FREE AUGUST 2014

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage page 10

GAME DAY

Clementine Ford on Miriam Sved’s debut novel about the pathology of an AFL club

page 6

WARNING: THE STORY OF CYCLONE TRACY

Belle Place interviews Sophie Cunningham about her new work of non-fiction

page 8

NEW IN AUGUST

WAYNE E. LOCKHART SOPHIE BORGEN ANGUS MACAULEY CUNNINGHAM $17.99 $49.95 & JULIA $29.99 $32.99 STONE page 12 page 21 page 7 page 14 $21.95 page 22 Big and small will love this fantastic exhibition featuring the ever popular characters Hairy Maclary, Schnitzel Von Krumm, Slinky Malinki and Scarface Claw created by Dame Lynley Dodd.

1 august – 21 september

Civic Reserve, Dunns Road Mornington VIC 3931 Open Tuesday–Sunday 10am–5pm Phone: 03 5975 4395 www.mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au

Lynley Dodd, Hairy Maclary, Shoo (2010), © & ™ Hairy Maclary and Friends, Lynley Dodd, 2012, Reproduced courtesy of Penguin Group (NZ) and the artist

DISCOVER THE STORY BEHIND LES MISÉRABLES IN THIS WORLD-FIRST EXHIBITION AT THE STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA

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Featuring the original handwritten manuscript, costumes and other rare items from the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Maisons de Victor Hugo, Musée Rodin, and Cameron Mackintosh.

PRESENTED BY PRINCIPAL PARTNER MAJOR PARTNERS Bank of Melbourne

Victor Hugo_Readings Ad.indd 1 16/07/14 4:21 PM READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 3

News will complement the fair’s attractions. The program runs from 13 to 17 August. For more information please visit melbourneartfair. MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL symposium. Rubbo’s curatorial strategies com.au. Readings is a proud sponsor of FILM FESTIVAL 2014 and the narratives she proposed about Melbourne Art Fair, and Readings customers will have access to discounted tickets at The Melbourne International Film Festival contemporary art are investigated together just $22. This offer runs until 12 August, or is now upon us, showcasing the best in with the gallery’s radical agenda through a until sold out. To use the offer please visit contemporary cinema from around the public lecture and symposium. Admission melbourneartfair.com.au/readings. world, as well as Australia’s own emerging is free but as seating is limited, bookings are and established talent. This year sees required. For program information and to the Australian Showcase delivering register, please visit alumni.online.unimelb. MAN BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST edu.au, or for more information, please world premieres of three local films, and Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to contact Amanda Morris on aust-centre@ Melbourne Stories spotlighting what makes the Deep North has been longlisted for the unimelb.edu.au or (03) 9035 5280. this city unique. The festival runs from 31 2014 Man Booker Prize, which this year July to 17 August. For more information Readings Monthly was opened to writers from beyond the about the program and memberships, and Free independent monthly newspaper MELBOURNE ART FAIR 2014 Commonwealth for the first time. There are to make bookings please visit miff.com.au. published by Readings Books, Music & Film Melbourne Art Fair is one of Australasia’s five Americans nominated: Siri Hustvedt, Readings is a proud sponsor of MIFF. most celebrated contemporary art events, The Burning World; Richard Powers, Editor presenting a rich and diverse cross-section Orfeo; Joshua Ferris, To Rise Again at a Belle Place MADMAN DVD SALE of the region’s visual art scene, and directly Decent Hour; Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All [email protected] Completely Beside Ourselves; and Joseph To celebrate MIFF, we are holding our contributing to the livelihood of living O’Neill, The Dog. Six nominations come annual Madman DVD sale throughout artists. In 2014, the fair will deliver a range Editorial Assistant from Britain: Howard Jacobson, J; Paul August, featuring a wide range of releases of innovative satellite events, along with Bronte Coates Kingsnorth, The Wake; David Mitchell, The [email protected] that includes Tim Winton’s The Turning, the introduction of five new exhibition Bone Clocks; Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of The Trip, Melancholia, Blackfish, The Act of sectors that focus on cutting-edge, emerging Others; David Nicholls, Us; and Ali Smith, Advertising Killing and more. With prices starting from and new media artists. Don’t miss the How to Be Both. A further nomination is Tate Jerrems $12.95 each, this sale is not to be missed opportunity to meet 70 leading Australian from Ireland: Niall Williams, History of the [email protected] and will be available in all of our five and international galleries which will Rain. The shortlist will be announced (03) 9341 7739 shops as well as online at readings.com.au. represent over 300 artists. In addition, seven days of exhibitions, art events and projects on 9 September. Graphic Design Cat Matteson NATIONAL BOOKSHOP DAY theartdept.com.au Saturday 9 August is National Bookshop Day, a special day to celebrate all things tactile and Contributors readable. We are also delighted to announce Clementine Ford, Oliver Driscoll and some very special guests: the Gruffalo and Sophie Cunningham the Mouse will be joining us for storytime

Readings donates 10% of its profits each at three of our shops. Bring the kids along year to The Readings Foundation: to Readings St Kilda at 10.30am, Readings readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation Carlton at 12pm or Readings Hawthorn at 2pm for cuddles and giveaways with these Front Cover two furry friends! For more information To celebrate the release of Haruki Murakami’s please visit readings.com.au/events. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, his publisher, Knopf, commissioned five Japanese illustrators to create stickers WIN A $1500 DELUXE EDITION (picture below) associated with the book’s OF HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW characters. Murakami’s titular protagonist has NOVEL four best friends at school, and by chance The new novel from Haruki Murakami, each of their names contains the word for a Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of colour: Tazaki is the only ‘colourless’ name. Pilgrimage, hits our shelves on Tuesday 12 The illustration featured on our cover is by August. As with other Murakami novels, Fumio Obata. this absorbing tale of Tsukuru Tazaki, a boy

with a missing colour in his name, assures another ethereal classic in the making. Readings is offering a special price of $29.99 (was $35) for this gorgeous hardback release, complete with specially designed stickers to decorate your own cover as you please. Anyone who pre-orders their edition online at readings.com.au before Tuesday 12 August will automatically go in the draw to win a $1500 special deluxe edition of the novel, one of only 100 copies available in the world.

KIFFY RUBBO RETROSPECTIVE A dynamic and unique force in Australian art, Kiffy Rubbo was the director of the Ewing (later the George Paton) Gallery, at the University of Melbourne Student Union, from 1971 to 1980. Now, for the first time, her role in Australian visual culture is explored with a public lecture and a one-day Oslo Davis oslodavis.com

YOUR FAVOURITE BOOKS ON FILM TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT MIFF.COM.AU 4 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

August Events ONE MINUTE’S WINE, ROMANCE 12 SILENCE 21 AND THE TANGO FOOD, WINE & SOPHIE One Minute’s Silence is a moving picture Join us in celebrating the release of Alli 1 DUMPLINGS 7 CUNNINGHAM ON book for older readers. Join author David Sinclair’s Luna Tango over a glass of wine Metzenthen and illustrator Michael and an introduction to the tango via a WITH ALQUIMIE CYCLONE TRACY Camilleri for a beer to celebrate the release. demonstration and class. Melbourne-based journal, Alquimie, Join us for the launch of Sophie celebrates the very best of wine and food Cunningham’s Warning: The Story of Cyclone Free, no booking required. Entry is $10 per person and includes a glass of wine along with the lesson. Please book at culture. Esteemed food writer Tony Tan Tracy. Cunningham has gone back to the Tuesday 12 August, 6pm readings.com.au/events will join editor-in-chief Joshua Elias for eyewitness accounts of those who lived The Retreat Hotel, 226 Nicholson Street, Abbotsford Thursday 21 August, 6pm dumplings, wine and conversation. through the devastation and offers a sober Readings Hawthorn appraisal of what Tracy means to us now. Entry is $55 per person and includes DEE MADIGAN ON a copy of the third edition of Free, no booking required. POETRY WITH Alquimie, as well as dumplings with Thursday 7 August, 6.30pm 13 THE TRICKS OF matching local wines. Please book 25 STU HATTON Readings Carlton POLITICAL at readings.com.au/events ADVERTISING Come and hear Stu Hatton perform from Friday 1 August, 12.30pm his new poetry collection, Glitching, a book In The Hard Sell, Dee Madigan unveils Readings Hawthorn BOOK SIGNING concerned with error. 8 WITH BOB the world of political advertising with unapologetic candour. Madigan will be in JANE CAFARELLA GRAHAM Free, no booking required. conversation with Jonathan Green. Monday 25 August, 6pm 4 ON WRITING A Bob Graham will be stopping by our Readings Carlton MUMMY COLUMN Hawthorn shop to sign copies of his books, Free, but please book at including favourites like Greetings from readings.com.au/events. Join us for the launch of A New Life Sandy Beach and A Bus Called Heaven, as well Wednesday 13 August, 6.30pm ANDY GRIFFITHS Journal, a collection of Jane Cafarella’s as his new picture book, Vanilla Ice Cream. Readings Carlton 26 ON TREEHOUSE columns about her daughter’s first year of life. To be launched by Alan Kohler and ADVENTURES Free, no booking required. TREVOR GRANT Margaret Riddle. Friday 8 August, 4.30pm Andy Griffiths is dropping by our Hawthorn Readings Hawthorn 14 ON THE shop to talk about his latest treehouse Free, no booking required. RAJAPAKSA adventure and sign copies of his new book, Monday 4 August, 6.30pm The 52-Storey Treehouse. Readings Hawthorn NATIONAL REGIME 9 BOOKSHOP DAY Human rights barrister Julian Burnside will Free, but please book at launch Trevor Grant’s Sri Lanka’s Secrets: readings.com.au/events This annual event celebrates bookshops MEET AUTHOR How the Rajapaksa Regime Gets Away with Tuesday 26 August, 4pm around Australia. Bring the kids down to 5 QAISRA SHAHRAZ Murder, which continues the necessary Readings Hawthorn enjoy story time with our special guests – the conversation about refugees. PEN International is delighted to welcome Gruffalo and the Mouse from The Gruffalo! British-Pakistani novelist and scriptwriter There will be growls and songs and giveaways. Free, no booking required. KNOX PEDEN ON Qaisra Shahraz for a powerful, one-night- Thursday 14 August, 6.30pm 27 POSTWAR FRENCH only event. Shahraz’s work, which has been Free, no booking required. Readings Carlton translated into several languages, often Saturday 9 August, 10.30am THOUGHT explores the challenges faced by Muslim Readings St Kilda In Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French women living within Western societies. Saturday 9 August, 12pm JACK HEATH Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze, Knox Readings Carlton Peden reveals the influence of the Spinozist Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 18 ON REPLICA Saturday 9 August, 2pm rationalism on postwar French thought. Tuesday 5 August, 6pm Readings Hawthorn Jack Heath presents an electrifying new read Readings Hawthorn for young adults with Replica, a tense sci-fi Free, no booking required. thriller about identity, ethics and androids. Wednesday 27 August, 6.30pm GREG COMBET Readings Carlton DOUG PURDIE 12 WITH JULIAN Free, no booking required. 7 AND AMY VULETA BURNSIDE Monday 18 August, 6.30pm ON BEEKEEPING Readings Carlton PETRA BUESKENS Greg Combet will be in conversation with 28 WITH Beekeeper and bee advocate Doug Purdie human rights barrister Julian Burnside, will discuss his new book, Backyard Bees, discussing his new book, The Fights of PHOTOGRAPHY ANNE MANNE with Readings’ own resident beekeeper and My Life. 19 WITH JOHN Anne Manne will launch Mothering and assistant manager of our St Kilda shop, Amy WERRETT Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological & Vuleta. Treat yourself to mead, honey and Entry is $5 per person and includes a glass of Feminist Perspectives, which is edited by Morag Loh will launch John Werrett’s new wine as they discuss the practicalities and wine. Please book at readings.com.au/events Petra Bueskens. joys of bees. Tuesday 12 August, 6.30pm photography book, Out of the Dark, which Readings Hawthorn documents Victorians at work from 1979. Free, no booking required. Free, but please book at Thursday 28 August, 4pm Free, no booking required. readings.com.au/events Readings Hawthorn Thursday 7 August, 6.30pm JOURNAL Tuesday 19 August, 6pm Readings St Kilda 12 ASSEMBLY Readings Carlton SUSAN BIGGAR For the final event of our three-part series ON THE UPSIDE on the cultural significance/machinations of DON MILLER 31 For more information and updates, please journals, Katia Pase of Stilts, Brigid Mullane 20 ON WILL TO WIN OF DOWN visit the events page at of Kill Your Darlings and Samuel Rutter of Join us for the launch of Will to Win, which Andrew Gill and Dr Catherine Crock will readings.com.au/events Higher Arc will join chair Belle Place, editor provides a critical look at the nature of launch Susan Biggar’s debut memoir, The of Readings Monthly, in conversation. Upside of Down. Please note bookings do not necessarily modern sport. Free, no booking required. guarantee a seat and some events may be Free, no booking required. Free, no booking required. Tuesday 12 August, 6.30pm standing room only. Wednesday 20 August, 6.30pm Sunday 31 August, 3pm Readings Carlton Readings Carlton Readings Hawthorn

A dynamic and unique force in Australian art, Keynote Lecture: ‘Kiffy Rubbo, Admission is free. Kiffy Rubbo and Kiffy Rubbo was director of the Ewing (later Women Curators and Australian Bookings are required. the George Paton) Gallery, at the University Art Galleries’ by Frances Lindsay Seating is limited. The George Paton of Melbourne Student Union, 1971-1980. Friday August 29, 2014 For program information and 7pm - 8pm Gallery: Curating For the first time, her major role in Australian to register visit: visual culture as well as her legacy are alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au Symposium: ‘Kiffy Rubbo and explored. Under Rubbo’s leadership, the the 1970s The George Paton Gallery: For further information please Gallery became a vital, nationally recognised Curating the 1970s’ contact Amanda Morris at Public Lecture and venue, the first institutionally supported Saturday August 30, 2014 [email protected] experimental art space. Symposium 9am - 5pm or phone 9035 5280. READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 5

Mark’s News and views from Readings’ Managing Director, Say Mark Rubbo

On my recent holidays I had the great pleasure of reading an advance of the new Colm Tóibín novel, Nora Webster (Picador Australia, October). I have to confess that the only Tóibín I’ve read is The Testament of Mary, which I was fairly diffident about, and read, largely, because I’d been invited by his publisher to have dinner with Tóibín when he was here last year for the Melbourne Writers Festival. Tóibín was charming, witty and slightly the worse for wear. He’d been out drinking till the early morning with Christos Tsiolkas and Andrew O’Hagan. O’Hagan later confessed to me that this was not the kind of thing he normally did, although it was he who was still playing pool while Tóibín and Tsiolkas were sprawled, asleep, on the bar. The point of all this is that Nora Webster is such a beautiful and sensitive book – not what you’d expect from an Irish party boy. The book is set in a medium-sized town in Ireland in the 1960s and follows Norah Webster, who loses her beloved husband to cancer and is struck by grief. Her husband, a loved and respected teacher, helped define her and now she is left alone with her four children to find a new life for herself. It is a gentle and understated novel that affected me greatly. The downing of the Malaysian aircraft over the Ukraine is a great tragedy. Among the passengers were Australian novelist Liam Davison and his wife Frankie. His novel Soundings was the recipient of the National Book Council Banjo Award for Fiction in 1993, and his short stories were frequently anthologised. Liam was also a book reviewer for ictoria at War records the publications such as the Age and ABR. Sadly none of Liam’s books are currently in print – Vachievements of the state’s soldiers, nurses and their families they may be a candidate for republication now. Liam lived on the Mornington Peninsula, – including the Whitelaws from so we didn’t see much of him in the city, but when we did catch up it was always a great Gippsland with six sons enlisting, pleasure to chat about writing and his teaching at Chisholm TAFE Institute in Frankston. I ‘Bert’ Jacka, the first Australian hadn’t heard from him for a while; I hope he was enjoying himself and writing. to be awarded the Victoria Cross The Melbourne Writers Festival starts on 21 August. It will be the second festival in the First World War, and led by Lisa Dempster, and the program reflects her desire to offer a diverse festival. The commander Sir John Monash. opening night address will be presented by Helen Garner, whose new book, This House of Bestselling military historian Grief, will be published in time for the festival. The book is the product of many years’ work Michael McKernan commemorates and is about the case of Robert Farquharson, who was charged and convicted of murdering the generosity, devotion, sacrifice his three sons after his car, carrying his children, swerved off the road and plunged into a and spirit of a community pushed dam on Father’s Day in 2005. Garner is a very appropriate choice by the festival, as she was towards breaking point through on the original organising committee of the first festival in 1986 – that year Elizabeth Jolley stories from the home front and gave the keynote address, which was on sex. battlefront.

www.newsouthbooks.com.au From the The stunning second novel Books Martin Shaw, from the author of Mr Wigg Desk Readings Books Division Manager

