Free March 2012 Readings Monthly

Sian Prior on Deborah Robertson • Jessica Au on Paddy O’Reilly Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. University of Oxford. Bodleian Libraries, © Image: Image: Love and Devotion at the State Library March book, CD & DVD new releases. More new releases inside.

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March event highlights : Stephanie Alexander at Readings Hawthorn; Andy Griffiths at the Westgarth Theatre. More events inside.

All shops open 7 days, except State Library shop, which is open Mon – Sat. Carlton 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 Hawthorn 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 Malvern 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952 St Kilda 112 Acland St 9525 3852 Readings at the State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston St 8664 7540 See more new books, music and film, read news and reviews, check event details, and browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au

25% OFF LONELY PLANET * *AVAILABLE AT ALL READINGS SHOPS IN MARCH EXCLUDING ONLINE. 2 Readings Monthly March 2012

From the Books Desk Meet the bookseller with … Chris Rainier, Readings Hawthorn First up, it gives me great pleasure to an- ThisNaxos Audiobooks Month’s too brief few weeks, News invites you to immerse nounce a change at the helm of Readings 3 for 2 promotion yourself in the passion and drama that we Monthly as of this edition: namely that associate with this most romantic of cul- Kabita Dhara – a long-time bookseller, and tures. So with a programme that includes a subsequently book editor, and more recently dazzling selection of 45 films and documen- still publisher of her own imprint (Brass taries, don your beret, grab a croissant and Monkey Books) – is stepping into those giant head on down to your nearest Palace cinema shoes left behind by her much-loved prede- to indulge your every French fantasy! For cessor, Jo Case. Kabita is one of the most pas- Buy any two Naxos Audiobooks at any more information and session details visit sionate people in the book business, so relax www.affrenchfilmfestival.org Readings shop and receive a third of equal Why do you work in books? everyone – you are in very capable hands! or lesser value for free. Offer not valid online. Assisting her will be Jessica Au in the role of Lucky competition It’s just about the only way I can keep features editor, working on our regular ‘New Lonely Planet winners track of the avalanche of books, music Australian Writing’ feature and conducting 25% off travel Congratulations to the following lucky and film that gets ceaselessly poured various author Q&As etc. guides sale competition winners: onto the world – and get paid for it! There’s always something new. It’s a Have you started the year not Cutting their teeth on March 2012 new Helen Sweeney from Doncaster who was the working environment that never ceases feeling like you’ve had a real releases has, I suspect, been a stimulating ex- lucky Summer Reading Guide competition to surprise. holiday? That’s ok, it’s time perience – for as ever there are some wonder- winner of the instant library of books worth for our annual Lonely Planet ful highlights this month! more than $5000. What’s the best book you’ve read lately? sale, so purchase your dream Susie Robinson of Barwon Heads was the I have the bad habit of reading bits of destination travel guide at Deborah Robertson follows up her acclaimed winner of the trip for two to India that we various books at the same time – appar- any Readings shop for 25% Careless from 2006 with Sweet Old World ran in the December/January edition of the ently this makes me a 'polychron' – but less this month. (Vintage, PB, Normally $32.95, Our special Readings Monthly in conjunction with On all it really does is make me forget Please note offer not valid online. price $27.95), which is a love story with a the Go Tours and Air Mauritius. when I read what. The most recent twist, for it is the male lead character who Alliance Française Lorraine Ellis of Collingwood was the win- book I remember powering through is longing for kids and a family! It’s already ner of a Movida Masterclass with Frank (almost) in one go was Wild Coast: garnering some tremendous word-of-mouth. French film festival Travels on South America’s Untamed 7 – 25 March Camorra in the MoVida Aqui Kitchen that we ran in our November newsletter thanks Edge by John Gimlette, but equally Also hard to overlook will be that fine literary Come each March, local Francophiles to Murdoch Books. fascinating was Ferran: The Inside Story man-about-town – and former resident of abandon themselves to a frenzy of cinematic of El Bulli and the Man who Reinvented Belfast – Chris Flynn, with his debut novel, gluttony when the annual Alliance Française We hope the winners of these competitions Food by Colman Andrews. A Tiger in Eden (Text, PB, $22.95). Dubbed French Film Festival rolls into town. Now inspire you to enter more of our fabulous ‘in the anti-tradition of The Beach and in its 23rd year, this glorious event screens competitions. What’s the strangest experience you’ve had Trainspotting’ by his publishers, it features an the latest movies from France and, for an all in a bookshop? Irish thug called Billy Montgomery causing Apart from having very large Che Gue- mayhem (and finding grace?) in 90s Thai- vara hardcover biographies thrown at land. Do look out for the promotional beer my head and resuscitating narcoleptics coasters on our shop counters to coincide in the gift book section, my all-time with St Patrick’s Day! best anecdote has to be when an elderly gentleman brought a copy of the classic New novels from Paddy O’Reilly, Simon Western High Noon to the counter. Cleary and Robert Power round out a typi- Upon remarking that it was a classic of cally strong month for Oz fiction. On the the genre, he proceeded to inform me: international stage, we benefit this month ‘It’s not for me, it’s for the dogs.’ (His from the now-annual Adelaide Writers’ Fes- two Great Danes had their own TV tival bringing some of the best writers from room). ‘They don't like watching SBS abroad to our shores. A particular highlight with me, so I have to get them some- is Ron Rash, the acclaimed American short- thing they like.’ I was speechless. story writer and novelist, who is here simulta- neously with his new novel The Cove (Text, What’s the best experience you’ve had in PB, $29.95). Also noteworthy is one of the a bookshop? local participants – the much-loved Robert Meeting Michael Palin at a Readings Dessaix – who I’m sure is in as typically Hawthorn event. Asking him how engaging form as ever with a collection of many takes of the fish-slapping dance essays entitled As I Was Saying (Vintage, PB, he had to do in Monty Python. One of $27.95). ‘A swirling conversation with the the more surreal moments one has in a reader on everything from travel to dogs and workplace! cats, from sport and swearing to the pleasures of idleness’, according to his publisher. What was your favourite book as a kid? Oslo Davis www.oslodavis.com Although when I was a kid it was Finally, there may be many of you in these mostly about ‘the Tintin’ (thanks for political times who are reaching for the mute nothing, Spielberg & Jackson), I find button on your televisions. Even so, perhaps it virtually impossible to choose one veteran journalist George Megalogenis’s new adventure above any other, so I’d have book The Australian Moment(Viking, PB, to say that when I was very young it Normally $32.95, Our special price $29.95) was Sendak’s Outside Over There or will bring some timely perspective, and even Buy two Routledge Ungerer’s The Three Robbers, and later give cause for pride in our national achieve- Stevenson’s Kidnapped, by which time ments over the last 40 years. Using the inge- Classics and receive I’d discovered my father’s library of 70s nious modus operandi of interviewing former paperbacks and was reading everything prime ministers about how they assess, with a third free* I could reach, even though I only really hindsight, the achievements of other PMs understood every third word. High- * Lowest-priced book will be free of charge. of their generation, it seems destined to be a lights include Papillon, Down and Out landmark work on Australian politics. Offer only available at Readings Carlton, in March, while stocks last. Not available online. in Paris and London and the naughty Martin Shaw is from Readings Carlton bits in Tropic of Cancer.

CINEMA NOVA RECOMMENDS Visit the Cinema Nova Bar RALPH GERARD JESSICA VANESSA Joseph Gordon Levitt Seth Rogen Anjelica Huston FIENNES BUTLER CHASTAIN REDGRAVE Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) directs Will Reiser’s CORIOLANUS edgy comedy of a young Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in a gritty modern 380 LYGON ST CARLTON man’s brush with mortality. / www.cinemanova.com.au 50 50 interpretation of Shakespeare's tale of a country at war. Online bookings available “Gordon-Levitt & Rogen are a dream team” “An essential contemporary drama” Guardian, UK Rolling Stone Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera, MARCH 8 National Theatre and other stage spectaculars. EXCLUSIVE TO CINEMA NOVA MARCH 8 Readings Monthly March 2012 3

has an eye for detail, an unerring ear for both an accessible introduction to Ni- cant and pomposity and, most endearingly, etzsche’s thought and its impact, as well as an ability to mock himself. Wednesday 28 an overview of contemporary approaches to March, 6.30pm, Cinema Nova, Carlton. Nietzsche. Thursday 22 March, 6pm, Read- Free, but please book on 9347 6633. ings Carlton. Free, no need to book MarchPlease note that bookings do not guaranteeEvents Peter Rose 14 a seat, but rather indicate to us the number 29 Andrea Goldsmith will launch Rose’s new of people to expect. To see more events or for Special Viewing: Stephanie Alexander poetry collection Crimson Crop (UWAP, PB, updates on new events please visit the events Love and Devotion Stephanie Alexander’s new $24.95), which has at its core a series of ele- page at www.readings.com.au. Please join us for a guided tour of the State book, A Cook’s Life (Lantern, gies, several about his late father Bob Rose, Library of Victoria’s latest exhibition, ‘Love HB, Normally $39.95, and contains new ‘Catullan’ poems. Monday gold coin donations and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond’ Our special price $34.95), 26 March, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, at Readings Events which celebrates the beauty of Persian is a surprising insight into no need to book. manuscripts. Wednesday 14 March, 6 8pm, We’re now asking for people who attend – her life. Join us for a glass of Olga Bursian our events to please make a small donation, State Library of Victoria. $25 includes wine, Brown Brothers Wine and Bursian documents the stories of 30 migrant when possible, to the Readings Foundation. canapés and tour. Download and complete a an intimate conversation women who speak about displacement and The Readings Foundation was established by booking form from Readings’ online Events with one of Melbourne’s most loved chefs. resettlement, and about overturning popular Readings’ managing director Mark Rubbo in page or call Emily on 9341 7726. Thursday 29 March, 6.30 7.30pm, Read- – stereotypes about their cultures. Wednesday 2008 to make donations to individuals and ings Hawthorn. Free, but bookings essential 28 March, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, organisations that do good work for com- on 9819 1917. This is a standing-only event, no need to book. munity, literacy, or the arts. There will be a 15 please request a seat if needed. tin for gold coin donations at each event. All Halina Wagowska Brenda Niall in conversation contributions to the Foundation over $2 are Maria Myers will launch Niall’s True North: tax deductible and can be made at any Read- with Anna Epstein The Story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack ings shop. Thank you for your support. And Peter Singer Launches (Text, PB, $32.95). Wednesday 28 March, Halina Wagowska is a survivor of Auschwitz Merlinda Bobis 6.30pm, Readings Hawthorn. Free, no need and Stutthof, and her book is her last testi- How much can the heart accommodate? to book 5 mony before, as she puts it, she drops off the Death and love, an enemy and a sweetheart, Melbourne’s twig. Anna is from the Melbourne Jewish war and an impassioned serenade, and more. Martin Mulligan and Buildings Series Museum. Thursday 15 March, 6.30pm, Join us for the launch of Fish Hair Woman Yaso Nadarajah This year will mark the 150th anniversary Readings St Kilda. Free, but please book on (Spinifex, PB, $29.95) by Merlinda Bobis. Martin Mulligan and Yaso Nadarajah from of the first occupation of the Old Treasury 9525 3852. Tuesday 6 March, 6.30pm, Readings Carl- the Globalism Research Centre at RMIT are Building. We are commemorating the occa- ton. Free, no need to book. the authors of Rebuilding Communities in the sion by presenting a series of talks about the Simon Cleary Wake of Disaster: Social Recovery in Sri Lanka impact of buildings on our collective psyche. 22 and India (Routledge, HB, $163). The Head To begin, we present Dr Andrew Lemon, Sylvia Lawson Robert Hillman will launch Cleary’s second of Oxfam in Australia, Andrew Hewett, will president of the Royal Historical Society of novel Closer to Stone (UQP, PB, $29.95). launch this important book. Thursday 29 in conversation This novel follows two brothers: Jack, a Victoria, who is best known for his three- with gideon haigh March, 6pm for 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. volume history of Australian thoroughbred soldier peacekeeper with the UN, and Free, no need to book. Lawson’s book, Demanding the Impossible: racing. Monday 5 March, 6.30pm, Read- Sebastian, a sculptor, who travels to Africa Seven Essays on Resistance (MUP, PB, $32.99) ings Carlton. Free, but please book on 9347 in search of his missing brother. Tuesday 13 Pat Grant is a collection of essays that explores the 6633. March, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no Drinks will be served and graphic novels idea of resistance through accounts of some need to book. celebrated with the launch of Blue (Gira- who have practiced it. Thursday 22 March, mondo, HB, $20), a graphic novel about 6.30pm, Readings St Kilda. Free, Tess Evans race relations on the Australian beach. 7 but please book on 9525 3852. Local Melbourne author Tess Evans has Genius. Thursday 29 March, 8pm, Readings Ron Rash written another gem of a book. Come and Carlton. Free, no need to book. in conversation join the celebration of the release of The with Peter Pierce 23 Memory Tree (A&U, PB, $27.99). Thursday Ron Rash’s last novel catapulted him to Harry Howard 15 March, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, new heights, garnering rave reviews across & The Near Death no need to book. Australia and becoming a New York Times Experience Paddy O’Reilly And in April bestseller. Join us as he talks with Peter about Harry Howard & The Near Death Experi- Come along to the launch of another won- 2 his new book, The Cove (Text, PB, $29.95). ence will launch their new album Near derful book from Paddy O’Reilly, The Fine Wednesday 7 March, 6.30pm, Readings Sonya Hartnett Death Experience. Friday 23 March, 6pm, Colour of Rust (Blue Door, PB, $24.99). Toni Hawthorn. Free, but please book on 9819 Hartnett’s books have become part of our Readings Carlton. Free, no Jordan will be launching the book. Thursday 1917. literary landscape. Join us as Sonya reflects need to book 15 March, 6pm, Bella Union Bar, Trades on her work. Monday 2 April, 6.30pm, Hall. Free, no need to book. Readings Carlton. Free, but please book on 9347 6633. 8 26 Leanne Hall International Andy Griffiths Join us at the launch of Women's day event Ohhh nooo! He’s back with Terry and with Leanne Hall’s brilliant book, 3 Is Women’s Writing Different to Men’s?Join us another book, Just Doomed! (Pan, Queen of the Night (Text, PB, Sally Rippin in celebration of 101 years of IWD and in PB, $12.99). Hear more about it and meet $19.95), sequel to the Sally is the creative genius behind the Billie support of the Stella Prize as we tackle this the superstar himself. Monday 26 award-winning This is B Brown books and now she is introduc- question with Monica Dux, Sophie Cun- March, 5.30pm–6.30pm, Westgarth Shyness. Monday 19 March, ing the Hey Jack series (Jack is Billie’s best ningham, Chris Flynn and Rebecca Starford. Theatre, High Street, Northcote. Free, but 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. friend). Come and meet Sally as she reads We will also celebrate the launch of Over- please book on 9347 6633. Free, no need to book. from her latest Billie books, The Pocket land’s new short-story eCollection, She, Money Blues and The Copycat Kid. Tuesday 3 featuring five women writers. Thursday 8 Kate James April, 10.30–11.30am, Readings Hawthorn. March, 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, but 27 When Gods Collide (Hardie Grant, PB, $10 per child includes a signed copy of please book on 9347 6633. $24.95) is James’s account of growing up Deborah Robertson either The Pocket Money Blues or The Copycat In conversation with among missionaries in India and of her return to the subcontinent following the Kid and a special gift. Bookings are essential Angela Meyer murder of compatriot Graham Staines and as places are limited: 9819 1917. Suitable for 14 The much anticipated second novel, Sweet children aged from five to nine. New News brings you: his two sons by Hindu fundamentalists in Old World (Vintage, PB, Normally $32.95, Orissa. Tuesday 20 March, 6.30pm, Read- Who’s Afraid of Our special price $27.95) from the bestsell- ings Carlton. Gina Rinehart? ing author of Careless, explores the little- Free, no need to book. 5 Presented by the Centre for Advanced discussed subject of how it is to be a man Law School Series Journalism in partnership with Readings, who longs for a child. Tuesday 27 March, Christina Twomey We are going to be talking through The New News is an ongoing series of conversa- 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, but please Prof. Marilyn Lake will launch Mark Peel Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins tions designed to provide our community book on 9347 6633. and Christina Twomey’s A History of Austra- of International Criminal Law by Kevin with the opportunity to talk about journal- lia (Palgrave, PB, $49.95). This book offers a Heller. Tuesday 5 April, 6.30pm, Readings ism, why it matters and how to do it better. clear chronological narrative which brings to Carlton. Margaret Simons, Director of the Centre 28 life the ideas, hopes and journeys of Austra- for Advanced Journalism; Stephen Mayne, Hilary Mcphee lia’s past and present. Wednesday 21 March, 2012 global atheists Australian journalist and local government in conversation with 6.30pm, Readings Carlton. Free, no need to convention councillor; and Tim Wilson, a public policy book. Hannie Rayson And watch out for the Atheists Convention analyst and regular media commentator, talk McPhee’s Memoirs of a Young Bastard: The at the Melbourne Convention Centre from about family ties, media ownership and the Ashley Woodward Diaries of Tim Burstall (Miegunyah, HB, 13–15 April. Richard Dawkins and other great WA! Wednesday 14 March, 6.30pm, Woodward’s book, Understanding Nietzs- $59.99) are among the most evocative high profile atheists will be making the case Readings Carlton. Free, no need to book. cheanism (Acumen, PB, $32.95) provides Australian diaries of modern times. Burstall against God. 4 Readings Monthly March 2012 New Australian Writing Feature A Single Man Sian Prior interviews Deborah Robertson about her new book Sweet Old World

