FREE FEBRUARY 2021

The most anticipated books of 2021

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Read an extract from Growing Up Disabled in

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BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

EMMA DONOVAN & THE PUTBACKS page 22 WE ARE WHO ADAM SAM VAN GARY AMIE KAUFMAN WE ARE THOMPSON ZWEDEN LONESBOROUGH & RYAN GRAUDIN page 21 page 8 page 13 page 17 page 18

CARLTON 309 LYGON ST 9347 6633 KIDS 315 LYGON ST 9341 7730 DONCASTER WESTFIELD DONCASTER, 619 DONCASTER RD 9810 0891 HAWTHORN 701 GLENFERRIE RD 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 GLENFERRIE RD 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 ACLAND ST 9525 3852 STATE LIBRARY 285-321 RUSSELL ST 8664 7540 | SEE SHOP OPENING HOURS, BROWSE AND BUY ONLINE AT READINGS.COM.AU Congratulations to each of the seven category winners who were selected from an outstanding shortlist of 26 titles, and to Laura Jean McKay as the recipient of the Victorian Prize for Literature. Congratulations also to Louise Milligan for Witness: An Investigation into the Brutal Cost of Seeking Justice as the winner of the People’s Choice Award.

Winner VICTORIAN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE – FICTION

The Animals in That Country Laura Jean McKay Scribe Publications

NON-FICTION DRAMA POETRY Body Count: Wonnangatta Case Notes How Climate Angus Cerini David Stavanger Change is Killing Us Theatre UWA Publishing Paddy Manning Company Simon & Schuster Australia

YOUNG ADULT INDIGENOUS WRITING UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT Metal Fish, Tell Me Why: Anam Falling Snow The Story of My Life André Dao Cath Moore and My Music Text Publishing Simon & Schuster Australia

wheelercentre.com NEWS February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 3

is a volunteer group of teenagers who meet Winners of the Victorian Premier’s monthly to discuss young adult books, learn News Literary Awards about the book industry, meet authors, Congratulations to the winners of the and more. This year, the board will be run Sales & 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, online and we welcome applications from especially The Animals in That Country by a diverse range of from teenagers, aged Readings State Library is open again! Laura Jean McKay, which won both the 14-19, from anywhere in Australia. If you Promotions would like to join the board, please tell us We are delighted to announce our State Fiction prize and the overall Victorian Prize why you would like to take part, the types Library shop is open to the public again! Our for Literature. Other winners included Body of books you like to read, and why you love booksellers can’t wait to see you in-store, Count: How Climate Change Is Killing Us bookshops. Your application should be a and we’re very pleased to offer a special by Paddy Manning for Nonfiction, Metal 20% off all books at Readings single page document of no more than 20% off books sale to celebrate – see the Fish, Falling Snow by Cath Moore for Young State Library shop 500 words, in either Word or PDF format, sales and promotion section for more details. Adult and Tell Me Why: The Story of My addressing the points above and including To celebrate the store’s reopening, You’ll find our beautiful SLV shop (featured Life and My Music by Archie Roach for your name, age and contact details. Send we’re offering 20% off all books at our on this month’s cover!) in the State Library’s Indigenous Writing. Find a full list of winners it to [email protected] State Library shop from Monday 15 Russell Street Welcome Zone, right next to at wheelercentre.com. by 5pm, Wednesday 24 February, 2021. For Feb to Sunday 28 Feb! This special the Guild Café, which has also reopened. more details, please see readings.com.au/ 20% off sale is available in-store only For the most up-to-date information about Readings Teen Advisory Board the-readings-teen-advisory-board at the Readings State Library Victoria opening hours and conditions of entry into shop, and is not available online, or Applications for the 2021 Readings Teen our State Library shop, please visit at any other Readings shop. The readings.com.au/state-library. Advisory Board are now open! The board Readings bestsellers of 2020 discount applies to the recommended retail price, and is not valid with any We’ve tallied the numbers and our top other offers or discounts. ten bestselling books for 2020 were, in order: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, The Yield by Tara June Winch, Ottolenghi FLAVOUR by Yotam Ottolenghi 3 for 2 nonfiction favourites & Ixta Belfrage, Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, Throughout February, we are offering The Survivors by Jane , All Our three books for the price of two on Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton, Where a range of our favourite non-fiction the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, The titles. If you purchase two books, Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel and you can choose a third book in the Beatrix Bakes by Natalie Paull. range (of equal or lesser value) for free. From memoir to politics, you’ll find a wide and thought-provoking COVID-19 update range of books to browse. This offer All our shops are now open and trading is exclusively available in all Readings as normal. We ask that all our customers shops, except Readings Kids, until maintain social distancing and follow Sunday 28 February. This offer is government guidelines when visiting our valid on select stickered, in-stock stores. For the most up-to-date information items only, while stocks last, and is about our opening hours and conditions of not available online. entry into our shops, please visit readings.com.au/our-shops.