It’s been a sombre couple of weeks in the Australian book trade, with two tragic passings: the highly respected Melbourne novelist, critic and educator Liam Davison (on the ill-fated MH17); and Matt Richell, the widely admired CEO of Hachette Australia, whose passion for publishing, and commitment to emerging Australian talent in particular, was utterly infectious. This column is dedicated to their memory. Perhaps fittingly, this month turns out to be a bountiful one across both fiction and non-fiction. Likely to grab a great deal of literary oxygen is the new novel from Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, a return to the more realist style exemplified by 1987’s Norwegian Wood. For our reviewer, it’s ‘his most tightly focused yet’. Also of note is Booker Prize-winner D.B.C. Pierre with a novella in the INGA SIMPSON Hammer horror tradition: Breakfast with the Borgias. Australian fiction, though, predominates, and the list is wonderfully diverse and enticing. We have a long-awaited Joan London novel, The Golden Age; second novels from ‘It is a joy to Sofie Laguna (The Eye of the Sheep), Inga Simpson (Nest) and Jessie Cole (Deeper Water); as well as debuts from Nic Low (Arms Race: And Other Stories), Rebecca Jessen (Gap) and Omar linger with Jen Musa (Here Come the Dogs). Of the latter, expect to hear some considerable comment – for our reviewer, this verse novel ‘swaggers charmingly’ onto the literary scene, and ‘is beautiful … life affirming’ … not preachy or didactic, and it’s ripe with disdain for swathes of its potential audience’. Two novels strike me as particular achievements. Miriam Sved’s debut, Game BOOKSELLER + Day, takes as its fictional quarry the game and culture of AFL, and does so winningly, even PUBLISHER for those with no interest in the code whatsoever. As Robbie Egan notes in his review: ‘Whether you like the footy or not is irrelevant: these characters ring true and speak to us in many ways. Miriam Sved is a writer to watch.’ There is also a new novel from Wayne OUT NOW Macauley: Demons. I was asked recently whether I thought it was better than his three previous and all I could proffer was ‘just as good!’ Macauley really is our leading social Get the whole story at satirist of the moment – and each book is a gem. hachette.com.au Finally, in non-fiction, Sophie Cunningham has written a fascinating account of Cyclone Tracy (Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy): it recounts not just the cataclysmic effect of the cyclone, but what this said about the Australia of the time, and how the country changed as a result thereafter. Meanwhile, memoirs from Bob Brown and Greg Combet may well herald a particular nostalgia for political leaders of conscience and integrity. Comradely Greetings – the prison letters of Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek – promises to be a fascinating take on artistic subversion, political activism and the future of democracy. 6 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

New Australian Writing

In her debut novel, Game Day, Miriam Sved unfolds a deeply insightful story about the pathology of an AFL club, its players and its fans, set over the course of one season of Aussie Rules. Here, she talks with Clementine Ford about the social phenomenon of the sport, and discusses the intensity with which players, and those around them, pursue and worship it. Game Day Clementine Ford interviews Miriam Sved about her debut novel

he best kind of storytellers are the grandiosity of the whole thing, but this the ones so adept at their craft was without having much understanding that they can hypnotise even of the game itself.’ those readers bitterly opposed Years later, she moved in with Tto the subject matter. So it is with Miriam her partner, a woman she describes as a Miriam Sved. Photograph by Georgia Laughton Sved, whose debut novel, Game Day, ‘die-hard footy nut’. They would watch the addresses the complex, often insidious and games together, Sved slowly contracting the sport: the joy of the game, which exists feminists such as myself. ‘I knew I had to interweaving relationships formed between the fever. ‘I remember the first time I found for so many women as well as men; and the pay attention to the abhorrent behaviour the members of an Australian Football myself shouting at the telly during a close exclusionary, blokey parts of AFL culture. that some dickhead footballers exhibit, and League club. game, and then thinking where the hell did I think the reality is more multi-faceted there are aspects of the culture of the game The book is being sold as the that come from?’ This sense of falling into than it just being a blokes’ game. There that I find gross and hard to forgive,’ Sved journey taken by two young rookies, fandom without even realising it is evoked are so many women closely connected to explains. ‘But individually I don’t think of Mick ‘Mickey’ Reece and Jake Dooley, as in the later stages of Game Day, as Mickey it – women who know everything there is footballers as a necessarily or automatically they endure the gruelling physical and Reece’s mother, Kate, recalls the way to know about AFL, who live week to week bad bunch.’ She cites Anna Krien’s Night emotional trials of one complete AFL allegiances can have a means of creeping hanging on their team’s fortunes, and also Games as expertly depicting the sense of season. But the book is less linear than it under your skin – in Kate’s case, this comes many who work in the game. And then recklessness and sexual entitlement that sounds: Sved has employed the structure first via her country-born husband and then you watch the footy shows and the award can be fostered by footy culture, and says of a short-story collection with alternating her footy-star son. shows and the whole thing does seem so that she wasn’t interested in sympathising voices, perspectives and preoccupations. Indeed, it is the undercurrent of blokey. I guess I just tried to give both of with footballers en masse. ‘But as individual The result is impressively subtle; key female suffocation that is most transfixing those realities their due – the reality that characters I had no trouble getting behind incidents considered in one chapter are in Sved’s book. With steadfast clarity, she the game is loved by and means a lot to so the idea of a psychological spectrum, a deftly resolved through echoes in later addresses in turn the girls and women many people, so many of them women; and range of personalities and character types, ones. Liberated from the confines of a whose efforts to participate in such a and it was interesting to think about how constant narrator, Sved is able to explore hyper-masculine code are accompanied the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the some of the more glaring contradictions, by the ever-present reminder that they ‘Liberated from the AFL might work on those different kinds of corruptions and insecurities present in will never truly belong to it. There’s Bec, characters.’ such a revered institution, and the people the young woman who has established confines of a constant The result is hypnotic, startling within. ‘Liberating is a good word for how rules of engagement so that she can ascend narrator, Sved is able to almost in its breadth and focus. Tellingly, it it felt,’ she says. ‘I loved the freedom and from post-game ‘root’ to powerful WAG. also belies what we might think constitutes the scope of it, and I loved being able to And Em, a little girl attending a live game explore some of the more a ‘sports book’. The machinations of play with the voices and give them free with her father for the first time, who Australian sporting culture have always rein without worrying that I was going to catches a glimmer of the kind of woman glaring contradictions, bored me, while reports of AFL cover-ups be shackled to them for a whole novel.’ she will need to become if she wants to corruptions and insecurities and toxic culture have often sent chills Sved invokes the feverish be acknowledged, and seen, as a part of down my spine. And yet, settling in for a atmosphere of Melbourne’s AFL obsession it all. In one of the book’s most acute present in such a revered chapter or two of Game Day meant only to so well – its majestic highs and devastating scenes, there is the footy-mad nine-year- realise that, hours later and still reading, the lows – that it would be easy to assume old daughter of our nameless club’s public institution …’ afternoon light had waned across the sky she’s been a dedicated supporter of relations officer, lying in bed beneath a and a light must be turned on. the game since childhood. In fact, the giant poster of her favourite player while the reality that there are many aspects of opposite is true. ‘I was an outsider to the her father works behind the scenes to the whole culture that feel exclusionary.’ Clementine Ford is a writer and public speaker game when I moved down here in 2001, cover up yet another incident of the But Sved’s allegiance is not solely based in Melbourne. She writes a regular and I was immediately pretty interested player’s sexual misconduct. to the women of this story. Her compassion column for Fairfax’s Daily Life. Her essays have in the social phenomenon of it: so many ‘It’s an aspect of the book I for characters and their motivations sees appeared in numerous anthologies, including people asked me if I had a team, and told thought about a lot, and I guess worried her taking a far more circumspect and Just Between Us and Sincerely: Women of me about their teams, and tried to get about,’ Sved says. ‘I wanted to do justice realistic view of the players themselves, Letters. She is fond of the works of Patricia me involved with their teams. I went to a to different things that sometimes seem many of whom have been typecast by Highsmith and Penfolds, often at the same time. couple of games and was pretty taken by competing and even contradictory within media reports or narratives proposed by She tweets @clementine_ford. READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 7

New Fiction game-day swill (‘people flocking/to the grows along with its rhythms. What is footy/or/the cricket/all the same to me’), as essentially a coming-of-age tale and a love menace gathers around an unlikely survivor. story of sorts feels unpredictable, In Gap, sprezzatura poetics, lesbian desire untethered and wild. Book of the Month and the thriller genre come together in a Deeper Water is set in an unnamed visceral expression of the Australian psyche. Australian region whose landscape is itself DEMONS It’s a gutsy homage to Porter, but Gap is a fully formed character. From the very Wayne Macauley additionally great as Jessen’s own study of beginning, the narrative is framed by the Text. PB. $29.99 rough love and resilience. landscape’s moods when a young man’s At the beginning of the year, in a column on my ‘most Lucy Van is a freelance reviewer hire car is washed off a bridge in a flood. anticipated books of 2014’, I wrote: ‘In recent years, Mema is out in the rain, attempting to lead Wayne Macauley has well and truly arrived as one of our most HERE COME THE DOGS her calving cow back from the swollen creek’s edge as the car breaks through the exciting prose practitioners. No word on the content of his Omar Musa bridge barrier. She helps the man escape, forthcoming novel, but I don’t think we care – we’re reading Penguin. PB. $29.99 holding out a branch and pulling him onto it!’ Well, I can now confirm that this readerly compulsion is Omar Musa’s new the bank, immediately enlisting his help to repaid generously. In Demons, Macauley is at his caustic best: verse novel deliver the calf. Drenched by the summer here, ‘the greatest country on earth’ may just have found its swaggers charmingly rain, ankles in the creek, mud squelching wickedest chronicler. In the depths of winter, a group of friends gather in a holiday onto the scene. It under bare feet, covered in the cow’s house on the Great Ocean Road: think an open fire, food and wine, and old-fashioned follows a group of crude, birthing fluid is how Mema brings ‘flood yarn-telling (for good measure, phones are banned). In an increasingly charged sometimes violent and guy’ into her world, and how she begins to atmosphere – a storm rages; the roof is leaking; and a teenager, in despair at the adult partially talented young emerge, however late, from childhood. world around her, barricades herself in her room – the stories the friends tell begin to guys as they take drugs, What I found most powerful hit uncomfortably close to home. get tattoos, pick up girls about this novel was the sense of Mema But there’s always wine! Copious glasses of Heathcote Shiraz are poured, and, and worry about the not knowing exactly what’s happening of course, a Clare Valley on rotation. But what if all this indulgence is just a favourite future. Musa sets a scene like he’s directing a outside the borders of her own flesh, who tool of these friends, and contemporary society at large, to self-delude? As it turns film. In his hands, dark scenarios take on a the outsiders really are, who any of us can out, their seemingly innocent ‘exemplary stories’ betoken an emptiness at the heart music video allure. He turns greyhound trust, and where knowledge of one’s own of our culture that no amount of ‘lifestyle’ can redeem. How we should live, and to racing, street fights, public transport and world comes from. Mema’s narrative voice live in truth, is Macauley’s grand theme – one which art, like this novel, is uniquely other mundane Australian horrors into slick, is quiet and measured, never giving very positioned to address. dreamy vignettes. Ideas for literary scenes much away but at the same time revealing Macauley is as angry a social observer as fellow Melbournian Christos Tsiolkas, that would rightfully make anyone cringe the immense depth and intensity of her but his work is spiked with a now trademark sardonic bent – he mounts here an at once – an urban rap battle, anyone? – are feelings that sit just below the surface. Her hilarious and biting critique of our rampant ‘culture of narcissism’. At the same time he skilfully portrayed here. longing is mysterious, and Cole’s descriptive proffers a passionate case for the power and value of art in our hopelessly superficial, The main characters are likeable, prose imbues it with the gloriously sensual morally vacuous 24/7 world. Even though the landscape of late modernity is a barren if not exactly friendly. Sometimes they’re anticipation of a bud about to burst into terroir indeed, Macauley would seem to say, the harvest is still what we make of it. invincible young gods on a rampage, high bloom. A compelling and satisfying read; its Martin Shaw is the Books Division Manager at Readings and confident. Elsewhere, they’re testing sensuality and earthiness give a mythical their best poker faces on bored travel quality to the regional Australian landscape. agents who know full well they don’t have Australian GAP any money. The most awkward accounts Amy Vuleta is from Readings St Kilda Rebecca Jessen are reserved for Georgie, a white university student and feminist. She is a clownish ARMS RACE: AND OTHER GAME DAY UQP. PB. 22.95 Rebecca Jessen figure, in one scene spied handing out STORIES Miriam Sved won the Emerging leaflets on the street for refugee rights, Nic Low Picador. PB. Was $29.99 Queensland Author in another getting her classmates to Text. PB. Was $27.99 $24.95 prize at the 2013 intellectually gang up on someone. When $24.99 one of the protagonists accompanies her Miriam Sved’s Queensland Literary Inspiration for to a boring university lecture on sexism, debut novel strips Awards for Gap, a Arms Race, the he hates it but enjoys pretending he thinks back the corporate novel-in-verse set in debut book of stories they’re smarter than he is. persona of an AFL club inner-city Brisbane by Nic Low, might have These sections could have been by weaving together a that opens with the come from Nam Le’s disastrously clumsy, but they do point to a series of individual murder of a man in the much-lauded collection very real mutual discomfort, dishonesty or perspectives of our shadows of the Gabba. Dorothy Porter The Boat. Low similarly even just dislike between the working poor indigenous game. pioneered the form, lesbian-detective-epic- sets off over and their do-gooder liberal champions. Players, scouts, noir, in her stunning verse novel The international waters But thanks to scenes like these, questions coaches, groupies: Monkey’s Mask. Is it simply testament to and we’re a good way linger about which audience this book is none are spared, but nor are they mocked Porter’s swagger and genius that this highly through the book before we arrive at a story written for. Middle-class white people or trivialised. This fine book is a piercing specific style continues to resonate? Unlike taking place in Australia. By then the reader wanting an insight into scary hoodlums? view of a culture that runs deep, and Sved its predecessor, Gap is an outlaw narrative, has visited a coastal town in New Zealand; People who are part of this dark and violent mines a sporting obsession that is in turn displacing the detective’s point of view Fifth Avenue, New York; and an empty underclass? Rebellious, highly literate teens? uplifting, ennobling, degrading and sad. with that of the crime’s prime suspect. Ana hotel in Jaisalmer, India. Here Come the Dogs is beautiful, Game Day speaks in the AFL vernacular, at tells the story of being on the run, not only It’s a dynamic perspective that it’s not preachy or didactic, and it’s ripe with one point detailing a player’s ability to from the murder itself, but also from a past at times comes at the cost of attention to disdain for swathes of its potential audience. recognise the severity of an injury by the of neglect, dysfunction and deprivation. It’s detail. New York is a ‘sea of faces’ as the concussive thud of the collision. Sved a narrative that often connects with Chris Dite is from Readings Carlton starstruck protagonist follows a seductive constructs the milieu patiently, with an eye Australian readers. A battler in the celebrity painter to a restaurant, saying for intimate detail amid the organisational vernacular tradition, Ana is a cocky loser at DEEPER WATER ‘wow’ to almost every utterance she makes. imperatives of team and club. once crippled with class doubt and Jessie Cole India is a place of rickshaws, camels and AFL magnifies the tension between emboldened by outsider irreverence. Fourth Estate. PB. Was $29.99 veiled ladies, images that feel as though they individual achievement and the greater Having escaped the clutches of a rotten $24.99 are derived from stock footage. Low instead needs of the team, and Game Day chronicles mother, the speaker takes on the finds his focus on characters, inviting the There’s always it all: the young’s desire for their yet-to-be responsibility of looking after her younger reader to move into a world peopled by mad going to be sparkling futures, the has-been’s yearning sister. Driven by a protective instinct, Ana’s men and fools, hustlers and entrepreneurs, something comfortingly for their past, the lament of the injured, and best intentions are crosscut by a passion of labourers, artists, tourists, all careening familiar for me in an the one-and-all collateral of the blockbuster the most dangerous sort – nostalgic desire through fast, often explosive, narratives. Australian novel about machine. What emerges is the struggle men for a lover who has suddenly returned. Australian publishing has a growing up in an have with their fragile egos and the depth The narrative is spare and long tradition of stories with naturalistic isolated place. What of their reliance on booze and amateur unaffected, a tough distillation of noir depictions set in rural or beachside rang most true in Jessie psychology. Pleasingly, their daughters, convention. The free verse snakes across locations. Characters are often recognisable Cole’s Deeper Water wives and flings are not cursory notes or the pages, capturing the depletion and approximations of the battler, men and was the immense afterthoughts, but engaged participants intensity that often marry well in the women of humble aspirations for the most yearning of a young soul – not for the world amid the alpha males. Whether you like the Australian suburbs. The clipped, downbeat part. The ambition of Nic Low in Arms outside, but for an understanding of herself footy or not is irrelevant: these characters tone sees the writing diverge from the Race is to provide a sequence of stories and of what it means to belong somewhere. ring true and speak to us in many ways. temperamental range of Porter, tapping into that defies these conventions. Battler Cole’s heroine, Mema, doesn’t feel the pull Miriam Sved is a writer to watch. a laconicism that creates immediacy and has become another word for loser. The of someplace else but is firmly rooted in the Robbie Egan is the Manager of Readings instant rapport. Jessen’s setting is highly land she’s never left, and she swells and Continued on page 9 Carlton recognisable, breathing the warm stink of 8 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