the Nita B. Kibble Award and the Colin smart, but it’s also having someone look at Roderick Award and was shortlisted for the way you see things.’ half-a-dozen other literary prizes. It tells the The growing attraction between David and story of a shy girl called Pearl whose young Tania tantalises the reader with the possibil- brother dies as a result of a random act of ity of a happy ending that Robertson says male violence. Robertson says she has ‘an ‘would have helped me sell another 10 000 ongoing horror of children suffering and of copies’. children not feeling safe in the world’. ‘But I think it’s impossible to reach middle In Sweet Old World the suffering child is a age and not be deeply defined by your past, teenage traveller called Ettie who has an ac- as these two people have been. I do think cident on the island that leaves her hospi- character is destiny. The romantic fantasies talised in a coma. David, who has met Ettie of popular culture bear as much resem- just once, becomes her only visitor until blance to real love as pornography does to Ettie’s mother, Tania, arrives from Australia. real sex and I’m not in the business of ped- David collects Tania from the airport: ‘Her dling a romantic fantasy.’ face is lovely, but he wouldn’t be able to de- scribe it. A bright light shines from her and Robertson also turns her unflinching gaze makes him look away, a warning light that on the suffering body, both human and says don’t you fucking dare.’ But of course he animal. David remembers covering a story does dare and while Ettie lies silent in her on ‘The World’s Fastest Turkey Plucking hospital bed the two embark on a stop-start Championship’ at an English industrial fac- courtship. tory farm when he was a young journalist: Given the ubiquity – and narrative predict- ‘The stink of bird fear, there’s nothing ability – of popular romance writing, trying in the world like it. Behind the curtain, to convey the experience of falling in love turkeys were shitting and screaming and with fresh prose must be one of the hardest beating their wings; it was probably the most activity they’d known in their lives, the closest they’d ever been to their bird ‘One of the wonders natures, and it was all about to end.’ David recalls this gruesome scene when a of falling in love … back injury renders him immobile and bed- ridden for several days and his emotional Known for her simple, David Quinn is living alone in a cottage on is that the world vulnerability is suddenly mirrored by his graceful style that at the same one of the grey stone Aran Islands, at the physical incapacity: ‘The light wakes him, time never fails to mine the mouth of Galway Bay, where his sister Orla suddenly stretches or it might be his pain, or hunger … Now depths of human emotion, runs a B&B. David is haunted by the image life has come down to a few choices: should Deborah Robertson has long of a ghost-child whose absence fills him wider. It lets you he bend his leg or keep it straight? Arm garnered praise from both with a ‘black and icy … feeling of extinc- across his eyes or out to the side? Pain is the critics and readers alike. Her tion’. out of the closet of nucleus of everything.’ first collection of short stories, Proudflesh, won the Steele Rudd Award in In a quiet café in North Fitzroy, Robertson your own life – as ‘I believe that once that happens in a body, 1998 and her novel, Careless, was shortlisted ponders the word melancholy: ‘David loves an injury that is never repaired,’ says Rob- for the Miles Franklin Award. Now, upon the the world. He’s not a misanthrope, but expansive and as rich ertson, ‘once mortality comes in that way, release of her latest book, Sweet Old World the fact that his deepest wish hasn’t been the difference between that sort of human (Vintage, PB, Normally $32.95, Our special fulfilled renders him vulnerable. Perhaps as that might be – body and the body that has never know pain price $27.95), Sian Prior spoke to Deborah melancholy is what vulnerability looks like or illness is greater than the difference be- for Readings’ New Australian Writing series from the outside.’ and gives you access tween the human body and the animal body. Pain deeply insinuates itself into the way you on fatherhood, love, and what happens when One of Robertson’s greatest strengths as a look at the world and respond to it.’ our deepest desires are denied. writer is her ability to convey the infinite into someone else’s variety of human emotional states. ‘The Robertson plays with the analogy between problem with melancholy,’ thinks David, world.’ the slow deterioration of David’s body and eborah Robertson’s latest ‘is that melancholy doesn’t admit anger, or the erosion of his adopted home, an island novel began life as a story perhaps it’s anger suppressed.’ Robertson that is literally falling into the sea. And just about three sisters grappling teases out the subtle affective transforma- tasks a writer can set themselves. Robertson as the Atlantic Ocean carves chunks off the with the impacts of infertility. tions that can lead to dramatic shifts in is up to the challenge. She remembers the coastline, the Irish economic crisis gouges Eighteen months into the first people’s lives. When does embarrassment small, vivid details that most of us forget away the economic foundations of the draft, the Melbourne-based author was so morph into shame? How does shame lead once we’ve moved from being-in-love to island community. Everyone, it seems, is bored with her own project that she to silence, and what happens when silence simply loving; the sudden sense that the feeling vulnerable. becomes a habit? world has been made to your specifications; Dditched it. ‘It was a very melancholy time for Ireland,’ the desire to show your lover the world ‘It had the tone of a Sunday newspaper ‘I’ve always been interested in masculine through your eyes. says Robertson. ‘The prosperity that came supplement. We all know about childless- silence and the way women try to talk into from the so-called roaring Celtic Tiger ness and it’s all been about the woman’s that silence,’ she says. ‘Why do men so She describes David catching the ferry was unusual because Ireland’s history had body and the woman’s longing. There has often feel ashamed of wanting to be fathers? back to the island and consciously trying been all about poverty and emigration and been such a feminisation of infertility and I discovered this male friend of mine was to remember in exact detail the look of colonialism. Then the Celtic Tiger ran away of parenthood in recent decades.’ in complete despair about it but he had the Elvis impersonators on board, ‘so he from them. But melancholy is not nihilism; never talked about it, he just went about can paint [Tania] a picture, so she can be it’s not a failure to believe in anything. It’s Robertson hadn’t lost interest in explor- his life. And these days, with the availabil- there’. an appreciation of potential riches and a ing the experience of childlessness through ity of medical technologies for women and ‘One of the wonders of falling in love,’ sweet reflection on the gap between poten- fiction. What interested her more, she of adoption for gay male couples, a single tial and realities – that’s the case for Ireland realised, was the silence of men on this says Roberts, ‘is that the world suddenly heterosexual man is completely on his own stretches wider. It lets you out of the closet at that time and also for David Quinn.’ subject. She began again and the result is with this desire to have children.’ Sweet Old World, an exquisitely melancholic of your own life – as expansive and as rich Sian Prior is a Melbourne writer, broadcaster tale of a middle-aged man who longs to be Vulnerability, particularly that of children, as that might be – and gives you access and musician. She also teaches creative a father. was a dominant theme in Robertson’s into someone else’s world. Françoise Sagan writing at RMIT and Writers Victoria. said once that being in love meant having last novel. Careless (Picador, 2006) won www.sianprior.com In 2009 the Irish-Australian journalist someone to look at you. I think that’s really Readings Monthly March 2012 5

Mark’s say Book of the Month News and views from Readings’ the Fine Colour managing director Mark Rubbo of Rust Q&A with P.A. O’Reilly I don’t know about Blue Door. PB. $24.99. Ebook $4.99. you, but I go through Paddy O’Reilly has been Paddy O’Reilly phases when reading is a staple on the short- Readings’ Jessica Au interviews Paddy O’Reilly about The Fine Colour of Rust a bit of a chore but story circuit for a long (Blue Door, PB, $24.99). Ebook $4.99. then something while now, winning just catches my fancy and about everything from ing the story had been the catalyst for the off I go. I’ve started reading Drusilla the Age Short Story novel that wanted to be written. Modjeska’s new novel The Mountain Award to Zoetrope: All (out in May from Random House). You write characters like Norm Stevens, the Story in the US, a It’s set in New Guinea, just before gruff owner of the junk-yard, and Helen, history anthologised in her impressive independence; it explores notions of Loretta’s bloke-crazy friend, with great af- 2007 collection, The End of the World. colonialism, racism and sexism. For fection and wit. Humour is often a difficult The Fine Colour of Rust is her second many young Papuans, it was a time thing to do – how important was comedy as novel, and her first foray into ‘literary- of great promise – the new university a counterweight to hardship in the book? commercial’ fiction (hence why she’s had opened and an exciting group of writing as P.A. rather than Paddy). It was vital. It may be a strange thing to potential leaders was emerging. say but I think some books belong to read- I visited around the same time and was The Fine Colour of Rust covers much Your narrator, Loretta – a single mum ers, some to the authors who wrote them, struck by the paradoxes of the place. tried and true ground: Loretta Boskovic and some to the characters who inhabit On the one hand there was excite- is a single mum struggling to raise her struggling to raise her kids in a stranded rural town – is such a fresh voice: funny, the book. This is Loretta’s book. Her world ment and optimism and on the other two children, Melissa and Jake, in a view is what saves her life from being a colonial paternalism. I remember small, abandoned town on the edge of deprecating and frank all at once. (She dreams of dumping Melissa and Jake at an miserable grind of poverty and struggle. staying with a teacher in the highlands Australia’s rural frontier. At the same She is loyal but absolutely clear-eyed, so who told me about a liaison with a time, she’s stuck trying to push the orphanage, for example, yet is willing to go-for-broke to rally a less-than-enthusiastic her observations of the people around her, Papuan woman – it was OK he said, community of Gunapan into action to while imbued with the love she feels for because he never kissed her. I can’t save their school and perhaps also their community to save their school). What was it about this character that grabbed you? them, are funny because they are cracking- wait to get back to Drusilla’s book. resources, determined to rescue them ly honest. Events that could be tragic are I’m also a chapter or so into Katherine in spite of themselves. Things are not Apart from Loretta’s voice, which gripped remade by her wit into farce. In Loretta’s Boo’s book about the Mumbai slums, helped by the arrival of her ex-husband, me immediately, I was very interested in world, laughter makes the unbearable Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Scribe). ‘child-bride’ in tow, and the decided writing about people who are struggling to bearable. Readings Monthly editor Kabita Dhara lack of enthusiasm from her neigh- get by. There’s a kind of thinking that has reviews it very favourably here and bours. taken hold in Australia since the Howard There’s plenty of love between Loretta, Henry Rosenbloom from Scribe says years that people with no money and few Melissa and Jake, but you also touch on the This is clearly well-travelled ground, it’s one of the best books he’s ever prospects have only themselves to blame. ways children can test you. The tension, for yet in O’Reilly’s hands it is, surpris- published. They’re depicted as a bogan underclass instance, between an 11-year-old girl finding ingly, transformed into an energetically of lazy, unmotivated bludgers, or as an her mother embarrassing for the first time, The US Census has released figures crafted novel that is both smart and almost biblically violent and terrifying and the issue of bullying. Were you conscious showing printed book sales plunged by savvy. Loretta’s voice is a real force in tribe. I wanted to write the story of people of wanting to capture a particular idea of 15.7% last December, which echoes this book, carrying the reader along who have very little going for them but parenthood here? some of the figures coming from throughout. She is, in equal measure, who still live rich lives and do the best Australia. The figures are probably due winningly flawed, dramatic and wry: People have asked about how I can write for their families and community. Not to a combination of the US closure daydreaming of dropping Melissa and on parenthood when I don’t have children saints – Loretta is no saint – but ordinary, of Borders and the growth of ebooks. Jake off at an orphanage so that she can (no one ever asked me how I can write good, flawed people who have the courage Interestingly enough retail sales in run off with a man on a Harley and about men when I’m not a man or aliens to keep going day after day. It’s often the other categories were up strongly, un- wearing a bra from the $2 shop that when I’ve never met one and so on, but people who can laugh at the world’s absur- like Australia. I suspect the difference creaks and embarrasses her children, that’s another issue). In a way I have an dity, even as they’re being hammered, who between the two is the growth of the while at the same time negotiating the advantage in being the observer. Parent- manage to keep it all together. online sector. In Australia most online hardship of her life, and that of her hood is so consuming and the weight of purchases are made offshore, whereas kids, with wit and resilience. The other challenge was to write a book responsibility so great that everything must in the US most online purchases are that had some real content and honest be coloured by the constant anxiety that The book is replete with deadpan made domestically. This presents a characters, but that got these things across something bad may happen to your child. humour and you get a sense that pretty big challenge for Australian without the techniques that I might have So watching from the sidelines, I feel as O’Reilly is really cutting loose with the publishers and writers who are faced used if I was writing a book of a more though I am able to have a clear view of dialogue here. It spars and parries and with a shrinking market for printed standard literary form. Could I write the interactions of parents and children. is whippet-quick. Indeed, some of the books and an ebook market domi- Loretta in the first person as an original, Quite often they are hilarious because best moments are the simple passages nated by Amazon. Henry from Scribe vibrant, intelligent and complex char- children simply will not be the innocent of banter and bickering between the says he’s never known his subscriptions acter without investing her with literary angels we want them to be. At other times townsfolk, particularly the prickly but (advance orders) for new books to be references, meditations on landscape and the troubles of children’s private lives kind-hearted junk-yard owner, Norm so low – there aren’t as many booksell- highbrow analysis that would not be true can make a parent feel overwhelmed and Stevens, a wonderful character in his ers left and those that are, are more to her character? At one point she comes incompetent. It’s a hard job, bringing up a own right. The novel runs on a height- cautious. It’s hard to know how many across the blurb of a rather pompous child – full of joy, but there is always a part ened sense of reality, in which everyone to print and lower print runs mean sounding book and wonders if everyone of a child’s world that will be unavailable is a slightly embellished version of the higher unit costs, higher prices, lower thinks like this except her. I was having a to the parent. That small gap in knowing, people you feel you could know. Yet sales. A tough conundrum. There is bit of fun about certain kinds of books, and the separating off that happens as there are plenty of underhanded mo- talk of new printing technologies that not least my own! I love reading novels children grow, is rich territory for fiction. ments here too. One of the strongest will make shorter runs of books more with all those elements – hey, I write them threads remains, for me, what occurs Loretta is firmly rooted in life in Gunapan, cost effective. It is an interesting time. too – but this was to be a different kind of when Lorretta is confronted with the yet she often fantasies about ‘living the way book. The magnificent exhibition of Persian realities of bullying through Melissa she used to’, freer and without obligation. illuminated manuscripts opens this and Jake. Here, we see the clarity of This novel began life as a short story. At what How do you feel about this impulse – is it month at the State Library. It will observation and the humaneness that point did you realise you had a lengthier universal in a way? be wonderful to be able to see these are hallmarks of O’Reilly’s prose, and work on your hands? There are eras of my life I’d never want to beautiful books from the collection of the very real tugs of pain and confusion I had always felt that there was more to return to – who would ever want to be the Bodleian Library in Oxford and that parenthood can bring. a teenager again? – and there are others our own State Library. Preparing for come, partly because of Loretta’s insistent Insofar as there exists a framework for and laugh-inducing voice in my head. Ob- where I regret not realising how much I the exhibition has been a fascinating had. Yet that longing for the things we experience; we’ve worked particularly ‘literary’ versus ‘commercial’ fiction, viously for the novel I had to restructure The didn’t appreciate at the time, or the desire closely with stationery company Zetta and all the crossover in-between, the beginning, which had been the origi- Fine Colour of Rust for a freedom we imagine we once had, Florence creating a range of beautiful is a novel that is as nal story, but I didn’t do that immediately. self-aware as it is tightly written, clever At first I wrote loosely, letting the narrative is probably nostalgia for an illusion. We objects using four exquisite im- didn’t appreciate what we had because ages from the exhibition. One of the and quick. This is a book that knows go where it would. I wasn’t thinking novel. when to deliver on those conventions, I was writing, just writing. And when I our other concerns at the time made us principals of Zetta Florence, Georgina oblivious. We were free but desperate for Knightly, has lead the project and it’s and when to subvert them. It is a story found that I had a large body of words, that you can get swept up in yes, with and did go back to rewrite the begin- something else we didn’t have. Dreaming been very interesting to watch the and longing are fundamental human traits. development from concept to finished moments of warmth and uplift, but ning, I discovered to my amazement that that still has it in it to catch you off the seeds of the whole book were already The dream itself frees us. It’s like reading. product. We list them in this month’s It is more than an escape. It allows us to issue (page 9) and you’ll be able to see guard as well. there. Of course the seeds of whole lives Jessica Au is from Readings St Kilda are contained in short stories, that’s part of live more lives than the one we have in the them at our exhibition shop in this world. the library foyer. their job, but in this case I mean that the plot elements were all foreshadowed. Writ- Full interview at www.readings.com.au 6 Readings Monthly March 2012