READINGS MONTHLY EVENTS & PROGRAMMING Free, independent monthly Chris Gordon published by Readings Books, Music & Film ADVERTISING SUBSCRIBE Lucie Dess You can subscribe to Readings Monthly [email protected] and our e-news by visiting our website: readings.com.au/sign-up GRAPHIC DESIGN Cat Matteson DELIVERY CHARGES FOR MAIL-ORDER & OVER-THE- CARTOON PHONE PURCHASES Oslo Davis $6.50 flat rate to anywhere in Australia for orders under $120. Free shipping for orders FRONT COVER $120 and over. The February Readings Monthly cover features a photo of Readings at DELIVERY CHARGES FOR the State Library Victoria (© 2019 Chris ONLINE PURCHASES Middleton). $6.50 flat rate to anywhere in Australia for orders under $120. Free shipping for orders PRICES AND AVAILABILITY $120 and over. Please note that all prices and release dates in Readings Monthly are correct EDITOR at time of publication, however prices Jackie Tang and release dates may change without [email protected] notice. Special price offers apply only for EDITORIAL ASSISTANT the month in which they are featured in Readings Monthly. Judi Mitchell & Lucie Dess COVID-19 PROOFREADER While all title release dates were correct Nico Callaghan at the time of going to press, due to the KIDS & YA CURATORS ongoing COVID-19 crisis the unexpected may happen along the supply chain. Angela Crocombe & Dani Solomon Please bear with us as we bring you books MUSIC CURATOR in these rapidly changing circumstances. Dave Clarke Readings donates 10% of its profits each CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR year to the Readings Foundation: Phil Richards readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation

DVDS CURATOR Lou Fulco 4 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 COLUMNS

Atherfold told me: ‘It is hard to describe what it means to me to be back at the Readings SLV Mark’s bookshop after so long away over 2020. Being surrounded by literary sustenance once Say more, it is enticing, engaging and just simply with Mark Rubbo a breath of much needed fresh air. I can’t wait to share this with our customers again.’ To encourage you to rediscover, or indeed After having been closed discover, this beautiful Readings shop we are Open Water for the best part of a year, offering a 20% discount on all full price books Caleb Azumah Nelson the State Library of Victoria for two weeks this month: from Monday 15 A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black British artists. (SLV), one of Australia’s February to Sunday 28 February. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in most-loved and most-used About 10 years ago, then-director of the love. But two people who seem cultural institutions, is open again. There’s destined to be together can still be Wheeler Centre Michael Williams and I were torn apart by fear and violence. no need to book but as a precaution, visitors discussing how the Wheeler Centre could will have to scan a QR code. Just prior to support emerging writers. In the Wheeler The Silent Listener lockdown the library had completed a major Centre building, there is a gallery that Lyn Yeowart renovation with many magnificent heritage runs most of the length of the building, an Propelling the reader back and forth between the 1940s, 1960s spaces reopened to the public after decades ideal space to plonk some desks for writers and 1980s, The Silent Listener is of closure. For CEO Kate Torney the closure to use. Combine that with the ability for an unforgettable literary debut set in the dark, gothic heart of was difficult. ‘It felt counterintuitive,’ she aspiring writers to mix with the Wheeler rural Australia. said. ‘So often libraries play a critical role as a Centre folk, and it seemed like it could be community hub and trusted source of a perfect hothouse of creativity. Readings 'A wickedly dark debut – haunting information during a crisis.’ Like many agreed to throw in $20,000 a year, which and unputdownable.' organisations she and her colleagues thought would be enough for a small stipend and CHRISTIAN WHITE on The Silent Listener of different ways to engage with the public. some admin, and the Wheeler Centre Hot Hitler’s Horses Ironically, this has enabled the library to Arthur Brand Desk Fellowships were born. Over the years, connect with more people in regional How the Indiana Jones of the around 150 writers have passed through. art world took on neo-Nazis and Victoria and beyond. Despite the lockdown, Many of the writers have had their works the criminal underworld to solve Kate is optimistic about the future. The published including Ronnie Scott, Kirsty the mystery of the disappearance of Hitler's favourite statue. renovations give the library many more Murray, Jennifer Down, Rajith Savanadasa, opportunities to engage with the public, with Alice Bishop and Laura Jean McKay. I was How to Avoid a more spaces and better facilities. particularly thrilled that Jennifer Down’s Climate Disaster Readings has been part of the State Bill Gates collection of short stories, Pulse Points, was In this urgent, authoritative Library for many years, so it has been the 2018 winner of the Readings Prize for book, Gates sets out a equally hard for us to have had our SLV New Australian Fiction. And I am absolutely wide-ranging, practical plan for branch closed for such a long time, and we how the world can get to zero thrilled that Laura Jean McKay’s novel greenhouse gas emissions in time were all thrilled when we reopened a few The Animals in That Country has just been to avoid a climate catastrophe. weeks ago for the first time since last July. announced as the winner of the Victorian Kate commented: ‘Readings is such a huge Premier’s Literary Awards, Australia’s richest part of the SLV experience, and I loved literary award. As well as winning the fiction seeing the new Russell Street space thrive category, it won the overall Victorian Prize when it opened in 2019. The design makes for Literature as the best book of the year. Set it a seamless experience for library visitors. in a not-too-distant future Australia where With Readings reopening, it feels like the a pandemic is sweeping the country, it’s Library is really coming back to life,’ certainly a novel for our times. Our reviewer For our staff at the SLV Readings the Alison Huber called it ‘hugely entertaining lockdown was also tricky. Our manager Claire and superbly crafted’.

