illustrated by some staggeringly beautiful War does not depend on the lyrical, hyperbolic Qur’anic verses) she finds in a religion so often language sometimes used by Australian MISOGYNY misunderstood in the West. histories to evoke the brutality of the past. Anna Goldsworthy All, to varying degrees, describe Reynolds has remained scrutinisingly close Black Inc. PB. $19.99 fundamentalism in any religion as a ‘corruption’ to the sources he cites, and in doing so, he Review: In the introduction – as Woodlock writes, ‘because all the great has produced a book that is accessible for the to her Quarterly Essay traditions teach … compassion towards others, expert and the novice alike. Unfinished Business: Sex, where there is violence, barbarity, prejudice Forgotten War is Henry Reynolds’ Freedom and Misogyny, Anna and hatred … the tradition has been corrupted'. latest attempt to elevate the place of Aboriginal Goldsworthy opines that it’s While all four are passionate in Australians in the national consciousness. An never been a better time to be ‘Deftly weaves dark defending their beliefs and contesting one intelligent, challenging and informative work, it a woman in this country ‘on the humor into a plot that’s anothers', there are no attempts to proclaim has the potential to contribute a great deal to surface’. Surface is the key word here. Despite as complicated as a jigsaw a ‘winner’. The authors are always respectful, Australia’s understanding of itself. It is a broad the ascendency of women to key positions in puzzle but more fun to put insightful and open-minded. It is fascinating to together.’ — KIRKUS and meticulously researched overview of colonial government, big business and higher read each faith’s (often-conflicting but equally Australia’s treatment of Indigenous Australia, and education, women are still held to impossible ‘true’) answers to the same fundamental worthy of our most scrupulous attention. standards in what Goldsworthy labels an questions. Engrossing and enlightening, ‘image-centric culture’. Steve Bidwell-Brown is from Readings Carlton For God’s Sake is an important addition to a This superficial barometer, argues complex and ongoing discussion. Goldsworthy, limits the power and achievements of women who dare to break through the ever- Alan Vaarwerk is a freelance writer, editor Australian present glass ceiling. It’s what allows the Prime and proofreader based in Melbourne Minister to be ridiculed on national television for having a ‘fat arse’, or physically threatened on THE ABORIGINAL STORY Non-Fiction commercial radio, or called a ‘witch’ and other unprintable, gender-specific slurs. OF BURKE AND WILLS: THE LOCAL WILDLIFE Women, of course, have long been FORGOTTEN NARRATIVES A decade of the Best Robert Drewe held to oppressive physical standards and Ian D. Clark & Fred A. Cahir (eds.) Australian Political Hamish Hamilton. HB. $29.99 Goldsworthy is well aware of this. She sees the New South. HB. $59.95 Cartoons internet, particularly social media, as a double- Review: Robert Drewe is The Aboriginal Story of Burke edged sword for female empowerment. While This full-colour hardback is the dear uncle of Australian and Wills offers a reinterpretation a collection like no other — the web facilitates the spread of important letters: a book club favourite, a of the literature surrounding the brilliantly witty, and always footage such as Julia Gillard’s historic misogyny genial family man and a gent pair’s famous expeditions of insightful. speech, it also creates unsafe spaces rife with many of us have spent 1860–61. Drawing on official trolls and exploitative avenues. Goldsworthy Saturdays with – coffee in correspondence, journals, visual then segues into the ideology underpinning hand, The Age in our lap. A art, and archaeological and the pornography industry and what lies behind new book from him is like a companion linguistic research, as well as Aboriginal oral the success of pop-cultural phenomena such returned. In The Local Wildlife, we swim through histories and social memory, this book is a major as Girls and Fifty Shades of Grey, showing how pleasant whimsies and tales of the Northern study of Indigenous cross-cultural exchanges at a sexism is all-pervasive. Rivers – that exotic part of Australia where the seminal point in Australian history. 12 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013