Essay On using beauty to produce menace Oliver Driscoll on Janet Frame’s three-part autobiography and short stories

o doubt like many people, when self-reflexivity as well as hyper-sensitivity are stories within stories, sending surges The second book, An Angel at I first watched Jane Campion’s – or, perhaps, empathetic discomfort – for through the texts around them. In The My Table, is incredible for many reasons, 1990 film An Angel at My those around her, Frame also has much Envoy from Mirror City, Frame is on her but particularly for its insight into the Table, some ten years ago, I in common with contemporary quasi- way to Andorra, having had her first love consciousness of someone suffering within Nintended to read Janet Frame’s three-part autobiographical writers, such as Ben affair with a mediocre American poet who the inhumane locked jaw of the psychiatric autobiography – To the Is-Land, An Angel at Lerner and Karl Ove Knausgaard. disappeared without a word shortly after care facilities in New Zealand at the time, My Table and The Envoy from Mirror City Frame’s stories, in particular, have they had unprotected sex in Ibiza and: ‘the how mean and basic they were. But it’s the – on which the film is based, and anything an incredible economy. In ‘The Linesman’, stark black of the northern trees against first and third books where we see Frame else of hers I could get my hands on. which is a little over a page in length – the snow seemed to be part of the natural developing first as a person and then as a The books cover, respectively, originally published in The Reservoir: regression from the southern spring to the writer, where she is learning how to live Frame’s childhood and teenage years; then Stories and Sketches (‘The Reservoir’ and northern winter and in tune with the mood within that complicated, choppy relationship her twenties, much of which she spent in ‘Prizes’ from the same collection are two of inescapable present that sooner or later between oneself, other people, the world and psychiatric hospitals misdiagnosed with of her best stories) and more recently besets a woman of thirty-two who is alone words. And she loves words: gored, rushed schizophrenia and receiving over 200 published in The Daylight and the Dust – and may be pregnant’. Frame attempts to (rushed to the hospital), skirting board, though doses of ‘unmodified ECT, each the Frame uses the perspective of a narrator miscarry using a childhood friend’s folk she frets that she is neither imaginative equivalent, in degree of fear, to an looking out a window along with the knowledge: gin, quinine and rushing up enough – Frame suffers from being too execution’ and only escaping a leucotomy viewpoint that the narrator imputes to a mountains. practically and factually minded – nor that after winning the Hubert Church Memorial linesman up a telegraph pole to present the Many of the chapters in Frame’s she has experienced true personal tragedy, Award for her first published book, The complex mechanics of the neighbourhood, autobiography are essentially tight short at least not the right kind. Shirley, a girl in Lagoon and Other Stories; and lastly, the and the narrator’s own troubles. This use stories in their own right, one of the best her class, not only plays the piano and sings years she then spent, originally on a literary of multiple perspectives, which often being ‘The Birds of the Air’ from To the but also has the most enviable thing of all: a grant intended to ‘broaden her experience’, cloud and interfere with the clarity of one Is-Land. Janet’s maternal grandmother, dead father. By this time, Frame’s eldest sister in Europe. At one point while in hospital, another, appears again and again in her Grandma Godfrey, is coming to stay with Myrtle is already dead, drowned at the local Frame looks at the notepad of another best writing. In this story, we see (though the family. For years, their mother has told swimming pool, but, ‘Somehow, Myrtle’s patient who is writing a ‘book’. The page is it is probably the linesman who actually the children, a block of we, how much they death did not really “qualify”.’ It is too much covered with zeroes. Frame, never terribly does) youths ‘lying in attitudes of surrender will love Grandma Godfrey, that she will a part of her. The inappropriateness of confident, is terrified that her writing beneath the dismantled bellies of scooters’, be ‘like a sister’ to them. As soon as she this being used as subject matter, and her amounts to little more, that the desire to and women ‘sweeping the Saturday night arrives, however, she starts complaining pained unwillingness, is, of course, the story. write has little to do with ability. refuse from their share of the pavement’. about the ways the children disabuse their Re-watching the film now, as But no doubt also like many And then we learn of the narrator’s mother. To the children she is a stranger, gorgeously staged and shot as it is, you people, after seeing the film I didn’t read ‘marauding despair’, and that she wishes and yet ‘behaved towards Mum as if she could almost feel sorry for the limitations her autobiography, at least not for a very the man would fall. Frame creates beauty, owned her’, even though everyone knows faced by the director. In the translation long time. When I finally did, I did so and then uses that beauty to produce that their mother belongs to them alone. to film, Campion has been largely denied along with two excellent collections of menace. It’s also fascinating to see the way ‘The saddest fact was that Mum appeared the most powerful element of Frame’s Frame’s stories, Between My Father and she reworks much of the same material in to agree with Grandma Godfrey.’ The writing: her internal world. All the same, the King: New and Uncollected Stories and her fiction and her autobiography, with the grandmother soon leaves and when she it’s a pleasure to watch as a reminder of all The Daylight and the Dust: Selected Short different possibilities of each, adding depth does, Frame is left with more evidence that the incredible, perceptive writing beneath, Stories. At times, with her sense for detail, and complication. what her parents say isn’t always true, and which is a long way from zeroes. she brings to mind short-story writers of her But her economy is not a simple or sometimes her parents don’t even believe time, such as Mavis Gallant, with whom she direct one, and is often created with long, the things they say themselves. Truth and Oliver Driscoll is a Melbourne short-story shares a perpetual sense of out-of-placeness. tightly bound sentences that leave us where the slipperiness of words is the constant writer. He reads fiction submissions for Overland But with her at once ugly and charming we didn’t expect to be left. Sentences that problem of her childhood. and is a co-founder of the Slow Canoe Readings. Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy Belle Place interviews Sophie Cunningham about her new work of non-fiction

This year marks 40 years since Cyclone that he helped you attain a ‘sense of It could also be argued that the devastation but, with some exceptions, it was hard for Tracy hit Darwin on Christmas Eve – the times and the differences between caused by Tracy made Land Rights people to be articulate about something that what is your motivation for wanting to Canberra’s perspective on Tracy, and the issues more acute. The Aboriginal Land happened to them 40 years ago, especially write this book now? perspectives of those who’d been through Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was given how traumatic the whole thing was. I have always been fascinated by Cyclone it’. Can you tell us a little about this? proclaimed in January 1977. And, sadly, many of the main players have Tracy – it had a big impact on me as a child. The year after Cyclone Tracy, 1975, was an Given the natural disaster occurred died, or are extremely old and weren’t up But, as I write in the book, my biggest extraordinary one in modern Australia’s four decades ago, how did you go about to being interviewed. The people I did motivation was the fact that the human race political life. 1975 was the year of the Racial finding your eyewitness accounts and speak to weren’t reluctant at all, but nor did is transforming the land, the seas and the Discrimination Act. It was the year the collecting archival materials? Were they enjoy talking about it. However, it is weather. In a country that tends to extremes Aboriginal Land (NT) Bill was introduced those you interviewed, people who had absolutely a fact that many people are not of drought, flood and bushfire, we are now into Parliament. It was International experienced the devastation of Cyclone interested in talking publicly about their facing a world where there will be more Women’s Year. Gay rights were finally Tracy first hand, open or reluctant to experiences – I touch on that in the book. on the agenda and homosexuality was calamities more often and larger numbers sharing their story, 40 years on? Your book shares portrayals of an legalised in South Australia. The death of us will be affected. So I wanted to analyse The Northern Territory Archives Service Indigenous experience of Cyclone Tracy, penalty was abolished in Victoria. Legal just one such calamity, and consider how is an amazing institution. Over the years, a side of the story not often included in Aid was introduced. Advance Australia Fair it changed a town, and a nation. I was also hundreds of oral histories have been taken, official accounts of this natural disaster. became the default national anthem. The interested in the impact such an event has covering everything from the bombing of How did this come to form part of your British honours system was replaced by for people over the decades. However, the Darwin in World War II; the experiences narrative? the Australian one. No-fault divorce was fact that my book is coming out in time for of the Chinese population – many of the introduced. So, the main question I asked This was one of my motivations for writing the fortieth anniversary is a coincidence first migrants to the area were Chinese; of Malcolm Fraser was whether Cyclone the book in the first place. I had read quite really (or a reflection of how many years it and, significantly, the experiences of the Tracy had acted as a catalyst for political a lot about the cyclone and there was took me to write!). Stolen Generation. Those archives formed events during the mid-70s. His answer, in very little reference to the experiences of the basis of my research. Can I just pause The narrative in Warning moves from short, was that it had not. Not everyone Indigenous people during and after the here to say that archives, and our access to a gripping account of the days before agrees with him – those interested in the cyclone, despite the fact there is a large them, are incredibly important, and many the cyclone hit, to the wild times introduction of self government to the Aboriginal population in Darwin, and significant libraries and collections are that ensued – in both the personal Northern Territory in 1978 think what the Northern Territory. Weather is an struggling to manage with both funding and and political spheres. You meet with followed Cyclone Tracy had a lot to do with important part of Indigenous culture, so staffing cuts? I also did my own interviews, Malcolm Fraser and write in your book the fact the NT became more independent. it’s a subject on which the Larrakia (and READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 9 other Indigenous communities) have confront the reader with uncomfortable strong views on. I am also interested in questions about the challenges of the fact that disasters quite often show up meaningful cultural exchange. Lane’s fault lines in a society. Making Indigenous depiction of the limits and expectations people invisible is one example of that. placed on women, both here and in The evacuation of the women out of Indonesian society, are especially poignant. Darwin on the grounds they would get in This is a refreshingly original the way after Cyclone Tracy was another. exploration of the gulfs and bridges Eruptions of racism towards the Greek between Australia and Indonesia, one community of Darwin yet another. Political that goes beyond the superficiality of tensions between the federal government massages, temples and sunset cocktails. and the territory also came to the fore. The final pages are a sobering reminder that, no matter where you live in the world, Can you tell us about any narrative non- freedom often comes at a price. fiction titles you used as reference or influential sources for this project? Sally Keighery is a freelance reviewer I had no particular book in mind, other THE EYE OF THE SHEEP than, in a superficial way, Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, which I read many years Sofie Laguna ago. I didn’t read creative non-fiction titles A&U. PB. $29.99 on incidents like, say, Hurricane Katrina, Jimmy is because perversely I can find reading other different. Where good books somewhat debilitating. That we see our parents, said, I was inspired early on by Kinglake-350 friends or siblings, he by Adrian Hyland. And when I was making sees internal organs and the finishing touches to the final draft I blood rushing through did read Darwin by Tess Lea. That is an their veins. At age six, excellent book. he reads instruction manuals to his mother. Belle Place is the Editor of Readings Monthly. He worries about her weight, and obsesses over the mechanisms of the tumble dryer and about his Continued from page 7 relationship with his brother. He becomes characters in Low’s book are desperate for manic when the lawnmower is being used alternatives, and if they have been humbled, and is anxious about his dad ‘hitting the hunger for another chance at success. hard stuff’. He loves so deeply that the cells Though Low’s technical ability doesn’t in his body spin uncontrollably. Nothing always match his ambition, Arms Race can about Jimmy is normal. be compared to Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Eye of the Sheep follows Foreign Soil as another locally produced Jimmy’s journey as he tries to understand book that opens broader and more modern himself and the world around him. It perspectives in Aussie literature. works as a reminder that having a child with special needs is not an impossible Alec Patric is from Readings St Kilda task; it is a challenge that runs alongside OVER THE WATER complexities faced by many families. Sofie Laguna tackles the William Lane intricacies of love and marriage, Transit Lounge. PB. $26.99 brotherhood, power dynamics, medical An unexpected issues and the definition of family – her sense of menace novel is a mixture of the brutality found and melancholy in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and the pervades this debut pain in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. novel about cultural Equally distressing and uplifting, every difference and identity, moment of pain is juxtaposed with the light set in Indonesia’s third- we see in the central figure of Jimmy. largest city. Following This book should be impossibly in the footsteps of his bleak, but Laguna has managed to imbue it enigmatic older with luminosity. This is a story about how brother, 23-year-old Joe arrives in Bandung to find your place in the world and how to to teach English and immediately ‘struggles accept what you have been given. The Eye with that imposter feeling’. As a seemingly of the Sheep will break your heart – a small innocent outsider, he quickly becomes price to pay to hear Jimmy’s story. embroiled in the lives of various women, Savannah Indigo is from Readings Malvern both foreign and local. His relationships form with an accelerated intimacy and he begins to question the possibility of THE GOLDEN AGE romantic love and the notion of freedom, Joan London leaving him feeling uncertain of his place in Random House. PB. Was $32.99 the world. It’s this sense of displacement $27.99 that William Lane captures so well. In 1950s Perth, Lane has lived in Indonesia and his Frank Gold lies first-hand knowledge of language, customs awake in his bed in the and place lend this book an authentic boys’ ward of the and compelling voice. Lane’s settings are Golden Age Children’s lush, dark and richly described, and his Polio Convalescent characters are moody and intense, hinting at Hospital. He is the mythic power that bubbles underneath thinking about Elsa, a Javanese culture, always threatening to fellow-patient. Across explode. This is not the fluffy, loved-up the road the netting Indonesia of Eat, Pray, Love, but a darker, factory hums, its lights shining through the more intimate portrait of a complex society hot dry night, like the green beacon at the steeped in religion and superstition. end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock. Anyone who has ever taught New Australians in a new suburb, English overseas will instantly recognise Ida and Meyer Gold drink brandy on their Joe’s colleagues who are a mishmash of front porch, smoke billowing from their accents and attitudes. Wavering between cigarettes. They think about Budapest, a sickly spiritual gushiness and a visceral about Lake Balaton, their old lives and their disgust for the local culture, they each incongruous new home. In the isolated 10 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 desert town, the arcane grandeur of Europe THE WONDERS Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of BREAKFAST WITH THE feels a world away. They think about Ferenc, Paddy O’Reilly Pilgrimage already sold in the first week of BORGIAS now called Frank. The Golds don’t know release in Japan. Affirm Press. PB. $29.99 D.B.C. Pierre that their son, their hope, has found his The novel follows Tsukuru Tazaki, The examination Random House. HB. $24.99 vocation: he is a poet. Frank has found an whose life was changed irreparably when of celebrity internal strength, and Elsa, his muse, fuels his relationships with a close-knit group For those familiar culture is not new to his young passion. of high-school friends fell apart after with the comedic Australian author Joan London doesn’t distract he moved to Tokyo for university. Now horror of D.B.C. Paddy O’Reilly. In her with poetics – her prose is clear and direct 35 years old, Tsukuru is urged by a new Pierre’s fiction, worry short story ‘Reality TV’ with attention focused on character and girlfriend to address his past so he can not about the – recently published in plot. Frank’s narrative is fashioned by the uncover why his best friends abandoned conventional beginning The Great Unknown, an perspectives of numerous characters in him and tie up the emotional loose ends that as this novella soon anthology edited by various contexts: from Pest to Buda, to have entangled him for so long. The classic descends into a tightly Angela Meyer – Carly, Vienna and later Perth; from the iron lung- Murakami themes of isolation and loss, wound pressure cooker the protagonist, appears on a program imprisoned Sullivan Backhouse; to the motley missed opportunities, emotional struggle reminiscent of Edgar about her famous sister only to discover, crew of Golden Age inmates; the fresh- and intense desire are all here, and the Allan Poe, both hilarious and horrific. The with dawning apprehension, that her faced overseer, Nurse Penny; and the girl of narrative is well-crafted. One quibble is that opening string of messages flashing husband is also on set. The Wonders, the moment, and all others, Elsa Briggs. Murakami’s depiction of the modern world between entangled lovers, but split across however, takes the strange phenomenon With The Golden Age, London is a bit clunky; the book is set in the present worlds, may repulse readers who find that is ‘celebrity’ a giant’s step further and offers us a story at once specific and day, but his characters don’t seem really to modernity and technology in fiction wryly observes the pleasures and pitfalls of universal: first love. Frank and Elsa find have the hang of contemporary technologies. irritating, but this is not a reckless three characters who find themselves themselves united in a world removed from This novel is Murakami’s most appearance of texts and tweets – it’s this suddenly blinded by the public spotlight. all others, knowing the other as they know tightly focused yet. Fans and new readers duel of contemporary contradictions and Meet Leon, a man whose chest themselves, but somehow more intimately. alike will be rewarded by this universal ironies that Pierre makes a good fist of. cavity has been replaced with titanium As readers, we don’t imagine the pair could story – it speaks of our connection with Ariel Panek is an American ribs and a mechanical heart; Kathryn, remain together forever, but we understand others and the decisions and sacrifices mathematician stranded on the foggy whose treatment for Parkinson’s has left the profound impact that such a relationship we make. coast of Suffolk after his plane is diverted her covered in black wool; and Christos, will have on them. The Golden Age grows from Amsterdam where Zeva, his student whose aesthetic mentality compelled Ingrid Josephine is a friend of Readings on you, warming up like a coming summer, lover, paces anxiously, waiting for a text him to implant metal wings into his back. refreshing as an ocean swim. message that could ‘raise or squash in These are the Wonders, and the public THE SLEEPWALKER’S an instant, no hope it couldn’t nurture Sophie Shanahan is a freelance reviewer falls in love with them thanks to the GUIDE TO DANCING or kill’. Without mobile reception Ariel ingenuity of their marketing director, Kyle, Mira Jacob checks into the Cliffs Hotel, a guesthouse NEST and their manager, the rhinestone-studded Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99 reeking of 70s plastic and kitsch, complete Inga Simpson cowgirl Rhona. The Sleepwalker’s with cantankerous hosts and devoid of Hachette. PB. $27.99 Just as it would in real life, the Guide to Dancing guests, besides the Border family. Wild, Inga Simpson is Wonders’ celebrity status brings as many is a hefty 500-page, unpredictable, generous, talented and one to surprise. burdens as it does boons. O’Reilly doesn’t multi-generational grotesque, the Borders coax Ariel into a Her first novel, Mr shy away from the darker side of stardom family saga. The novel melodrama that quickly turns to farce. He Wigg – while not and, by tracing the Wonders’ journey – follows the story of an is desperate and dependent upon their something I would their lives, their loves, their losses – she Indian family who willingness to share their phone so he can instinctively select – offers an entertaining study of not only immigrate to America, get in touch with Zeva. quickly won me over what drives humanity to pursue fame, moving between three In three acts we witness Zeva and with its heartwarming but also the shark-infested waters that timelines – India in the Ariel move from rationality to madness, tale. Her second work surround it. 1970s, New Mexico in the 1980s, and Seattle their scientific brains unable to cope of fiction, Nest, again There is a lot to like about The and New Mexico in the 1990s. The timelines with the chaos of emotion that rises from deals with loss, grief and healing, and the Wonders: the premise is engaging and are all connected, although to say how here hope and possibility. But what of the role that nature and creativity play here the three characters each battle different would spoil the unfolding story. Borders? These modern-day Borgias are aspects of their complex personalities as easily drew me in. Amina is at the centre of the vividly drawn and every bit as greedy, they navigate their new life. That being Jen has moved back to the quiet narrative: a struggling teenager in the powerful, murderous and lustful as their said, I wondered if O’Reilly herself fell for coastal hamlet of her childhood and spent 1980s and an almost-30-year-old wedding Renaissance namesakes, and they are the her characters’ luminosity as, in parts, the many years tending to her semi-isolated photographer, still trying to figure out her key to the book’s gothic twist. Pierre’s narrative seems to lose its flow. Regardless, forest home, creating a safe haven for life, in the 1990s. Amina’s teenage years novel is unexpected and dastardly clever, The Wonders is an interesting read and a her and the birds she lovingly draws. She make for the most compelling sections of and he takes us on a journey of the River surreal examination of the effect celebrity has minimal contact with the gossiping the book, as she discovers a passion for Styx. Easily devoured between meals, it can have on both stars and their fans. townsfolk, instead getting updates from her photography, grapples with her place in would make a perfect recipe for the stage. talented drawing student Henry. Samuel Zifchak is from Readings Carlton the social hierarchy at school and worries Bon appétit! Jen’s peaceful existence is about her brother’s increasingly odd Luke May is a freelance reviewer shattered one day when a local schoolgirl behaviour. in Henry’s class goes missing, mirroring International The Sleepwalker’s Guide to TO RISE AGAIN AT A events that took place when Jen was Dancing is a big, sometimes messy novel DECENT HOUR Henry’s age: her own best friend, Michael, COLORLESS TSUKURU that covers a lot of ground, gently exploring Joshua Ferris disappeared, followed by her father a how grief and loss can irrecoverably change TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS Penguin. PB. $29.99 few days later. Jen finds herself revisiting a family over time. It is also a novel about New York dentist memories she thought she had locked away. OF PILGRIMAGE belonging, and provides a fascinating Paul O’Rourke is Having exhausted attempts to locate her Haruki Murakami look at a family divided by their idea of an avowed atheist in father years ago, she is again questioning his Harvill Secker. HB. Was $35 what constitutes ‘home’. Amina’s mother, search of something to reasons for leaving and grappling with the $29.99 Kamala, misses India, but her father, a believe in. Disaffected possibility that he is still alive. Available 12 August successful surgeon, never wants to leave I found that Simpson’s use of and lonely after a Haruki America. As a teenager, Amina observes the botanic and biological names added succession of failed Murakami’s new growing tension in her parents’ marriage nicely to Jen’s complete absorption in relationships, which novel is unlike most of with concern: her mother ‘could perch her environment, and, as in Mr Wigg, the saw him less ‘whipped’ his previous works, anywhere in the house, so riddled with inclusion of the day-to-day maintenance than ‘gripped’, he flits which are strongly fury that she seemed not to see anything of her house and tending of the land across from obsession to obsession – golf, the based in the in front of her’ and Amina’s increasingly the seasons adjusted me into her rhythm. banjo, the Boston Red Sox – but they all metaphysical – strange absent father is just ‘a blur coming or going Where I struggled a little was when Jen inevitably end up disappointing him: events intersecting the to the hospital’. This depiction of a deeply slipped back into memories of her past ‘Everything was always something, but everyday life of very complicated marriage is one of the novel’s relationships and decisions: though this something – and here was the rub – could ordinary characters are great strengths. was not unexpected given the situation, never be everything.’ the norm. If you were put off by The Sleepwalker’s Guide to I became irritated by her brooding. On When someone begins Murakami’s massive, meandering 1Q84 Dancing is an engaging portrait of a family reflection, I can see that these flaws make impersonating Paul online, posting (2009) this latest book is similar in style and an ambitious debut. While the plotting Jen human, and I forgave her moments cryptic passages in his name about and treatment to Norwegian Wood (1987), occasionally veers off track, the characters of self-pity for the overall strength of Judaism, a place called Seir and a his most realistic novel and one of the most are funny, vibrant and so alive as to be character that Simpson carves out for her. forgotten people called the Ulms, Paul’s popular to date. That said, Murakami’s new jumping off the page. Nest is a delightful and uplifting read. reluctant investigation uncovers a book might give Norwegian Wood a run for Nina Kenwood is the Digital Marketing religious movement led by a shadowy, Suzanne Steinbruckner is from Readings its money, with over one million copies of Manager for Readings almost Gatsby-like figure. For the dentist, St Kilda READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 11 What I Alison Huber, Loved Readings Carlton