month include journalist Bret Christian who has investigated the Claremont murders On (Stalking Claremont); -based journalist Sandra Hogan who recounts the Events true story of three children growing up with parents who were ASIO spies (With My Little with Chris Gordon Eye); and the wonderful Tony Brooks (Bourke Street, My View from Here). If you are from Recently at a Readings you probably know Tony. He marketing team meeting seats himself close to Pellegrini’s most days we decided to theme this and is always up for a chat about what it’s like year, internally, as: ‘Better to be living on our streets. Than 2020’. Well, with that This year, Readings will be taking over in mind, I am delighted to let you know that The Collective on some evenings to host the Readings events program is continuing to book launches again. The Collective is a huge expand this year. We will be hosting events in warehouse event space (and importantly, our shops, in our local bars and theatres, and a bar) on Elgin Street in Carlton. The space – no surprises here – online. Using the Zoom allows us to safely celebrate together, but platform allows us to continue to bring you please note, you must book a place. We authors from all over the world. need to be able to contact you all if needed. We started the year strongly with Looking to the future, I am also excited that Angie Thomas, US author of international we have former Prime Minister bestseller The Hate U Give, who spoke talking about the influence of the Murdoch about her new YA novel Concrete Rose with media empire. This event will be held at the Readings’ own Leanne Hall. This powerful Athenaeum Theatre. Of course, we will be story examines racist vilification. Authors following all health protocols but truly, what a who bring us stories from across the oceans thrill it will be to simply see you. are vital to understanding what is happening On a personal note, receiving emails from elsewhere and indeed within our own you this past year made me feel connected country. We must stay informed and we to you all. Please do not stop writing and must keep caring. Do also tune into Zoe suggesting author events. Anywhere in the Daniel talking about her book Greetings from world is an option, so let me follow up any Trumpland. Zoe was the ABC’s US bureau dreams you have of listening to your favourite chief and has been based in Washington author. Together we can make this year better since December 2015, and the revelations than 2020. And of course, the easiest means of within her book will shock you to the core. finding out what is on is to visit our website or Australian authors we are hosting this subscribe to our e-newsletter. EXTRACT February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 5