HE FOUND New Fictionthe novel reads like a road movie. Through The Memory Tree a series of vignettes we see Billy grow Tess Evans FREEDOM, Australian Fiction increasingly frustrated with his life in A&U. PB. $27.99. Ebook $16.79. Sweet Old World paradise; he feels like his life is missing When Paulina dies, she leaves SOLACE AND Deborah Robertson meaning. Eventually, via a mixture of behind little Zav and Sealie Vintage. PB. Normally $32.95 curiosity and boredom, he winds up at a with their loving but A MEANS OF Our special price $27.95 Buddhist monastery – and forced to unstable father, Hal. The There are novels that win contemplate the vagaries of existence and family plant a tree in her you over in an instant and self, he starts on a path that leads him to memory, to create a place of ESCAPE FROM novels that creep up on you. confront the demons from which he has solace, but Hal turns to his Surely and insistently, been hiding. own brand of salvation to Deborah Robertson’s Sweet THE TERRORS With its lusty language and unwittingly make sense of the voices that torment him. Old World is the latter. introspective narrator, A Tiger in Eden Sealie blossoms into a young woman and OF HIS PAST. Writer and expat David brings to mind the novels of Irvine Welsh, Zav is conscripted for duty in Vietnam but Quinn has come to live near or DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little. Unlike all the while, the voices continue to murmur his sister and her children on the remote Vernon though, Billy never seems to be in poisonous words to Hal. A compelling story island of Inishmore, Ireland. A bachelor any real peril. Like an uncouth Irish James of love, loyalty, grief and forgiveness. BUT THOSE who is beginning to feel the onset of age, he Bond, Billy merely fires off a jab of Celtic longs deeply for a child of his own, yet fears wit or a right hook of Ulster muscle and he The Mistake WERE THE that this opportunity may have passed him easily negotiates any hurdles that Thailand Wendy James by. Enter Ettie – a young tourist from Perth may fling at him. And gets the girl to boot. Michael Joseph. PB. $29.95 OLD DAYS. – who may be the one to give him that It is in this same way that his redemption, Jodie Garrow is just a chance, though not without complications. or at least his confrontation and acceptance teenager when she falls There is more to it than that of course, of his own conscience, also comes to him pregnant. Scared, alone and much more, but to say it here would be to too easily, and as a result, the novel winds desperate to make something ruin a brilliantly crafted narrative. up feeling a little hollow and unsatisfying. of her life, she adopts out the Robertson is brave enough not to rely That being said, A Tiger in Eden is a worthy baby illegally – and tells on gendered clichés in her exploration of debut, the writing is fluid and authentic nobody. Twenty-five years parenthood and family and the book is and the descriptions of Thailand make you on, Jodie has built a new life stronger for it. David’s need is both visceral yearn to holiday there. In fact, if you do and a new family. But when the adoption and moving: ‘he wonders who is making find yourself on a tropical beach looking to comes to the notice of the authorities, Jodie love, who is soothing a restless child. He ignore the troubles of the world, this novel becomes caught in a nationwide police hasn’t done enough of either in his life, and would make a fine companion. investigation, and the centre of a media tonight he feels like the lack could kill him Tom Hoskins is from Readings at the State witch hunt. … It is the greatest of all its inequalities, Library of Victoria the world’s distribution of love.’ Yet David Sarah Thornhill not a wholly likeable character either. In Search of Kate Grenville Internally at least, he pursues his compul- the Blue Tiger Text. PB. $29.95 sion towards fatherhood like a kind of lust, Robert Power Sarah Thornhill is the a desire that adds a desperate volume to sex, Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 youngest child of William and to the new relationships he encounters. Thornhill, convict-turned- Oscar Flowers is a boy, the landowner on the Hawkes- Through this, we are made painfully aware same as any other. He has bury River. She’s known Jack of the hopes and perils of striving for the the Mother, the Father and Langland since she was a life you want – of what can drive two the Great Aunt and lives in a child, and always loved him. people together and the turn of screw; the house, a House of the But the past is waiting in smallest moments that can break a relation- Doomed and Damned. He ambush with its dark legacy. Grenville takes ship apart. The prose is lean and muscled dreams like any other boy, us back to the early Australia of The Secret and the ending near-perfect in its restraint. dreams of adventure in far River and the Thornhill family in this story Written with equal measures of grace and off places and of tigers, the colour blue and of tangled secrets and the silent spaces of regret, Sweet Old World is a novel that is the number 25. His goal in life is to the past. both knowing and true. become a tiger with blue stripes, for he Jessica Au is from Readings St Kilda knows that every person can also become an animal. The hardest part of life is Closer to Stone working out which animal the adults are at Simon Cleary any one time. He learns this from his International UQP. PB. $29.95 parents, who called each other animal There has never been a names and spill each others blood on the Fiction deserter in Bas Adams’ walls. the BELLWETHER family – from the Somme to This story is full of discoveries, of watching REVIVALS Vietnam. So when his a boy see the world for the first time. With Benjamin Wood brother, Jack, is reported danger in his everyday life at home, and S&S. PB. $29.99 missing from his peacekeep- no friends or help from school, he wanders A quote on the back cover of ing contingent in Western around trying to discover as many things this book sparked my Sahara, Bas knows he must about tigers as possible. In a moment of interest: ‘if you love the be found. Their father demands it. From love the Father finds Oscar a plum-coloured bohemian glamour of Queensland’s Lockyer Valley to the dog to keep him company. Along with Brideshead Revisited, the mountains of southern Algeria, Bas follows the twins, Perch and Carp Fishcutter, who clandestine circle of students Jack’s trail deep into the Sahara Desert, and have their own world that they slowly draw in The Secret History… you A GRIPPING into a world apart. Nothing could prepare Oscar into, and Mrs April the kind and will love this book’. I love a him for what he finds. thoughtful librarian, he starts to create a good campus novel but if it is comedy, satire LITERARY space for himself in the world. or even reality you’re looking for, Bellwether Revivals doesn’t quite fit this genre. There is a A Tiger in Eden Sometimes I was unsure whether the author subgenre of the campus novel, the ‘campus THRILLER Chris Flynn was making fun, being serious or being murder mystery’ and it is within this setting Text. PB. $22.95 simple. The names of the townspeople, that we meet Oscar Lowe. Oscar lives in Flynn’s debut novel sees Mr and Mrs Fishcutter, Mrs Butcherhook, Cambridge but because he is not a student, Billy Montgomery, an Irish Brother Saviour, characterise them more he assumes the role of the outsider. He grew loyalist foot soldier, on the than any long-winded description could up in a working-class family, never finished run from his violent past do. Oscar is at times brave, resourceful, high school and works as a care assistant at a and hiding out in Thailand independent, innocent and old before his local nursing home. Predictably, his attrac- during the mid nineties. time. With despair invading the majority of tion to Iris Bellwether, a brilliant medical There, Billy attempts to find the book, there is some spark at the centre student and musician, draws him in to the solace on the beaches, in the in this young character that turns and cloistered world of Cambridge University beers or between the bosoms of the many becomes a strange message of hope. and he becomes entangled in the lives of her comely backpackers he stumbles upon. All Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton family and friends. But here is where the the while however he is haunted by the predictability ends because despite the memories of his former life. Written in the contrived premise, this book does throw up first person and in bawdy Irish vernacular, some surprises. There are interesting themes Readings Monthly March 2012 7 of mental illness, religion and musicology that smoking pot, and slowly revealing more I was surprised to encounter. The central and more about themselves. But when you mystery surrounds Iris’s brother (another make their subject matter the politics of brilliant Cambridge student) and whether or religious identity under the shadow of the not he has managed to harness the power of Holocaust – the secular couple – the stakes music to heal the human body or whether his begin to rise, until the story’s devastating experiments are deadly. The prelude begins denouement. But this story, like several of with a couple of dead bodies so we know the others here, is also leavened with from the start that it’s going to end badly. If it moments of high comedy, which plants all sounds a little crazy well that’s because it is Englander firmly in the rich Jewish and here is where our perceptions of mental comedic tradition of Woody Allen et al. illness are challenged. This is Wood’s first The longest story in the collection, ‘Seven novel so he can perhaps be forgiven for Hills’ is more at the Kafkaesque end of the relying heavily on a framework that Evelyn humour scales, but is no less stunning – a Waugh and Donna Tartt have perfected. history of one of the original founding LOVE AND What he has produced is a highly readable, families of what is now an Eastern Jerusa- often interesting, escapist novel. lem suburb, but was then arid hills in DEVOTION Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton disputed territory, post-Six Day War. I felt I From Persia and Bey ond learned more about the lived experience of Waiting for Sunrise that region from Englander’s almost William Boyd mythical tale than any number of non- Bloomsbury. PB. Normally $29.95 fiction treatments. Our special price $24.95 Martin Shaw is from Readings Carlton In his new book, Boyd In partnership with: returns to the world of The Cove espionage and intrigue that Ron Rash LOVE A ND was the hallmark of his Text. PB. $29.95 wonderful novel, Restless. It Siblings Laurel and Hank DEFrStateom PVOT ersiaLibrary andIO Bey ondN is 1913 and English actor Shelton live in the cove, 9 March – 1 July 2012 lonely, fruitless farmland 10am–5pm daily (to 9pm Thursday), of Victoria Lysander Rief has come to closed Good Friday Vienna to seek treatment for that the locals say is cursed. Free entry an embarrassing condition. A close friend Returning from WWI, State Library of Victoria Hank soon falls in love but 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne had suggested that psychoanalysis may be a Inquiries: 8664 7000 his new bride refuses to live LOVE AND solution to his problem and recommended Image: The marriage of Yusuf and Zulaykha in the cove, forcing him to (detail), from Jami, Yusuf u Zulaykha, 1595, an English psychoanalyst practicing in Bodleian Library, University of Oxford DEVOTION Vienna. Dr Bensimmon, a colleague of choose between her and his sister. Mean- From Persia a nd Beyond Freud, had developed a technique he called while, Laurel discovers an injured man on Major sponsors: ‘parallelism’, which he believed might be their land who slowly insinuates himself Celebrate the beauty of Persian manuscripts very effective in Rief’s treatment. Vienna in into life in the cove – bringing her happi- and their stories of human and divine love in 1913 is a city of art, culture and political ness, even love. But when Laurel stumbles this captivating landmark exhibition. intrigue that sits on top of a river of sex. At on the stranger’s true identity, she realises LOVE AND least that’s what Lysander’s new friend, they are in real danger, beyond any kind of Conference partner: Supported by: Lieutenant Wolfram Rozman, a lodger at mythical curse. love-and-devotion.comDEVOTION his boarding house says. It doesn’t take long From Persia and Bey ond Indemnified by the Victorian Government for Lysander to discover that river and the The Detour through Arts Victoria rest; he begins a passionate affair with Gebrand Bakker another of Bensimmon’s patients. Wrongly Scribe. PB. $27.95. Ebook $18.99. accused of a crime, he flees Vienna, aided This is a simple novel. There by two mysterious gentlemen from the are very few characters; the British embassy. Shortly after his return, subject is a Dutch woman LOVE AND war breaks out and Lysander joins up; his who has moved to a embassy acquaintances from Vienna turn farmhouse in a remote part DEVOTION up and make a strange proposal to him. of Wales – the setting is From Persia and Bey ond There is a mole in the High Command, bleak. This Dutch woman passing on information to a spy in the goes by the name Emilie, German embassy in Switzerland. Rief must and the third-person narrator tells the go to Geneva, find the spy and get the reader very little about her (but enough to identity of the mole. Boyd delivers an know that Emilie is not her real name, and engrossing story with a host of wonderful that she is unwell). She is alone, but she has characters against an erotically charged a husband somewhere. She is very obser- background. Certainly a wonderful vant of the local animals, and sunbakes diversion. naked. A badger bites her on the foot. And Mark Rubbo is managing director of Readings she reads Emily Dickinson, unhappily. Why is she doing this? She was writing a What we Talk About Catherine lives with her Uncle in a rambling house To help us understand how Australia sidestepped thesis but it seems she has abandoned that in London’s East End. She has few companions and the Great Recession to become the envy of the When we Talk about now… Something has driven her away little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful developed world, George Megalogenis brings the Anne Frank from her home, or perhaps she is fleeing imagination. But then a murderer strikes. And numbers to life, probes the national character and Catherine gradually realizes she herself is snared coaxes our former prime ministers to candidly Nathan Englander something? Her behaviour confounds the in a deadly trap… re-assess the achievements of a nation brilliant W&N. PB. Normally $29.99 locals, and she enjoys smoking cigarettes. in a bust but selfish in a boom. Our special price $24.95 The paragraph above – replete with ques- On my very first visit to tion marks – is fit to introduce The Detour New York in 1999, I decided because this novel is uneventful, and avoids to go to a book launch one giving answers. Bakker uses spare, descrip- hot summer evening in a tive language to establish ‘Emilie’ as a char- little store in Greenwich acter who has removed herself from the rest village, just to compare it to of society in order to confront some sort of our own author events here existential impasse. His prose is impeccably at Carlton. It was packed clear and uncluttered. Very early on, Bakker with people (including myself, I think) establishes an ambiguous tension (without peering in from outside of the front door. ever giving away how he has done so), And it turned out to be Nathan Englander’s which carries the reader uneasily and anx- For the Relief of Unbearable Urges debut , iously from the start to the finish. The story which went on to become one of that of ‘Emilie’, which gradually and coolly season’s most acclaimed books. Now, all comes into focus for the reader, is told these years later, a second story collection unsentimentally. Bakker avoids dialogue, appears, and this one adorned with more preferring to describe the inner states of his Gillespie exposes the powerful role the multibillion- Set half in Doncaster, half in London, this is a very endorsements from contemporary literary characters, but when someone does speak, giants that I think I’ve ever seen before – dollar food, health and diet industries have played funny riff on modern values, featuring hamsters, the talk is dry and unassuming, and gives in promoting the health messages we follow. cockroaches, poodles, a Chicken and multiplying Foer, Eggers, Obreht, Egan, Franzen – and the world he has created a dark and comic Discovering the truth about diets, exercise, rabbits, told by Marina Lewycka in her unique and supplements and processed food is your first step brilliant combination of irony, farce and wit. that’s just the beginning! I think the chief tone. Bakker is completely in control of his quality to underscore here is nothing else towards improved health, greater happiness and a material. The Detour is startlingly quiet. longer life for you and your family. but the author’s courage. The title story Will Heyward is from Readings St Kilda takes its model from Carver – a bunch of penguin.com.au Jewish friends sitting around drinking and 8 Readings Monthly March 2012 Emerald City A Perfectly Good Man a secret from his family as he knows they will Jennifer Egan Patrick Gale disapprove of his cooperation with the evil Murdoch. PB. $19.99 HarperCollins. PB. $27.99. Ebook $13.99. capitalist regime. Perhaps Lewycka’s greatest A collection of masterful Paralysed in a rugby accident, strength is her creation of character; each short stories from the 20-year-old Lenny Barnes one is as sympathetic as they are infuriating. Pulitzer Prize-winning commits suicide in the They remain so wonderfully believable even author of A Visit From the presence of local parish priest in the unlikely and sometimes farcical Goon Squad. Egan’s charac- Father Barnaby Thomas. His scenarios they find themselves. The book is ters, models and housewives, death threatens a fissure set in 2008, and modern life, consumerism bankers and schoolgirls, are between the parish and its and greed are all examined with humorous united by their search for inhabitants, and opens up and perceptive insight. something outside their own realm of the fault lines between Father Barnaby and Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton experience and the stories deal with his family. Gale explores the gulfs of sadness loneliness and longing, regret and desire. in this Cornish community struggling to This isn’t the Sort of deal with tragedy and lays bare their lives Thing that Happens the Limpopo Academy and thoughts. to Someone Like You of Private Detection Jon McGregor Alexander McCall Smith Puppy Love Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Little Brown. HB. Normally $35 Frauke Scheunemann A man builds a tree house by Our special price $29.95 Corvus. PB. $24.99 a river, in anticipation of the From the hardest-working Billed as the biggest selling coming flood. A young man in crime (seriously, the dog-lovers’ book since Marley woman is almost killed when man must burn through and Me, Puppy Love is the a sugar-beet crashes through keyboards) comes the story of Hercules the her windscreen. A pair of thirteenth book of the resourceful dachshund puppy itinerant labourers sit by a Number 1 Ladies’ Detective and his quest to find his lake, talking about shovels Agency series. Much is mistress, Caroline, the and sex, while fighter planes fly low over- happening in Mma Ramots- perfect mate. When Caroline head. A striking collection of short stories we’s circle: Grace Makutsi’s attempt to build is badly treated by her bossy, dog-hating from the author of the acclaimed novel If Mad Women her family home with Phuti Radiphuti has hit boyfriend, Hercules decides to find her the Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. BY JANE MAAS a snag in the building company; Tlokweng perfect man. What follows is a touching and Road Speedy Motors’ apprentice is having funny story about love, life and the best A wickedly frank, funny and equal difficulty with a terrible lawyer; Mma friend a girl could ever have. The Thoughts and fascinating account of life in Potokwane, adored matron of the orphanage, Happenings of Wilfred the New York advertising world has been fired; and most surprisingly, in town The Ship Price, Purveyor of unexpectedly is Mma Ramotswe’s literary Stéfan Máni Superior Funerals in the 1960s by the real-life mentor, The Principles of Private Detection Murdoch. PB. Normally $30 Wendy Jones Peggy Olsen. Maas’s crisp prose author Mr Clovis Andersen. Murdoch. PB. $24.99 Fiona Hardy from Readings Carlton Our special price $24.95 shows what made her an award- A dark and claustrophobic A charming and moving winning copywriter and one of thriller set on a boat filled depiction of love and secrecy, the masterminds of the ‘I Love The Orphan Master’s with a dangerously salacious set against the rural backdrop Son crew, The Ship won Iceland’s of a 1920s Welsh village. New York’ campaign. Absolutely Adam Johnson Drop of Blood Prize – the Wilfred Price, overcome with unputdownable. Doubleday. PB. Normally $32.95 award for the country’s best emotion on a sunny spring Our special price $27.95 thriller or detective novel – on day, proposes to a girl he The Orphan Master’s Son is a its original publication. The barely knows at a picnic. The disorienting and powerful titular vessel is the Per Se, leaving Iceland for girl, Grace, joyfully accepts and rushes to tell read. Set in the brutally Suriname in South America, and taking with her family of Wilfred’s intentions. But by repressive regime of Kim Jong it nine shipmates who will experience piracy, this time Wilfred has realised his mistake. Il’s North Korea, it follows the mutiny, and the kind of horror that will chase He does not love Grace. life of Pak Jun Do from the you in your sleep. And for some on board, it’s orphanage to the lethal games the last journey they’ll ever make. The Black Rose of dictatorship politics. Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton of Florence Johnson’s novel is confronting and absurd by Michele Giuttari turns, making for a jarring read that initially Various Pets Alive and Little Brown. PB. Normally $29.99 seems a bit much. On reading his description Dead Our special price $24.95 of his own research and experiences in North Marina Lewycka From Italy’s leading crime Korea however, it seems a more traditional Fig Tree. PB. Normally $29.95 writer, a former head of the fiction mightn’t have encapsulated the bizarre Our special price $24.95 Florence police force, comes reality of life in the DPRK. I haven’t read Lewycka’s A this dramatic Florentine David Mitchell has praised the book, and Short History of Tractors in murder mystery. A beautiful fans of his Cloud Atlas will definitely find Ukrainian but it has been young woman is found dead something here; the disengaged, formal voice, sitting on my bookshelf for a in her apartment, naked and abrupt changes in perspective, and especially number of years. As I with a black rose on her the moving portrayal of an individual trying finished the last page of body. Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara to forge and cling to meaning in a distorted Various Pets Alive and Dead I is up against a powerful enemy who will do world. The dystopia Johnson presents, vowed it would be the next anything to hide his identity. As more though fictive, is nevertheless a disturb- book I read. And that’s because Lewycka’s violent deaths occur, Ferrara has to confront ing and important political insight into a latest book is a brilliantly entertaining deadly secrets from his own past. The Fine Colour of Rust country that is too often forgotten by the adventure. It’s smart and funny and one of BY P.A. O’REILLY general public except as caricature. Between those rare novels where you’ll think about the shock of prison camps, famine and tor- individual characters long after you’ve The Fine Colour of Rust is a ture, and the ridiculous farce of much of the finished reading. The story is told from the wryly funny, beautifully observed, country’s culture and diplomacy, Johnson point of view of three characters: Doro, a MJournaleanjin Vol. 71 life-affirming novel about constructs complex relationships between his retiree in her mid-sixties and her two Sally Heath (ed.) characters, whether of duty, fear or love, that friendship, love and fighting for children, Serge and Clara. Doro spends a MUP. PB. $24.99 transcend the facts of their situation. great deal of her time reflecting on her life in As the fourth inquest into things that matter. In Loretta a hippy commune where adults shared The Orphan Master’s Son, though readable Azaria Chamberlain’s death domestic responsibilities including the Boskovic, Paddy O’Reilly has and engaging, is occasionally a bit slow and began, John Bryson returned parenting of several of the communes’ created a truly endearing heroine hard going. Given the enormity of trying to Uluru last year for the first children. Predictably, this was not the idyllic to both understand and critique a notori- time since writing Evil who gives us all permission world it was supposed to be. Back to the ously private culture however, Johnson’s Angels. Gillian Mears writes to dream. present day and Doro is still caring for one care seems well spent. Jolting narrative and about the 16 years between of the children (not biologically her own) a sense of surrealism can be distancing, and novels; Jonathan Biggins who has Down syndrome. Serge and Clara often a character’s lack of emotion threatens takes a cold hard look at Australia Day; Tom have grown up somewhat resentful of their to disengage the reader; but the novel sees Cho’s short story of some 8000 words marks upbringing but unable to escape its influ- in North Korea ‘a grand trauma narrative’ the beginning of Meanjin Papers, a new ences, both good and bad. Clara is a played out on countless individual citizens, project highlighting one exceptional longer schoolteacher trying, without much success, where continuity, reflection and self-expres- work each edition; and Raimond Gaita to make a difference in a disadvantaged sion are constantly sacrificed to the ruthlessly argues for the very considerable benefits of a school. Serge has left an incomplete PhD in pragmatic goal of survival. generalist education. mathematics at Cambridge for a high-paying Imogen Dewey is from Readings Carlton finance job in London. He is keeping the job Readings Monthly March 2012 9