LEAN ON PETE Willy Vlautin Faber and Faber. PB. $19.99 One of the highlights of my reading year so far has been Willy Vlautin’s novel The Free. The book draws together the stories of three characters – an Iraq War veteran who attempts to take his own life; a nurse at the hospital where he is treated; and the night caretaker at the group home where he has been living – with quiet attention and compassion, but never with sentimentality or pity. It’s excellent. It was not by chance that I read The Free. I have a pre-existing love affair with Vlautin’s work that began back in 2010 with my discovery of Lean on Pete, which of course led me back to his earlier novels, The Motel Life (2006) and Northline (2008), both of which I also love. Lean on Pete opens with this line: ‘When I woke up that morning it was still pretty early.’ What a subtle hook – why say more when you can say just enough? – and so begins the gentle introduction to the novel’s narrator, Charley Thompson, a 15-year-old who has just relocated to Portland with his father. They’re a pair on the skids, always on the move as the father looks for work, shifting from trailer park to motel to run-down rental. Charley is grown before his time, a resourceful and thoughtful almost-man often left to his own devices; though he’s facing adult responsibilities before he should have to, he hasn’t Meet Jimmy Flick. He’s not like other kids. His mother Paula is the only become hardened by his circumstances. But he is longing for some stability and is willing one who can manage him. She teaches him how to count sheep so that he to do what is required to get it. can fall asleep and holds him tight enough to stop his cells spinning. In the early chapters Charley meets old Del, stuck in the car park of the local It is only Paula who can keep Jimmy out of his father’s way. But when racetrack trying to fix a flat on his horse trailer. Charley helps change the tyre and Jimmy’s world falls apart, he has to navigate the unfathomable world eventually talks himself into a job, working for Del at his stables. It’s no dream job by any means, involving encounters with nags on their last legs and a variety of shifty characters, on his own, and make things right. but it offers some money and purpose at least. It’s also how Charley meets Lean on Pete, a past-his-prime quarter horse, with whom he forms a bond so strong that the two soon In the tradition of Room and The Lovely Bones, here is a surprising and brilliant novel from one of our fi nest writers. ‘Vlautin belongs to a long tradition of understated North American writing that stretches back to Ernest Hemingway, with a focus on the small stories of ordinary people …’ set out together on a cross-country trek to find Charley’s aunt in Wyoming. I challenge anyone not to fall for these characters – both human and horse. This is writing that really gets under your skin. Lean on Pete satisfyingly covers a number of thematic bases: it is a coming-of-age story, a road trip, a tale of friendship and a search for belonging. It’s also a restrained work, and is all the more powerful for its temperance. Vlautin belongs to a long tradition of understated North American writing that stretches back to Ernest Hemingway, with a focus on the small stories of ordinary people grounded in the kinds of locations that loom large in this antipodean’s American imaginings – Reno, Spokane, Boise. Populated by folk down on their luck or dealing ‘London’s prose is a with the fallout of bad decisions, Vlautin’s stories sympathetically explore how people who could be overcome by their circumstances find the will to make things work. His seamlessly shifting blend of style is spare and evocative; you’ll think of other writers while you read – John Edward Williams, Carson McCullers, Raymond Carver, John Steinbeck, even S.E. Hinton – but poetry, pathos and humour’ these are whispers rather than loud announcements of homage, because Vlautin’s voice is unmistakably his own. His oeuvre is a total gem that had me at the first line. Washington Post whose epiphanies on life and death most HILD frequently occur when peering into the Nicola Griffith mouths of his patients, the idea that he Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 might have found ‘something that could We open on be everything’ is compelling, despite his three-year-old suspicions that he is the victim of a hoax. Hild, lying, ear to the Ferris’ third novel explores what ground, absorbing the makes a religion and the role of technology cadence of her world: in forming identity, along with hilarious and birds, trees, earth. She painfully frank insights into the modern is disturbed, though phenomenon of the middle-class male who not frightened, by the The new novel from yearns for a sense of belonging to society, arrival of her mother’s even while deliberately alienating himself the internationally lady with the news her from it. This is hardly new ground for father, a would-be king, is dead. After all, American literary novels, but Ferris writes bestselling author ‘She was three. She had her own shoes.’ with a good-natured self-awareness and So begins Nicola Griffith’s sixth of 1Q84 humour that sets To Rise Again apart from novel, Hild, based on an entry in Bede’s many of its more serious contemporaries. Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The end of the book feels a little about St Hilda of Whitby who lived from WORLDWIDE RELEASE DATE rushed by Ferris – the shadowy leader of 614 to 680 AD and helped convert the the Ulms lurks in the background but never 12 AUGUST 2014 English peoples to Christianity. fully emerges, and initial hints of a Da Vinci In Hild, Griffith creates an entry Code-style quest don’t resolve themselves. point to a Britain of the Dark Ages, one But as a darkly comic exploration of faith, that has never been so vivid, so bright, so obsession and flossing, it’s a fun and bustling with life and complexity. We are as rewarding read. randomhouse.com.au immersed as Hild is in this polyglot land in a /randomhouseau Alan Vaarwerk is a freelance reviewer state of flux: ‘… their Anglisc voices: words 12 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 drumming like apples spilt over wooden New Young Adult Fiction SOLITAIRE boards, round, rich stirring … utterly unlike Alice Oseman … otter swift British or the dark liquid gleam See books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 18–19 HarperCollins. PB. $17.99 of Irish. Hild spoke each to each. Apples to Tori Spring, average apples, otter to otter, gleam to gleam, though teenage pessimist and only when her mother wasn’t there.’ Young Adult Book of the Month chronic introvert, loves We travel with Hild in the nothing more than retinue of King Edwin as he continually WE WERE LIARS sort-of hating her manoeuvres and battles to keep, and E. Lockhart repetitive Sixth Form control, his kingdom of the north. We A&U. PB. $17.99 life. But when Higgs develop, as Hild does, an awareness of the We Were Liars is many things. It is an unflinching School is vandalised by powerful and vital alliances woven by her glimpse into a family fueled by their own self- ‘Solitaire’, an online mother, which intertwine and sometimes destruction. It is King Lear and his three daughters. It is a community of teenage diverge from Edwin’s efforts. Hild grows pair of star-crossed lovers. Mostly, it is clever and surprising. anarchists, she is forced by Michael into the two worlds and takes us with her, The brilliant plot twists and turns and doesn’t stop for Holden, a disconcertingly cheerful Year 13, absorbing the rhythms of both and the anyone. I began reading this book without knowing a thing to investigate the organisation. growing power of the coming Christian about the story, and I truly believe that is the best way to church and its written language. approach it. I enjoyed this book so much. What they say is THE ASTROLOGER’S What Griffith so vividly creates is true. Just read it, and if anyone asks you how it ends? Just lie. DAUGHTER a rich, sumptuous, foreign past, and a world When Cady wakes up half-naked and halfway dead on the beach of her Rebecca Lim complex enough to explain how the second wealthy family’s private island, she has no memory of how she got there or of the Text. PB. $19.99 daughter of a never-king might become previous summer she spent there. Her family – with stiff upper-lips, huge wealth, the converter of a whole land. Women great tennis serves and conservative natures – neglect to tell Cady exactly what has Avicenna Crowe’s are not often the agents of early medieval mother is an astrologer fiction, and Hild leaves you wondering why. with uncanny predictive ‘The brilliant plot twists and turns and doesn’t stop for anyone … I enjoyed Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton powers. Now she is this book so much. What they say is true. Just read it, and if anyone asks missing. The police are AFTER ME COMES you how it ends? Just lie.’ called, but they’re not THE FLOOD asking the right happened, choosing to ignore any sign of failure. The book begins with a set of lies. questions, like what she Sarah Perry saw in her stars that Serpent’s Tail. PB. $27.99 Lie number one: ‘No one is a criminal.’ Lie number two: ‘No one is an addict.’ And lie number three: ‘No one is a failure.’ made her so afraid. But One hot summer’s day, This is really sophisticated young-adult writing with a highly original concept Avicenna has inherited her mother’s gift, and John Cole decides to in the age of John Green. Highly recommended for ages 13 and up. she soon uncovers a link between Joanne’s leave his life behind. disappearance and a cold-case murder. When his car breaks Kushla Egan is from Readings Carlton down on an isolated THE PROTECTED road outside of Claire Zorn London, he goes UQP. PB. $19.95 looking for help, and ARE YOU SEEING ME? by the end. This is mature young-adult Hannah’s world is in stumbles into the writing that doesn’t rely on an all- Darren Groth pieces: she has a grounds of a grand but consuming love-interest plot. I think fans Woolshed Press. PB. $18.99 seriously depressed dilapidated house. Its residents welcome of Melina Marchetta (and basically anyone Reading Are You mother, an injured dad him with open arms – but there’s more to with a beating heart) will love this journey. Seeing Me?, I felt and a dead sister. But this strange community than meets the A great read for ages 15 and up. KE myself wanting to now Hannah feels a eye. As nights and days pass, John finds reach out and hug glimmer of hope. Is it himself drawn into a baffling menagerie. NOGGIN every character, tightly, because the elusive Josh Psychologically complex, After Me Comes John Corey Whaley the whole way through. is taking an interest in the Flood is a hypnotic debut novel. S&S. PB. $14.99 The experience made her? Or does it run my heart hurt in a Travis Coates is CALIFORNIA deeper than that? In a family torn apart by special way. The story dying of grief and guilt, this is one girl’s struggle to Edan Lepucki follows 20-year-old leukaemia. As his body come to terms with years of torment. Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 twins Justine and Perry as they spend their slowly deteriorates, California imagines a last days left together holidaying, before Travis and his family SINNER realise he will soon die. frighteningly realistic Perry moves into supported living. Maggie Stiefvater When a doctor near-future. Cal and Perry has a disability: a form of Scholastic. HB. $24.99 Frida have left the brain disorder that makes it very difficult suggests he take part in This is a standalone crumbling city of Los for him to relate to people and makes a cryogenics trial companion book to the Angeles far behind him behave inappropriately at the best of (where you are internationally them and now live in a times. Instability is a constant in the twins’ preserved in below-freezing temperatures bestselling Shiver shack in the lives. Their mum upped and left before until future medical developments are able trilogy and follows wilderness. Consumed they were out of nappies and their dad to bring you back to life), Travis decides he Cole St. Clair, a pivotal by fear of the future died during their teens, leaving Justine might as well give it a go. And, with that, character. Everybody and mourning for a past they can’t reclaim, as Perry’s sole carer. They each crave his head is removed from his cancer-ridden thinks they know they seek comfort and solace in one other. their own kind of independence but are body and frozen until, five years later, Cole’s story: stardom, But the tentative existence they’ve built for terrified at the cost of leaving the other. doctors manage successfully to reattach it addiction, downfall, themselves is thrown into doubt when This holiday is their final shot at creating to another person’s body. disappearance. But only a few people know Frida finds out she’s pregnant. the best of times together and enough But five years is a long time to be Cole’s darkest secret – his ability to shift memories to keep them going. away and Travis realises that being brought into a wolf. Can this sinner be saved? ADULTERY I developed a soft spot for Perry back to life might be a lot tougher than Paulo Coelho early on in the book. Maybe it was his he expected. Not only does he have to get used to his new (although far superior) IF I STAY (FILM TIE-IN) Penguin. PB. 29.99 Jackie Chan obsession, or his quirky body, he also has to come to terms with Gayle Forman Released 15 August explanations of how the world works, international fame (due to being brought Definitions. PB. Was $19.99 Linda knows she’s or his resolute love for his sister. Most back from the dead) and the fact that a lot $15.99 lucky. It’s what makes probably it was all three and more. can happen in five years. People change, Seventeen-year-old being unhappy even The bond between the twins things evolve and the loved ones who you Mia’s future is full of worse. Her friends is tender. Whatever situation they find thought would wait for your return have music and love, and is advise taking themselves in, they treat each other with moved on. In the words of Travis Coates, brimming with hope. medication, but Linda dignity and kindness, and their relationship ‘shit got weird’. But life can change in wants to feel more, not reminded me of how special the bond From the quietly brilliant author an instant. A cold less. A meeting with a between siblings can be. of Where Things Come Back, Noggin is a February morning, a politician, and ex- The story is told from both touching, hilarious somewhat-coming-of- snowy road, and boyfriend, reawakens a side of her that she Justine’s and Perry’s perspective, and age novel that shows that life really is too suddenly all of Mia’s – respectable wife, devoted mother and Perry’s chapters, in particular, are written short to waste. For ages 14 and up. choices are gone. ambitious journalist – thought had with sensitivity and insight. I didn’t always Except one. As alone as she’ll ever be, Mia disappeared. She embarks on a relationship understand exactly what his quirks were Katherine Dretzke is from Readings must make the most difficult choice of all. that is dangerous and undeniably exciting. getting at, but it all somehow felt important Hawthorn READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 13