Growing Up a spaceship; the glowing green numbers on During daylight hours, when I wasn’t Disabled in the pole could have been data on the ship’s in the emergency department for high Australia dashboard. potassium levels or the fluid building up on my chest, I wrote in my diary, which had Carly Findlay The cystic fibrosis patient in the been my confidant since high school. (ed.) adjacent bed, coughing up blood into the Black Inc. PB. nurse’s bedpan, wasn’t another person Dear Diary, $29.99 waiting for their organs to fail. She was my Available 2 Nightly dialysis sucked. Again. I didn’t fellow astronaut. February travel to the Moon or go for a spacewalk; Your suit’s running low on oxygen. instead I spent the whole night reading between the spasms and cramps. The display panel showed three hours and forty-five minutes until re-entry. Morning also sucked. Took tablets. Injected EPO. Tried going for a walk until Go! I’ll fix the heat shield. I’ll save you. my swollen ankles hurt too much to stand. Go back to the ship! Looked through the classifieds for a job Eventually she did go. suited to my degree and flexible enough for my dialysis schedule. I wondered whether the nurse asked her what she wanted to be when she grew Afternoon was okay. I’d passed out from Growing up, and whether the nurse knew that she fatigue at the kitchen table until the alarm wouldn’t get that chance. awoke me for my midday dialysis exchange. From the bestselling author of Superpower, a ground-breaking — Drained. Depressed. Desperate for sleep. Up sequel about Australia’s best After numerous hospital stays, endless Signing off until tomorrow, when we will path out of recession Disabled appointments, and surgery, I began to do it all again. Or leave to heaven and the realise why Mum had said the stars were stars. Dear Diary, tell me which is really the out of reach. Maybe the only way to travel worst option? in to the stars was via heaven, like other Months and years blurred by. During patients I’d met. another sleepless night dialysing, I was I knew astronauts were checked for reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Australia for the umpteenth time, trying to find out even the slightest hint of an infection before taking flight. I guessed that my that elusive meaning behind forty-two. potential for organ failure and need for I must have fallen asleep, because I in-flight dialysis meant I wouldn’t be awoke with a stomach cramp like nothing Edited by award-winning author and considered. Even after a transplant, the I’d ever felt before. I placed the waste activist Carly Findlay, Growing Up medical complications, risk of infection bag over my book to check the fluid for and rejection would be an issue. I was like Disabled in Australia is an essential infection and, through the usually clear the Invalid from Gattaca, who was never yellow liquid, I couldn’t see a single new anthology that brings together given a chance. word. The cloudy solution concealed more than forty personal stories of What I didn’t yet realise was that an everything. I should’ve been scared of the disabled writers and writers living elite gymnastics career was now also a potentially life-threatening infection, and with chronic illness. ‘The Bedridden ridiculous dream. Cramps, fatigue and yet a tranquillity settled over me. Like Astronaut’ by Melanie Rees, below, is nausea became the new norm. During high galactic hitchhiker Arthur Dent, I suddenly one such memorable story. school, the doctors convinced my parents understood everything as my Babel fish A rich collection of writing translated the invisible prose: Why waste that my body couldn’t cope anymore. from those negotiating Although I didn’t speak to them for a week, time on pointless ramblings in your diary disability in their lives – a group It was an innocent question, but when the I was almost relieved they made me quit and pining for something you know to be nurse asked what I wanted to be when I the arduous thirty-hours-a-week training impossible? Why write about disadvantages whose voices are not heard grew up the conversation left an aftertaste schedule. It gave me the chance to sleep. and what makes you unhappy? Write about often enough worse than my medication. what you want, what you imagine, what Sleep. That was all I seemed to do you dream behind that cloudiness. ‘She’s training as an elite gymnast, but during my school and university years, after that she wanted to be an astronaut leading up to complete organ failure and When I was too swollen to walk, I and go to the Moon.’ Mum’s voice was like kidney dialysis. could still write. When I was tethered soda; it sounded bubbly until those bubbles to drips or emergency haemodialysis On peritoneal dialysis, restful sleep reached the surface and popped. machines, I could still write. And even became a forgotten pleasure. Like a scene on the darkest, most painful days, when from Aliens, a catheter emerged from my Wanted? my bones ached too much to type, I could stomach, connecting me to my dialysis ‘I guess she could still work in still create new worlds. machine, filling and draining my stomach the scientific field,’ Mum continued. with fluid to remove toxins. Every. Single. Maybe in an alternate reality, like ‘Something at a desk.’ Night. It was hard to imagine the tube Stargate or Sliders, I would be looking out a Desk? from my stomach was an astronaut’s portal at the approaching Moon. safety tether now. Cramps pierced my ‘Sounds exciting.’ The nurse rolled up But why should I mourn the loss of a calves and shins, and as I attempted to the sleeves of my oversized hospital gown single trip so close to home, when I could walk the pain off, I tried to believe I was and connected a bag of saline to the needle visit a thousand worlds and moons? flying back to my ship. in my elbow crease. ‘We will just give her That’s why I’m happy and thriving in some fluid to help her kidneys.’ She talked But my tubing only let me walk a my reality, resting on a lumpy hospital bed to Mum about disability financial support, couple of metres, and that floor space was tethered to tubing, after a failed transplant as if I were the Invisible Man’s child. cluttered with the bucket containing my and more years on dialysis. I’m not staring A gripping exploration of the last night’s dinner and the plastic bag with Disability? I naively associated that at the flickering fluorescent light above complex relationship between the yellow waste in it. with amputees or paraplegics. Sure, or dwelling on biopsy pain and boredom. the heart, the brain and the they had just discovered the kidney I was trapped by my tubing, unable I’m holding a pen in my spare hand and human spirit. disease I was born with, and I was tired to sleep or escape. The display panel on gazing at distant stars, wondering which and vomiting regularly, but I’d just been the dialysis machine mocked me with will be next. selected for a junior training squad at its bright green words suggesting I have Institute of Sport. I was a ‘good night’. Toxins accumulating in Melanie Rees is a dual transplant survivor and physically fit and capable. my blood made sleep even more elusive: speculative fiction writer from South Australia. my skin itched so much I made it bleed, Her work has appeared in over 100 domestic and That night, as I attempted and failed to and restless leg syndrome caused spasms international publications such as Nature: Futures and sleep, I stared at the IV line – like a safety throughout my body. Cosmos. She was recently awarded The Hope Prize’s tether connecting my spacesuit to the Women’s Writing Career Development Scholarship. shuttle during my spacewalk – and gazed at Each morning, the yellow complexion the cardboard cut-out stars dangling from of Frankenstein’s monster glistened in the This is an edited extract from Growing Up Disabled the ceiling along with Disney characters. mirror and bloodshot anaemic eyes greeted in Australia, published by Black Inc. books and BLACKINCBOOKS.COM The stars could have been real. The IV pole me, as I spat out mouthwash to remove the available now at all Readings shops. and infusion pump could have been part of taste of bile and urea. 6 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 FEATURE