BATTLERS & DIRT FILES: A DECADE Meet BILLIONAIRES: THE OF BEST AUSTRALIAN Biography STORY OF INEQUALITY POLITICAL CARTOONS the Bookseller A LONG WAY HOME Steve Bidwell-Brown, Readings Carlton IN AUSTRALIA Russ Radcliffe (ed.) Andrew Leigh Scribe. HB. $39.99 Saroo Brierley Viking. PB. Was $29.95 Black Inc. PB. $19.99 Based on the bestselling Special price $24.95 In Battlers & Billionaires, annual Best Australian Saroo Brierley’s use of Google Andrew Leigh weaves together Political Cartoons series, Earth to find his long-lost home history and statistics to Dirt Files features more than town half a world away made discuss why inequality matters 400 political cartoons from global headlines. Lost on a train – why it can be good, and why 2003 to 2012, providing a in India at the age of five, Saroo it can be harmful. For much of vivid collective account of a fractious decade. survived for weeks on the the twentieth century, Rather than simply focusing on the Canberra streets of Kolkata before he was economic inequality fell in Australia. Now, soap opera, it also interprets the key political adopted by an Australian couple. Always Leigh shows that disparity is returning to themes that have played out over the past ten What’s the strangest experience curious about his origins, he pored over levels not seen since the 1920s. But this time years – from war, globalisation and climate you’ve had in a bookshop? thousands of satellite images of India for it is not so much a case of the bottom falling change to the rise of China, changes in the landmarks he recognised, until one day he I once helped a budding Charlie Chaplin back, as the top accelerating away. Battlers & economy, the apology, and the treatment of found what he was looking for. He then set off impersonator find books about his hero. Billionaires sheds fresh light on what makes asylum seekers. A broad and insightful on a remarkable journey to find his mother. A He was a young method actor looking Australia distinctive and what it means to have reflection on Australian identity. true story of survival and triumph. to audition for a mime school in France. – and keep – a fair go. Our exchange generally consisted of me communicating with words and him DOWNFALL: HOW THE Cinema THE REASON I JUMP: ONE responding through mime. He’d pirouette LABOR PARTY RIPPED BOY’S VOICE FROM THE on his cane to agree with something, and SILENCE OF AUTISM strum his fake moustache when perturbed. ITSELF APART THE REVOLUTION Naoki Higashida (translated by It was a strange, beautiful language he was Aaron Patrick WAS TELEVISED trying to forge. HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 Alan Sepinwall K.A. Yoshida & David Mitchell) Black Inc. PB. $27.99 Sceptre. HB. $26.99 In 2007, Labor was one of the What’s the best experience you’ve Written by Naoki Higashida had in a bookshop? most successful centre-left Review: In the world of political parties in the world. online TV recapping, Alan when he was only 13, this book A couple of years ago I organised a poetry Freshly triumphant from a Sepinwall is not just a pioneer, explains the often baffling event with Polish poetry translator Marcel federal election, it controlled he’s a god. Sepinwall has been behaviour of autistic children Weyland at a bookshop in Sydney. He states across Australia. Six writing about TV for almost 20 and shows the way they think read and discussed a bunch of poems years later, the ALP is in a death years and was pivotal in and feel about the people he’d worked on, many of which were spiral. With Julia Gillard facing humiliating defeat bringing the practice of TV around them as well as being translated into English for the first in the forthcoming election, observers across recapping into the mainstream. His popular themselves. Naoki illuminates that autistic time. Some of the poems were found in the country are asking: how did it come to this? blog, What’s Alan Watching?, currently recaps people do possess imagination, humour and the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto after Here, Aaron Patrick examines the downward up to 15 shows per week. empathy, but also makes clear how badly they World War II, written by men who’d been spin, from corruption hearings and revelations In his book The Revolution Was need our compassion, patience and incarcerated by the Nazis and were about deals for mates and misuse of funds to Televised, Sepinwall combines his passion and understanding. David Mitchell and his wife have determined to pen their experiences. It was tales of faceless men exercising power for all the extensive knowledge of the industry to create translated Naoki’s book so that it might help an incredible event to attend. wrong reasons. a brilliant cultural history of the last 15 years. others dealing with autism, and generally He shows how TV has evolved from the poor illuminate a little-understood condition. What’s the best book you’ve read cousin of cinema to become a medium that now lately and why? WHY WE ARGUE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE features the most exciting acting, screenwriting Dal Stivens’ A Horse of Air. It’s an Australian and directing work of recent times. History novel about a wealthy mental patient who Eric Knight Sepinwall focuses on the 12 TV is encouraged to keep a diary and ends up Black Inc. PB. $19.99 dramas he believes have been the most THE INHERITOR’S POWDER recalling the time he chased an exotic parrot Climate change, one of the influential in the television revolution:Oz , The Sandra Hempel through the desert with a team of amateur most polarising issues of our Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Orion. PB. $29.99 naturalists. It’s one of those brilliant, out-of- time, has reached a political Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar In the nineteenth century, print Miles Franklin winners from the 1970s deadlock in the battle between Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men and poisoning with arsenic was that no local publisher has thought to re- sceptics and believers. But it Breaking Bad. He explains the importance of frighteningly easy. For a few release. It reads like an Australian Vladimir doesn’t have to be that way. In each and examines their iconic characters, pence and with few questions Nabokov writing his confessional equivalent Why We Argue About Climate particularly focusing on the recurring theme of asked, it was possible to buy of Tropic of Cancer – playfully cunning, Change, Eric Knight unpicks the misconceptions the male anti-hero, from Tony Soprano to Jack enough poison to kill off an fervently penned, full of animal insights and that keep us arguing about the nature of the Bauer, Don Draper to Walter White. entire family, hence arsenic’s all about the nature of first-world freedom problem and stop us from seeing possible Each chapter is filled with fascinating popular name: the Inheritor’s Powder. Yet if solutions. As politicians and commentators stories of how the shows were created, cast poisoning was easy, the crime itself was What’s your favourite book? continue to squabble, this book offers essential and written. Sepinwall details exactly how notoriously difficult to prove. The popular press insight for those who want to do more, rather unplanned the creative process can be (the Probably James Joyce’s Ulysses. It coverage led to a nation becoming transfixed by than just argue about the weather. writers of 24 describe their method as being taught me more about language and the idea that danger lurked in every cup and on ‘like driving at 65 miles per hour on the consciousness and what the written every plate. Then came the infamous murder highway and you’re building the highway as medium is capable of capturing than RECLAIMING EPICURUS: case that led to the birth of modern toxicology. anything else I’ve ever encountered. PENGUIN SPECIALS you’re driving’). Some shows are revealed Reading about one typical day-in-the-life as having surprising origins. Deadwood, for Luke Slattery through 18 different forms was just an example, was originally pitched as a series Penguin. PB. $9.99 astounding experience. I often feel like I’m set in ancient Rome. There’s also the good Sport still reading it, there’s that much to it. Epicureanism is not just for – and bad – advice given along the way gourmands – journalist Luke (Joss Whedon’s agent begged him not to THE RULES: THE WAY OF Why do you work in books? Slattery argues that it can help work on a little TV show about a teenage THE CYCLING DISCIPLE vampire slayer). Books make fantastic conversation us rethink out materialistic Velominati The Revolution Was Televised is pieces. One minute you’re discussing the ways and face the challenges Sceptre. HB. $26.99 of man-made climate change. a must-read for TV fanatics. It’s interesting, Istanbul music scene with a community Like a two-wheeled Fight Club, Rather than appealing to insightful and provides a genuine behind-the- radio jock, and the next you’re helping the Velominati are here to initiate altruism, or calling for economic revolution, the scenes glimpse at some of the greatest shows a traveller choose the right book on you into the secret rules of Epicurean philosophy counsels that genuine of our time. Obviously the more familiar you Australian history. Just about everyone cycling. Currently one of the happiness comes from the quieting of desire: are with the TV being discussed, the better, but you meet is either curious or obsessed. world’s most popular online from less, not more. And that might just be the you don’t need to have watched all 12 shows It’s hard to go a day without encountering communities, the Velominati mindset we need to rein in unsustainable to enjoy the book. In fact, reading it will no something surprising and grand. embrace cycling not simply as a development. Could answers to the big doubt provide you with a newfound enthusiasm pastime, but as a way of life. They are as obsessed questions of the twenty-first century be found to seek out one or two shows you’ve never with style, heritage and authenticity as they are on fragments of petrified scrolls in the Villa of watched before. with performance, and they aim to cultivate a the Papyri, or buried along with Pompeii? Nina Kenwood is Readings’ online manager passion for both the sport and the gang. READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 13 Popular Science Art & Design Food & Gardening with Kate O’Mara, with Margaret Snowdon, with Christine Gordon, Readings at the Brain Centre Readings Carlton Readings Carlton