New Crime Dead Write IF I SHOULD DIE Matthew Frank with Fiona Hardy Michael Joseph. PB. $29.99 Meet trainee detective Crime Book of the Month Joseph Stark: an Afghanistan veteran with – like all good LIFE OR DEATH crime heroes – a Michael Robotham substance abuse Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 problem that is Some plots grab your attention as swiftly as a viper can beginning to lose its attack your ankle: it’s unexpected, gets the blood going shine. Counselling, and you’ll be feeling the effects well after you’ve been bitten. rehab and avoiding the Audie Spencer Palmer, serving a 10-year sentence for an armed military police are taking away from his car robbery turned bloodbath, has just escaped from jail, a feat precious investigative time into a series of in itself – especially when the route out would have been much violent attacks against the homeless, but less difficult just a day later, when he was due to be released. when Stark and his partner, DS Fran Instead, he is back to being a fugitive, unable to relish in the Millhaven, encounter one man who fought freedom he has spent so long waiting for, and on the hunt. Because despite his guilty back and killed his attacker, Stark knows plea, Audie Palmer did not commit the crime he served time for, and those who did it’s time to pay attention. The homeless still need him to shut the hell up. man was a soldier, and, for Stark, something doesn’t add up. This is a layered debut. ‘Life or Death is like the best kind of noir movie: seedy bars, strip clubs ... people as quick-witted as they are criminal.’ RESEARCH Philip Kerr Life or Death is like the best kind of noir movie: seedy bars, strip clubs, money Quercus. PB. Was $29.99 exchanging slippery hands and people as quick-witted as they are criminal. There are $24.99 enough characters to add colour but not so many as to blind you: Moss Webster, Audie’s John Houston is the closest friend in jail, who is serving a life sentence but is about to be cut a deal he can’t world’s wealthiest refuse; Special Agent Desiree Furness, who interviewed Audie in the past about the author, so successful he seven million dollars stolen but never retrieved – and so short that everyone treats her can now pay others to like a child, even when she’s one of the smartest people in the book and doesn’t have do his writing for him. time for everyone cooing at her; and Sheriff Ryan Valdez, a police officer with a deep and He comes up with the personal interest in Palmer’s welfare, or lack thereof. Audie, ‘with his puppy-dog eyes plots and his team of and floppy fringe, as wholesome as a glass of milk’, gains the trust of those he encounters, ghostwriters finish the but the book is also unfailingly brutal. Robotham’s American underbelly is a world in work. Then Houston’s which women aren’t given much value beyond how they look, and the people who want wife is found dead in to find Audie Palmer will shoot at anything to get their man. This is shank-sharp writing. their luxurious Monaco apartment, while Houston – owner, of course, of a boat and pilot licence – has vanished. Many are happy THE MANDARIN CODE DEAD LIONS to air their grievances about the frequently Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann Mick Herron unpleasant author, but his colleague, Don HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 Soho Press. PB. $19.99 Irvine, believes he’s not the killer. A taut, After the success of Once upon a time, twisting and suspenseful thriller. their first book, The Jackson Lamb was a Marmalade Files, successful MI5 spy. THE HEIST journalists Steve Lewis Now, he works in Daniel Silva and Chris Uhlmann Slough House, along HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 have teamed up for with all the other spies If you enjoy spending another political who did not quite meet your winters curled up thriller set in Canberra. expectations. The in front of the heater Reporter Harry Dunkley former spies are stuck living vicariously is knee-deep in unstable doing the dreariest of through fiction, then government problems when a body is found work, but action falls their way when a man globetrotting part-time in Lake Burley Griffin. This is a thrilling, is found dead on a bus. But Dickie Bow was spy and art restorer knowing and rollicking book – the power not just an ordinary commuter – rather, he Gabriel Allon is one of struggles we don’t see on the news and the was a spy – and Jackson is convinced it’s the best to follow on a amused cynicism of these characters make murder, probably the Russians, and literary adventure. for an intriguing and clever read. possibly Alexander Popov, the most When one of his art-dealer friends is accused ruthless Soviet spy no one has ever actually of murdering an ex-spy who was the ABATTOIR BLUES seen. Winner of the 2013 CWA Gold Dagger go-between for stolen masterpieces, Allon’s Peter Robinson for Best Crime Novel of the Year. quest to prove his friend’s innocence takes Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 him from Venice to Paris, London, Corsica $27.99 BROADCHURCH and further, via political machinations, greed, DCI Banks, in his Erin Kelly & Chris Chibnall violence and beautiful works of art. twenty-second literary Little, Brown. PB. $19.99 outing, has a new police Usually when a wildly THE GIRL NEXT DOOR commissioner to deal popular crime series is Ruth Rendell with: one who wants to aired (Miss Fisher’s Hutchinson. PB. Was $32.99 focus on police Murder Mysteries, $27.99 Sherlock, Inspector presence at rural In the summer of 1944, Montalbano), the offences. This leads the a group of children original book version is homicide and major discover an already waiting for crime units to the site underground network readers on bookshop of a stolen tractor: not, generally, the most of tunnels and use shelves. With grave of crimes the team encounters – until them as their secret Broadchurch, the TV show, so many people things more pressing arise. Two young men hideaway. More than asked the screenwriter when the book was vanish, blood is found in an abandoned 60 years later, coming out that one was commissioned. aeroplane hangar, a caravan is burned to the construction of new Thriller author – and Broadchurch fan – Erin ground, and a distraught girlfriend is visited estates has reached Kelly has written a book as gripping as the by someone posing as a police officer. It’s their secluded playground – unearthing a series itself. It tells the story of a British confusing enough, even for seasoned tin box containing the bones of two hands: town horrified by the murder of 11-year-old detectives and their readers, but just when one male, one female. Life has changed for We love a good story Danny Latimer, and the police officers who all is beginning to make sense, a hailstorm the friends, and the ensuing investigation must solve the crime among a population hits and a car accident leads to some new, brings new tension, new hope, and the unwilling to let their secrets be discovered. grisly and altogether dangerous information. dawning realisation of a horror committed. 14 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

Meet New Non-Fiction HE WHO MUST BE OBEID Kate McClymont & Linton Besser the colourful exhibits (a Jim Cairns here, an Random House. PB. $34.99 Bookseller Australian Studies Al Grassby there) and telling the usual Meet Australia’s most good stories, plus one or two you may not corrupt politician WARNING: THE STORY have heard. This is your chance to find whose brazen misdeeds out which Whitlam minister assured a were on a scale Tate Jerrems, OF CYCLONE TRACY press conference that ‘traditionally, most ‘unexceeded since the Readings Marketing and Sophie Cunningham of Australia’s exports come from overseas’, days of the Rum Corps’. Events Coordinator Text. PB. $32.99 how Malcolm Fraser played a joke with From the shadows, It’s almost 40 pickled onions, and how much Lionel Eddie Obeid ran the years since Murphy was, as they say, a pants man. state of New South Why do you work in books? Cyclone Tracy Under all the anecdote is a deeper Wales as his fiefdom, destroyed the northern So many times has the book tucked snug story about how hard it is to change pocketing tens of millions of dollars made city of Darwin on the under my arm or banging around in my Australia. The Whitlam government from corrupt deals. In He Who Must Be night of 24 December, backpack been the catalyst for a decision released two decades of pent-up ambition Obeid, award-winning journalists Kate 1974. Australia had not to move, meander, imagine and explore. and ideas onto the health, education, McClymont and Linton Besser have known a natural Through reading, we live out someone else’s industrial and legal systems – and the unearthed the vast and secret empire Obeid disaster like it since creative explorations as if they were our own, Australian establishment reacted with built over decades, producing an European colonisation. eventually altering the way we tell our own something like hysteria. It’s true that authoritative account of how he got away Seventy-five people died, hundreds more tale. The opportunity to give an experience Whitlam and his ministers, very experienced with so much for so long. were injured and 12,000 homes were such as this to others, with a knowing smile, at planning, but very inexperienced at doing, destroyed or made totally uninhabitable. is why I’ve chosen this industry. made big bags of mistakes. THE HARD SELL: THE Most public buildings were flattened or But this book argues that the What book would you happily spend a TRICKS OF POLITICAL seriously damaged. Thirty thousand of the Whitlam government’s ambition was more weekend indoors with? ADVERTISING city’s population of 47,000 were airlifted important than any of its errors. And that I must say that Everything is Illuminated Dee Madigan from the city in the days after, in what was the tragedy is, in Australia, we seem to by Jonathan Safran Foer is still up there for MUP. PB. $24.99 to become Australia’s largest evacuation believe that so much good progressive filling me with joy, sadness, laughter and With her humorous effort. Many of those people never returned. government ambition was used up, was wonder. Its sense of journeying through and down-to-earth With a forensic eye and a proven to be too dangerous – forever – in time and space, geography and ancestry, approach, creative novelist’s sensibility, Sophie Cunningham the three short years of Whitlam. rich with both cultural satire and down- takes us through the cyclone and the days director Dee Madigan Sean O’Beirne is Events Coordinator for right shocking reality, will always transport and weeks immediately afterwards. It is unveils the world of Readings me to another place. And all without hard to imagine what it must have been like political advertising leaving the couch. to endure the cyclone, with winds reaching with unapologetic Your job entails recommending good 300 kilometres an hour, destroying THE GOOD, THE BAD candour. Drawing on reads: how do you balance personal taste homes while the inhabitants attempted & THE UNLIKELY: real-life stories from with customer nous? to take shelter inside. One woman in AUSTRALIA’S PRIME her own recent federal Generally, I’m just honest. All I can do is Cunningham’s book describes being sucked MINISTERS (UPDATED and state campaigns, she shares fascinating recommend the books that have changed my from her house with her baby in her arms, AND REVISED) industry insights and answers questions own perspective on life in the hope of sharing such as: How are political ads designed to only to be hit by a torrent of water as her Mungo MacCallum the experience. I also enjoy getting to know above ground swimming pool burst open. work? Who are they designed to work on? Black Inc. PB. $19.99 the customer’s interests, toying with titles I How do people and a community cope with How do we pay for them? Why are so Since the federation of haven’t read but would love to if I were them. this kind of traumatic experience? With many negative? the colonies in 1901, Describe your own taste in books. great difficulty, but also with great stoicism Australia has seen 28 and courage. AMBON Mysterious, even to myself. I love essays prime ministers take a The strength and beauty of this Roger Maynard on nature, art and aesthetics; I’ve been crack at running the book is the way it delves into the lives of Hachette. PB. $35 through a phase of mind-expanding country. Their time at the people affected and tries to understand In February 1942, the Buddhist texts; schlock horror and sci-fi the top has ranged their responses, their courage and their Indonesian island of have certainly had their run; and animal from eight days for failings. Cunningham argues that these Ambon fell to the might philosophy often lands on my bookshelf. Frank Forde to 18 years kinds of natural disasters are going to of the advancing When it comes to fiction, the journey has for Bob Menzies, but become more prevalent as the effects of Japanese. Key among to alter my reality to a point of catharsis whatever the length of their term, each has climate change make extreme weather the captured Allied or I’m actually not that interested. I live a story worth sharing: Edmund Barton conditions more likely. This book is no forces was a unit of to challenge myself, and books are my united the bickering states in a federation; polemic: it’s a gripping and visceral tale. 1150 Australian soldiers favourite way to do this. the unlucky Jimmy Scullin took office days known as Gull Force. Name a book that has changed the way Mark Rubbo is Managing Director of before Wall Street crashed into the Great Over the next three and you think, in ways small or large. Readings Depression; John Curtin faced the ultimate a half years, these soldiers would be The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. challenge of wartime leadership; Julia incarcerated, starved and brutalised; some This book reminds me of where language THE WHITLAM MOB Gillard overthrew Kevin Rudd and Kevin 300 of them would be massacred. In Ambon came from. Non-verbal communication Mungo MacCallum Rudd overthrew Julia Gillard, thus paving the survivors tell their stories, speaking of in tribal culture, and the essence of nature Black Inc. PB. $29.99 the way for Tony Abbott. With not just the horrors, but also of the courage itself, is where it all began. This made me It’s hard to characteristic wit, Mungo MacCallum and mateship that got them through. pull back any preconceived notions I held understand now brings the nation’s leaders to vivid life. of how we communicate, swirling around what it would have HELL-BENT: an unfathomable yet altogether familiar THE POLITICAL BUBBLE been like to have the AUSTRALIA’S LEAP INTO concept of simply sensing ones way through same government in Mark Latham life. Strangely enough, Abram’s poetic Australia for 23 years. Pan Mac. PB. $32.99 THE GREAT WAR and heartfelt language works to confirm Different prime After the Douglas Newton that words are a key element to human ministers, but still: the disappointment of the Scribe. PB. 32.99 communication. same party, the same Rudd–Gillard years, Most histories of What’s the best book you’ve read lately? ideas, sitting on top of Tony Abbott promised Australia’s Great War White Beech by Germaine Greer. Trust the country, all the way from 1949 to 1972. to restore trust in rush their readers into Greer to decide in her sixties to buy a plot And it’s hard now to understand what it Australian politics but, the trenches but of land and create a complete scheme would have felt like when, at long last, as with most of his Douglas Newton takes a for regenerating a piece of rainforest Australia got a new government: the promises, this one also slower approach in Hell- and the biodiversity within. This book is Whitlam government. Mungo MacCallum’s proved dispensable. In Bent. By examining informative, inspirational and compelling. book, The Whitlam Mob, gives some sense The Political Bubble events in Britain and of the exhilarating, silly, messy, nasty fight Australia closely, even Who has the best book cover? Mark Latham explores how parliamentary that went on, when a government rushing hour-by-hour, during One that has always stuck with me is democracy has lost touch with the people to make Australia different came up against the last days of peace in July and August of the cover of Doppelganger: Images of the it’s supposed to represent, demonstrating the many, many people who wanted it to 1914, Newton provides a new understanding Human Being (Robert Klanten et al). What how politics has become more tribal with stay the same. of readily accepted events. His research more could one want, really, than a man in left and right-wing fanatics dominating The Whitlam Mob is not so much reveals how Australia’s leaders exposed a multicoloured woollen textile suit with formerly robust, mainstream parties. His a history as an amiable after-luncheon soldiers and their families to the full horror matching vest – mohawk included? I want hard look at the new government’s policies tour, with Mungo pointing out the of the slaughter that was to come. another copy of this book to spread the love. shows how it bolsters the growing distrust. READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 15

VICTORIA AT WAR: are about professional milestones and 1914–1918 impressions of, among others, a ‘stately’ Julia Gillard and an ‘affable’ Tony Abbott. Michael McKernan Supplemented by excerpts from Hansard NewSouth Books. HB. $59.99 records, news publications, memos and During the First World private notes, the sum is a portrait of an War, schoolchildren uncommon politician. One story is that from communities of Nigel Brennan, a photojournalist held across Melbourne and hostage in Mogadishu, whose plight went Victoria knitted socks unresolved under the Rudd government. for the troops serving Brown contributed a substantial personal in Gallipoli, the Middle amount towards the ransom demanded by East and on the Western Front, while their Brennan’s kidnappers. After 460 days in families set up Red Cross branches to captivity, Brennan was released in 2009. A support the 91,000 Victorian servicemen related senate inquiry (moved by Brown) and women overseas. In Victoria at War, recommended a more compassionate bestselling military historian Michael approach by the government when McKernan records the achievements of the assisting relatives of kidnapped state’s soldiers, nurses and families, Australian citizens. commemorating their generosity, devotion, Narrating in his own inimitable sacrifice and enduring spirit. style – he recalls once being likened to ‘a latter-day John Lennon’ by the Herald TIM WINTON: CRITICAL Sun’s Patrick Carlyon – Brown reflects on ESSAYS life choices that inspire all the more for Lyn McCredden & Nathanael his having overcome existential despair O’Reilly (eds) and common self-doubt. From 1996 to UWAP. PB. $34.99 2012, Brown led the Greens from Oura Tim Winton’s novels Oura to Parliament House, and from a and short stories are marginal state group to a significant force vernacular and lyrical, in the federal parliament. Then, as now, optimistic and dark; Brown conveyed ideas in plain yet poetic they hold up a language. True to form, he addressed a 2012 distinctly audience in Hobart as ‘Fellow Earthians’ ‘Wintonesque’ mirror before advocating for global equity and through which readers personal optimism. Optimism, according to see themselves, Brown, ‘gets things done’. The pillars of the refracted. In Tim Greens’ political philosophy (social justice, Winton: Critical Essays, Lyn McCredden democracy, peace and ecological wellbeing) and Nathanael O’Reilly have brought recur not just in Brown’s senate motions together an international line-up of scholars and town hall speeches, but also in a life each investigating Winton’s body of work, lived conscientiously. His is a remarkable from Shallows to Eyrie. These contributors life for it. explore, question and debate Winton’s Maloti Ray is a freelance reviewer themes within his fictional landscapes and take into account their context, thinking THE FIGHTS OF MY LIFE through his place and reception in Greg Combet & Mark Davis Australian and world literature. MUP. PB. $32.99 suspenseful Greg Combet has been from the Small Publisher Biography central to some of the stories of the Year 2012, 2013, 2014 biggest public struggles of recent time – the OPTIMISM: REFLECTIONS 1998 Australian ON A LIFE OF ACTION waterfront dispute, the Bob Brown collapse of an airline, Hardie Grant. HB. Was $39.95 compensation for asbestos victims, the $34.95 campaign against Amid unfair workplace laws and then climate contemporary change. The Fights of My Life is the story of figures in Australian a man who faces up to the power structures public life, Greens of politics, big business and the media, as party founder Bob well as an eloquent argument for the Labor Brown is an Party and the trade unions to democratise. iconoclast. This book A country getaway uncovers shocking 2014 marks the fortieth anniversary of anecdotes is neither THREE-QUARTER MAN secrets between friends. Extraordinary of Cyclone Tracy. Acclaimed writer a traditional nor social satire by the author of The Cook. Sophie Cunningham provides the Sam Bramham entirely chronological definitive account. Affirm Press. PB. $29.99 memoir. With optimism as the common theme, Brown tells 53 stories, each Paralympian and centred on a meaningful memory or winner of an Order of lesson learnt. A country doctor turned Australia Medal, Sam politician by way of environmental Bramham has never let activism, Brown describes personal the loss of his right leg, milestones in the first 15 stories. By the amputated when he last 10 stories, some beginnings have was five, dampen his come full circle. Fittingly, his beloved larrikin spirit. He bush property, Oura Oura, appears in this caused an international narrative, as do idyllic scenes of the incident at one Paralympics after surrounding Liffey Valley. Purchased in convincing a pesky American journalist 1973, Oura Oura was donated in 2011 to that his leg had been chewed off by a kangaroo, and spent a night in the slammer Bush Heritage Australia, an organisation A fierce debut collection of stories, By the author of the bestselling Mercy after he and his mates faked a shark attack Brown founded in 1991. aimed at the dark heart of our obsession series: ‘A beautifully-written mash-up of on a packed NSW beach. With his However, unlike the aged miner with technology, power and image. mystery, thriller and love story.’ competitive spirit still burning, Three- he encounters at the Ulverstone bus shed Vikki Wakefield Quarter Man sees Sam on the road to Rio in Tasmania, Brown is deeply engaged not in his quest to win gold in the first ever just with the ‘living wilds’ but also with Paralympic triathlon. Book club notes available at textpublishing.com.au the body politic. The remaining stories 16 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