Readings at © Love & Devotion Zetta Florence products available at our pop-up shop at the State Library of Victoria’s Love and Devotion exhibition and at www.readings.com.au

The exhibition

The Love and Devotion exhibition (9 March – 1 July) features nearly 70 rare 13th to 18th-century Persian, Mughal Indian and Ottoman Turkish illustrated manuscripts and miniatures from the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford. Early European manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries will also be on display, including a Roman de la rose and works by Chaucer and Dante. Love and Devotion will also feature rare editions of European literature, travel books and maps from our collections. Don’t miss this first major exhibition of Persian manuscripts to be held in Australia.

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TEXTPUBLISHING.COM.AU 10 Readings Monthly March 2012 Available Now New YA Fiction Cooking See picture books and books for younger and middle readers on page 15. Erebos with the Book of the Month Ursula Poznanski Queen of the Night A&U. PB. $19.99. Ebook $12.99. Leanne Hall Nick is given a highly addictive computer game Text. PB. $19.95. Ebook $16.16. called Erebos that asks its Second novels are notori- players to carry out actions in ously hard to write, espe- the real world in order to cially when, as here, the first keep playing online, actions novel,This is Shyness, won an which become more and award (The Text Prize) and more terrifyingly manipula- has an eager following. Celebratingest 20 years of the tive. As Nick loses friends and all sense of B Which makes Queen of the right and wrong in the real world, he gains Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Night a triumph. The writing power and advances further towards his in this sequel is as beautiful and as mes- online goal – to become one of the Inner merising, but the plot is stronger and has Circle of Erebos. Winner of the 2011 more substance without losing any of the German Youth Literature Prize – Youth Jury earlier edginess and wayward imagination. award, voted for by teenage readers. The world of Shyness is still a rich jumble of the familiar and the strange, especially if one knows the inner-city suburbs, but the Three Summers narrative is built round three mysteries. The Judith Clarke first and central one is why the crackling A&U. PB. $19.99. Ebook $17.99. relationship between Wolfboy (Jethro) and The path of Ruth’s life was Wildgirl (Nia) with all its hope and trust shaped when, as a baby, she has withered, leaving both hurt and vulner- was tossed clear from a car able but still longing for each other. Then wreck. Her grandmother what is happening to Jethro’s oldest friend raised her, with a fierce hope Paul who has become withdrawn and has that she would one day go to been seen with members of the creepy blue university and see the world. uniformed Datura Institute with its ‘moon- When Ruth finishes school, flower’ floral symbol and its rumoured pur- she knows that she must leave town, but that A swirling conversation An unforgettable love story, pose to enter and steal dreams? Why would means leaving Tam Finn, the entrancing boy on everything from travel to dogs and about a man who desperately yearns anyone want such power and will any heal- so unlike any other she has ever met. cats, from sport and swearing to the to be a father, from the bestselling ing come through the mysterious Queen of pleasures of idleness. author of Careless. the Night who can grow luminescent fungi Dead Actually and plants in the darkness of Shyness? Kaz Delaney There’s so much more at A&U. PB. $17.99. Ebook $9.99 /randomhouseau Reading this book is like being brushed randomhouse.com.au by a velvet curtain as one enters a shim- Willow’s having a bad week. mering world shot with bright colours and A dead body, a funeral and edgy black, but strangely transluscent and now she’s being haunted by purpley grey at the same time. I don’t know the star of it all, the dead how else to put it. (The cover is perfect!) queen of Ruth Throsby But what will happen after the darkness? I, High herself, JoJo Grayson. for one, await the next book with fascina- There’s a missing phone, an

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Inventive Labs: Bookish Brand Identity Readings Monthly March 2012 11

Dead Write with Fiona Hardy New Crimea D issection of Murder Good Bait Vanished Felicity Young John Harvey Liza Marklund Book of the Month HarperCollins. PB. $24.99. Ebook $11.99. Random. PB. $32.95 Bantam. PB. $32.95 Budapest Noir In turn of the (twentieth) Parallel cases cleave together A foundation that erases your Vilmos Kondor century London, it’s not in London, where DCI past completely sounds like HarperCollins. PB. $24.99. Ebook $10.99. often you find female Karen Shields tries to find the right place for someone In pre–WWII Hungary, autopsy surgeons – in fact, the resources to solve the on the run from witnessing crime reporter Zsigmond Dr Dody McCleland is the murder of a Moldovan a crime, and after the Gordon drinks a lot of coffee, first, and she has a hard road teenager in Hampstead murders of two men in a smokes a lot of cigarettes and to travel to prove herself Heath, while DI Trevor Stockholm port Aida needs goes about his job with a more than capable. Elsewhere Cordon makes his way from exactly that. She has gone to perfectly noir amount of sass in London, the suffragette movement is sleepier Cornwall to the city to find a crime reporter Annika Bengtzon for help, and insider knowledge. Life gaining speed, though one protest ends in woman he had helped recover from and Annika guides her to the foundation has been cruising along quite the deaths of three women. When one ends addiction years before. Unfortunately, he she’s just heard of – but, she realises, could well, when he’s called to the murder of a up on Dody’s table and she realises her own has bad news to deliver to her, and the possibly do with a little more investigation, Jewish prostitute on the street, a crime ties to the body, she must extend herself drug-related crimes both police officers something to detract from the current generating a lot of disinterest of its own but beyond the comfort of the surgeon’s knife have to tackle reach far into London’s mortifying status of her life. A punchy which strikes Gordon as something much and towards bristling Chief Detective society itself. page-turner set before her previous book more complicated. Unfortunately for him, Inspector Matthew Pike. Happily, it’s the The Bomber and a crime that becomes he’s right, and against the backdrop of the first in a new series by this talented West the Mattress House much broader than Sweden itself. sudden death of Hungary’s prime minister, a Australian author. Paulus Hochgatterer political event even Gordon can’t ignore, he Maclehose Press. PB. $27.99 the Golden Scales uses all his contacts, pengos and wits to figure Dead of Night After winning 2009’s Parker Bilal out what happened to the dead woman, and Barbara Nadel European Literature Prize A&U. PB. $29.99 what links her to everything from the boxing Hodder Headline. PB. $32.95 with The Sweetness of Life, Ex-police inspector Makana ring to the police chief to those in the highest Barbara Nadel’s beloved Hochgatterer returns to the has fled from Sudan to Cairo echelons of power. inspectors Çetin İkmen and Austrian Alps. The Mattress and now lives dejected and I worried that the political chitchat of a Mehmet Süleyman leave House is as much crime as it alone, in an old houseboat region I had virtually no knowledge of Turkey and their melancholy is a psychological explora- on the Nile, working as a would make this book an overwhelming fellow officers behind for a tion of the relationship private investigator. He’s as prospect, but Kondor handles that possible police conference in the one between parent and child – or between surprised as anyone when issue deftly, explaining everything clearly but place colder than Istanbul humans in general – that stars a police Saad Hanafi, one of Cairo’s leaving the major thrills to the star charac- – Detroit, Michigan. Once a commissioner and a psychiatrist trying to most influential men, hires him to find the ters – Gordon, his jam-making grandfather, bustling city, now broken, Detroit gives the nut out the identity of the mysterious star player from the prestigious Cairo soccer his fed-up graphic designer girlfriend, and two more than just the conference to attract ‘black owl’ that is haunting the town’s team Hanafi owns – a player more valuable the medley of bad, good and entertaining their attention. An elderly man with a children with the worst of threats. With a than anyone else in the city. Evocative of sorts he encounters along his investigation. centuries-long of line of American-Turkish narrative that jumps characters and shifts in Egypt’s multifaceted atmosphere and rich Blackly humorous, as dangerous as the excel- descent approaches them to help find out feel, it may leave you feeling as unsettled as culture, Makana’s investigations into that lently portrayed times it’s set in and hitting who killed his son decades earlier, and the town itself. case, and another seemingly unrelated one, all the right notes, this is a crime novel that suddenly the city becomes much more lead right back into his own past. does exactly what it says on the packet. dangerous than expected.