OUR NECESSARY SHADOW PUNK: CHAOS TO COUTURE LEVANT Tom Burns Andrew Bolton, with Richard Hell, Anissa Helou Learn Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 John Lydon & Jon Savage HarperCollins. HB. $35 For good or ill, psychiatry is a Yale University Press. PB. $59.95 I love the recent trend of polemical battleground. On the Since its emergence in the incorporating a bit of food French one hand, it’s often critcised for 1970s, punk has had an history into cookbooks, and this being an instrument of social explosive influence on is exactly what Anissa Helou control or a barbaric practice. fashion. As a style, punk is does in Levant. This collection at the On the other, the latest about chaos, anarchy and of mouth-watering recipes is developments are trumpeted as rebellion, drawing on inspired by Helou’s family and NEw! offering lasting solutions to mental illness. In this provocative sexual and political imagery. This childhood in Beirut and Syria, as well as her deeply thoughtful, descriptive and sympathetic aesthetic of violence – even cruelty – is intrinsic travels around the eastern Mediterranean and STAT E book, Tom Burns reviews the historical to the clothes themselves, which were often the Middle East. Throughout, Helou describes development of psychiatry, the places where customised with rips, tears and slashes, as well how culinary traditions in many countries are there is much agreement on treatment and where as studs, spikes and zippers. This extraordinary rapidly changing and are at risk of disappearing. LibrAry there is not. Throughout, he is alert to where publication examines the impact of punk’s While some of the more exotic ingredients are psychiatry helps, and where it is imperfect. aesthetic on high fashion, focusing on its not found in every local supermarket, the of Victoria do-it-yourself, rip-it-to-shreds ethos. recipes are easy to follow. Cabbage and Tomato LETTERS TO A YOUNG Salad is one of my new favourites, and a SCIENTIST VAN GOGH, DALÍ, delicious accompaniment to lamb chops. Edward O. Wilson AND BEYOND: THE I LOVE NY Norton. HB. $27.95 with WORLD REIMAGINED Daniel Humm & Will Guidara Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Samantha Friedman Ten Speed. HB. $65 Edward O. Wilson imparts the MoMA Publications. HB. $70 wisdom of his storied career Daniel Humm and Will Van Gogh, Dalí, and Beyond to the next generation in these Guidara, co-owners of Eleven traces how modern artists twenty-one fascinating Madison Park, give us another have reinvented the genres letters. At a time in human marvellously unorthodox history of landscape, still life and history when our survival is book with I Love NY. As part of AllianceFrançaise portraiture from 1889 to linked more than ever to our understanding their search for New York’s best de Melbourne today. From Vincent van of everything around us, Wilson insists that food artisans, they explore more We teach French Gogh’s twisted olive trees to Paul Cézanne’s success in the sciences does not depend on than 50 farms throughout the state. The city’s rich humble objects, from Jeff Koons’s shiny mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding culinary heritage is rightly described as a cultural commodities to Frida Kahlo’s confident self- French Language & Cultural Centre since 1890 | Not-for-profit Australian association a problem and solving it. From the collapse of melting pot, and this book features more than 100 portrait, these iconic works from the Museum stars to the exploration of rainforests, Wilson wonderfully diverse recipes, including www.afmelbourne.com.au of Modern Art show the development of radical instils in his readers a love of the innate creativity reinterpretations of New York classics such as ☎ 9525 3463 new ways of seeing. The book includes essays of biology and a respect for the human being’s Oyster Pan Roast, Manhattan Clam Chowder and on each of the three genres, as well as a modest place on the planet. the traditional brunch drink, the Bloody Mary. compendium of quotations by artists and others. KITH: THE RIDDLE OF THE DUKE’S TABLE CLAUDE MONET’S Enrico Alliata THE CHILDSCAPE GARDENS AT GIVERNY Jay Griffiths Random. HB. $59.95 Dominique Lobstein & Hamish Hamilton. HB. $45 If you loved The Silver Spoon, Jean-Pierre Gilson then this gem of a book is for While travelling the world in Abrams. HB. $45 you. First published in 1930, The order to write her award-winning Duke’s Table is a complete book Wild, Jay Griffiths became Water lilies, ponds, a Japanese guide to authentic vegetarian increasingly aware of the huge footbridge and blankets of Italian cuisine and features 1030 differences in how childhood is glorious flowers: nothing evokes recipes. It was the brainchild of Enrico Alliata, the experienced in various cultures. Claude Monet’s Impressionist This month’s Readings Monthly cover art by Duke of Salaparuta, who by all accounts was a Kate Banazi has been proudly brought to you by One central riddle in particular paintings quite like the images utopian gourmand and winemaker. (Can I just say the very friendly faces, mouths, and hands at captured her imagination: why are so many from his garden at Giverny, The Jacky Winter Group. that it’s so good that this book comes from an children in Euro-American cultures unhappy? about 50 miles north-west of Paris. The artist lived actual duke?) While much Italian fare is already And why is it that children in many traditional there for nearly 43 years and would draw vegetarian, Alliata worked for decades to cultures seem more content? In Kith: The Riddle inspiration from it for many years after. Here, systematically reimagine other classic Italian of the Childscape, Griffiths explores these Dominique Lobstein’s insightful writing and dishes without using meat, creating a timeless questions and many more. Jean-Pierre Gilson’s lush four-season photographs bring Monet’s personal universe encyclopedic reference work for vegetarians. to life in vivid and definite form. 101 THINGS I LEARNED IN PLANTING: A NEW ENGINEERING SCHOOL CRAFTYDERMY PERSPECTIVE John Kuprenas Tracey Benton Piet Oudolf & Noel Kingsbury with Matthew Frederick Cicada Books. PB. $24.95 Timber Press. HB. $49.99 Grand Central Publishing. HB. $23.99 The current fashion for This impressive and 101 Things I Learned in jackywinter.com taxidermy is hard to avoid. It inspirational book is perfect for Engineering School uses seems every trendy bar or those who want to take a real-world examples to show restaurant these days now has scientific approach to creating how the engineer’s way the head of some animal or dream landscapes within their of thinking can – and another gazing down from on own suburban plots. Piet sometimes cannot – inform our understanding high. But for those of us who Oudolf’s green thumb is legendary and, in this of how things work. Questions from the simple are reluctant, for whatever reason, to exhibit latest work with Noel Kingsbury, he takes it to a to the profound are illuminated throughout: Why such works on our walls, an alternative option whole new level, favouring highly integrated shouldn’t soldiers march across a bridge? Why do has surfaced at last. Using sewing, crochet, schemes in which plants intermingle and blend buildings want to float and cars want to fly? What knitting, papier-mâché, and in some cases just without overcrowding one another. The pair is the difference between thinking systemically cutting and pasting, you can achieve the spirit of share their intimate knowledge of ecology to and thinking systematically? An informative taxidermy without the morbid overtones. look at how plants behave in different situations resource for students and general readers, and Combining the twin joys of craft and taxidermy, and which species make good neighbours in even experienced engineers, who’ll discover many Craftydermy presents a cabinet of curiosities that order to create beautiful gardens that require provocative new insights into familiar principles. will delight, amuse and inspire. minimal maintenance. 14 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013

Getting back up on the horse

SAMUEL RUTTER WRITES ON THE LIFE, WORK AND FATALISTIC SOUTHERN FAILINGS OF WILLIAM FAULKNER.

Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner William Faulkner has been portrayed in popular culture as something of a boozy, tortured genius (think the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink, for one). We Picture Books can expect to see less of the man and more of his work on screen in the near future, with HBO THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT purchasing the television rights to his fiction under the direction of Deadwood creator David Drew Daywalt & Oliver Jeffers (illus.) Milch, and the ubiquitous James Franco directing an adaption of his classic novel As I Lay Dying, HarperCollins. HB. Was $24.99 expected to be released later in the year. What follows is not an essay about the power of his prose or the subtle brilliance of Special price $19.99 his structure, because as Richard Hughes’s introduction to the Vintage Classics edition of The Review: Things are not right in crayon Sound and the Fury makes clear, if it were possible to summarise the force and the importance world! Oh, I bet you thought they were having and the splendour of such a novel in a single page, there would be no need for the novel itself. a ball happily colouring in and looking bright Anyone who has read Faulkner’s fiction will be familiar with how his prose at times seems in kids’ pictures, but you’d be wrong. It seems turgid or meandering (surely no other writer of the twentieth century has his characters spend there is a downside to a crayon’s life and they so much time in the back of wagons), before breaking into passages of sublime clarity and are here to tell you some of their problems. shimmering beauty. Duncan’s crayons have sent him letters of complaint, and really, Yet despite the accolades he earned later in life and the reputation he enjoys today, you’ve got to sympathise with them. There are overworked William Faulkner spent much of his life failing – failing in business, failing in love and failing in crayons and neat ones being led outside the lines. Some are writing. He didn’t fail in the flamboyant or suicidal way Ernest Hemingway did, or with the wry Did you ignored while others are exhausted and about to disappear from morbidity of Samuel Beckett. Like the Southern gentleman he was, he failed fatalistically, and overuse. Some are feuding (even crayons can be territorial), and made a point of quietly carrying on anyway. know... the final disgrace for one: he is nude! What is Duncan going to do The golden era of Faulkner’s writing was the decade about this colourful unrest? spanning 1929 to 1939, which saw the publication of novels ... that author The Day the Crayons Quit is immense fun. It is such as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and The imaginative, hilarious and totally original. Kids will get the Wild Palms. Faulkner’s novels of this period seem to me best and illustrator humour, identify with the pictures and be pretty happy with described as difficult pleasures, and it is worth noting that they Graeme Base Duncan’s solution. This is one to be read over and over again. were no less of a challenge for the author to write as they are So get your crayons out, kids, and remember to be kind to them. for us to read. Faulkner considered himself first and foremost used to be in For ages 2 and up. a poet. He is said to have realised his failure at poetry and so Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn turned to the short story as a money spinner, only to further a band called ‘descend’ into the lowly mires of the novel. A dip into the vast amount of biographical material Rikitikitavi? BLUEBIRD available (such as the excellent two-tome account written by the He played the Bob Staake recently deceased Joseph Blotner) reveals that Faulkner still Random. HB. $24.95 had his work routinely rejected by journals and magazines well drums and then Review: A little boy is sad and lonely, into the 1940s and 50s, despite his burgeoning reputation. Coupled with this rejection was the and then a bluebird comes and changes his extreme mental and physical toll the excruciating process of writing took on the author. Often, the keyboards, day. The small bird offers him friendship and upon the completion of a manuscript, Faulkner would embark on a cycle of drunken destruction happiness follows, until a dramatic event and abandon, as if it were somehow necessary to wipe the slate clean after every piece of work. and ended up occurs! Bluebird is a wordless picture book, The world of work was no more glamorous for Faulkner, whose careers included and its gorgeous graphics invite a slow and almost entirely unsuccessful stints as a postmaster, power plant supervisor, mule breeder marrying the careful reading. The eloquent simplicity of the illustrations will and Hollywood scriptwriter. Faulkner’s ornate style meant that hiring him to write dialogue lead singer. draw readers in, yet this is also deceiving as there’s a lot to see as for blockbusters was sort of like hiring Michelangelo to repaint your letterbox. He had a few the eye moves over the sequential frames within each page. notable successes when collaborating with Howard Hawks, such as on the adaption of The Big Emotionally, the story is even more stark and moving without Sleep, but his time in Hollywood was replete with drunken episodes and pages upon pages of words. Bob Staake has created an atmospheric picture book, discarded scripts. whose beauty lies in its clarity and empathy. I liked it very much It also seems from Faulkner’s letters and early writings that what he really wanted to and hope it will find a broad audience. For ages 3 and up. AD be wasn’t a novelist or a poet but a pilot. Conflicting biographical accounts abound of the extent to which Faulkner managed to achieve this dream. He often used to lie to friends and journalists about his time in the air, but what appears to be certain is that he joined the RAF in Canada but WHO SAYS WOMEN CAN’T was still in training by the time World War I ended. He tried again during World War II but was too BE DOCTORS? old. Over the years, through persistence and saving, he managed to purchase his own aircraft, Tanya Lee Stone & Marjorie Priceman (illus.) which he flew gingerly until a near-fatal accident and the death of his brother in a plane crash in Henry Holt. HB. $23.95 1935 finally broke his nerve. Yet perhaps the greatest arena in which we see Faulkner fail and persist is in that Review: I’ll bet you’ve met plenty of doctors of love – an important theme in both his life and work. Faulkner was a great lover of women, in your life. And I’ll bet lots of them were women. harbouring a deep, slow-burning passion for the few who entered his life. He was deemed too Well, you might find this hard to believe, but poor a prospect by the parents of his adolescent love Estelle Oldham, and he was rejected after there once was a time when girls weren’t a long courtship by his early muse, Helen Baird. Estelle, in circumstances rare for that time, was allowed to become doctors. Thus begins this divorced by her husband and fortuitously came back into Faulkner’s life, and he entered into a delightful and inspiring story. The person who tortuous marriage that would also see his first daughter die days after her birth. His first mistress, changed this inherent sexism, in America at Meta Carpenter, was as neurotic as Faulkner was volatile, and his earthly longing for Jean Stein least, was a feisty and brave young woman called Elizabeth went largely unrequited, the young author seeing him more as a mentor than a lover. Blackwell, and this is her tale. Engaging and immediately Faulkner had a tonic for such occasions, which he would prescribe just as easily captivating, this book has plenty of fun moments for young for head colds as for heartbreaks. Served on a silver platter, a hot toddy (bourbon and sugar readers while also conveying an important message about mixed with the juice of half a lemon and topped off with boiling water) was a ceremonial fix determination and overcoming prejudice. The illustrations by that comforted only in small doses. In his twilight years, Faulkner took to long horse rides in Marjorie Priceman are vibrant and beautifully evocative. Highly the countryside surrounding his home, Rowan Oak. True to the fatalistic Southern tradition, recommended for curious readers aged 4 and up. he was thrown and severely injured on a number of occasions, yet refused to give up the Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda practice. Faulkner kept getting back up on the horse, because he seemed to realise that it was the struggle that was important. If we have to be reductive, we can perhaps leave it to Quentin LET’S PAINT! Compson, his most archetypical narrator, to sum up the Faulkner way of living, writing and loving: ‘No battle is ever won. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and Gabriel Alborozo despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.’ A&U. HB. $22.99 Review: Art is fun! It can be experimental By Samuel Rutter and controversial, and it’s totally subjective. Let’s Paint! shows us that all ideas and styles Samuel Rutter has published fiction, translation and criticism in Australia and abroad. He is a are valid, and that respect for individual contributing editor to the journal Higher Arc and currently teaches in the School of Languages creativity is to be encouraged. It gently at the University of Melbourne, where he is a PhD candidate in Spanish. explores the creative process and some of art’s more intangible concepts with humour READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 15