I, MIGRANT Attack is more than a selection of shocking to terms with who we are. Roland hopes culture was built around sacred, reciprocal Sami Shah stories ‘ripped from the headlines’. It is a to provide insights and inspiration for violence and ritual cannibalism. The Dutch comprehensive and fascinating account readers, regardless of what their journey to government and the powerful Rockefeller A&U. PB. $29.99 of how modern journalism and journalists emotional wellbeing entails. family denied the story. Now, Carl Hoffman The combination of lost their way (and their humanity) in a Despite his academic background, uncovers evidence that finally tells the full, seeing the aftermaths devastating race to the bottom. it’s Roland’s vulnerability that keeps astonishing story. of a bomb attack and Throughout this book Davies his memoir emotionally intelligent and being the target of subtly reminds us that this is a crime in engaging. Even the books cover design, death threats which many are complicit: from those featuring kintsukuroi, a Japanese technique Cultural Studies convinced Pakistani at the very top to the hacks and private of repairing pottery with gold or silver comedian and writer investigators tapping phones; the police too lacquer, evokes a lovely metaphor: ‘the Sami Shah and his COMRADELY GREETINGS: inept or unwilling to prosecute to the people understanding that the piece is more family to leave the willing to betray those closest to them; and, beautiful for having been broken’. THE PRISON LETTERS OF home he loved for ultimately, the consumer, who signalled NADYA AND SLAVOJ Australia. Now, despite a crippling Stella Charls is from Readings Carlton their acceptance with a purchase worth £1. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova addiction to meat pies and a near-death & Slavoj Žižek experience with a kangaroo, he’s beginning Brigid Mullane is a freelance reviewer Verso. PB. $12.99 to feel settled. I, Migrant is a hilarious and Philosophy In an extraordinary moving story of what it’s like to start a new THE ECONOMICS exchange of letters, life in another country so your child can OF JUST ABOUT BORN BAD: ORIGINAL Nadezhda grow up with a limitless future. EVERYTHING SIN AND THE MAKING OF Tolokonnikova, Andrew Leigh THE WESTERN WORLD imprisoned for taking HOCKEY: NOT YOUR A&U. PB. $26.99 AVERAGE JOE James Boyce part in Pussy Riot’s Economics has things Black Inc. PB. $34.99 anti-Putin Madonna King to say about AC/DC According to original performance, and UQP. PB. $32.95 and Arthur Boyd, sin, humans are ‘born Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian Madonna King’s dating and dieting, bad’ and only God’s philosopher, discuss authorised biography Grange and Geelong, grace can bring artistic subversion, political activism and explores the man murder and poverty. In salvation. In this the future of democracy via the ideas of behind the politician The Economics of Just fascinating read, James Hegel, Deleuze, Nietzsche and even Laurie and the influences that About Everything, Boyce traces a history Anderson. Erudite and worldly, the have shaped his life. Andrew Leigh draws of this belief, from correspondence between the punk- Drawing on hundreds on examples and data Adam and Eve to philosopher and the philosopher-punk of interviews, as well as from across Australia to illuminate how Richard Dawkins, unfolds with poetic urgency. These two full access to Joe seemingly simple everyday activities can revealing that though Christianity is on the radicals show passionately that there is still Hockey, his family and have unexpected outcomes. With fresh wane, these religious ideas of morality still a common cause worth fighting for. friends, King provides an exclusive and facts and provocative ideas, he presents the underpin modern society. He writes, ‘The unparalleled insight into the man who will ways economics is mixed up with what purpose of this book is not to defend or A REVOLUTION IN THE play a pivotal role in our nation’s future. happens on the sporting field, in the condemn the Western creation story, but to MAKING: 3D PRINTERS, stockmarket and at work. challenge the assumption that its influence ROBOTS AND THE Politics was ended by science and secularism.’ FUTURE Psychology Guy Rundle Affirm Press. PB. $19.99 HACK ATTACK Music HOW I RESCUED The dust has barely Nick Davies settled on the digital Random House. PB. Was $35 MY BRAIN THERE GOES GRAVITY: A revolution yet the $29.99 David Roland LIFE IN ROCK AND ROLL world is preparing for In July of this Scribe. PB. $29.99 Lisa Robinson the material year, Andy Through his Penguin. HB. $29.99 revolution. Guy Rundle Coulson, former editor work as a forensic paints an all-too- A pioneering female of Rupert Murdoch’s psychologist, David believable picture of journalist, Lisa News of the World and Roland spent years how life will change Robinson is a pre- David Cameron’s grappling with matters throughout the twenty-first century when eminent authority on disgraced director of of the mind. Indeed, emerging technologies like 3D printing the music world. She communications, was the emotional pressure – and with it the possibility of printing visited the teenage sentenced to serve 18 of supporting his your own kidney – become mainstream. Michael Jackson at his months in jail for his patients in their His imagined future intimates enormous home and introduced part in one of the greatest scandals of our mental-health implications for not only Australia, but also David Bowie to Lou time. His undoing began in 2009 when problems coupled with personal and the global economy and the fundamental Reed during a private Nick Davies, a freelance journalist at the financial stresses led to Roland’s own structures of everyday lives. dinner. She was with the Rolling Stones on Guardian, first broke the story about the struggles with anxiety and depression. their jet during a storm, and mid-flight use of phone hacking at Coulson’s paper. When he finds himself in an emergency with Led Zeppelin when their tour Hack Attack, Davies’ stunning ward, with no idea how he got there or Science manager pulled out a gun. There Goes work of investigative journalism, follows a why, it seems likely that he’s suffered a Gravity looks back on her years spent with trail of tapped phones, hacked voicemails nervous breakdown. musicians backstage and on the road. WHY AREN’T WE DEAD and bribed officials to piece together a That Roland had in fact suffered network of law-breaking journalists, who a stroke, and resulting brain injury, proved YET? operated with impunity and without fear far scarier. Faced with the fear that he Travel Writing Idan Ben-Barak of repercussions. This is a ruthless club, has lost his mind, and might not get it Scribe. PB. $27.99 with hard drinking, drugs and questionable back, Roland’s journey to recovery sees Disease is what morals all par for the course. These ‘hacks’ him engaging with both medical and SAVAGE HARVEST eventually kills the had thought themselves invincible; there spiritual experts and strategies: doctors, Carl Hoffman overwhelming majority was no celebrity beyond their reach and no neuroscientists, psychotherapists, yoga Text. PB. $32.99 of humans and it’s boundary they wouldn’t cross in the quest teachers and a Buddhist nun, to name The disappearance of amazing that it doesn’t to catch an exclusive. just a few. Michael Rockefeller in happen sooner when While this story might begin in While Roland’s breadth of New Guinea, 1961, has each person is fighting the dark corners of the now-closed tabloid research is ambitious, what he offers kept the world off millions of disease- newspaper News of the World, we quickly is accessible, often moving and always guessing for years. causing germs on a realise it also spills into Fleet Street and personal. His experiences shape the Despite exhaustive daily basis. In this lively Scotland Yard, and even runs through the narrative arc of the memoir, but How searches, no trace of and accessible book, Idan Ben-Barak tells us corridors of 10 Downing Street. There I Rescued My Brain is more than just him was ever found, why we’re not dead – yet. He explores the are moments in this narrative that you one man’s story of remarkable cognitive and soon after his immune system and what keeps it running, will remember from the headlines – most recovery. Roland offers an impressive disappearance, how germs are destroyed, why we develop notably, the News of the World’s deletion of translation of psychology and neuroscience rumours surfaced that he’d been killed and immunities to certain disease-causing messages from missing teen Milly Dowler’s for a lay audience. This thoughtful book ceremonially eaten by the local Asmat – a agents, the role of antibiotics and vaccines in voicemail, an act that gave her parents false works to reframe our view of how minds native tribe of warriors whose complex modern life, and more. hope she was still alive. However, Hack work more broadly, and how we come READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 17

Art & Design perceptions of ‘high art’. Surprising and Food & Gardening many family members have been involved diverse examples of British folk art are in charity work, volunteering at the local opportunity shop, serving on numerous with Margaret Snowdon illustrated, from rustic leather Toby jugs to with Chris Gordon brightly coloured ships’ figureheads and committees or helping the town recover ON THE NEW highly accomplished carousel horses. BREAD, CAKE, from natural disaster through the art of Boris Groys DOUGHNUT, PUDDING baking. Now all those tried and tested (over generations) recipes have been Verso. PB. $29.99 PANTONE ON FASHION: Justin Gellatly collected in order to give a little back to On the New looks at the A CENTURY OF COLOR Fig Tree. HB. $49.99 this small country town. Profits from this economies of exchange Leatrice Eiseman & E.P. Cutler I associate the word cookbook will go to the Nathalia and valuation that drive Chronicle Books. HB. $49.95 ‘pudding’ with England Opportunity Shop, where the proceeds modern culture’s key This book traces the – and here, in this assist in supporting the local community. sites: the intellectual vivid journey of colour wonderfully enticing What’s not to love? marketplace and the in fashion. Favourite and straightforwardly archive. As ideas move hues and their titled cookbook, we ALQUIMIE: EDITION from one context to appearances across the have a range of another, newness is decades are profiled pudding ideas. Justin THREE created. This continuous through text and Gellatly is one of Various shifting of the line that separates the illustrated by runway Britain’s best bakers and in Bread, Cake, Alquimie. PB. $18 valuable from the worthless, culture from photos and archival images. Track ‘Bright Doughnut, Pudding, he shows you how to Oh là là. Here is a profanity, is at the centre of Boris Groys’ Marigold’ from its heyday in the 1940s as make the classics, and the classics with Melbourne-based food investigation that aims to map the uncharted Hermès’ identifying hue to its show- twists. His cookbook also shows you how to and drink publication territory of what constitutes artistic stopping appearance in Carolina Herrera’s raise your cholesterol levels in two easy that strikes me as one innovation and what processes underpin its Spring/Summer 2013 collection, and trace steps: first, make deep-fried jam of the classiest journals recognition and appropriation. ‘Cyber Yellow’ from 1960s mod style to sandwiches and secondly, eat them with around town. With Anna Sui’s 1990s punk-inspired looks. cream. Absolutely perfect feasting for these hints of five spice, MONDRIAN AND HIS short winter days. To be fair, there are also freshly roasted coffee STUDIOS THE MONOCLE GUIDE TO recipes here for everyday consumption, and fresh snow, edition Francesco Manacorda & Michael GOOD BUSINESS each beautifully presented. This cookbook three is worth perusing for the White (eds) Monocle has over 150 recipes covering bread, photography alone, though by saying that I’m downplaying the wonderful articles: a Tate Gallery. PB. $39.95 Gestalten. HB. $99.50 biscuits, buns and cakes; hot, warm and cold puddings; ice-cream, doughnuts, celebration of subregional Chinese cuisine Mondrian’s relevance Following the popular savoury baking and store cupboard with iconic Australian food writer Tony Tan; has not only to do with Monocle Guide to Better essentials. an interview over coffee with artist Mirka his pioneering role in Living, this new title is Mora; a look at the traditional Japanese the definition and a book for would-be HONEY & CO: FOOD preperation of mackeral; and a complete conceptualisation of business leaders, dissection of Swiss wine – perfect for abstraction, but also start-ups and FROM THE MIDDLE EAST helping you choose an appropriate drop for with the complex established companies Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich watching The Bridge on cold winter nights. relationship between that feel it’s time for Hachette. HB. $49.99 his artworks, the space around them and the some new ideas. It’s a book made to be This debut cookbook Food writer Tony Tan will join Alquime belief that they were conceived to inspire. used. Write in its margins and turn over the from Sarit Packer and editor-in-chief Joshua Elias for dumplings, His studios in Amsterdam, Paris and New corners of its pages, just don’t expect Itamar Srulovich is wine and conversation on Friday York reflect different stages of the painter’s management-speak or miracles for untold packed with Middle- 1 August, 12.30pm at Readings Hawthorn. way of thinking and of his intentions. Each riches. This is a book about doing things Eastern dishes and was designed to allow the artist to perform a well – from how you run the show to the baked specialties. It’s clearly defined intellectual and social role. pens you buy, and even about taking your the type of cookbook This book is illustrated with his works and dog to work. one reads before ...... with photographs of the artist in his studios. embarking on a New DISOBEDIENT OBJECTS weekend cook-up. Imagine, there you are F iction FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY Catherine Flood with 12 friends coming for dinner on from NEXT Bloomsbury. PB. $39.99 Saturday evening. Start preparation on the FREMANTLE PRESS ...... Magdalene Keaney This timely book shows Friday, sourcing fragrant spices and nuts T&H. PB. $49.99 how objects can change and marinating the meat. Spend the This vibrant new the world by out- Saturday in the kitchen and your place will survey sets the agenda designing authority. smell as festive and welcoming as an both for fashion Included are arts of eastern marketplace. Each recipe takes photography and rebellion from around time but is well worth the effort. For innovative image- the globe: defaced example, turmeric, cardamom and orange making in the decade currency, designs for peel contribute to the most fragrant ahead. The world of barricades and blockades, political video meatballs you will ever eat, while a dessert fashion is obsessed games, an inflatable general assembly to of white chocolate, pine nut, olive oil and with freshness and facilitate consensus decision-making, candied lemon zest is equally tantalising. youth, and Fashion Photography Next experimental activist-bicycles, and textiles You, the chef of all good things, will be even embraces that obsession, looking beyond bearing witness to political murders – along more loved come Saturday night. what is ‘now’ and presenting over 30 young with earlier objects of protest such as a ‘Will resonate with fans photographers – the emerging talents who suffragette tea set, and the barricades and PASS IT DOWN: AND of Tim Winton …’ hold the prospect of creating enduring balloons of the Paris Commune. KEEP BAKING! Books+Publishing fashion images and influencing the cultural Beth Ellen Wilkinson & and style trends of tomorrow. KEITH HARING Laura Jean Wilkinson Jeffrey Deitch & Julia Gruen PB. $35 BRITISH FOLK ART Rizzoli. HB. $69.95 I love a cookbook Martin Myrone & Jeff McMillan This book is closely when it is both Tate Gallery. PB. $35 based on Keith Haring’s sentimental and This book accompanied own concept for the useful, so naturally, I a major exhibition at monograph he wanted embraced the story Tate Britain – the first to publish before his behind this sweet major survey of British untimely death. From collection of folk art – and is an chalk drawings deep in traditional baking accessible and richly the New York City subways to murals in Pisa recipes – think illustrated look at the and Berlin, collaborations with William sponges, slices and jams. In 1918, Henry ‘Fierce and clever …’ subject’s growing Burroughs and the famous body painting of Hutchins married Violet and together they Books and Arts Daily RN influence on popular Grace Jones, this book follows the incredible had 14 children. The family grew up in ...... culture. Rarely considered in the context of trajectory of Haring’s artistic career: how a Nathalia, a small town just outside of art history, folk art has been viewed as part young man from a small town in rural Shepparton, Victoria. For this large family, UNIQUELY AUSTRALIAN STORIES. of social history or folklore studies. The Pennsylvania came to revolutionise the art the kitchen became the central hub of ...... selection of objects explores the threshold world – and the course of art history – activity. Everyone in Nathalia knows the Find us on Facebook @FremantlePress between art and artefact, and challenges within little more than a decade. Hutchins family. Humble and generous, 18 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

THE SOLDIER’S GIFT Picture Books Tony Palmer & Jane Tanner (illus.) VANILLA ICE CREAM Viking. HB. $26.99 Bob Graham Emily knows that her big brother, Tom, wants to leave Hillside Farm and Walker. HB. $27.95 go overseas to the war, but Emily By cleverly imagining the chain doesn’t want him to go. The Soldier’s of events that might lead to a Gift is a moving story of one family’s small child accidentally having their courage and endurance during World A new picture book from first ever taste of vanilla ice-cream, this award-winning illustrator War II, the terrible losses at Gallipoli and a time that new picture book by Bob Graham will and renowned street artist changed Australia forever. Kyle Hughes-Odgers. have wide appeal. Children will enjoy identifying with the young sparrow – a true free spirit who hitches a ride from Junior Fiction India to Australia on his search for food. They’ll also see themselves in STUFF HAPPENS: JACK Edie, licking ice-cream from the end of her finger thanks to Tony Wilson that cheeky sparrow. For adults, there’s the relationship Puffin. PB. $9.99 between grandparents and their grandchildren to ponder, as well as a reminder to stop and remember the wonder of Stuff happens sometimes. Everyday simple things. This is one to treasure. stuff. At school, at home, with sport, with mates. For Ned it happened with a Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton new teacher. For Sean it happened starting at a new school. For Michael it LINDBERGH: THE TALE OF A happened when he thought he was FLYING MOUSE disappointing his parents. For Jack it PRAISE FOR KYLE Torben Kuhlmann happened when a game at recess went ‘The illustrations make Peribo. HB. $27.99 wrong. A new series of realistic stories. this book irresistible.’ This incredibly beautiful and Stuff Happens: Ned is also available now. Herald Sun unusual picture book debut tells ‘I have never seen anything like the journey of a resourceful mouse this before.’ ABC Radio Victoria who must escape Hamburg to reach Middle Fiction ‘I love everything about this book.’ America the only way he knows how Magpies – by building his own aeroplane and MY DOG DOESN’T LIKE ME flying it! There are many challenges Elizabeth Fensham to overcome, including predatory cats UQP. PB. $14.95 and owls, but his three failed When you’re eight and you attempts at building and flying the finally get a puppy for your plane attest to his determination and engineering nous. birthday, you feel like nothing in the Eventually he succeeds in flying over the Atlantic Ocean world can ruin your happiness. But