Clockwise from top left: Tony Birch, Leanne Hall, Alice Pung, Sally Rooney, Christos Tsiolkas, Ellen van Neerven, Gabrielle Williams, Kazuo Ishiguro, Omar Sakr, Jamie Marina Lau, and Emily Bitto, centre.

The most anticipated books of 2021

Dear Reader It doesn’t seem so long ago that I these stories, and his writing is particularly strong in its success, documenting the breadth and specificity of lived sat down to write the version of this development of character and dialogue. It’s a standout experience in Australia. This month Growing Up Disabled piece for the February 2020 Readings debut of the first half of the year. Our nonfiction pick in Australia joins this book family, edited by writer and Monthly, but then again, as I am is also a debut, Sam van Zweden’s collection of essays, activist Carly Findlay. Turn to page five to read an extract Alison Huber certainly not the first to observe, it Eating with My Mouth Open, a unique work of critical from this essential release. Our reviewers also point you Readings’ also feels like we have lived (or is body politics, which is also a great piece of food writing. to another polyphonic project, Coming of Age in the War head book that aged?) several years’ worth of In crime, we draw your attention to the new novel from buyer life since then (can I get a credit on Iain Ryan, The Spiral, an extremely clever, edgy crime these years, please universe). I reread take on the campus novel that happens to involve a that article before I sat down to write choose-your-own-adventure style sub-plot. Our reviewers A year with a new this year’s missive, and cringed also recommend several other strong debut novels – from slightly at what felt like our collective Rebecca Starford, Christy Collins, and Martin McKenzie- Tony Birch book is a naivety in the way things were pre- Murray – as well as the new novel from Steven Carroll, O, pandemic. Thankfully, there were which novelises the life of the author of the classic erotic good year; some constants throughout the novel, The Story of O. chaos of 2020, and the solace and In international fiction, our reviews will entice you entertainment to be found in books to discover the new works from Jennifer Nansubuga a year with two was one of them (changing release Makumbi, Melissa Broder and Mary Lawson, as well as dates and COVID-related supply debuts from Lucy Jago, Lauren Oyler, and Robert Jones Tony Birch books is chain issues notwithstanding!). Jr., whose highly anticipated novel The Prophets is off to a So here I am again, faithfully cracking start already, with our reviewer joining a chorus a great year. anticipating a new year of of international praise (and while stocks last we have a publishing, which begins with a great special-edition hardcover available for you to purchase at list of February books to help you the same price as the paperback, $32.99). Also take note on Terror, as well as Craig Munro’s book about Australia’s maintain that new year’s resolution of Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf book editing culture, Literary Lion Tamers, and Danielle to read more, and more widely. (you may remember the author’s contemporary retelling Celermajer’s reflection on the losses endured in our We begin the year with three very of that story from a few years ago, The Mere Wife), staff changing climate, Summertime. The climate emergency fine Books of the Month. Our fiction favourite Sigrid Nunez’s first novel reissued (A Feather on is also (back) on the agenda with big new releases from title is an excellent collection of short the Breath of God), Rebecca Watson’s experiment in form climatologist Michael E. Mann and Microsoft co-founder stories from Adam Thompson, Born (Little Scratch), and Anna North’s appealing feminist turned philanthropist Bill Gates. Also out in February Into This. Thompson takes readers Western, Outlawed, in which a brave coterie of ‘barren are major new releases from Henry Reynolds, Mariana into the heart of contemporary women’ run for their lives and make their own fortunes. Mazzucato, Simon Winchester and Christopher Harding. Aboriginal experience in each of Black Inc.’s ‘Growing Up’ series has been a wonderful The winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction FEATURE February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 7