Book of the Month THE EXTINCTS Veronica Cossanteli Chicken House. PB. $12.99

Review: Read on if you love adventure and excitement, as there are a lot of both in The Extincts by Veronica Cossanteli. When George takes on a job at Wormestall Farm, he is very disappointed to find that WILD BOY: THE REAL LIFE OF THE the new girl at school, Prudence, has also been offered work there. Life in their little English village is rather SAVAGE OF AVEYRON typical; however, Wormestall Farm is a most unusual place and houses a range of curious creatures. The Mary Losure & Timothy Basil Ering (illus.) eccentric owner, Mrs Lind, immediately gives the children significant responsibilities, which they learn to manage Candlewick Press. HB. $24.95 well despite the many dangers involved in caring for the rare animals there. George is not at all sure about Prudence initially. However, necessity forces him to work with her and, eventually, they form a real friendship. The true story of what happened when a wild boy was found alone in the woods. One day in Meanwhile, the villagers are increasingly concerned about repeated sightings of an enormous, mythical serpentine 1798, woodsmen in southern France returned animal called the squermington wyrm. Legend has it that if you look at the wyrm, you’ll immediately be turned to from the forest having captured a naked boy. stone. Prudence and George must keep all the goings-on at Wormestall secret in order to protect the animals And so began the curious public life of the there, but that’s getting harder and harder, especially with Prue’s evil step-mother and her goons on the lookout Savage of Aveyron. Though the wild boy’s world for something unusual to stuff for a taxidermy competition. was forever changed, some things stayed the same. A moving work of narrative non-fiction. There is a lot of humour in The Extincts, and the action is pacey, with the children managing to get out of some extremely difficult situations without any help from the adults. In short, this is great fun to read and highly recommended for girls and boys aged 9 and up. Middle Fiction Kate Campbell is from Readings Hawthorn THE GIRL WHO BROUGHT MISCHIEF Katrina Nannestad ABC. PB. $14.99

Review: This is a little heartbreaker of a story. Think Pollyanna meets Anne of Green Gables with a dash of Heidi. It’s set in Denmark New in 1911, so younger readers may need a bit of context to start with, mainly with regard to the treatment of girls and children (for example, and sensitivity. Kids are told here that it’s great to have a go, disciplinary measures and the lack freedom that they shouldn’t be scared to experiment and most of all that to roam), but the beautiful messages of the book need no they should enjoy it. As with all the best picture books, the text further explanation. and artwork combine seamlessly to make a very satisfying Kids’ Ten-year-old Inge Maria has been recently orphaned read. For budding artists aged 3 and up. AD and travels to the tiny island of Bornholm to live with her grandmother. Only Inge and the reader know what grief she THE FROG WHO LOST carries inside after the loss of her mother, and this aspect of her HIS UNDERPANTS childhood is tenderly explored. Juliette MacIver & Cat Chapman (illus.) Books Inge is brave and bold, and she navigates life with good Walker. HB. $24.95 intentions and optimism. Yet, as much as she might long to be ‘good’, she’s also a magnet for mishaps. She simply can’t sit still Hopping through the jungle, this way, that or hold her tongue. So when it comes to certain school rules, way, Frog is in a frenzy, scattering the ants. such as boys and girls made to play on separate sides of the Teddy’s looking too now, this place, that schoolyard, Inge takes drastic action. Her antics bring the whole place. Will they ever find those jolly island to life, while her compassion finds her many friends, both underpants? A fun rhyming story. Non-Fiction animal and human. A joy to read with ages 7 and up. We also have a limited number of toys to 1000 ILLUSTRATIONS Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton give away when you buy the book! FOR CHILDREN Julia Schonlau GOLDILOCKS AND THE Quarry. PB. $29.99 THREE DINOSAURS Review: 1000 Illustrations for Children is Classic of the Month Mo Willems a rich and colourful cornucopia of children’s Walker. HB. $24.95 illustrations in one volume. The breadth of THE FAIRY DOLL & OTHER TALES Once upon a time, there were three hungry styles is stimulating and it’s inspiring to see FROM THE DOLLS’ HOUSE dinosaurs: Papa Dinosaur, Mama Dinosaur, and the range of talent from around the world, Rumer Godden a dinosaur who happened to be visiting from particularly as many of the artists featured Macmillan. HB. $19.99 Norway. This new take on a fairytale classic is here haven’t yet had their books translated into English. The so original, it could only come from the brilliant magical world of children’s picture books takes us on journeys Review: This satisfyingly hefty pink mind of Mo Willems. that are so diverse and imaginative that we should never hardback gathers together seven magical underestimate their importance in a child’s development, and stories, all of which were previously books like this are a great starting point. A generous amount of published as much-treasured separate JEREMY space is devoted to each artist, so you get a real feel for their volumes. It is so good to see them all Chris Faille & Danny Snell work. My only quibble is that the book lacks notes on the available again here. Rumer Godden writes Working Title. HB. $24.95 illustrators; however, there are websites listed for further with an intensity and simplicity that is totally When tiny Jeremy falls out of his nest and research and it’s a great price for a full colour book. Highly beguiling. Dolls, like children, wish for is brought home by the family cat, he is recommended. AD things passionately, but they are dependent only a few days old. Luckily, Jeremy is on those they live with to make their dreams a fighter. As the weeks go by, he grows THE BIG BOOK OF FLIGHT real. In ‘The Dolls’ House’, for instance, a doll family dwelling in stronger and stronger, until the time comes Rowland White a shoebox long for a real house, just like the one Tottie, the little wooden doll, used to know. In ‘Miss Happiness and Miss to say goodbye. Bantam. HB. $39.95 Flower’, two little Japanese dolls, lost and anxious in a strange Everybody dreams of flying. For as long as land, meet a young girl who’s recently arrived at the home of her THE ROYAL NAPPY we’ve been able to look up and see the birds, cousins, and who just might empathise with and understand Nicholas Allan we’ve wanted to join them. But our efforts to do their wishes. Other stories include ‘Little Plum’, ‘The Fairy Doll’, Red Fox. PB. $14.95 so have not always been as elegant or as ‘Candy Floss’ and ‘Impunity Jane’. My all-time favourite is ‘The A funny look at the royal nappy throughout accomplished. Instead, there’s been danger, Story of Holly and Ivy’, about a toyshop doll named Holly, an history – from Henry VIII to the present day. excitement, courage and brilliance. The Big orphan called Ivy, and a policeman and his wife, Mr and Mrs Find out where the royal nappies are made Book of Flight celebrates it all, and a lot more Jones. Perfect to read aloud to girls around age 5, or for girls and the different kinds for every occasion besides. It’s packed with derring-do stories of aviation’s pioneers, aged 7 to 9 to read to themselves. as well as fascinating profiles of remarkable planes, from Spitfires (parachuting nappies, say, or shiny nappies Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton for palace floors – whee!). to space shuttles. 16 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013