UNIQUELY AUSTRALIAN STORIES. and is lauded a hero in America, which provides what if owning a puppy is hard? What inspiration to a young plane enthusiast named Charles if your puppy prefers your mum Lindbergh. At 96 pages, with numerous sepia-toned, instead of you? Is there anything more double-page illustrations and many detailed mechanical devastating than discovering that your illustrations, this is a stunning publication. It is suitable puppy, who was supposed to be your for readers aged 5 to 9, particularly those with an life-long, loyal and obedient interest in aviation. companion, doesn’t even like you? No, there is not. Except Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda when your whole family tell you it’s your fault when your puppy is naughty. BIG PET DAY My Dog Doesn’t Like Me perfectly captures the feeling all new pet owners have had at some point when the Lisa Shanahan & Gus Gordon (illus.) reality and responsibility of pet ownership set in. It’s not all Hachette. PB. $16.99 rescuing Timmy from the well and having him lie at your Dragons aren’t real, right? Or are feet by the fire. Pets are hard work, and Eric works hard to they? Bossy Courtney believes earn the love of Ugly, his dog. But will that be enough? they don’t exist, so when Lily brings Dani Solomon is from Readings Carlton her dragon to Pet Day at school she is very vocal in her ‘Dragons are only in NAVIGATING EARLY fairytales’. This is such a fun book with charming dialogue and Clare Vanderpool illustrations that enable the story to Random House. PB. $14.99 come alive with plenty of humour. It’s just after World War II and The chaos of a classroom invaded by pets of all shapes and Jack Baker has been sent to a sizes is perfectly portrayed – and, of course, there is one boarding school in Maine following very well-behaved dragon! Fun for ages 3 and up. the death of his mother. Feeling lost and unsure of what life holds for him Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn anymore, Jack is drawn to Early ONE MINUTE’S SILENCE Auden, an odd yet intelligent boy who reads the number pi as a story and David Metzenthen & Michael Camilleri (illus.) refuses to believe the rumours A&U. HB. $29.99 surrounding the Great Appalachian The clever juxtaposition of Bear and the fate of Fish, a popular ex-student who was placing contemporary young lost at war. When the two boys are left on campus during adults in a depiction of Australian the holidays, they decide to take to the Appalachian Trail in troops landing at Gallipoli makes this search of the black bear. Along the way they meet some of moving book even more powerful. the most intriguing (although a few of them frightening) Sitting through a minute’s silence on people, all of whom are written into Early’s story of pi. The Remembrance Day, a class imagines pair will find some answers to their questions – however, the horrors of war, picturing sometimes those answers are not what you were expecting. themselves in that experience. What makes this book From the author of Moon Over Manifest (one exceptional is that the students contemplate both the of my all-time favourite books), Navigating Early is a Australian and Turkish perspective. Michael Camilleri’s beautifully written novel about believing in something extraordinary graphic portrayal adds gravitas to the and not stopping until you have found the answers. The ominous and heartbreaking futility of war, and you feel that fascinating story of pi that Early narrates is unique and David Metzenthen has poured his heart and soul into creative, making this a book for kids who are interested in a creating this profound work. This is a picture book for truly different narrative. A must-read for ages 10 and up. older readers, aged 10 and up. AD Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 19

Book of the Month STICKS AND STONES, ANIMAL HOMES Tai Snaith T&H. HB. $24.99 Melbourne artist and author Tai Snaith has produced a beautiful, educational picture book that oozes with appeal. Covering similar ground to her highly THE LITTLE FACTORY successful Family Hour in Australia, the narrative journeys around the world OF ILLUSTRATION to visit unusual animals and the unique homes they have created. From the Florie Saint-Val & Sarah Ardizzone (trans.) Myanmar River turtle to the Australian bilby, the hermit crab to the honeybee, Tate. HB. $24.99 animals are lovingly drawn in their natural environment. Yet they are also sweetly The Little Factory of Potential anthropomorphised, such as the muskrat who wears a suit as he swims home to Illustration is full of eccentric artists his modernist chair and violin, and the polar bears who read as they wait out the who just love making pictures, not to winter in their den. Kids will particularly enjoy animals such as the dung beetle, mention some oddball animals and which makes its home out of poo and sometimes eats it too! A facts page at the astonishing machines. Readers can back provides more info on the habitat, location and lifespan of the animals for doodle, experiment with different enquiring readers. This is a covetable picture book that will find a special techniques or simply draw alongside place in many homes, human and otherwise. LIFIPO’s resident team of artists. Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda There’s a games pocket at the back with some weird and wonderful dominos, and heaps of activities throughout exploring – among other things – collage, patternmaking, sculpture and composition. Reference I SPY A GREAT READER: UNLOCK THE LITERARY SECRET AND GET Did you know ... ? YOUR CHILD HOOKED ON BOOKS As a child, children’s author Bob Graham Jackie French lived with a cat called Smokey. At school, HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 he was often in trouble for drawing Drawing on her own experience with under his desk. dyslexia, Australia Children’s Laureate New Jackie French has written this book to help parents identify the possible reading difficulties their children may PLENTY have. All children learn differently, Ananda Braxton-Smith and Jackie offers many fun and Black Dog. PB. $14.95 Kids’ rewarding ways to help launch your Ten-year-old Maddie is confused child into literacy. These include and extremely angry when her games for coordination, concentration parents reveal they’re moving from and focus, as well as helpful steps to kickstart your childs their inner-city Melbourne home to a lifelong love of books. small regional town. Her sense of dislocation is profound as all that she’s Books ever experienced – home, school and Classic of the Month friendships – will now be so far away. THIS JOURNAL BELONGS Essentially, she feels homeless. But it’s TO RATCHET THE GIVER in the small town of Plenty that Nancy J. Cavanaugh Lois Lowry Maddie discovers family and a wonderful friend who not Jabberwocky. HB. $12.99 HarperCollins. PB. $14.95 only truly understands her plight but gives new meaning It’s the first day of school for all the The Giver is a brilliant to ‘home’. kids in the neighbourhood except for example of dystopian I found myself completely involved in Maddie’s Ratchet, who is homeschooled. The literature, written in 1993, long journey from homesickness and anger to understanding best friend she has is her notebook, before the glut in this genre. It was and acceptance, and finally to a sense of belonging. I and she’s going to use it to write about unusual at the time and banned loved this story’s honesty and tender heart, its perceptive her top-secret plans. This is the story from some schools and libraries, portrayal of Maddie’s emotional upheaval and uncertainty, of Ratchet’s quest to make a friend, but also won the Newbery Medal. and its gentle resolution. Beautifully written and save a park and find her own Jonah lives in ‘The wonderfully insightful, this story will definitely strike definition of normal. Community’, a group protected a chord with confident, independent readers. It’s also from the outside world whose a compelling and satisfying read-aloud book. Highly lives are comfortable and ordered, helped along by recommended. happy pills that everyone must take daily once they hit Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Activity puberty. But the pills have dulled their real emotions and their capacity to think critically and remember THE TEMPLETON TWINS MAKE A FOUND AND MADE: THE ART the past. There are no books or songs, no awareness SCENE: BOOK 2 OF UPCYCLING of war or tragedy. One person in the Community is Ellis Weiner & Jeremy Holmes (illus.) Lisa Hölzl entrusted to remember the collective memories for Chronicle Books. PB. $9.95 Walker. PB. $19.95 everyone else – the Receiver. When Jonah is chosen to train as the next Receiver, his mind is opened up to the Abigail and John Templeton find Make a masterpiece from your reality of their world and the sacrifices that are made themselves at TAPAS (the Thespian rubbish! With 11 exciting projects to to maintain their comfortable lives. Academy of the Performing Arts and inspire you, Found and Made: The Art An incredibly thought-provoking and insightful Sciences) where their father, the of Upcycling will help to turn your story, The Giver still challenges readers just as much illustrious Professor Templeton, has trash into treasure. A toilet roll as it did when first published. The forthcoming movie, been hired to invent a groundbreaking holder and some papier-mâché can directed by Australian Phillip Noyce, should bring theatrical device. Once again, there is become a puppet king. A shoebox can this book a new generation of admirers and, no doubt, drama, silliness and suspense, as the transform into a treasure box. dissenters too. twins (and their ridiculous dog) must Ice-cream sticks, magazines, plastic thwart the dastardly Dean brothers in order to save the bags, tin cans – all are waiting to be part of your art kit. Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda invention as well as their father. Collect, create and upcycle! 20 READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014

THE HUEYS IN STAN LEE’S THE LEBANESE ON THE IT WASN’T ME HOW TO KITCHEN ORIGIN OF Oliver Jeffers WRITE Salma Hage SPECIES HB. Was $24.99 COMICS HB. Was $59.95 Charles Darwin & Now $13.95 Stan Lee Now $29.95 David Quammen A fight has broken out HB. Was $69.95 In The Lebanese Kitchen, (ed.) amongst the Hueys to Now $29.95 Salma Hage presents HB. Was $59.95 the cries of ‘It was not The legendary Stan Lee a list of more than Now $19.95 me!’ and ‘It was him!’ but now no-one can (co-creator of Spider-Man, the Hulk, the 550 recipes including her own family Edited by award-winning science journalist remember what they’re actually fighting Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, the X-Men) favourites and classic dishes passed down David Quammen, this richly illustrated about. It Wasn’t Me is the second picture shares everything he knows about writing through generations, and ranging from edition of Charles Darwin’s masterpiece book from award-winning author and comic books. 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Was $35 A Table in the Tarn is Bring Up the Bodies Max Hastings presents an Now $19.95 Orlando Murrin’s account is the second indelible account of what World In Yeah Yeah Yeah, of how he gave up his life as a journalist part of a War II was like for the Bob Stanley tells the and cook in London, to open a gourmet planned trilogy charting people who experienced chronological story of the modern pop era, from its bed-and-breakfast with his partner in the rise and fall of it, from soldiers at the beginnings in the fifties with the dawn of southwestern France, painstakingly Thomas Cromwell, front, to civilians such the charts, vinyl, and the music press, to transforming the simple nineteenth- the powerful minister as American and century Manoir de Raynaudes into a pop’s digital switchover in the year 2000. in the court of King British housewives, Audacious and addictive, Yeah Yeah Yeah is celebrated gastronomic destination. Henry VIII. In this Soviet infantrymen, essential reading for all pop lovers. book, Hilary Mantel Indian peasants, THE PENGUIN Bargain explores one of the and Luftwaffe crew. HOW TO COMPLETE most mystifying and Inferno puts forth DESIGN A NOVELS OF frightening episodes a new and essential Table HOUSE JANE AUSTEN in English history – the understanding of one of the Design Museum Jane Austen destruction of Anne Boleyn. most significant events of the twentieth century. HB. Were $25 each PB. Was $35 Now $12.95 each Now $19.95 REINVENTING THE How to Design is a Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties BACH gorgeous hardback of their own social milieu with the wit and Paul Elie RELUCTANT series from London’s Design Museum insight of Jane Austen. Through the lives PB. Was $29.95 FUNDAMEN- with titles such as How to Design a House, of her vivacious and spirited heroines, Now $19.95 TALIST How to Design a Chair and How to Design she paints vivid portraits of English In Reinventing Bach, Paul Mohsin Hamid a Typeface. Each volume includes the middle-class life in the late eighteenth Elie blends the stories PB. Was $23.95 principles and process of designing the century. This volume includes Sense and of modern musicians with a polyphonic Now $12.95 object in question, as well as working case Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield account of our most celebrated composer’s Set at a cafe table in studies of practitioners in the field. Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion life, creating a spellbinding narrative of Lahore over the course of a single evening, and Lady Susan. musical life. Elie reveals how dozens of a Pakistani man tells his life story to an MAY WE BE gifted musicians across the years have uneasy American stranger. This multiple FORGIVEN AT LAST experimented and collaborated with one award-winning novel by Mohsin Hamid A.M. Homes Edward St Aubyn another in the service of a single, truly was selected by the Guardian as one of the HB. Was $41.95 HB. Was $39.95 astonishing composer. fifty books that defined the naughties. Now $16.95 Now $15.95 Harry is a Richard Nixon As friends, relations NO TIME LIKE FREEDOM scholar who leads a quiet and foes trickle in to THE PRESENT Jonathan Franzen life; his brother George pay final respects to Nadine Gordimer HB. Was $38.95 is a high-flying TV Patrick Melrose’s mother, HB. Was $39.95 Now $14.95 producer with a murderous temper. 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In charting the mistakes and AS VEGETABLES Gordimer captures the essence of a nation joys of his characters as they make their CONSCIOUS- FROM AN struggling to define itself post-apartheid. way through an ever more confusing ITALIAN world, Jonathan Franzen has produced an NESS IS GARDEN THE indelible portrait of our time. HARNESSED Phaidon EMOTIONAL TO FLESH HB. Was $49.95 LIFE OF YOUR EAT YOUR Susan Sontag & Now $24.95 BRAIN VEGETABLES David Rieff (ed.) With hundreds of authentic and time- Richard J Davidson Arthur Potts HB. Was $39.95 Now $14.95 honoured recipes, Vegetables from an & Sharon Begley Dawson Italian Garden is the definitive guide to HB. Was $43.95 PB. Was $59.99 As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh is harvesting and cooking vegetables like Now $15.95 Now $16.95 the second of three volumes collecting together Susan Sontag’s journals and the Italians do. The book is organised For more than thirty years, Richard Eat Your Vegetables isn’t a vegetarian notebooks. A record of the inner workings by seasons – Crema Fredda di Cetrioli cookbook; it’s simply an answer to the call Davidson has been at the forefront of brain of one of the most inquisitive and analytical for more vegetables and less meat. These makes a fresh summer starter, while research. Now he provides an entirely new thinkers of the twentieth-century, this recipes are suitable for home chefs of all the decadent Pure Tartufato features model for understanding our emotions, as volume follows Sontag through the classic comfort dishes for cold days – and well as practical strategies we can use to abilities and inclinations. turbulent years of the 60s and 70s. includes profiles of vegetables within each change them. The Emotional Life of Your season, highlighting best-known varieties, Brain shares useful techniques for living a appearance, storage and preparation. more meaningful life. New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at readings.com.au for more. READINGS MONTHLY AUGUST 2014 21

New Film & TV THE SPIDER $34.95 DVD of the Month with Lou Fulco Copenhagen, 1949: a young SECRETS & LIES reporter attempts to BORGEN: SEASON 3 uncover a crime syndicate $49.95 (RE-RELEASE) on an unprecedented level. ‘Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a $19.95 Although inexperienced, he man’s character, give him power.’ And so reads the epigraph Released 6 August delves headlong into the of the final episode of Borgen. Indeed, Lincoln’s words are a fitting The 1996 film Secrets & Lies case, much to the discomfort illustration of the political intrigue, moral complexity and the is widely acknowledged as a of his more conservative workmates. A importance of one’s principles that have made Borgen a must- triumph of modern British gripping mix of family drama and crime, watch international sensation. Borgen (‘The Castle’, referring to social realism. One day, The Spider is Danish television at its best. Denmark’s Christiansborg Palace) follows charismatic politician working-class single mum Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) as she rises through the political ranks, using Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) COSMOS: A SPACETIME skilful tact and poise, to become the prime minister of Denmark. The third and final receives a phone call from a ODYSSEY season begins two years from where Season 2 concluded: Birgitte is on the post-prime woman named Hortense (Marianne $46.95 minister speech circuit, having moved into the corporate world. Yet her Jean-Baptiste), who claims to be the More than three decades disillusionment with the changes in her once-centrist Moderate Party quickly force daughter Cynthia had put up for adoption after the debut of Carl her back into the political sphere, this time with the aid of her brilliant new media years ago. The revelation causes a ripple Sagan’s stunning exploration adviser, Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen). effect in Cynthia’s own dysfunctional family. of the universe, Cosmos: A The series delivers an outstanding sense of political naturalism; there is a FREAKS AND GEEKS: Personal Voyage, Neil certain optimism to this landscape, tempting us with the notion that this is what deGrasse Tyson invites government could look like when reason and compromise are necessary. It’s a THE COMPLETE SERIES viewers to embark on a new depiction that is clearly in contrast to the highly stylised TV dramas of say, House of $49.95 voyage for the stars with Cosmos: A Spacetime Cards, which conversely portrays cunning and obsessively power-hungry leaders. Freaks and Geeks follows Odyssey. This 13-part miniseries looks at Borgen, perhaps most astoundingly, allows us to believe in the idea of a good politician the Weir siblings – former how we discovered the laws of nature and – albeit only for an hour at a time. Certainly the success of the series is dependent math whiz Lindsay and her found our coordinates in space and time. upon the strength of its female characters, and Borgen is distinct insofar as both of its younger brother Sam – as leads, Birgitte and Katrine, are single mothers, negotiating the difficulties of raising a they navigate the perils and DISNEY’S SLEEPING family while navigating highly successful careers. pleasures of a Michigan BEAUTY A substantial amount of material is covered in this third season, and while it is high school circa 1980. $39.95 a fitting end to the series, the conclusion is perhaps not as precise for the supporting What separates this particular show from Released 13 August characters – this might be a signal, however, that we haven’t heard the last from most other scholastic series is its brutal This Disney production tells Danish politics and its players. honesty which, when combined with its the story of a princess Robert Constantine is from Readings St Kilda whip-smart dialogue and winning cursed to fall into a death- performances, cements Freaks and Geeks as like slumber at the age of 16, a benchmark for quality television. from which she can only be with the body go horribly awry, and Mickey selection of Britain’s most ambitious awakened by true love’s kiss. finds himself stuck in a darkly comedic self-building projects. ORPHAN BLACK: The film’s musical score and struggle of life and death. SEASON 2 songs are arrangements or adaptations of JACQUES TATI: THE $29.95. Seasons 1 & 2 box set $54.95 numbers from the 1890 Sleeping Beauty GRAND DESIGNS: RESTORED COLLECTION This smart Canadian thriller ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. SEASON 11 $69.95 is a must-see for fans of lo-fi $39.95 Released 20 August sci-fi. Orphan Black really GOD’S POCKET Released 20 August Daring and colourful, finds its feet in the second $29.95 Kevin McCloud continues whimsical and fun, Jacques season and features an Released 6 August to follow the journeys of Tati is one of the great astonishing performance by Nobody in the blue-collar enthusiastic self-builders comic icons of French Tatiana Maslany, who plays neighbourhood of God’s in the eleventh season of cinema. A Gallic equivalent several different clones. Sarah Manning is Pocket is sorry when his popular show – from of Charlie Chaplin or Buster determined to find her missing daughter and Mickey Scarpato’s (Philip the restoration of a Keaton, Tati’s works as must navigate a dangerous world of new Seymour Hoffman) crazy decaying 1920s cinema in director, writer and actor are well-loved enemies and shifting allegiances, including stepson, Leon, is killed in a South Yorkshire to a miniature Hollywood classics. His six classic comedies are the clone Rachel Duncan, who will stop at construction ‘accident’. But Hills-style mansion in North London. collected here for the very first time, along nothing to complete her mission. Mickey’s attempt to bury the bad news Grand Designs showcases a wonderful with seven rare short films.