make a splash. Another debut with great expectations a ‘queer ghost story set in Sydney and Beijing’. I was is Emily Spurr’s A Million Things (April), which earned quite smitten by Robert Hillman’s The Bookshop of the the author one of those legendary big book deals with Broken Hearted; Hillman’s new book, The Bride of the a US publisher that make writers’ dreams come true. Almond Tree, is due in July. Antoni Jach’s first novel Having a short story published in Granta is kind of a since Napoleon’s Double will be out the following month: big deal too: Chloe Wilson had that experience with her a novel with travel themes and European settings story ‘Hold Your Fire’ which gives her debut collection (remember when we could travel there?), it’s called its title (March). More very promising debut titles to look Travelling Companions. Anita Heiss has a new novel out for include Melissa Manning’s Smokehouse (April), in May called Bila Yarrudhang-galang-dhuray, and its Clare Moleta’s Unsheltered (May), Campbell Mattinson’s publisher says it’s the first commercial fiction release to We Were Not Men (June), and Filip Vukasin’s Modern have a title in Indigenous language (Wiradjuri) without Marriage (September). an English translation on the jacket. Later in the year, my Claire Thomas’s debut, Fugitive Blue, won the 2009 sources tell me we can expect a new Liane Moriarty novel Dobbie Award, and her second novel, The Performance (Apples Never Fall, September), a work of autofiction (March), has a great buzz behind it: it centres on three called 7 1/2 from Christos Tsiolkas, and a new novel called characters’ internal lives, and unfolds across the duration Scary Monsters from Michelle de Kretser. Oh boy! of a Beckett play. Laura Elizabeth Woollett also impressed Not to get too distracted by the year’s forthcoming with her first novel, Beautiful Revolutionary, which fiction, I do want to point out some of the great pieces delved into the dark world of Jim Jones and the People’s of nonfiction coming our way too. Sarah Krasnostein’s Temple, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s follow-up to her outstanding The Trauma Cleaner Literary Awards in 2019, so we’ll be keen to see what appears in March. The Believer is a well-timed she does in The Newcomer (July). Another celebrated exploration of the notion of belief during this time where emerging novelist, Mark Brandi, whose first two books our collective foundations are very shaky. Stan Grant’s (Wimmera and The Rip) have won him many fans at With the Falling of the Dusk (April) is a look at the global Readings, has a new book called The Others (July). status quo, and the change we are living through. We Briohny Doyle, the author of the acclaimed work of can also look forward to new work from Bri Lee and climate fiction, The Island Will Sink, has a second novel, Clementine Ford, as well as memoirs from former MP called Echolalia, due in June, another thought-provoking Kate Ellis, comedian and broadcaster Kate Langbroek, work whose context is how we are to live in a changing writers Monica Dux, Rick Morton and Catherine Deveny, environment. while Clem Bastow reflects on a mid-life diagnosis in Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s debut, The Tribe, her memoir, Late Bloomer (July). Turns Out I’m Fine was shortlisted for the inaugural Readings Prize, and is a great title for ’s memoir (April). Sarah Walker’s essay collection themed around the body in late capitalism sounds amazing: The First Time I Thought I Was Dying (August), as does writer and scientist Kaya This is, of course, Wilson’s literary memoir of transgender experience, As Beautiful as Any Other (May). Historian Mark McKenna’s our annual appetite- Return to Uluru is out in March, while Kate Holden’s The Winter Road (April) investigates the killing of environmental officer Glen Turner. The Care Factor whetting exercise, by Ailsa Wild (March) is getting great endorsements: it’s about a nurse called Sim and her work during so get set, for this the pandemic. In the same month, Yumiko Kadota’s Emotional Female is bound to produce much discussion, fast, furious, and as she recounts her time as a young hospital surgeon pushed to the edge by the culture of work in this high- stress, male-dominated workplace. Proud Gunai/Kurnai entirely incomplete woman, Veronica Gorrie, has written a memoir of her time in the police force called Black and Blue (April). rundown of what’s I always look forward to reading Anwen Crawford’s writing, and her essay collection, No Document, will be coming up. no exception (also April). Don Watson publishes his first major new work in some years with The Passion of Private White (October). Helen Garner will treat us to the third is now available locally (The Dead Are Arising: The Life so we’ve followed his career with interest. The Lebs was instalment of her diaries in November. of Malcolm X by Les and Tamara Payne), as is a reissue impressive too, and the timely anthology he edited, After And then, of course, there is the odd international of Joe