ABSOLUTE THE BLACK THE OPTIMISM FLIGHT MONARCHS SWAN BIAS BEHAVIOUR John Julius Norwich Nassim Nicholas Taleb Tali Sharot Barbara Kingsolver PB. Was $44.95 HB. Was $45 HB. Was $38.95 PB. Was $32.99 NOW $15 NOW $16.95 NOW $12 NOW $12 Renowned British author John This is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Tali Sharot, one of the most Discontented with her life Julius Norwich brings us a comprehensive fascinating exploration of ‘Black Swans’ – the innovative neuroscientists at work today, of poverty on a failing farm in the eastern history of the papacy. In Absolute Monarchs, random events that lie behind our lives and brings to light our very human tendency to United States, a young mother named he recounts the histories of the most motivations. Taleb reveals the extensive impact maintain an irrationally positive outlook on life, Dellarobia impulsively seeks out an affair. Yet significant popes and what they meant such occurrences have on all levels of society and suggests that optimism may in fact be instead, she discovers something much more politically, culturally and socially to Rome. The and questions our attempts to rationalise them crucial to our existence. The Optimism Bias profoundly life-changing: a terrible marvel men who have held this position of infallible despite their unpredictability. This edition comes uses cutting-edge science and a wide-ranging of nature. Flight Behaviour is a topical and power have ranged from heroes to rogues, the in a gorgeous hardback slipcase, complete with narrative to provide startling new insights deeply human novel exploring notions of admirably wise to the utterly decadent, yet all original artwork. into the major role that optimism plays in class, poverty and climate change. have cast light and shadows on the Vatican determining how we live our lives. and the world of today. THE MUSEUM OF THE INNOCENCE A FRAGILE COMPLETE GARDEN MANIA Orhan Pamuk BALANCE PEANUTS: Philip De Bay & HB. Was $55 Christopher Dickman 1971–1972 & James Bolton NOW $15 HB. Was $85 1973–1974 PB. Was $49.95 Set in Istanbul and spanning 30 NOW $29.95 Charles M. Schulz NOW $15 years, The Museum of Innocence is a story of love In A Fragile Balance HB. Were $29.99 each Garden Mania is an irresistible and obsession, of human relations and Christopher Dickman takes a look and informative encyclopedia selfishness. Kemal, the son of one at all the marsupial species NOW $15 each that celebrates every conceivable aspect of Istanbul’s richest families, in Australia, using an Peanuts is the most of gardening. Diagrams, illustrations and becomes infatuated with evolutionary framework popular comic strip in the history of the world. prints are included alongside expert writing the beautiful Füsun, a to interpret their Its characters, including Charlie Brown, Snoopy, on botanical design. Gardeners and garden- lower-class shop girl biological traits. The Lucy, Linus and Schroeder, have become dearly lovers will delight in the brilliant plantmanship, 12 years his junior. Readings book includes a basic loved icons for generations. The 1971–1972 ranging from the official plans of magnificent The novel depicts a description, map edition includes an introduction by Kristin parks and extensive formal gardens to light- panoramic view of and a conservation Chenoweth, who played Sally Brown in a later Bargain musical interpretation of the comics. Billie Jean hearted details such as hidden fountains, their relationship, one status for each new swings and slides. that is lengthy and species introduced. King, tennis champion and longtime friend of increasingly bizarre. Throughout these Charles M. Schulz, serves up the introduction for MANUFACTURING Table accounts, Dickman pays the 1973–1974 edition. DEPRESSION FULL loving attention to detail, blending anecdotes and facts, THEY ARE Gary Greenberg CIRCLE as well as fine illustrations. MEDITATING PB. Was $32.99 Ferdinand Museum of NOW $10 Mount THE BEST Manufacturing Depression HB. Was $45 Contemporary Art AMERICAN PB. Was $59.95 argues that we should think of depression not NOW $15 as an illness but as a story in itself. Drawing on Much about our society in the twenty-first COMICS 2011 NOW $14.95 his 25 years as a psychotherapist and his own century bears a resemblance to what is known Alison Bechdel et al Over the past 60 years, the practice of bark experience as a patient, Gary Greenberg shows as the ‘classical world’, from its institutions to its HB. Was $35 painting has become increasingly pertinent to the outside world. Many great painters known how the idea of depression as a widespread physics, and even its sexual morality. Ferdinand NOW $13.95 and admired today began their careers during chronic disease has been successfully packaged Mount effortlessly peels back 2000 years of The Best American Comics showcases the work this illuminating period, drawing inspiration from by scientists, doctors and marketing experts. history to show how much we are like the of both established and up-and-coming comic the form. This stunning catalogue explores the ancients, in ways both trivial and crucial. artists. The editors have gathered together the richness of their early works. THE WORLD’S best stories from graphic novels, pamphlet RELIGIONS THE TWELVE comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics DIARY OF A Christopher TRIBES OF and the web to create this cutting-edge Partridge (ed.) HATTIE collection, demonstrating the diverse and exciting WOMBAT possibilities the comic form has at its disposal. Jackie French & PB. Was $21.99 Ayana Mathis Bruce Whatley NOW $12 HB. Was $29.95 This revised and updated edition introduces COLLINGWOOD: HB. Was $29.95 NOW $13.95 A LOVE STORY new contributors and provides greater When Hattie clambered from a train, her skirt NOW $12.95 Don′t be fooled. This wombat leads a very busy coverage of recent developments in world still hemmed with Georgia mud and the dream Paul Daley and demanding life. In this tenth anniversary religions, especially in terms of indigenous of Philadelphia bright in her mind, she couldn’t PB. Was $35 edition, she wrestles unknown creatures, runs practices, as well as esoteric, pagan and guess that just two years later, at 16, she’d be NOW $12 her own digging business and, most difficult of New Age beliefs. Editors from the UK, USA, fighting to keep her baby twins alive. Ayana Paul Daley investigates the all, she trains her humans, teaching them when Germany, Denmark, Finland, Japan and Mathis’s debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Collingwood Football Club’s role within its she would like carrots, when she would like oats Australia have come together to represent a Hattie, is both a searing portrait of twentieth- community, introducing an array of characters and when she would like both at the same time. wide international spectrum. century America and a ferocious vision of along the way, including John Wren and humanity at its rawest. Archbishop Daniel Mannix. Collingwood: A Love GREAT SOUL Story is a multi-generational saga of football, ON THE TRAIL Joseph Lelyveld MORNING, love, war and, most critically, identity. OF THE SILVER HB. Was $45 NOON, AND BRUMBY INDIA: A NOW $15 NIGHT Elyne Mitchell In this ambitious and original PORTRAIT HB. Was $49.95 study, Pulitzer Prize-winner Arnold Weinstein Patrick French NOW $16.95 Joseph Lelyveld deepens HB. Was $49.95 HB. Was $39.95 The silver brumbies of Elyne Mitchell’s classic our sense of Gandhi’s achievements NOW $12 NOW $15 children’s stories have captured the hearts and disappointments. While India and its Tapping into the hearts and minds of memorable India is increasingly being of readers for generations. This is a stunning politicians may be ready to place Gandhi on characters, from Sophocles’ Oedipus to Artie in recognised as a country with an important role celebration of the brumby heartland – the a pedestal as the ‘Father of the Nation’, they Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Arnold Weinstein makes to play to Australia’s future. Patrick French glorious Australian Alps. On the Trail of the Silver are less inclined to embrace his teachings. an eloquent and powerful case for the role of great examines the cultural foundations that have Brumby brings together the best of Elyne’s non- Lelyveld’s reconsideration of Gandhi’s literature as a window into our lives and times. His made India’s stunning transformation possible, fiction writing about her beloved high country struggles over two continents reveals his genuine appreciation for the written word reminds as it grows from a nation of listless planned with archival images and new photography from fierce, but ultimately unfulfilled, hopes and his us just how crucial books are to the business of economy to an entrepreneurial powerhouse. her grandson, James Auchinleck, and others. ever-evolving legacy. being human.