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journey to where she feels able to move past Robespierre: the suffering and towards a future of hope A Revolutionary Life is one of the most honest and wrenching Peter McPhee memoirs I have read. Yale. HB. $49.95 New Non-Fiction Not only did she make me cry – repeat- For some, Robespierre was a great revo- parents must embark on at some stage, and edly – but her writing style, engaging and lutionary who led the French Republic to Robertson depicts this wonderfully, with immediate, flows seamlessly from emotion- safety in the face of overwhelming military Biography & determination and skill. ally raw to the warmth of literary hot milk. odds. For others, he was the first modern What resonated for me were her stories of Chapters roam back and forth in time and dictator, a fanatic who instigated the mur- Memoir explaining Ben to schools, health officials, we sit on the floor of her room watching derous Reign of Terror in 1793–94. McPhee Leaving Alexandria psychologists, friends and family. When her teenage years: shoplifting, the discov- combines new research into Robespierre’s life Richard Holloway you have a child that is atypical, you are ery of boys, abandoning friends for those with a deep understanding of society and the Text. PB. $26.96. Ebook $26.69. continually interviewed about your parent- who appear more damaged. We are in the politics of the French Revolution to arrive When I was given this book ing and your child’s significant develop- car next to her during her time at college: at a new understanding of the man, his pas- to read I’d not heard of mental moments. Robertson’s strength is independence, poetry, and most final, the sions, and his tragic shortcomings. Richard Holloway in a that throughout these examinations she also death of her mother. Then there are the meaningful way. I’d seen his questions her own life, and even her right years beyond, and we watch with our fin- books around the store, to write about her son in a public forum. gers covering our eyes as she moves to New particularly Between the York and meets the abrasive and dominant Monster and the Saint: Reflec- Reaching One Thousandis an ode to being Colin, reeling from his own loss; as alcohol Australian tions on the Human Condi- a mother, to family and to accepting that takes over; as she moves to LA and briefly Non-Fiction tion, and thought their titles were intrigu- we cannot do a damn thing to change our finds herself in the middle of something As I Was Saying ing. Leaving Alexandria is not a work children that are different, but we can make like a The Devil Wears Prada’s twisted sure that their path is clear. Robert Dessaix specifically about an aspect of religion, magazine-assistant lifestyle; as her beloved Vintage. PB. $27.95 humanity or what is an important topic for Chris Gordon is events coordinator father slips away while she holds his hand. In a speech given by Robert him – sexuality. It is simply about him and of Readings Then, finally, we smile (and maybe weep a Dessaix at the awards how he came to think as he does, act as he little more, if you’re sappy like me) as she ceremony for the Calibre does and continue along his path as a Partners and Crime: tackles her grief head on, and with effort Prize in 2010, Dessaix self-confessed ‘after-religionist’. The True Stories of and grace, reaches the other side. pondered whether the art of Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton I say ‘simply about him’ but as soon as you Eight Women and Life the essay is dead. After all, start reading this book, you realise noth- with their Notorious he mused, nobody ever won Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Nobel Prize for essays, ing was ever simple for him. He grew up Partners Legend of the World’s impoverished in Scotland, and it is a credit Rochelle Jackson even Michel de Montaigne, whose memoirs to his schooling and personal questing Most Famous Dog on happiness and travel can now be found A&U. PB. $29.99. Ebook $26.99 Susan Orlean resurfacing in the pockets of tweed-breasted throughout his life that on page after page It’s easy to judge the wives Atlantic. PB. $29.99 university types. Wouldn’t one say in he quotes from every source of literature and girlfriends of the From the bestselling author comparison that the essay, unlike a novel, is you could think of. A lot of the time it feels notorious Australian of The Orchid Thief comes small? Far from it, cries this reviewer in as if he is quoting off the top of his head criminals that populate our this poignant exploration of reply. As I Was Saying, Dessaix’s fifth book and doesn’t need to reference them while news stories, but in reality, the enduring bond between of non-fiction, is by no means a ‘small’ gem writing. However there are detailed notes at the stories of these women humans and animals. of delight. the back should you wish to read the com- are much more complicated Corporal Lee Duncan plete poem or finish the chapter he quotes. than they appear. Journalist The book, of which the above speech is discovered Rin Tin Tin on a Rochelle Jackson has the stories of those in a part, is structured around an essay or The book follows a meandering path, WWI battlefield in 1918 the other half of terrifying relationships speech, followed by Dessaix’s further mus- chronologically through his life. He and introduced him to Hollywood, where that include men from gangster Bob ings on the subject. Most vivid and heart- frequently gets sidetracked, often in he went on to star in films, radio programs Trimbole, wife-killing Joe Korp, and felt of the essays proper are those about philosophical debates with himself. They’re and television shows. This is also a history literary criminal figure Mark Chopper travel: in a single paragraph, an encounter interesting, thoughtful and often imbued of twentieth-century entertainment and Read. The book for those who have ever with an imposing Russian is etched into with a touch of humour. The honesty about entrepreneurship and the changing role of wondered about the motivations of these awkward clarity; a few essays later, in the his actions and thoughts is painful and, as dogs in the American family and society. you read, it provokes realisations that per- women to stay, leave, chapter entitled ‘Alexandria’, E.M. Forster’s haps you are also guilty of what he accuses or even assist these men. first and only sexual feelings for a local tram himself of. Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton Full Service: conductor are blazed alight across several My Adventures in illuminating pages. In his linking essays, Written by a highly intelligent priest, phi- A Card from Angela Dessaix is no less enlightening. losopher, human or whatever title you want Hollywood and the to give him, I will be seeking out his back Carter Secret Sex Lives of The book begins with a meditation on catalogue as necessary reading for modern Susannah Clapp the Stars Dessaix’s tower from which he writes, and day philosophy. Bloomsbury. PB. $21.99 Scotty Bowers sparks a discussion of other tower lovers Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton Angela Carter sent Susannah Grove. PB. $29.99 and their writing habits (these ‘turriphi- Clapp many postcards For 60 years, Bowers has kept liacs’ include Montaigne, Rilke and Vita Reaching One throughout their long quiet about the long list of Sackville-West); a comment about dogs friendship. The pictures she Hollywood icons he either leads to an examination of the idolisation Thousand: A Story sent were sometimes bedded or arranged liaisons of cats (which to Dessaix, appears to be of Love, Motherhood domestic, sometimes flights for. Now, in a memoir quite baffling). and Autism of fantasy and surrealism. whose authenticity has been Other essays involve reflections on subjects Rachel Robertson The messages were always endorsed by Gore Vidal, pungent. Here, through those postcards, such as swearing, the subjunctive and the Black Inc. PB. $29.95 Bowers reveals the exploits smell of cities. Dessaix has always been con- Firstly, I read Reaching One Clapp evokes the Carter she knew and of Hollywood stars such as Vivien Leigh, captures Carter’s anarchic intelligence, her cerned with the transformation of the hum- Thousand because I’m the Laurence Olivier, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, drum into something more arcane; here, his mother of a child with learn- fierce politics, the richness of her language, Cole Porter, Rock Hudson and Bob Hope her ribaldry and the great swoops of her essays can most definitely be considered, to ing differences, and love as well as Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, quote the Japanese monk Myoe, as ‘making another child with autism. I imagination. A funny and intimate portrait Cecil Beaton, Tennessee Williams, Somerset of one of the most original writers of the the normal supernormal’. think there are many of us Maugham, Edith Piaf and Brian Epstein. Nicole Lee is from Readings St Kilda out there that love someone twentieth century. who is a tad different to Aiming for the Skies others. Is this enough of a reason to read The Rules of Fay Marles The Australian this book? No, it’s not, but if you enjoy Inheritance Miegunyah. HB. $49.99 Moment beautifully crafted writing about someone’s Claire Bidwell Smith Fay Marles was Victoria’s first George Megalogenis life, then there is another reason. Text. PB. $29.95. Ebook $24.26 Commissioner for Equal Viking. PB. Normally $32.95 Robertson’s writing is superb. Her fiction Claire Bidwell Smith is 14 Opportunity, where she Our special price $29.95 and essays have been widely published. Her when her mother is diag- battled discrimination on In the tradition of The Lucky essay ‘Reaching One Thousand’ was joint nosed with cancer; by the many fronts and oversaw the Country and The End of winner of the 2008 Calibre Prize and laid time she is 25 she will have commission’s rapid develop- Certainty comes an extraordi- the foundations for this book. lost both her parents to the ment and expansion. She nary new book from one of When her child, Ben, is a baby, Robertson disease. The intervening went on to found Australia’s Australia’s best writers on poli- believes him to be eccentric. There is a years, and those that follow, first private equal opportunity consultancy, tics and economics. The charm to his eccentricity and she enjoys it, see her so plagued with grief and made history again when she became Australian Moment is a fine but she is aware that she is making ex- that the faultlines in her psyche crack, and the first woman Chancellor of the University history, and an argument cuses for him constantly. Eventually he is as she falls into addiction and bad relation- of Melbourne in 2001. Here she reflects on a about what Australia could be. ‘[Megalogenis] diagnosed with autism. The diagnosis and ships the reader can’t help but fall alongside life rich in achievements and explores the is perhaps the sanest journalist in Australia. the acceptance of both herself as a mother her. There is no doubt about the love she influences that helped to shape her outlook He has a unique grasp of politics in all its and of her son is where the real pathos in and her parents feel for each other, and and interests. messy detail.’—David Marr. ‘Likely to this book begins. This is a crossing all us when they are gone, she is no longer become the essential short work on anyone’s most important person. Her modern Australia.’—Don Watson. Readings Monthly March 2012 13 Bigger or Better?: Mad Women Australia’s Population Jane Maas Debate HarperCollins. PB. $27.99. Ebook $15.99. Ian Lowe Maas was a major player in UQP. PB. $34.95 the New York advertising When Kevin Rudd respond- agency world in the 1960s, a ed to a government forecast world recently portrayed in that the Australian popula- the hit television show Mad tion could reach 36 million Men. Here, Maas gives us by 2050 by saying he the juicy, often hilarious, believed in ‘a big Australia’, inside stories of what there was a strong public happened behind the scenes but also looks reaction. Bigger or Better? at the more serious issues of the era such as offers a comprehensive analysis of the equal pay, sexism and the difficult choice ensuing debate and seeks to clarify serious many women had to make between misconceptions. It provides an historic motherhood and career. account of Australia’s population growth; looks at factors such as birth rates, an ageing Sex Drive: population and immigration; and analyses In Pursuit of the motives of different interested parties. Female Desire Bella Ellwood-Clayton acked with stories of A&U. PB. $27.99. Ebook $25.19 students both bored and Sexual anthropologist Dr P Cultural Studies Bella Ellwood-Clayton enthusiastic, lesson plans, staff A Dangerous Method explores what the female rooms and drama as studied for John Kerr libido is and why it is being the HSC and lived every day, A&U. PB. $22.99 depleted. With increasing the book follows teacher Ned This mesmerising book numbers of women with low Manning from high schools in reconstructs the fatal triangle libido being diagnosed as dusty country towns to the edgy between Sigmund Freud, ‘sexually dysfunctional’, the Carl Jung and Sabina race to create a ‘pink Viagra’ is on. But do Newtown School of Performing Spielrein, a young woman we have unrealistic expectations about our Arts in Sydney’s inner-city and who had been both patient sex drive? And could ‘low libido’ in fact be a crucible of creativity at EORA and lover to Jung and the natural order of things? Aboriginal College. Through the colleague and confidante to Freud before going on to become an challenges he inevitably faces, innovative psychoanalyst herself. Now made How to Change Manning finds the common into a movie starring Keira Knightly, Viggo the World: Tales of thread of possibility and hope Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, and Marx and Marxism that runs through his profession. Vincent Cassel, A Dangerous Method is Eric Hobsbawm A funny and disarmingly honest intellectual history with the narrative power Abacus. PB. $24.99 and emotional impact of great tragedy. In the 144 years since Marx’s memoir of a full life of teaching. Das Kapital was published, Fishing the River the doctrine that bears his of Time name has been embraced by www.newsouthbooks.com.au Tony Taylor millions and has, just as Text. PB. $29.95. Ebook $24.26. dramatically, fallen from In his debut book, 82-year- grace with the retreat of old Tony Taylor looks back communism from the on a life of fishing and Western world. As capitalism reaches its adventure in England, extreme limits, and in the wake of the Australia and British financial crisis, Hobsbawm investigates Columbia. It reads like the Marxism’s influences and analyses the man is setting things down at spectacular reversal of its fortunes over the the end of life and is part past 30 years. angling memoir, part guide for living and part paean to nature, especially the wild The New Hate: rivers of Vancouver Island and the salmon A History of Fear and that support the region’s rich biodiversity. Loathing on the For Taylor, ‘Life is an adventure searching Populist Right for answers. They are best looked for in Arthur Goldwag remote places where civilisation hasn’t taken Scribe. PB. $32.95. Ebook $18.25 hold.’ Answers, and the odd aside on globali- From ‘Birthers’ who claim sation, are set down with the assuredness of a that Barack Obama was not man with a full, inquisitive life behind him. born in the US to counter- Jihadists who believe that There is longing for what has been lost too. the American constitution is ‘A stunning achievement — A charming blend of memoir, Amongst the epic salmon runs and gi- in imminent danger of being ant pristine forests of yesteryear is Taylor’s a monumental work of humane and philosophy, and science that explores replaced with sharia law, present-day wish to connect with his eight- painstaking observation, and a gripping the big questions about how to conspiratorial beliefs have year-old grandson through fishing; Ned become an increasingly common feature of testament to the human spirit.’ live well without faith. is the same age as his father when Taylor’s American public discourse. In this deeply ANNA FUNDER marriage broke up in the late 60s and he researched history of the ideas and rhetoric repaired alone to the Cowichan River. that have animated extreme, mostly The river is Tony’s special place, the one that right-wing movements from colonial times centres him and offers up wisdom unfath- to the present day, Goldwag reveals a omable elsewhere. While awaiting Ned’s disturbing pattern that runs through the arrival, Tony describes the river as the elixir American grain. of life – indeed, he retains a youthful curios- ity and exuberance – but in terms distinctly scientific. Venturing from his cabin with fly Down to Earth rod in hand, Tony joins frontier characters Rhonda Hetzel like Big Arthur the sasquatch poacher who Viking. HB. $39.95 fishes with a gaff and Donny the cougar Hetzel has turned her From the IMPAC Award- This little book will have A fascinating history of the hunter with his tidy fortune made from award-winning blog ‘Down ideas and rhetoric that have scalps. There are also lessons at the foot of to Earth’ into this beauti- winning author of The Twin a big impact: it will change the Nitinat River and, later, Ned, but mostly fully presented guide to comes a stunning new novel the way you think about the animated extreme, mostly the teacher is the river itself. living a better life. She that asks: when our lives go environment, efficiency, and right-wing, US political gently encourages readers to awry, which route do we take? movements from colonial If you’re one for life lived in thrall of wild find the pleasure and the real path to sustainability. times to the present day. places, parallels between fishing and living, meaning in a simpler life, or listening to tales of an octogenarian sharing all the practical information she has raconteur, this one’s for you. gathered on her own journey. Whether you Jason Cotter is a friend of Readings want to learn how to grow tomatoes, bake 14 Readings Monthly March 2012 bread, make your own soap or preserve Heaven on Earth: fruit, or just be inspired to slow down and A Journey Through live more sustainably, this book will show Sharia Law Food & Wine Art & Design you the way. by Chris Gordon, Readings Carlton by Margaret Snowdon, Readings Carlton Sadakat Kadri This is the year that I anticipate we will Bodley Head. PB. $32.95 be leaning towards food our grandparents Ngaanyatjarra: Almost 1400 years after the made. We will be earthier, our cheeks will Art of the Lands Prophet Muhammad first be rosier and we will have more energy and Tim Acker & John Carty (eds) articulated God’s law – the Essays more money because we are eating food we UWAP. PB. $49.99 New Ways to Kill sharia – its earthly interpret- know and understand, and we will spend This gloriously illustrated Your Mother ers are still arguing over what less on packaged food and more on grains. book documents six Aborigi- Colm Tóibín it means. Hardliners reduce That is my prediction for 2012. We can nal art centres – Warakurna, it to veiling, holy war and Picador. PB. $29.99 only hope! Papulankutja, Tjarlirli, stonings. Others say that it is In essays that range from the Kayili, Maruku, and Tjanpi humanity’s only guarantee of a just society. importance of aunts (and Trupps Wholefood – that make up the Western Kadri probes the history of sharia law, and the death of parents) in the Desert Mob group in travels to countries such as Pakistan, India, Kitchen English nineteenth-century Australia. Their mantra of Iran and Egypt to examine its application in Walter & Dorota Trupp novel to the relationship ‘thriving in the living desert’ encapsulates between fathers and sons in a contemporary world. Victory. PB. $34.99 So having spun my proph- the blossoming of a distinctive regional art the writing of James movement that has taken its place amongst Baldwin and Barack Obama, ecy into the air, it is as if I had guessed that this book the most highly regarded contemporary Tóibín illuminates not only the intimate Australian art. connections between writers and their fami- was coming to ensure my lies but also articulates, with a rare tender- Current Affairs prediction’s success. Here is Behind the Beautiful a collection of recipes that Margaret Olley ness and wit, the great joy of reading their Forevers work. are good for you, earthy, and Barry Pearce Katherine Boo delicious. As they should be, Beagle Press. HB. $120 Quarterly Essay 45 Scribe. PB. $27.95. Ebook $16.71. given the Melbourne-based authors’ Margaret Olley was a I was recently bemoaning the credentials: Walter was the executive chef at much-loved painter whose Us and Them: On the fact that good, groundbreak- Marco Pierre White, and Dorota is a beautifully executed interior Importance of Animals ing, narrative non-fiction nutritionist. Now don’t be misled though, and still life paintings are Anna Krien about India seems few and this is not a book just for people who much sought after. She was Black Inc. PB. $19.95. Ebook $9.95 far between. So I was frequent organic food markets; the recipes an independent and colour- From pets to food, from pleasantly surprised when (which tell you if they are gluten free, ful character, and this new wildness to science experi- this book came across my lactose free, vegan, etc.) are extraordinarily book on her life and work ments, Krien reveals how desk, mainly because of the good. In our home we favoured two has been on the waiting list for many an animals are faring in a new sophistication the author has brought to her chapters – the grains and the sweets. We Australian art lover. She had more than 90 world order where, for the research and writing. made barley balls with creamy dill sauce solo exhibitions, and she was a Member of first time in history, humans (kids loved it) followed by chocolate tofu the Order of Australia, and also awarded the sit unchallenged at the top Katherine Boo is a Pulitzer Prize–winning cheesecake which took more time, and Companion of the Order. of the food chain. Us and journalist who spent three years visiting more concentration, but was finished in Them is a clear-eyed look at how we do – Annawadi, a Mumbai slum, observing the one sitting. This is a marvellous book if you The Printed Square: and should – treat animals, and a medita- lives of the slum-dwellers and interview- want to know more about your food and Vintage Handkerchief tion on humanness and animalness that ing them with the help of translators. The how it can put the skip back in your step! Patterns for Fashion sheds new light on our contemporary resulting book is remarkable for its depth and Design obsession with animals. and breadth; it succeeds not only in delv- Mr Wilkinson's ing into the inner lives of her subjects in a Nicky Albrechtsen Favourite Vegetables: T&H. HB. $29.95 meaningful and honest way, but also gives A Cookbook to equal weight to the stories of each character In recent years, vintage she has chosen to write about. By doing so, Celebrate the Seasons handkerchiefs have been an TSciencehe Conundrum Boo avoids the usual trap ‘slum-writing’ falls Matt Wilkinson unsung source of inspiration David Owen into – that of generalisations and insisting Murdoch. HB. Normally $50 for many of the world’s most Our special price $39.95 exciting brands. Over 200 Scribe. PB. $19.95. Ebook $12.99 that slum-dwellers are happy in their ‘simple’ Bravo to a man who puts his beautifully designed hand- The Conundrum lives. is a carrots before his lamb kerchiefs have been selected mind-changing manifesto Annawadi is situated near Mumbai airport, chops. For chef Matt to reflect the magnificent about the environment, Wilkinson, vegetables clearly array of printed designs that emerged efficiency, and the real path in the shadow of luxury hotels and a thriv- ing, upwardly-mobile India. Boo’s book come first. Whether he’s between the 1920s and 1950s, a particularly to sustainability. Owen cooking at his Melbourne innovative period in handkerchief design. argues that our best efforts focuses on a handful of characters living in Annawadi, including Abdul, a Muslim eatery Pope Joan or at home, at living green are still at Matt obviously lets seasonal cross-purposes to our true teenager with a talent for seeing a fortune in Abstract No 6 ~ What the recyclable waste that rich people throw vegetables do the work. This wonderful Remains: a homage goal – living sustainably, and caring for our collection of recipes is not strictly for environment and the future of the planet. away; Asha, an ambitious woman who has to the enduring moved to Mumbai from a rural village and is vegetarians; it is just that the parade is S. Aschermann et al. An elegant non-fiction narrative filled with about plants. Matt takes 24 of his favourite determined to succeed in politics no matter Verlag. PB. $40 fascinating information and anecdotes that veggies and brings in other ingredients what corrupt path she has to take; and Asha’s What has remained the same takes you through the history of energy and around them. Beautifully illustrated, with daughter Manju, who hopes to be the first throughout the history of the quest for efficiency. easy creations and a true celebration of female college graduate in the slum. Boo’s humankind and why? Does eating step by step through the seasons. narrative shows us the reality of their lives life itself naturally produce Yippee for another Melbourne-based chef and of those immediately around them, but constants, or is it the who is celebrating menus built on acces- also examines their motivations and actions decisions of individuals to sible and affordable food. theReligion Young Atheist’s with a keen eye. The courage of the char- perpetuate them? Contribu- acters, convinced of their ability to prosper tions are from a wide range Handbook alongside their countrymen is inspiring, and Manu's French Bistro of experts including curator Hans Ulrich Alom Shaha Boo’s revelations of the dark side of their Manu Feildel Obrist, former Swiss president Doris Scribe. PB. $27.95. Ebook $18.99 struggle are illuminating. Penguin. HB. $49.95 Leuthard, psychologist Hans J. Markow- Shaha grew up in a strict Kabita Dhara is editor of Readings Monthly This is what you need to itsch, and author of crime fiction Heinrich Muslim community but was remember home chef … Steinfest. drawn to science and its Cairo, My City, Our European food is easy to power to illuminate. cook, especially if under the Austral Avenue: Through memoir, philoso- Revolution heading of ‘bistro’. After all, phy and science, he explores Ahdaf Soueif bistro food is often fast, or a An Experiment in questions about faith and Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99 one-pot job. To test this, I living with art the afterlife, about what we Cairo-born Soueif is perhaps cooked coq au vin because I Jane O'Neill (ed.) should believe and how we should live. A best known for her Booker- like to say it out loud and often. Easy and Emblem Books. PB. $35 powerful narrative in which Shaha shows shortlisted novel The Map of delicious. Throw in the ingredients, cook, Documents the life span of that it is possible to live a compassionate, Love. During the 2011Egyp- serve and receive high praise from daughter. an experimental project space fulfilling and meaningful life without God. tian uprising she reported Not bad for a Wednesday eve. Feildel, as we operated by Jane O’Neill live from Tahrir Square and already know, is a highly regarded chef in from the front room of a became one of the spokes- Australia and for good reason. Gathered home in Brunswick, Mel- people for the revolution. here are 100 recipes that all fall under the bourne. For each of the 21 Here she relives the dramatic series of events heading of possible and delicious. exhibitions by contemporary and shares its intimate stories, unlocking the artists from Australia and physical, historical and emotional back- overseas, an essay was written that incorpo- ground of her great city. rated the experience of living with the artworks for the show’s duration. Readings Monthly March 2012 15