Helen MIRREN Om PURI Manish DAYAL Charlotte LE BON

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New Music WORLD PEACE IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS Album of the Month Morrissey Pop & Rock $22.95. Deluxe edition $24.95 ANGUS & JULIA STONE Angus & Julia Stone SONG READER Morrissey is a $21.95. Deluxe edition $24.95 Beck & Others controversial figure in the $21.95 contemporary music One of the best and most successful Australian acts of the past Beck’s 2012 Song Reader landscape. In World Peace decade, brother–sister duo Angus and Julia Stone, return with was an experiment in what Is None of Your Business, their first album in over four years. Following their phenomenally an album could be – a book he investigates the tragedy of human successful first two albums, A Book Like This in 2007 and Down the Way in 2010, the two of sheet music for 20 apathy in our turbulent modern era. His went their separate ways, breaking up just when global success seemed within reach. songs. Now continuing this lyrics continue to fiercely display the Solo projects were released, but these failed either to ignite the charts or excite the project, Beck presents recordings of these signature black humour, penchant for critics – it is no surprise, really, to see them back together, but the story of how this came songs, each performed by a different artist. drama and emotional intensity that first about is worth telling. Legendary American producer Rick Rubin heard their music Contributors include Jack White, Jarvis characterised his role as the lyricist and playing at a party and quickly decided he wanted to get in touch and work with them. Cocker, Jeff Tweedy, Laura Marling, Jack vocalist of the Smiths. When Rubin finally met up with Julia, she told him they were no longer playing music Black, Sparks, Jason Isbell, Loudon together – and, in fact, were barely in touch. Wainwright III, Norah Jones and others. TERMS OF MY Angus and Julia are definitely stronger together. It’s surprising to learn that SURRENDER this album is the first on which the pair have written songs collaboratively, rather than HYPNOTIC EYE John Hiatt trading songs like they had done for their two earlier albums. The effect is immediately Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers $19.95 apparent and adds a new dimension, an edge that was not perceptible earlier. Of course, working with one of the biggest producers in the world has helped craft their $21.95 Produced by long-time collaborator Doug Lancio, Since the release of their John Hiatt’s Terms of My ‘Legendary American producer Rick Rubin heard their music playing at a debut album in 1976, Tom Surrender is rooted in the party and quickly decided he wanted to get in touch and work with them.’ Petty and the Heartbreakers blues and accentuated by have sold over 60 million the singer–songwriter’s soulful, gritty songs from fairly simple folk–pop to a grander and more expansive sound. Angus, in records and were inducted voice, which mirrors the gravity of his particular, lets loose on the guitar a few times, and comes across very much as a Neil into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. reflective lyrics. A master lyricist and Young devotee. The first single, ‘Heart Beats Slow’, is a great driving duet where the Hypnotic Eye is their first new studio album satirical storyteller, Hiatt weaves hidden siblings’ – who’ve always shared vocal duties but rarely with the same upbeat – back- in four years and has been described by plot twists into fictional tales of redemption and-forth dynamic is really on display. The album is sure to please old fans while Rolling Stone as ‘Petty’s decisive return to and relationships, of growing old and winning over a whole new generation. the concise sixties-rock classicism of his surrender. The two recorded most of the first great New Wave era albums’. album as if in a live setting. Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton HIGH LIFE Brian Eno & Karl Hyde Folk/World with its biting electric guitars and Country harmonica, is a particular standout here. $19.95 HAVEN’T GOT THE BLUES Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton Within weeks of their (YET) COMMON GROUND: acclaimed debut album Loudon Wainwright III DAVE ALVIN & PHIL REMEDY Someday World’s release, $24.95 ALVIN PLAY AND SING Old Crow Medicine Show Brian Eno and Karl Hyde Loudon Wainwright III THE SONGS OF BIG BILL $21.95 have emerged with their presents 14 bitingly funny BROONZY Virginian string band second full-length record. Written and songs that defy Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Old Crow Medicine recorded over a series of sessions in April Show have a fearsome live conventional genres and $24.95 and May of this year, the result – six traverse a wide range of reputation, but it’s one that American bluesman expansive tracks of 45 minutes – sizzles subject matter – senior has never quite translated Big Bill Broonzy with energy. This release is the clearest citizenship, heartbreak, gun control, pet to disc. Previous albums have been good but may not be revered as expression yet of their ‘Reichkuti’ influence, ownership, New York City’s arcane practice uneven. No problems like that here, though, much as Robert Johnson what the pair have cited as, ‘the polyrhythmic of alternate side-of-the-street parking. as this time around they have struck the but his influence remains. music of Fela Kuti and funk’ and ‘the Produced by long-time collaborator David balance between raw energy and a dynamic His 300-plus songs and acoustic guitar repetitive minimalism of composers like Mansfield, album guests include banjoist mix of tight harmonies and intricate style influenced the likes of Muddy Waters Steve Reich and Philip Glass’. Tony Trischka, saxophonist Steve Elson, playing, featuring a strong acoustic bass and and a whole generation of British blues drummer Sammy Merendino, bassist Tim the familiar interplay of fiddles, banjos, and folk performers such as Eric Clapton, THE BREEZE: AN Luntzel and vocalist Chaim Tannenbaum. mandolins and acoustic guitars – this is APPRECIATION OF J.J. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. In consistently classy. If there’s one noticeable CALE ACOUSTIC CLASSICS California, two brothers, Dave and Phil development, sound-wise, then it’s the Alvin, formed the Blasters, a hardworking Eric Clapton & Friends Richard Thompson influence of the rockier side of Bob Dylan’s band that fused country, blues, rock, singing style on several numbers. Lo and $21.95 $24.95 rockabilly and folk. The brothers fought a behold track three, ‘Sweet Amarillo’, is a Eric Clapton has stated For the first time ever, lot and the original Blasters lasted until very catchy tune and is a Dylan–OCMS that J.J. Cale (who sadly Richard Thompson has 1985. For this highly enjoyable collection co-write that could have come straight from passed away last year) is reprised the classic songs of Broonzy tunes, the two have united in Dylan’s mid-70s Desire era. Other tracks one of the single most that form the heart of his their mutual love for the music. Dave is resonate with mid-60s Dylan folk-rock important figures in rock acoustic concerts to the better guitarist and Phil the better references. As well as the hard-driving history. In honour of Cale’s legacy, Clapton present Acoustic Classics. singer – it’s a great combination. This is bluegrass numbers there are some quiet has gathered a group of like-minded Featuring 14 newly recorded, acoustically not a dry, reverential tribute but a totally moments of reflection and sadness, such as friends and musicians to create The Breeze: rendered gems like ‘I Want to See the rocking and fun-filled collection that in ‘Dearly Departed Friend’. ‘Doc’s Day’ is a An Appreciation of J.J. Cale. This album Bright Lights Tonight’, ‘Dimming of the combines acoustic and full band statement from the band about what they comprises performances of 16 beloved Day’ and ‘Beeswing’, this album is a arrangements with their rockabilly- love about old-time music and a tribute to Cale songs by Clapton, Mark Knopfler, stunning celebration of the legendary infused sound. ‘Southern Flood Blues’, the great Doc Watson. PB John Mayer, Willie Nelson and Tom Petty. musician’s back catalogue. READINGS MADMAN DVD SALE Over a hundred terrific titles from $12.95 each

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New Classical Music carefully assembled cast of exceptional Prokofiev and Hindemith were all central soloists, vigorous, intelligent chorus and an figures of their time, illustrating – and to an orchestra made up from some of the UK’s extent personifying – different approaches Classical Album of the Month leading period instrumentalists. to modernism in music, and this varied program touches in turn on neo-classical LOUIS ANDRIESSEN: LA COMMEDIA PURCELL: TEN SONATAS and neo-baroque idioms, folk music, IN FOUR PARTS (1697) atonality and impressionism. But first and Reinbert de Leeuw & Cristina Zavalloni The King’s Consort foremost the disc offers an exciting and Nonesuch. 7559795900. 2CDs+DVD. $34.95 colourful mix of great music. Vivat. VIVAT106. $26.95 ‘Satanic Broadway’ is how one reviewer from the New Yorker describes Louis Andriessen’s adventurous film opera La The King’s Consort holds BEETHOVEN: THE Commedia: a bold but apt statement. The prolific Dutch composer a worldwide reputation as leading performers of CREATURES OF has achieved a great deal of success throughout his career, and can count himself among PROMETHEUS the greatest living composers of our time. La Commedia (2008), encompassing a number of Purcell. This new release Armonia Atenea & George Petrou different styles, including minimalism, stile antico and jazz, is one of the finest strings to adds to TKC’s 25 his bow. The opera is based loosely around Dante’s The Divine Comedy, and, as described in recordings of the Decca. 4786755. $24.95 the CD sleeve notes, is a cycle of five mini-cantatas: ‘The City of Dis, or The Ship of composer’s music, which have won Beethoven’s ballet score Fools’, ‘Racconto dall’inferno’, ‘Lucifer’, ‘The Garden of Delights’ and ‘Luce Etterna’. numerous international awards and been ‘Die Geschöpfe des Cristina Zavalloni is our narrator as the complex Dante, while the late Dutch central in restoring Purcell’s music to Prometheus’ (‘The actor Jeroen Willems portrays a charismatic but troubled Lucifer. Claron McFadden is a prominence. Purcell’s extraordinarily Creatures of Prometheus’) beguiling and ethereal Beatrice, and the Asko-Schönberg Ensemble, under the direction of inventive, highly individual music combines was created in Reinbert de Leeuw, delivers an electric reading of Andriessen’s score. Andriessen explains Italian vigour, French elegance and delicious collaboration with his casting choices: ‘I’ve always been more interested in working with singing actors than English melancholy with harmonic daring, choreographer Salvatore Viganò. The ballet acting singers. So the three principal voices in the opera are not conventional types.’ extraordinary contrapuntal technique and was the composer’s first major work for the Zavalloni is the true star of La Commedia. No wonder, considering Andriessen unique melodic inventiveness. The stage. Based on the Greek fire-stealing myth, composed the opera with Zavalloni in mind, describing her as ‘the first since Cathy international performer line-up includes the story of ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’ is Berberian [twentieth-century American mezzo-soprano, and wife and muse to Italian–Dutch violinist Cecilia Bernardini, conveyed with music full of drama and Andriessen’s former teacher Luciano Berio] to produce the right vernacular quality’. German viol player Susanne Heinrich and verve, but was the only ballet score that Six years since their first collaboration in 2002 (La Passione for soprano and violin), Welsh violinist Huw Daniel. Beethoven wrote. ‘Prometheus’ was initially Andriessen has created a masterpiece for the singer. Zavalloni’s voice, while retaining a great success, and within a few years it had its distinctive timbre, has flourished into a lovely, full soprano. Enjoy La Commedia RIVAL QUEENS been performed dozens of times. Still, it was not just on your stereo but also on DVD, and allow yourself to follow Zavalloni and be Simone Kermes & Vivica Genaux criticised by a contemporary as drawn into Andriessen’s ‘Satanic’ musical world. Sony. 88843023662. $21.95 ‘fragmentary’ and ‘too learned for a ballet’, and the score, save for the overture, has Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton On 6 June 1727, prima donnas Francesca Cuzzoni since been generally neglected as little more and Faustina Bordoni than an historical curiosity. Rejecting CONCERTO: JOHN style going with a bold and bright concerto hurled insults at each other academic coolness, Armonia Atenea, under WILLIAMS sure to have you enthralled. These on the stage of London’s the baton of conductor George Petrou, particular works blend beautifully together, King’s Theatre – or so injects dramatic energy and bright colour to John Williams creating an album that seamlessly moves legend has it. Simone Kermes and Vivica Beethoven’s bold work. JCW. JCW3. $29.95 from one work to the other. Genaux try to get to the bottom of the myth John Williams’ Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings with their new album, Rival Queens. career started in the Cuzzoni and Bordoni were certainly rivals Special of the Month late 1950s and although he HANDEL: THE TRIUMPH there’s no doubt about it. Rivalry is just had his seventy-third transformed here into a creative force. Two MENDELSSOHN: ELIJAH birthday in April, he is still OF TIME AND TRUTH charismatic sopranos with different types of Paul McCreesh & Gabrieli Consort going strong. I grew up Ludus Baroque & Richard voice recall the two opera divas without listening to him perform the world’s Neville-Towle and Players whom many of the arias and duets might Signum. SIGCD300. Was $39.95 greatest guitar concertos, with the world’s Delphian. DCD34135. 2CDs. $34.95 never have been written. Kermes and Genaux $19.95 (only while stocks last) greatest musicians. There is something In their third disc for depict Cuzzoni and Bordoni, and the about his glorious sound and tight control Delphian, Ludus Baroque Cappella Gabetta provide the instrumental At the time of its first that makes the music sing. Williams has and five stellar soloists accompaniment for this unique portrait. performances in 1846, chosen three distinctly modern, yet bring to life Handel’s ‘Elijah’ was hailed as one neo-classical in style concertos. The rarely heard final oratorio, VISIONS FUGITIVES: of the great oratorios, ‘Danzas Peregrinas’, by Horacio Salinas, a remarkable Protestant MUSIC FOR STRINGS alongside Handel’s also features Horacio Duràn on the re-casting of a work written 50 years earlier ‘Messiah’. It tells the story charango, a small lute-like instrument, and Camerata Nordica of the prophet with inspirational to a text by the young composer’s Roman & Terje Tønnesen Richard Harvey on various instruments, patron Cardinal Pamphili. Compelled by orchestration and beautiful arias, recitatives Select. BIS2126. $29.95 including clarinet, mandolin, recorder and Time and Truth to accept the divine order and choruses. This mighty piece requires two types of South American wooden flute. of change and decay, Beauty ultimately The Swedish string even mightier orchestral and choral forces, With so many instruments you would have gives way – as with the ageing composer ensemble Camerata and the Gabrieli singers are reinforced by the thought there would be too many sounds, himself – to an assertion of redemption by Nordica and its artistic talented Gabrieli Young Singers’ Scheme and and yet somehow it just feels like a glorious good works, reflected in the incorporation director Terje Tønnesen’s the Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir. All of these blend of timbres. The ‘Arafura Dances’, of choruses Handel had written for the latest recording is a performers work wonderfully under the composed by Ross Edwards, are similar to Foundling Hospital. The resulting work, program of twentieth- meticulous baton of Paul McCreesh. This the ‘Peregrinas’ but with that Australian neglected by centuries of scholarship on century music for strings – this time by four recording is an excellent consolation prize for flair. They finish with a guitar concerto by account of its hybrid origins, here proves an different composers, and spanning the years those people unable to attend McCreesh’s Stephen Goss, which although isn’t extraordinary feast of riches, and the ideal before World War I to a few days before the recent performance of Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’ officially a set of dances, certainly keeps the vehicle for Richard Neville-Towle’s outbreak of World War II. Bartók, Webern, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

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_____ X ______$ ______Order No. : ______Payment enclosed or please charge my VISA MC

_____ X ______$ ______Card No. : ______CCV : ______( Last three numbers of the security code on the back Postage (see rates below) : $ ______Expiry Date : __ __ / __ __ Signature : ______of your card )

TOTAL : $ ______Send me Readings Monthly e-news My email : ______

POSTAGE is FREE to anywhere in Australia for all items purchased from our website: www.readings.com.au. POSTAGE RATES IF ITEM SENT FROM SHOPS: Australia: Melb. Metro: 1-6 items $6.50; Other VIC: 1–6 items $7.50; Anywhere else in Aust: 1-6 items: $7.95 ~ Purchase 7 or more items and we will pay the surface freight to anywhere in Australia ~ New Zealand: Freight for 1-3 items: $7.95; 4 or more items: $10. ~ NOTE: Prices correct at time of printing but subject to change ~ Readings ABN : 45 005 153 533.