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

ELLES $29.95 DVD Anne (Juliette Binoche), an with Lou Fulco investigative freelancer for Elle, of leads a perfectly bourgeois life in Paris, juggling family, work the and leisure. Her research for an CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: HOUSE OF CARDS: THE article on student prostitution WORLDS AWAY COMPLETE FIRST SEASON month leads her to Alicja, a Polish girl $39.95 $49.95 whose persona is as troubling as it is seductive, and Charlotte, a somewhat reserved French A young woman entranced by Kevin Spacey is Frank AMOUR woman who is seemingly at ease with her an aerialist falls into the Underwood, a Democrat who $39.95 dreamlike universe of Cirque goes about exacting his profession. Soon, Anne starts to question Retired music teachers Georges and Anne du Soleil. But the couple are revenge on the President and everything she once believed in. are in their eighties. Their daughter, Eva, also separated and must travel everyone who betrayed him a musician, lives abroad with her family. One through the different tent after he is passed over for an day, Anne has a stroke and the couple’s bond ZERO DARK THIRTY worlds to find each other again, appointment to the position of of love is severely tested as Georges tries to $39.95 all the while interacting with a host of strange Secretary of State. House of Cards is a political care for her at home according to her wishes. Released 10 July and wonderful performers. drama series adapted from the novel by Michael Fighting against the pain of an uncertain Dodds and also stars Robin Wright, Kate Mara, For a decade, an elite team future, difficult decisions must be made. Stars Corey Stoll, Michael Kelly, Sakina Jaffrey, Kristen of intelligence and military OLIVER STONE’S the wonderful Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Connolly and Constance Zimmer. operatives working in secret UNTOLD HISTORY OF Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert. across the globe have devoted THE UNITED STATES themselves to a single goal: to FLIGHT $39.95 find and eliminate Osama bin $39.95 DANCING ON THE EDGE Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites Welcome to a brutal new history $39.95 A pilot manages to save almost the Oscar-winning team of director-producer of the United States, one that’s all his passengers from a Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal rarely seen in the textbooks or malfunctioning plane, which Men), John Goodman (Argo) (The Hurt Locker) to tell the declassified story the newspapers. Oliver Stone eventually crashes, but an and Matthew Goode (A Single of history’s greatest manhunt. It stars Jessica attempts to strip away the bias investigation into the accident Man) star in this explosive new Chastain, Mark Strong and Joel Edgerton. and look for the real America reveals something troubling. BBC drama series, written and hidden between the cracks. Denzel Washington gives a directed by award-winning Although not his most enthralling work, it is GREAT EXPECTATIONS standout performance as our flawed hero. filmmaker Stephen Poliakoff nonetheless fascinating viewing. $39.95 (The Lost Prince). Dancing on the Edge Released 4 July follows a black jazz band’s rise to success in Get swept away with this 1930s London during times of extraordinary beautiful adaptation of Charles change, before violence and prejudice bring it Dickens’s classic novel, starring WHAT I LOVED crashing back to earth. Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Jeremy Irvine, Holliday HOUSE OF PLEASURES DEXTER: THE Grainger, Robbie Coltrane and SEVENTH SEASON David Walliams. Young orphan Bertrand Bonello $59.95 Pip (Irvine), is given a chance to rise from his $34.95 humble beginnings thanks to a mysterious Review: When it screened at last year’s Alliance Française French Film Meet Dexter Morgan. By day, benefactor. Moving through London’s class- Festival, Bertrand Bonello’s lavish, lugubrious fin de siècle bore the superior he’s a forensics expert for the ridden world as a gentleman, Pip uses his title House of Tolerance. The term was a euphemism for a brothel around the Miami police, specialising in the newfound positioning to pursue the beautiful turn of the twentieth century and, given the tenor and milieu of Bonello’s film pattern of blood splatters. By Estella (Grainger), a spoilt heiress he has known (which is set in the languid world of high-end prostitution), this was perhaps night, he takes on an entirely since childhood. Yet the shocking truth behind a far more befitting name than the more commonplace one under which the different persona: serial killer. his great fortune will have devastating film has been quietly ushered onto local DVD. In short, don’t let the perfunctory title dissuade you. One of the continuing themes consequences for everything he holds dear. No matter what you call it, Bonello’s was one of last year’s best films. on Dexter is that no one really knows who he is. L’Apollonide, a luxurious Parisian maison close, is waning after decades of catering It's his sister, Deb, who finally gets a peek CLOUD ATLAS to the sexual predilections of an elite clientele. Under the pragmatic eye of Madam Marie-Claire behind the facade. But what will this mean for (Noémie Lvovsky), a group of young female courtesans cohabit, commiserate and console one Dexter and his darker pastimes? $39.95 another. The women are literally kept: their incomes can’t meet their expenses, indebting them Andy and Lana Wachowski’s to Marie-Claire as both superior and landlady. Most dream of some favourite client one day ROMAN POLANSKI: latest epic, Cloud Atlas, settling their debt and proposing, but, as one woman forewarns teenage newcomer Pauline A FILM MEMOIR explores how the actions and (Iliana Zabeth), ‘Men seldom marry prostitutes.’ $29.95 consequences of individual L’Apollonide’s opulence belies troubling realities behind the women’s cloistered and Released 3 July lives affect one another ostensibly glamorous existences. One succumbs to syphilis, another withdraws behind an throughout history, combining opium haze and another reads quack sociology at her peril. Petty rivalries erupt but camaraderie This documentary tells the action, mystery, drama and invariably prevails. The film’s most absorbing subplot – a perverse Gothic romance-come- extraordinary story of director romance. One soul is shaped from a killer into a revenge worthy of Poe – is ultimately a potent demonstration of the women’s solidarity and Roman Polanski. It begins with hero, and a single act of kindness ripples across strength. The beautiful Madeleine (Alice Barnole) is shockingly disfigured by a psychopathic client his childhood in the Kraków the centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant whose affection she craves, an angry rictus slashed irremediably across her face. She becomes Ghetto and his first films in future. Based on the award-winning novel by known as L’Apollonide’s mysterious Woman Who Laughs (after the protagonist of Victor Hugo’s Poland, before tracking his David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas stars Tom Hanks, 1869 novel), ultimately attracting an enigmatic admirer. The masque she attends at his behest is a move to Paris and his growing Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant. scene to remember – two parts Greenaway, one part Lynch. success in Europe and US, which culminated What sounds unremittingly grim is, in practice, darkly beguiling, thanks to Bonello’s with his Oscar win in 2002 for The Pianist. The THE PAPERBOY Cassavetes-meets-Kubrick approach. The easy naturalism engendered by the director’s film also touches on the tragic murder of his $34.95 preference for prolonged scenes of idle chatter, the sparse score and the cast’s effortless pregnant wife Sharon Tate in Los Angeles and chemistry is offset by a rigorous formalism. Bonello’s postmodern techniques prompt the controversy surrounding his arrest in 1977, The Paperboy takes audiences consideration of the film’s contemporary resonances far beyond the camcorder-shot, present- as well as his life today in France with wife deep into the backwaters of day coda. More than once the screen is quartered like CCTV footage to afford a simultaneous Emmanuelle Seigner. Includes excerpts from steamy South Florida during view of L’Apollonide’s various rooms. Later, a sad event is commemorated by a dance to The Polanski’s films, news footage and press the 1960s, as investigative Moody Blues’ ‘Nights in White Satin’ in a sublimely anachronistic soundtrack cue. clippings, as well as exclusive photographs. reporter Ward Jansen (Matthew If there’s a take-home, it’s less moral or ethical than rhetorical, making Bonello McConaughey) and his partner an impartial provocateur rather than any kind of polemicist. Did the endemic outlawing and Yardley Acheman chase a disenfranchisement of brothels – seen here in almost halcyon form, sumptuous and (mostly) sensational, career-making story. With the help Also Available hygienic, although conspicuously still not peril-free – best serve their typically indigent employees of Ward’s younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) ParaNorman, $39.95 or the well-heeled moral majority? As House of Pleasure’s final moments make clear, the world’s and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless Side Effects, $39.95 oldest profession is still in demand. Seldom are impossible questions broached so impressively. (Nicole Kidman), the pair attempt to prove that Nurse Jackie: Season 4, $39.95 violent swamp-dweller Hillary Van Wetter (John Thirtysomething: The Complete Series, Gerard Elson – Readings St Kilda Cusack) was framed for the murder of a corrupt $129.95 local sheriff. 18 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013