A Cat Called Penguin Holly Webb & Polly Dunbar Scholastic. PB. $12.99 Alfie has always loved playing FOR THE New Kids’ Books in the overgrown garden next door. It is here he plays with BODY AND Penguin, an enormous black-and-white cat, a stray MIND who Alfie has claimed as his board books Do Not Forget own. But when his next door the Very Hungry Australia neighbour'’s granddaughter, Caterpillar Sally Murphy Grace, comes to live with her, she decides Sound Book & Sonia Kretschmar Penguin belongs to her. Eric Carle Walker. HB. $29.95 This one’s perfect for Anzac Middle Readers Puffin. BB. $16.95 Day. Henri lives in the Press the button! Hear A Boy and a Bear French village of Villers- the sound! Listen to the in a Boat Bretonneux. Billy lives in Very Hungry Caterpillar Dave Shelton Melbourne, Australia. These walking and eating his two little boys, who live David Fickling. HB. $24.95 way through this thousands of miles away A boy and a bear go to sea, delightful sound book from each other, share one equipped with a suitcase, a based on Eric Carle’s classic tale. story that unites Villers-Bretonneux and comic book and a ukulele. Melbourne in history. A moving and They are only travelling a Hairy Maclary inspiring story of WWI. short distance and it really and Friends: shouldn’t take long. But then Touch and Feel Book What’s the Matter, their boat encounters Lynley Dodd ‘unforeseeable anomalies’. Aunty May? Will the Harriet, their trusted vessel, with- Puffin. BB. $19.95 Peter Friend & Andrew Joyner stand the violent lashings of the salty waves? Hairy Maclary from Donald- Little Hare. HB. $24.95 son’s Dairy finally appears in When the Help becomes a Ghost Club 1: an interactive touch and feel hindrance, Aunty May is left book. This attractive The New Kid clean out of patience. In this Deborah Abela production has different ultimate portrait of child- textures on every page hood optimism and cheer, Random. PB. $15.95 spread. Children can now the narrator proceeds from Ghosts can be quite the problem for those not used to explore the textures of Bitzer chore to chore, leaving a Trupps’ Wholefood Kitchen Maloney all skinny and bony, Muffin McLay dealing with them, especially trail of destruction behind Eat well, live well, feel great like a bundle of hay, Hairy Maclary from him, oblivious to his aunt's horror. when they show up throwing Donaldson’s dairy and the rest of the gang. ectoplasm and knocking over Based on the latest nutritional House Held Up By Trees priceless vases. Luckily, the research, this book is packed with Picture Books Ghost Club are here to deal recipes that use clean, whole and Ted Kooser & Jon Klassen with pesky poltergeists, organic foods to promote good Where is Fred? Candlewick. HB. $27.95 gruesome ghouls and any other paranormal health and well-being. Edward Hardy From Pulitzer Prize–winning pests. Twins Angeline and Edgar are Ghost poet Ted Kooser and rising HGE. PB. $16.95 Club’s youngest members, until new recruit OUT NOW Hey, YOU! Yes, YOU talent Jon Klassen comes a Dylan shows up. As the grandson of Ghost reading this! I’m Gerald the poignant tale of loss, change, Club’s Grandmaster, big things are expected crow and I’m looking for a and nature’s quiet triumph. of Dylan, but he’s having a hard time taking lovely, fluffy white caterpil- When the house was new, up the mantle of ghost-catcher. Even with lar called Fred. Have you not a single tree remained on Edgar and Angeline showing him the ropes, seen him? I want him for my its perfect lawn to give shade Dylan’s not so sure he’s cut out for this lunch! You haven’t? Are you from the sun. The children in the house business. Can he overcome his biggest fear? sure? Then WHERE IS trailed the scent of wild trees to neighbour- Any young readers who might feel the same FRED? Follow Fred the fluffy white ing lots, where thick bushes offered up secret way about ghosts as Dylan needn’t be afraid caterpillar as he outwits Gerald the Crow, places to play. When the children grew up to pick up Ghost Club – this book is defi- in a scintillating new take on the much- and moved away, their father, alone in the nitely more funny than scary! An immensely loved hide-and-seek theme. house, continued his battle against blowing enjoyable adventure for readers eight and up seeds, plucking out sprouting trees. Until that won’t give them nightmares. Fancy Nancy and one day the father, too, moved away, and as Holly Harper is from Readings Carlton the Mermaid Ballet the empty house began its decline, the trees Jane O’Connor began their approach. Novelty Harper. HB. $19.99 Paris: A 3D Expanding Fancy Nancy and her best junior Readers City Skyline friend, Bree, couldn’t be The Lorax Sarah McMenemy more excited about their Dr Seuss Walker. HB. $12.95, HB upcoming dance show. After HarperCollins. PB. $9.99 This exquisite cut-paper book all, it’s all about mermaids This timeless environmental is presented in a beautiful and who knows how to be a classic by Dr Seuss is about to slipcase and features twelve fancy, glamorous mermaid enjoy a revival, with a new of Paris’s most famous sites better than Fancy Nancy animated movie version along a brief histories—in- herself? But when another ballerina wins released this month. A story cluding the Louvre, the the coveted role of the mermaid, Nancy is about the destruction inflicted Tuileries Gardens, Musée stuck playing a dreary, dull tree. by the clueless Once-ler, The d’Orsay, Sacré-Coeur Lorax has been a perennial Basilica, and the Arc de Triomphe. Franklin and Eleanor Extra Yarn bestseller since first publication in 1971, Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen despite periodical attempts from the Ameri- easter roundup An Extraordinary Marriage can logging industry to ban it. Narrated by a Harper. HB. $24.99 Easter is just around the By Hazel Rowley wiser and older Once-ler, the story focuses on A monochrome town gets a corner, and if you’d like a his business idea of chopping down Truffula change of color and attitude healthier option than *Shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Trees to make Thneeds and his arguments award at the 2012 Adelaide with the help of a box of chocolate, Readings has with the crotchety Lorax, the voice of the Festival Awards for Literature yarn and a girl named plenty of Easter books to trees and animals. The entertaining story and Annabelle. From the indulge in. My Aussie Easter gorgeous illustrations lighten the powerful NEW B FORMAT OUT NOW seemingly endless box of Activity Book (Yvette Poshogli- environmental message regarding the Extra Yarn, Annabelle knits an & Danielle McDonald RRP$24.99 long-term destructive influence of logging on clothing for everyone (illus.), Scholastic, PB, $5.99) is sure to keep animals, waterways and the atmosphere, as around her, creating beautifully patterned little hands busy; The Easter Egg (Jan Brett, well as humanity. This book was a childhood warmth for people, animals, and objects Putnam, HB, $19.95) is a beautiful Easter favourite and I hope the movie will bring its alike. When a greedy archduke tries to steal Bunny story; and anyone looking for an message to a whole new generation of readers, the box for himself, he discovers that Australian alternative to rabbits will love reminding them of the absolute importance ill-gotten gains bear no fruit, or in this The Smallest Bilby and the Easter Tale(Nette of protecting our environment over the case, yarn. Hilton & Bruce Whatley (illus.), Working demands of the money-makers. Title Press, HB, $24.95). Check out our Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda www.mup.com.au full range of Easter books instore. 16 Readings Monthly March 2012

BargainsReadings on the web: New books are Bargai regularly added to our website.n Table Click on the Bargains tab at www.readings.com.au.