Biden’s 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep. The Australia, was in our Top 100 bestselling books of 2020. author in whose new work you might hold a passing marvellous George Saunders has written a book about His new novel is The Other Half of You (June). One of the interest, such as Sally Rooney (cancel all plans in writing, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Amal Awad takes a contributors to Ahmad’s edited collection, award-winning September!), Willy Vlautin, Haruki Murakami, Colson look at new spiritualism (In My Past Life I Was Cleopatra); poet and essayist Omar Sakr, has been working his piece Whitehead, Maggie Nelson, Helen Oyeyemi, Elizabeth Vanessa Russell documents her journey to understand ‘White Flu’ into novel length (due later in the year). Strout, Kazuo Ishiguro, Imbolo Mbue, Max Porter, Patricia refugee experiences in The World Is Not Enough; artist Meanwhile, another of the Readings Prize alumni, Jamie Lockwood, John Banville, Lauren Groff, Jonathan and writer Fiona McGregor publishes a collection of Marina Lau, brings us Gunk Baby in May (a book that Franzen, Deborah Levy, Jim Shepard, Colm Tóibín, essays, Buried Not Dead. There’s more to February, of staff have been asking me about for years, so anticipation Vendela Vida, Karl Ove Knausgård, Sebastian Faulks, course, but as my word count builds, I must turn our has built to extreme levels!). Speaking of tremendous Rachel Cusk, Lucy Ellmann, Mieko Kawakami , Lisa attention to the books slightly further ahead of us, for anticipation, we’ve been hanging for Jennifer Down’s Taddeo (with a debut novel!), Richard Powers, David this is, of course, our annual appetite-whetting exercise, new book (you’ll recall her great debut, Our Magic Hour, Sedaris, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jarvis Cocker, Laurent so get set, for this fast, furious, and entirely incomplete and her Readings Prize-winning collection, Pulse Points): Binet, Pat Barker, Anthony Doerr, Rachel Kushner, and rundown of what’s coming up. get set for Proudflesh in September. I really like the sound Richard Osman, whose second Thursday Murder Club A year with a new Tony Birch book is a good year; a of several anthologies on the way: Flock (May, ed. Ellen book will delight many, many people. There are also year with two Tony Birch books is a great year, so bring on van Neerven) which showcases First Nations stories numerous exciting novels on the way from authors whose 2021! Tony has a collection of poetry, Whisper Songs, out from both established and emerging writers; Cop This name you don’t know yet, but to be honest, dear reader, in June, followed in August by a story collection called Lot (May, ed. Tobias McCorkell, May) whose contributors let’s deal with them as they appear. By the way, I should Dark as Last Night. And speaking of local celebrities, address class in Australia; Lines to the Horizon (April), a have mentioned that there will be a test on your retention Stella Prize-winning Emily Bitto’s second novel, Wild book of Australian surf writing, including a piece by Sam of the above information as a condition of entry next time Abandon, will also be out in the second half of this Carmody (who also happened to win the 2017 Readings you visit us! year, and I think we can expect it to be brilliant. Much Prize with The Windy Season). And finally, dear reader, you have come to expect anticipated too is One Hundred Days (June) the first novel The multi-talented writer/filmmaker/academic annual book releases from the talented staff of Readings, for adults by beloved writer Alice Pung. has her third novel, called After and this year they meet that expectation yet again. I so enjoy reading stories about non-normative Story, due in July; it follows an Indigenous mother Leanne Hall and Gabrielle Williams both have new work women (a description I would apply to almost every and daughter on a bus tour of historic literary sites on the way for young adult readers, which is terrific woman I’ve met in real life) and two exciting debuts out in England. Emily Maguire’s most recent novel, An news. If all of this is still not exciting enough for you, in March have scratched that itch: Madeleine Ryan’s Isolated Incident, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, I’m pleased to say that we have a 3-for-2 promotion on a quite stunning A Room Called Earth, and Ella Baxter’s and she publishes Love Objects in April, a novel which great range of nonfiction titles for the month of February audacious New Animal, which is already in development addresses the complex issue of hoarding. Jennifer Mills’s thanks to our friends at Penguin Random House, so do as a TV series. These are both novels that will challenge Dyschronia made the 2019 Miles Franklin shortlist, and come by one of our stores and have a rummage. We’d love readers in very different ways and I feel certain they will in August we’ll see The Airways which is described as to see you soon. 8 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 FICTION