recorded across Victoria, New South Wales cd and New Zealand, and mixed in Melbourne and San Francisco. This itinerant recording journey means that Wake also features a host of great of the guest artists, including Marita Dyson of new band and penned a compelling collection please everybody; he’s thinking only of himself. Melbourne band the Orbweavers, the month of songs that add up to her strongest record yet. His latest release comes close to recreating the Blackeyed Susans’ Rob Snarski, former There is a newfound confidence and muscle wonder of his first album,Maxinquaye . It features Powderfinger guitarist Ian Haug, Bamboos’ KVEIKUR here that was somewhat lacking on her previous a number of guest vocalists – the standout being leading lady, Kylie Auldist, and guitarist wunderkind John Phillips. Lead single ‘The Sigur Rós albums, despite their obvious qualities. In short, Francesca Belmonte singing in a gorgeously another fantastic piece of work from a seriously breathy voice – and really is a return to form. Shortest Day of the Year’ is already gaining $21.95. Vinyl $29.95 talented local songwriter. wide airplay. Alice Bisits is from Readings Malvern Review: When Sigur Rós announced their Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda David Bridie will perform songs from new album earlier this year, they promised a more Wake at Readings Carlton on Friday 5 ‘aggressive’ sound. Kveikur certainly starts out that DESIRE LINES July at 6pm. way: a heavy bass line dominates the first track, THE BEGINNING AND Camera Obscura ‘Brennisteinn’. Things settle down somewhat from THE END OF EVERYTHING $21.95 there, with Jónsi’s mesmerising imaginary lyrics Josh Pyke Vinyl $24.95 floating beautifully over the band’s trademark Soul Was $26.95 Review: I first became atmospherics. Yet Kveikur undoubtedly has a Special price $21.95 aware of Glasgow band much poppier sound, especially compared to their ONE TRUE VINE Camera Obscura through an first two, incredibly fragile, albums,Ágætis Byrjun Review: It took a while for interest in Belle & Sebastian. Mavis Staples and ( ). I don’t say that as a criticism, for Sigur things to happen for Josh B&S lead singer Stuart $24.95 Rós would surely have become irrelevant had Pyke. He knew he wanted to Murdoch produced Camera Obscura’s first Vinyl $29.95 they repeated themselves over and over. Rather, I be a musician from age 12, but album, Biggest Bluest Hi Fi and, from there, the imagine Kveikur will be played out of many it required a lot of inner strength From the opening lines of band have gone from strength to strength, headphones in the months ahead, with listeners and belief to make that happen over the following One True Vine, you’ll feel like giving us many great album titles, such as walking around in a sonic daze from the sensory years. I can’t help but think that his fourth studio you’re witnessing something Underachievers Please Try Harder and My assault found within. album, The Beginning and the End of Everything, very special. Mavis Staples explores some of the themes that might have got Maudlin Career. Their latest release, Desire returns to the gospel roots Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton him to where he is now. It’s a record about desire, Lines, finds them in fine form, maturing in sound she established all those years ago with the death and the need to leave a mark, as well as the but still retaining their intelligent, quirky phenomenal Staple Singers. One True Vine is personal moments in life. Josh Pyke is one of our relevance, with singer Tracyanne Campbell’s her second album with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and foremost singer-songwriters, and his ability to emotive vocals channelling Tracey Thorn from features a mix of covers of songs by Low, Pop/Rock Everything But the Girl. MAS create intelligent pop infused with uniquely Funkadelic and Wilco, as well as originals Australian experiences endears him to us all. penned for Staples by Tweedy and Nick Lowe. ABOUT FAREWELL SING ME THE SONGS Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn Alela Diane Various Was $26.95. Special price $21.95 BLACKBIRD 2CDs. $24.95 Folk/World Review: Nevada-born Fat Freddy’s Drop This stunning tribute album American singer Alela Diane was recorded live during QUERCUS $21.95 has continued to grow in concerts in memory of the June Tabor, Iain Ballamy & critical and cult popularity since Review: When attempting late Canadian singer- Huw Warren to describe the music of New her first independent release, songwriter Kate McGarrigle. It $24.95 Forest Parade, in 2003. Her follow-up, The Pirate’s Zealand’s Fat Freddy’s Drop, features her children, Martha and Rufus Gospel, led to even bigger exposure, and she it’s probably best to let the Wainwright, her sister Anna and a superb cast of Review: June Tabor has toured with the likes of The Decemberists and Iron band, if not the music, do the friends, including Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, been a mainstay on the & Wine. Her new album, About Farewell, steps talking. They’ve described their sound as an Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, as well as English folk scene since the back drastically from the rockier sound of Alela ‘unholy blend of disco, rootsy dub, blues, soul Linda, Richard and Teddy Thompson. The late 60s, along with her Diane & Wild Divine. Instead, it’s an album that is and electronic funk’, and Blackbird is another album was produced by the legendary Joe longtime saxophonist Iain shaped profoundly by loss and heartbreak. Alela’s cracking record of blissed-out grooves. It’s sure Boyd and serves as the soundtrack to the Ballamy and pianist Huw Warren. The real vocals are thoughtful and intuitive, and her to delight this fantastic band’s massive fanbase forthcoming concert film,Sing Me the Songs surprise with Quercus is that it crops up under strength of character shines through. when they make a welcome return to our shores That Say I Love You, directed by Australian Lian the wing of European jazz label ECM; in August. Slip into summer early. DM Lunson (who also did the fabulous Leonard however, a quick listen will confirm what a Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from Cohen cinematic tribute I’m Your Man). natural step this is for Tabor and her Readings Carlton FALSE IDOLS companions. The album is actually a live recording from 2006, but you’d never be able Tricky WAKE IN BLOOD MEMORY to tell – the clarity of sound is perfect, as is the $24.95 David Bridie Jen Cloher combination of voice, piano and saxophone. Vinyl $39.95 $24.95 $24.95 Tabor sings of love and betrayal, and she Review: With False Idols, Wake is classic David Bridie does new musical arrangements of famous Review: After four years Tricky claims to have and features 11 original works and poems by the likes of Shakespeare without a peep, Jen Cloher disowned his last two albums songs and one Hank and George Butterworth. Full of atmosphere has returned with her third and come back with what he Williams cover. Envisioned as and melancholia, this is one to immerse longplayer, In Blood Memory. has always wanted – a sound a slow, stripped-back album yourself in late into the night. Cloher has clearly not been formed without compromise. No more trying to with piano and minimal instrumentation, it was idle during this time, however; she recruited a Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton

READINGS MADMAN DVD SALE READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2013 19

AUSTRALIAN PIANO CONCERTOS classical Various ABC Classics. 4810215. $9.95 cd of the Review: ABC Classics LUDOVICO EINAUDI: VERDI HEROINES month has been working through IN A TIME LAPSE Angela Gheorghiu, Riccardo its back catalogues of Ludovico Einaudi Chailly & Orchestra Sinfonica di recordings and rereleasing SCHUBERT’S STRING Decca. 4810173. $22.95 Milano Giuseppe Verdi some of them under its QUINTET & SCHOENBERG’S budget collection, Discovery. Of course, this is a Review: I don’t know Decca. 4669522. $19.95 VERKLÄRTE NACHT fantastic chance to hear some of the best local what’s in the air at the Review: Verdi’s Heroines Janine Jansen compositions and performances, which would moment but there have been is simply a snapshot of the Decca. 4783551. $24.95 otherwise have been lost. The recording I have a slew of fantastic women of the operas of been listening to most recently at length has contemporary classical Giuseppe Verdi, from Otello Review: Schoenberg can be a divisive been Australian Piano Concertos. It comprises albums released one after the other. First we and Don Carlo through to Il composer. A lot of strict traditionalists shudder three concertos, starting with an exuberant had Max Richter’s reworking of Vivaldi’s Four Trovatore and more. Of course, Angela when you suggest listening to his works, dance-inspired work by Ross Edwards, Seasons and Daniel Hope’s Spheres, and now Gheorghiu is terrific, as befitting one of the most thinking it’s all going to be atonal. But when I then moving on to a more contemporary Ludovico Einaudi gives us In a Time Lapse. If sought-after lyric sopranos in the world. However, listened to his string sextet, the famous and rhythmically driven piece by Malcolm you have not heard of this Italian composer, I am for me, it was the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Verklärte Nacht, or Transfigured Night, on Williamson. Lastly, there’s a concerto by the here to say that you are missing out. The sound Giuseppe Verdi that stole the show (there’s Janine Jansen’s latest recording, I was estimable Peter Sculthorpe, which draws on is a bit Arvo Pärt, a bit indie-pop, with a healthy clearly a reason why they have Verdi’s name in spellbound. The strong performance from Japanese court music and Balinese gamelan. dose of traditional string quartets and electronic the title of their ensemble). This is obviously Jansen and her colleagues is arresting and I music. Intrigued? Then check this out. KR was carried away by their musicality. The Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton music they perform for the joy of it, which in turn brought me much joy as a listener. KR differences between Schoenberg and Schubert here also somehow seem to work in BRUCH & DVOŘÁK CHOPIN: ÉTUDES Jan Lisiecki MOZART PIANO concert, bringing them closer together. A treat Julia Fischer, David Zinman & for all lovers of chamber music. DG. 4791039. $21.95 Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra CONCERTO SERIES Various Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton Decca. 4783544. $21.95 Review: Those in the know are well aware that the ABC Classics. 4810192. 4810191. 4810189. Julia Fischer is a Review: Chopin Études are exciting, 4810190. $9.95 each darling of the classical music emotional works, and often world and her most recent Review: There is a BALKAN SPIRIT much more fun than they’re release from Decca has her reason why the Mozart Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI given credit for. They’re also challenging performing Max Bruch’s Violin piano concertos have been Alia Vox. AVSA9898. $29.95 musically and can sometimes be a bit of a train Concerto No. 1, coupled with the less-performed recorded innumerable times. wreck if the technique is not under control. This is Review: Jordi Savall is a violin concert by Antonín Dvořák. ‘Ten years ago Changing the face of music as Jan Lisiecki’s second album following Mozart: favourite around the Readings when you said you wanted to play the Dvořák, we knew it, Mozart revolutionised piano playing Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 21 and it’s obvious classical bays, and his elegant everyone would ask why?’ says Fischer in her and polished the concerto form until it sparkled from the start that he has no problem with the musicality and consistency liner notes. Indeed, listening to her performance, unlike anything else. Now, ABC Classics have technical side of things. A performance worthy of are wonderful additions to you wonder why more violinists haven’t risen to created a new series featuring every single one of any concert hall in the world. KR any collection. Following the popular Spirit of Mozart’s piano concertos, as performed by some champion this work. Filled with the beautiful Armenia, Savall heads over the Black Sea to look of the world’s best. So far, they’ve released four sonorities we associate with Dvořák, the pairing at the music of the Balkans. Joined by musicians ELGAR CELLO CONCERTO albums, with Howard Shelley, Simon Tedeschi of the two really shows off Fischer’s technique from pertinent countries, including Serbia, Alisa Weilerstein, Daniel Barenboim and Imogen Cooper among the first pianists and a sense of musicality with gorgeous Greece and Turkey, he presents a fantastic album involved. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to Romantic overtones. KR & Staatskapelle Berlin of traditional dances and songs along with his listen not only to these iconic works, but also to Decca. 4782735. $21.95 ensemble, Hespèrion XXI. KR the different musical ideas each artist brings with ENCHANTED FOREST Review: The Elgar Cello them, in terms of tempo, cadenzas and even Concerto is generally Anna Prohaska, Jonathan Cohen improvisation. KR STARS OF OPERA & Arcangelo thought of as a compulsory AUSTRALIA piece for all cellists to Archiv. 4790077. $21.95 Various perform. Of course made THE CLASSIC 100: Anna Prohaska Opera Australia. OPOZ56041DVD. $24.95 Review: famous by Jacqueline du Pré, it is now one of MUSIC IN THE MOVIES is a soprano from an the most challenging works to record, as Various Review: This is a great way impressive musical lineage, everyone has a firm idea of what it should ABC Classics. 5343879. 4CDs. $34.95 to experience opera in with both parents as well as sound like. So how then to make your mark? bite-sized chunks that are her brother firmly established Review: Every year ABC Well, perform it exactly as you want to, and easily digestible after a long in the world of opera. On Enchanted Forest, Classic FM invites listeners to convince everyone around you that this is how day at the office. Beautifully she sings a range of works from the Baroque vote for their favourite works it should be done. This is what the estimable presented, the film starts with era, concentrating on the big composers such in a particular genre of Alisa Weilerstein has done here. However, what selections from the astonishing as Vivaldi, Handel, Purcell and Monteverdi. classical music, and for 2013 makes this particular album fantastic is production of La Traviata, which was staged on Prohaska brings a drama and freshness to they took a look at ‘music in the movies’. With Weilerstein’s pairing of Elgar with the Carter the Sydney Harbour. We then move onwards each of these works, and this album is a lovely this album, they present selected highlights from Cello Concerto. These two works really do give and upwards into the realm of the gorgeous way to evoke the courts and landscapes of the their radio program, featuring both original you a breathtaking view of what the cello Lakmé, through to the timeless La Bohème, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. KR scores as well as classical works that have been instrument is truly capable of. KR and more. KR featured in more than 50 films. KR

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