Florence Broadhurst: Charlie & Lola: Supermarket Catherine of Aragon: Her Secret and My New Extremely Satoshi Azuchi Henry’s Spanish Queen Extraordinary Lives Busy Activity Pack HB. Was $35. Now $15 Giles Tremlett Helen O’Neill Lauren Child A modern classic in Japan, PB. Was $29.95. Now $12 HB. Was $69.95. Now $14.95 HB. Was $19.95. Now $10 Supermarket is an epic Born to Spain's powerful This deluxe edition of Helen Now you can do even more journey of one man's attempt King Ferdinand and Queen O’Neill's award-winning painting and drawing, to find meaning life and a Isabella, Catherine of Aragon book is a must for lovers of colouring and sticking with brilliant evocation of Japan's gave credibility to the rising design. With stunning Charlie and Lola’s new postwar economic and Tudor monarchy into which full-page prints of Florence extremely busy activity pack! cultural upheaval. she married. influencing Broadhurst’s distinctive Don’t forget to add the Henry VIII’s foreign policy designs, together with glitter! and routing the Scots at gorgeous photographs of The Shaking Woman Flodden Field while Henry less successfully interiors from around the world using her or the History of led his army in France. amazing patterns, this is a beautiful book the Frock-Coated My Nerves you will want to treasure. Communist: The Life Siri Hustvedt Napoleon’s and Times of the HB. Was $32. Now $14 Haemorrhoids Heart of the Artichoke Original Champagne While speaking at a memo- Phil Mason David Tanis Socialist rial event for her father in PB. Was $24.99. Now $10 HB. Was $45.00. Now $12.95 Tristram Hunt 2006, Siri Hustvedt suffered The history of Europe might Nobody better embodies the a violent seizure from the have turned out very PB. Was $26.95. Now $9.95 mantra ‘eat real food in neck down. Despite her differently had Napoleon not Friedrich Engels was one of season’ than David Tanis, one flapping arms and shaking had an attack of haemor- the most attractive and of the most original voices in legs, she continued to speak rhoids that intervened with contradictory figures of the American cooking. Tanis clearly and was able to finish his usual battlefield surveil- nineteenth century. A reveals his own private food her speech. lance. How such seemingly Victorian gentleman, he was rituals, and follows with 20 tiny events can have large also the co-founder of incomparable menus (five The Greatest Show on consequences is the subject matter of international communism – per season) that serve four to six. Full color. Mason’s entertaining book. the philosophy which in the Earth Richard Dawkins At Elizabeth David's twentieth century came to control one third Salmon Fishing of the human race. HB. Was $55. Now $16 Table: Her Very Best In a brilliant follow-up to his in the Yemen Everyday Recipes HOUSE OF HOLES blockbuster The God Paul Torday Elizabeth David Nicholson Baker Delusion, world-renowned HB. Was $29.95. Now $14 HB. Was $49.95. Now $29.95 HB. Was $29.95. Now $13.95 evolutionary biologist and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen Published to celebrate the Brimful of good-nature, wit, author Dawkins lays out the is the whimsical story of an 60th anniversary of Elizabeth and surreal sexual vocabulary, evidence for evolution. unlikely hero who discovers David’s first book, Mediter- House of Holes is a modern- true love, finds himself first a ranean Food, this book day Hieronymous Boschian pawn and then a victim of collects her recipes and bacchanal that is sure to political spin, and learns to features them with full surprise, amuse and arouse. The Passage believe in the impossible. colour photography for the Justin Cronin first time. Interspersed with PB. Was $23. Now $10 the recipes are some of her short essays, plus FBI agent Brad Wolgast is Country Cooking tributes from many of today’s most popular the Arabian Nights Gift haunted by what he’s done in of Italy chefs. Set the line of duty. Six-year-old Colman Andrews Malcolm Lyons orphan Amy is a refugee HB. Was $59.95. Now $14.95 the River Cafe Classic from the doomed scientific HB. Was $200. Now $79.95 Drawing on more than 40 project that has triggered Italian Cookbook The first complete translation years of experience travelling apocalypse. Brad is deter- Rose Gray & Ruth Rogers into English of The Arabian and eating in Italy, Andrews mined to protect her from HB. Was $59.95. Now $29.95 Nights from the Arabic since explores every region, from the horror set loose by her captors. But for A celebration of Italian food. the 1880s including new Piedmont to Puglia, and Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the It offers an interpretation of translations from 18th provides the fascinating beginning of a much longer odyssey. family recipes that the century French of the origins of dishes both authors have cooked so-called ‘orphan stories’, for familiar and unexpected. alongside mothers, grand- which no original Arabic text The Shipping News mothers, cousins and remains. Presented in a beautiful three- Annie Proulx Antarctica: wine-makers. volume, luxury, limited edition boxset. HB. Was $54. Now $16 That Sweep of In a Newfoundland fishing Savage Splendour the CASUAL CYCLIST’S town, a third-rate newspaper- Alisdair McGregor (ed.) Team of Rivals: GUIDE TO MELBOURNE man and the women in his HB. Was $39.95. Now $19.95 The Political Genius Matt Hirst life – his elderly aunt and Throughout history, Antarc- two young daughters – de- of Abraham Lincoln HB. Was $19.95. Now $9 tica has captivated and cide to resettle in their Doris Kearns Goodwin With hand drawn maps of overwhelmed with its ancestral seaside home. PB. Was $29.95. Now $13.95 Melbourne, design by cult stunning landscapes and When Barack Obama was agency Studio Pip & Co and wildlife, and extremes of asked which book he could illustrations from Melbourne The Evolution of God climate and isolation. not live without in the White artists Tin & Ed, this McGregor draws on the best House, his answer was Team beautifully designed little Robert Wright factual and fictional accounts of Rivals. This monumental package is an essential item HB. Was $36. Now $15 of human activity on the ice to paint a vivid work shows how Abraham for the Melburnian on two Robert Wright tells the story picture of a ‘land of unsurpassed desolation’. Lincoln saved America by ap- wheels or the visitor from afar. of how God grew up. He pointing his fiercest rivals to starts with the deities of Tiepolo Pink key cabinet positions. Freedom hunter-gatherer tribes, moves Roberto Calasso Jonathan Franzen to those of chiefdoms and HB. Was $75.00. Now $16.95 nations, then on to the La Cuisine PB. Was $35.00. Now $12.95 The eighteenth-century polytheism of the early Israel- Francoise Bernard From the National Book Venetian painter Giambat- ites and the monotheism that HB. Was $75. Now $23.95 Award-winning author of The tista Tiepolo spent his life followed, and then to the New Testament A culinary bible featuring Corrections comes a darkly executing commissions in and the Koran, before finishing off with the 1000 recipes from the comedic novel about family. churches, palaces and villas. modern multinational Gods of Judaism, woman who revolutionised Franzen’s intensely realised The life of an epoch swirled Christianity and Islam. French cooking by simplify- characters struggle to learn around him – but though his ing recipes for the home how to live in an ever-con- contemporaries admired cook. fusing world – one with the him, they failed to understand him. temptations and burdens of liberty. Readings Monthly March 2012 17

SHERLOCK: SERIES 2 reliable than any catwalk as an expression of $34.95 time, place and individual flair. New Release DVDs The multi award-winning super series is back as PERSECUTION BLUES: Sherlock (Benedict Cumber- THE BATTLE FOR THE TOTE dramatise mental illness as impending DVD of the Month batch) and John Watson $29.95 apocalypse. You’ll not find a more rattling – Autoluminescent (Martin Freeman) return to Punk, passion, politics and nor a more empathetically performed – new $24.95 face the ultimate test in three public protest. In 2010, the release on shelf this month. GE The late Rowland S. Howard, of their most famous cases: last bastion of Melbourne’s elegant gloom poet of Drive ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, ‘The vibrant music countercul- Melbourne’s early post-punk Hounds of Baskerville’, and ‘The Reichen- ture, the iconic Tote Hotel, scene, is given worthy $39.95 bach Fall’. Sherlock needs every one of his was forced to close due to valediction in this illuminat- Ryan Gosling is the world’s remarkable skills to survive and Moriarty is unfair laws. Filmed over ing documentary. So fully most handsome blank slate still out there in the shadows, determined seven years, Persecution Blues transformed was Nick Cave’s in this so-chic-it-hurts to bring Sherlock down whatever the cost. depicts the struggle of more than 20,000 band of high-school noise- homage to the wave of fans – and the bands who inspired them – to makers, The Boys Next Door, by the intro- spacious 1980s crime thrillers Pina preserve their history and protect their duction of Howard’s electric fretboarding that that launched the careers of $39.95 Blu-ray only future, and puts the audience on the front they were compelled to rebrand as The Michael Mann and Walter All the world is dance in line of an epic scale cultural war. Birthday Party. That band’s supernovic legacy Hill. Gosling’s impassive, Wim Wenders’ ravishing is now the stuff of infamy. For Howard, These deadly capable Driver – a Hollywood tribute to the high-concept the PROMISE stuntman who moonlights as a getaway guy Eternal Souls followed, where he claimed his work of genius modern $39.95 – finds his double life flipped on its head rightful spot as a frontman, along with two dance choreographer Pina Just as 18-year-old Londoner when he falls for the pretty single mother seminal solo albums in Teenage Snuff Film Bausch.‘Essential viewing Erin sets off to spend next door (Carey Mulligan). Powered by a and Pop Crimes. A cast of alt-cultural for anyone with even the summer in Israel with her best-selling soundtrack of Italo-disco and luminaries – including Cave, Wim Wenders, slightest interest in contem- best friend Eliza, she synth-pop, this is one instance where style Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins – are on porary dance.’ – Alison Croggon. GE unearths an old diary incontestably is substance. GE hand here to intone their honour. But what belonging to her seriously ill really distinguishes Autoluminescent from OUTNUMBERED: SERIES 4 GAME OF THRONES: grandfather, Len. Intrigued other commemorative rock docs is the living SERIES 1 by his life, she takes the diary $29.95 presence of Howard himself – fortunately, $59.95 with her, and is stunned to learn of his part When is Jake going to bring production was well underway at the time of Summers span decades. in the post-WWII British peace-keeping his death from liver cancer at age 50 in late round his mysterious force in what was then Palestine. Left to her girlfriend? Why is Karen Winters can last a lifetime. 2009. Essential viewing. And the struggle for the Iron own devices while Eliza serves in the Israeli Gerard Elson is from Readings St Kilda suddenly so obsessed with army, Erin witnesses the complexities of life, browsing? And just what is Throne has begun. It will stretch from the south, where for both Jews and Arabs, in this troubled Midnight in Paris Ben up to with the washing land. And as Len’s story comes to life from machine? These are just some heat breeds plots, lusts and $39.95 intrigues; to the vast and the pages of the diary, Erin discovers the A charming jaunt back to of the tricky questions facing disturbing truths about his time in Palestine Pete and Sue in the fourth series of hit savage eastern lands; all the the Paris of Hemingway, way to the frozen north, where an 800-foot and the atrocities he witnessed in the 1940s. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzger- comedy Outnumbered. A year is a long time in the Brockman household. But older wall of ice protects the kingdom from the ald, Picasso, Buñuel and dark forces that lie beyond. A new original FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL Dali, with a likeably hangdog doesn’t necessarily mean wiser as the family negotiates a host of new challenges. series based on George R.R. Martin’s Owen Wilson playing best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series. chaperone, Woody Allen’s The Illusionist latest cinematic soufflé has BILL CUNNINGHAM'S been hailed as a true return to form. $29.95 Sylvain Chomet’s charming NEW YORK ‘Wistfully romantic, endearingly funny and $29.95 deliciously wry.’ – Tom Ryan. GE follow-up to The Triplets of Belleville centres on a ‘We all get dressed for Bill,’ Take Shelter senescent travelling stage says Vogue editor Anna magician and the fatherly Wintour. ‘Bill’ is the To celebrate the French Film Festival $34.95 blessedly humble octogenar- (March 7-25) we are having a sale of some The mighty Michael friendship he forms with a young woman. Adapted by ian New York Times photog- of our favourite French Films from classics Shannon (Revolutionary rapher, Bill Cunningham. (including Betty Blue, above) through to Road, Boardwalk Empire) Chomet from an unpro- duced screenplay by Jacques Tati, it’s a For decades this cultural recent releases. You will find something to gives an earth-quaking anthropologist has been enjoy. Prices start from $14.95. The sale will performance in this stunning largely dialogue-free, ink-and-paint animated eulogy to the great golden age of chronicling fashion trends and high society be on at all stores and online. For a full list family drama that, like soirees for the Times’ Style section. Cunning- of titles available, check our website. Melancholia, dares to analogue entertainers. Feature animation rarely comes more stirring than this. GE ham’s enormous body of work is more New Release CDs and members of the E Street Band. The incor- M are covered with lush strings and Wagner’s this new album. Protest songs being her poration of loops and electronic percussion softly spoken vocals which have always been specialty, she has written lyrically strong CD of the Month influences including hip hop and Irish folk comforting. Lambchop have always straddled pieces here that has her highly respected WRECKING BALL should not deter long-time fans. Springsteen the fringes of Country music but Wagner’s amongst her peers. Powerful vocals over her Bruce Springsteen has always incorporated varying influences … almost conversational singing style lends more pulsing guitar playing, highlighted on her Released 9 March. Standard edition. his sound, though, is always his own. to the call and response of soul singers of the version of the Pete Seeger classic Which Side Normally $26.95. Our special price $21.95 Listening to the first single We Take Care Of Bobby Womack era. British Band Tinder- Are You On, make this album really enjoy- Deluxe edition. $24.95. Vinyl. $39.95 Our Own is testament to that. Could this be sticks come to mind as their immediate able. Pete even plays banjo on the track This is his 17th studio the most important album of 2012? My contemporaries. Lambchop continue to be showing support for her interpretation. album. This is his first since money says yes. thoughtful and engaging. Kurt Wagner Overall very satisfying. the death of long time Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn farewells his recently departed friend and Alice Bisits is from Readings Malvern friend and musical partner fellow Muscian Vic Chesnutt on this record, Clarence Clemons. This is which may be their last and which is why we Toward the Low Sun the release I have awaited should treasure this all the more. Dirty Three with much anticipation. This … is Bruce Pop/Rock Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from Readings $21.95. Vinyl $26.95 Springsteen. I admit to only hearing four Mr. M Carlton For the first time in six tracks off this album as the veil of secrecy on Lambchop years, post-rock instrumen- major releases is always high. What we do Which Side are you on? Normally $26.95. Our special price $21.95 tal trio Dirty Three – who know is that this is a group of songs that deals Ani Difranco Vinyl $39.95 have been involved in other with the big picture, in this case social issues, $24.95 Lambchop’s eleventh LP projects, notably Warren injustices and a vision of the modern life they It’s hard to believe Ani after 2008’s OH and Ellis as one of Nick Cave’s invade. Springsteen regards this as possibly Difranco has been releasing frontman Kurt Wagner’s Bad Seeds and Grinderman collaborators – the angriest album he has made (presumably albums for two decades, album of Country standards have released a new album. Consistently lyrically), although having guests like Tom they just keep coming! Her original and without a single bad track Morello will clearly give his sound an edge. with Cortney Tidwell last Mr. M strong political opinions behind them, Warren Ellis’s improvisational Also guesting is Pearl Jam’s Matt Chamberlain year. finds Kurt Wag- ner in a reflective mood. The 11 songs on Mr. are once again exposed on violin styling blends perfectly with unfairly 18 Readings Monthly March 2012 talented fellow members, drummer Jim with various guest performers along for the Antarctica, unlike the designers of the The Descendants ost White and guitarist Mick Turner. The 2005 ride. Of the eight studio recordings the first Olympic Rings. Although I have a declared $19.95 album Cinder was beautiful but mellowed, so four were penned by Beck and each one is hatred of much ‘third-stream’ music, this is I haven’t seen the film yet the band’s return to the raw, spontaneous better than the last. From the spine tingling pretty charming stuff, and would sound just but was intrigued by this energy evident in earlier works is worth opener Terrible Angels to the wicked stomp dandy on the porch of your beach home with fantastic collection of celebrating. of All This Rain it’s clear that it was not a nice merlot. Better news: in spare studio Hawaiian slack key guitar quality issues that kept this material from Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton time the quartet put down some lovely pieces and songs by the public till now. Other highlights are Got standards and Chick recorded some stellar modern masters. By slack to Let Go featuring Charlie Fink of Noah & Let It Burn little improv pieces, and the second disc they key I mean guitars tuned open played finger the Whale and Memoir, a haunting acoustic Ruthie Foster comprise is just sublime. Until the 50-blu ray style in a flowing and extremely melodic way duet with Villagers’ Conor O’Brien. The live $24.95 box set inspired by L. Ron Hubbard’s hat that induces a feeling of peace and relax- section of the album, which was recorded on Brand new album from collection, this may be the definitive Chick, ation. This is acoustic guitar-based music, her 2010 tour in support of Irm, proves that Ruthie sees her in fine form. for better or for worse. which really came into its own in the 1970s Charlotte can rock out when needed as she Transcending her blues/folk Richard Mohr is a friend of Readings when there was a resurgence in indigenous adds much muscle and grunt to songs that tag, she shows a soulful culture in Hawaii. This is fantastic feel- sounded otherwise delicate on the record. clarity in her performances, The Well good stuff and we could all enjoy some of Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda which also works beautifully Tord Gustavsen Quartet the Aloha spirit. Full marks to the film- in the gospel-tinged duets she performs with HARRY HOWARD $24.95 makers for doing such a great job, a labour The Blind Boys of Alabama. The majority of I’ll be frank and call this a of love. PB the tracks are in fact covers (Pete Seeger, The AND THE NDE return to form after the, err, Black Keys, Adele, The Band, John Martyn Near Death Experience courageous (minister?) vocal Woodbine etc.), and yet this is far more than a mere $24.95 minimalism of Restored, and Ivy Band covers record; she takes the songs and Harry Howard played with Returned. That singer/poet $26.95 transforms them into something they have Crime and the City lady has been banished to This collection of English, never been before. Case in point – June Solution and These whence she came (ECM’s rising tenor star Tore Irish and Scottish trad Carter Cash’s Ring of Fire is a million miles Immortal Souls, criminally Brunborg stays, all breathy and sultry) so we songs was originally sans from what we know of it. Backed by the underrated groups that also now have a quintet. Tord remains blessed with backing by a changing Meters rhythm section of George Porter Jr featured his late brother an apparently infinite collection of melodies roster of folk singers, with and Russell Batiste, and featuring Hammond Rowland, subject of the recent Autolumines- that shouldn’t work but do lodge themselves. folk-rock arrangements B3 legend Ike Stubblefield, Let It Burn is cent documentary. The nucleus of this group As you might expect, this is mood music first grafted on later as well as a 12-piece choral more than the sum of its parts, and is guitarist Howard, and Edwina Preston, and foremost, and there are occasions when back up. Athough none of these versions worth investigating. who plays organ and stylophone. They are I wanted to kick the drummer in the pants compare with the original interpretations Melissa Whebell is from Readings Hawthorn perfect complementary foils for one another to get them moving, but there’s always from the golden era of Joe Boyd–produced on duets about wanting to shoot your lover, another cinematic melody or three around English folk rock, from the likes of Steeleye Love at the Bottom being sick and/or dead and having blood the corner to beg, nay demand, your Nordic Span, John Martyn and mavericks like Andy of the Sea tests – viciously funny songs in which forgiveness. Alright, I admit it’s lovely. RM Irvine, it’s still a sonically very creative The Magnetic Fields sardonic humour is employed as a vehicle for tribute to the electric folk era with contribu- the brutally honest articulation of pain, Normally $26.95. Our special price $21.95 tions from Bill Leader who worked as suffering and mortality. Vinyl $29.95 producer on some of those late 60s and Lisa MacKinney is from Readings Carlton This happily feels like an Folk/World early 70s classics. PB album full of short stories, Harry Howard & The Near Death Experi- concerto of each of which has been ence will launch their new album Near The Greater Sea Annual Music scored to match the tale Death Experience. Friday 23 March, 6pm, Joseph Tawadros & the ACO on DVD sale itself rather than create a Readings Carlton. Free, no need to book $24.95 Our annual music DVD sale fifteen-track recording that Joseph Tawadros is making is on once again at our begins to sound the same. The excellent Sounds of our City a name for himself around Carlton, Hawthorn, Malvern, Magnetic Fields – one of whose members is Emma Russack the world for his virtuosic St Kilda stores, and online. author Daniel Handler – have released $21.95 oud performances. This Over a hundred titles, with another indie-pop delight to make you laugh Attention, we have a new latest release, though, prices starting from $9.95. and sigh and everything in between. Back to talent worth checking out. features him as composer as Artists include Roy Orbison, adding synthesisers to their acoustic sound for Emma Russack is a well as performer. With the Australian Bob Dylan, Bruce Springs- the first time in years, and with tracks titled Melbourne-based, NSW Chamber Orchestra by his side, we are teen, Foo Fighters, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard I’d Go Anywhere With Hugh and All She Cares south coast raised singer- presented with the premiere of his Concerto Cohen, Pink Floyd, New Order, bba, Neil About is Mariachi, Love at the Bottom of the songwriter whose debut of the Greater Sea, along with many other Young & Nirvana. See the full list online at Sea is something to sing to your friends when album is a thing of dark beauty. Reminiscent one-movement works. With musicians of www.readings.com.au they’re down, or up, or just happen to be of Mia Dyson & The Cowboy Junkies, her this quality you can’t go wrong. Highlights nearby. FH songs have an ethereal bluesy feel. Her voice are the quartet with Chris Moore, Principal Also Out NOW is deep & rich, the recording stripped back, Viola ACO, Matt McMahon on piano, I Will Set You Free which brings an intimacy to the album. DC James Tawadros on percussion and, of Barry Adamson course, Joseph Tawadros on oud. If you’re a $24.95 triple J’s Hottest 100 fan of crossover albums, this is your first Adamson is renowned for Vol 19 essential album for 2012. his work (primarily as Various Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton bassist) for post-punk 2CD Normally $34.95. Tindersticks / Something Rain group Magazine, The Our special price $29.95 All the Way Home Andrew Bird / Break it Yourself Birthday Party and Nick It is an Australia Day Cathy Jordan Sinead O’Connor / Cave’s Bad Seeds. Since tradition, Triple J’s $24.95 How About I Be Me & You be You leaving the Seeds in 1987, he has worked as countdown of the Hottest This beautiful solo album Chieftains / Voice of Ages a prolific composer, producer and solo artist 100 songs of the previous from Cathy Jordan, lead Damian Jurado / Maraqopa with the cinematic approach to his own year. Over 1and ¼ million singer of Irish traditional Sharon Van Etten / Tramp albums leading him to feature on, or people recorded their vote band Dervish, has been 20 Angelique Kidjo / Spirit Rising produce, actual soundtracks (Natural Born – a record. Not surprising that Gotye and years in the making. For Various / This One’s for Him: Killers, Lost Highway and Delusion, to name Kimbra came out on top with their brilliant this album, Jordan has gone A Tribute to Guy Clark just a few). I Will Set You Free is the third of single Somebody That I Used To Know. back to the songs she heard sung in her Adamson’s solo albums to be released on his Included here are 42 of the best songs on house by parents and friends,songs that Forthcoming own label, Central Control International. 2 CDs. A great collection of tunes from helped shape her musical development into Lyle Lovett / Release Me (9 March) Its full, funky, soulful and characteristically 2011. DC one of the best singers in Ireland over the Shins / Port of Morrow (16 March) cinematic sound is genuinely impressive, last two decades. Jordan has called upon Bic Runga / Belle (16 March) with the work of Barry White, Nick Cave, former bandmates and some of Celtic Ladyhawke / Anxiety (16 March) Scott Walker and, dare I say it, George music's heavy-hitters, including Eddi Elvis Costello & Imposters / Michael springing to mind. Reader, Andy Reader and Michael Mc- Return of Spectacular (16 March) Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda Jazz Goldrick to name a few. But it is Jordan’s Paul Weller / Sonik Kicks (23 March) The Continents album and what a showcase it is for that Madonna / MDNA (26 March) Stage Whispers Chick Corea gorgeous voice on a collection of rebel Justin Townes Earle / Nothing’s Gonna Charlotte Gainsbourg 2CD. $26.95 songs, immigration ballads, originals and Change the Way You Feel (30 March) $27.95 God bless Chick. Just when some lesser-heard gems. Bonnie Raitt / Slipstream (April) Stage Whispers is a strange you think he couldn’t get Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton Cold Chisel (6 April) and fantastic beast. Having any nuttier he gives us an struck gold in her collabo- hour-long six-movement ration with Beck on 2010’s concerto for orchestra and jazz quintet based on (gasp!) AT CARLTON, Bob Dylan, Miles cracking Irm. Stage Davis, Tom Waits the continents. And yes, thanks to condens- HAWTHORN & Whispers sees Gainsbourg ST KILDA. and many more! combine eight studio tracks left over from ing the Americas into one continent he VINYL those sessions with eleven live recordings manages to include both Australia and Readings Monthly March 2012 19

member of Les Six. After enjoying the Charles Ives: Four music on this disc, I feel appropriately Sonatas for Violin corrected. The major works here date from & Piano some decades after Honegger’s association with that group of French composers. He Hilary Hanh/Valentina Lisitsa Classical CDs DG. 4779435. $26.95 has retained from that period a clear tra we now have a sumptuously presented interest in mining tradition for lessons in Our special price $21.95 (while stocks last) performance of his three act non-narrative structure, melody and rhythm, but, while What is blatantly apparent Classical CD ballet, Jewels. Starting with vibrant Emerald, these works are inventive and colourful, from the very first notes of we move into strident Rubies and finish with they have none of the emotional detach- this recording is that not of the Month the eternal Diamond. KR ment or irony typical of the French only do these two musi- Brahms: A German movement. They are, rather, deeply cians feel absolutely Requiem Mozart: Flute & Harp personal and at times quite romantic. The comfortable performing Cantate de Nöel is at once dark and together but they really love this music. Teddy Tahu Rhodes/Nicole Concerto/Sinfonia Hahn said in her introduction that while Car/Johannes Fritzsch/MSO/ Concertante for jubilant, brilliantly original and immedi- ately accessible. Great music and flawless, recording these four sonatas their enthusi- MSO Chorus Winds spirited performances. asm for them ‘never flagged’. Every note has ABC Classics. 4764811. $24.95 Claudio Abbado Evan Meagher is from Readings Hawthorn feeling and nuance, with the bouncy Brahm’s German Requiem is DG. 4779329. $26.95 rhythms juxtaposed by expressive melodic one of the great works of Deutsche Grammophon Los Parajos Perdidos: ideas all in the distinctly Ives fashion. classical choral music. Over and Claudio Abbado Having not heard these works before, I am the years there have been joined forces in 2011 and The South American thrilled to add them to my collection. I can’t many great recordings and released two albums of project imagine a version that could match the this new recording from Mozart wind concertos. Christina Pluhar/L’Arpeggiata/ amount of love poured into every note of ABC Classics definitely will not suffer in Here we have the Sinfonia Philippe Jaroussky this recording. KR comparison. This is a beautifully recorded CD Concertante for Winds as well as the ever EMI. 0709502. $19.95 and all the performers, from the conductor popular Flute and Harp Concerto. Jacques This new recording from J.S. Bach: Cantatas Johannes Fritzsch, to the two soloists Teddy Zoon is well known to flautists for his Christina Pluhar and Andreas Scholl/Julia Schroder/ Tahu Rhodes and Nicole Car, to the MSO, orchestral prowess and here he lends his L’Arpeggiata is a stunning Kammerorchester Basel are excellent. But for this reviewer, the real delicate wooden sound along with Letizia recording of Spanish and Decca. 4782733. $26.95 stars are the MSO Chorus who, under the Belmondo on harp in a lovely performance. Latin American music Our special price $21.95 (while stocks last) direction of chorus master Jonathan Grieves- The four soloists in the Concertante are from the 17th century to There was something Smith, do justice to the brilliance of Brahms’ virtuosic soloists without forgetting that the present day. It involves an array of delicious about the opening composition with exemplary singing from this piece is truly a conversation between exotic stringed instruments such as the of this album. Some beginning to end. Highly recommended. four very good friends. KR arpa llanera (a harp); cuatro (a form of recordings have it, some Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton. small, four-stringed guitar); bandolin (a don’t, and this one really Mozart: Piano kind of 15-stringed mandolin); jarana (an does. Don’t worry about the Widor: Piano Concertos 19 & 23 eight-stringed guitar); requinto (a high- fact that Andreas Scholl is possibly one of the Concertos Helene Grimaud pitched guitar), and charango (a small greatest counter tenors currently living, the Andean guitar originally constructed orchestra murmuring under his soaring voice Markus Becker/Thierry DG. 4779455. $26.95 from an armadillo shell). These wonderful are deserving of just as much praise. In the Fischer/BBC National Helene Grimaud is already instruments are complemented by the voic- past I will admit that I’ve found Bach cantatas Orchestra of Wales a world renowned pianist, es of Philippe Jaroussky, Lucilla Galeazzi, quite dry and not particularly appealing. This so when I found out she Hyperion. CDA67817. $19.95 Luciano Mancini, Vincenzo Capezzuto and recording has changed my mind completely had never recorded Mozart Charles Marie Widor is not Raquel Andueza. All performances are note and I look forward to listening to it repeatedly until this album I was a name familiar to most perfect and just confirm what a valuable over the next few months. KR people; however, in his day surprised. But I have to asset Christina Pluhar is to the world of he was considered not only say, it was well worth the wait. There is a music. Magnifico!! PR one of the best organists in balance and precision in this album, both France, but also a composer in the sound quality and musicianship that to be reckoned with. Although many of his I found instantly appealing. I love Mozart’s J.S. Bach: Concertos Reissue of works have fallen out of favour, Hyperion’s orchestrations in his piano concertos and & Trasnscriptions new disc of his two piano concertos and felt I discovered them all over again. With Xuefei Yang/ the Month Fantaisie will hopefully change that. Framed an interlude of a recitative and Rondo from Elias String Quartet Debussy: Complete by two Germanic feeling piano concertos, the Idomeneo with Mojca Erdmann as soprano EMI. 6790182. $24.95 Works for Piano whimsical Fantaisie in the centre of the disk is this is one of those rare, truly enjoyable Xuefei Yang’s star has been (4 CD set) certainly a highlight with the infectious joy of performances. KR shining brightly from her Walter Gieseking the third movement of the 1st piano concerto debut album Romance de Regis. RRC4010. $29.95 well worth a repeat listen. Honegger: Pastorale Amor and it has continued This is perhaps not strictly Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton d'ete, Symphony No.4, to shine brightly with all a new reissue, as the EMI Une Cantate de Nöel subsequent offerings. Her boxed set is still in Jewels (DVD) new album is her transcriptions of Bach’s circulation, but not at the Vladimir Jurowski London Phil- harpsichord concerto in D minor, the two Valery Gergiev/Tugan Sokhiev/ harmonic Orchestra and Choir, bargain price of this new Mariinsky Ballet & Orchestra violin concertos and music of Bach’s Regis packaging. Sixty New London Children’s Choir arranged for solo guitar. The winning move Mariinsky. MAR0514. $34.95 years on, these are still the definitive LPO. LPO0058. $19.95 here has been to use the Elias String To Balletomanes, the name Debussy recordings. The sound is fine and The London Philharmon- Quartet as her orchestra for the concertos. George Balanchine means the recordings lose little or nothing for ic’s newest release under This allows the guitar to really standout and more than simply a choreogra- being in mono. Gieseking is perhaps conductor Vladimir of course it doesn’t hurt to have a soloist as pher in the Ballet Russes. His unmatched for the sensitivity and subtlety Juroswki is a series of live talented as Xuefei Yang. This really is an most ardent fans consider him with which his performances tap into the recordings of works by outstanding album. Everything is beauti- the premiere choreographer of nebulous and often hypnotic atmospheres Arthur Honegger. In the fully played and the sound and balance of the 20th Century. From the of this groundbreaking music. Essential to liner notes we are admonished against the recording is excellent. PR any collection. EM Mariinsky Ballet and Orches- thinking of Honegger primarily as a

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