world, and the shadow cast by World War II The Price of Two Sparrows and the Cold War continues to influence Christy Collins Fiction writers. Affirm Press. PB. $29.99 Over the last decade, there has been a Available now noticeable presence of female voices in the In a Sydney espionage fiction genre, including Jennie beachside suburb in Adam Thompson’s Born Into This was the perfect Rooney, Charlotte Philby (Kim Philby’s early 2004, a block of land short-story collection to start my 2021 reading year. This BOOK OF THE granddaughter), Kate Atkinson and Natasha next to a bird sanctuary remarkable debut crackles with wit, swagger and rage – as Walter. Rebecca Starford’s new World War II has been purchased by MONTH entertaining and affecting as it is thought-provoking – and spy thriller, The Imitator, is another welcome members of the Muslim Australian assuredly introduces Aboriginal (pakana) writer Thompson as addition to the espionage canon, capturing community to build a Fiction a fresh new voice to follow in the Australian fiction landscape. the look and bustle of wartime London, as mosque. The mosque has Thompson was an inaugural recipient of the Wheeler well as the anxiety and dread associated with been designed by talented young architect Centre’s The Next Chapter scheme (through which he has the occupation. Bored of her job in ladies’ Salema with the intention of incorporating been mentored by Cate Kennedy), and many of our country’s fashion, Evelyn, a young Oxford graduate, the natural environment to create a finest writers including Ellen van Neerven, Tara June Winch embarks on a new career as a spy working for peaceful area for people to gather and pray. and Tony Birch are all singing his praises. MI5. Evelyn never did quite fit into the social Meanwhile ornithologist Heico has been circles at boarding school or university, asked by the media to comment on the Every encounter in this collection and the mask-wearing and deceit in these upcoming development and its effect on is charged with tension and energy; settings make her a natural candidate for the migratory birds in that vicinity. Thompson’s dialogue sparks on clandestine work. However, the deeper the Unaware what the proposed development infiltration, the greater the cost, and the the page. is, Heico sends compromised information harder it is to distinguish friend from foe, to a paper which overlays years of data onto obscuring true objectives. Readers will know the one map thus exaggerating the It’s clear why from the first page of Born Into This. of Starford through her work as co-founder visitation rate of birds to the area. These 16 tight and punchy stories are distinctly Tasmanian, Born Into This of Kill Your Darlings and her memoir about The Price of Two Sparrows is the debut each with a Tasmanian Aboriginal character at its centre. bullying, Bad Behaviour. The Imitator is a novel from Christy Collins, a writer from an Adam Thompson Every encounter in this collection is charged with tension UQP. PB. $29.99 bold character study from a versatile and academic background whose fiction talents and energy; Thompson’s dialogue sparks on the page. adept writer. Available now have already been recognised through the Yet while the stories in Born Into This are all driven by Julia Jackson is from Readings Carlton 2015 Viva La Novella Prize (among other their human conflicts, each protagonist’s relationship to achievements). Collins’s background in their environment (both urban and natural) is deeply considered and fully realised. both the academic and the creative has Thompson leaves the reader with a profound sense of what we’re losing when it comes to O produced a unique and intelligent piece of both the damage and disappearance of our native environment and the cultural practices Steven Carroll work that explores the things people hold that rely on its survival. Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 sacred and the importance and challenges Born Into This not only stands out as an engaging short-story collection from an Available now of creating and protecting sacred exciting young writer, but will open readers’ minds to the diverse lived experiences of First Almost 70 years ago, spaces. Salema is a wonderful character: Nations people. I hope we are all approaching the year ahead with a strengthened resolve a slim little book was purposeful and confident, yet realistic. She to listen deeply and actively to First Nations Australians so that we may better advocate for published by a small is a perfect complement to Nahla (Heico’s justice and equality in this country. This is vital storytelling that we should all be reading, French publishing house, cleaner) who has recently moved to and I couldn’t recommend it more highly. sans publicity or fanfare, its author a previously Australia and is exactly the type of person Stella Charls is from Readings Carlton unheard-of woman by the for whom the mosque is being built. Most name of Pauline Réage. intriguing, however, is Kadim, the teller of The Story of O would go on to become one fables and stories and the only character written in first person. uncovered on site, the exploration of of the most divisive (and bestselling) works Australian the friendship between the two young of literature ever published, celebrated by I had to spend days thinking about this Fiction women, the politics of the personal some, reviled by others. For decades, book before I could even attempt to start and academic relationship between the Réage’s identity remained a mystery, many writing about it and I have a feeling that’s husband-and-wife pair leading the digs, believing The Story of O could never have exactly what Collins wants us to do. She The Beach Caves or Sue’s growing feelings for Brian and her been written by a woman. Then, in 2004, it presents the issues in all their complexity Trevor Shearston reluctance to explore them. With so many was revealed that the true author was and readers are asked to respond by drawing Scribe. PB. $29.99 threads already, the arrival of the mystery Dominique Aury, a refined, intellectually on their own experiences and beliefs. Available now in the book’s second half was a slight passionate French woman, respected for This is a perfect book for both private contemplation and discussion with others. Annette Cooley and shock. When it does arrive, it explores the her translations and her years of excellent Sue Klima met in decades-long consequences of decisions work as an editor at leading French Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton their first prehistory made on those sites. Shearston wrangles publisher Gallimard. Many have since tutorial. Quickly realising these threads into a satisfying conclusion, speculated how such a woman could have The Speechwriter they were as ambitious as though it’s not tidy on all fronts, and I was written this novel. Moreover, why would Martin McKenzie-Murray each other, they chose left thinking how I would have responded she have written it? Scribe. PB. $29.99 friendship over to the situations Annette found herself in at Enter Steven Carroll and his new novel Available now competition. Now it’s this early stage in her life and career. O. Some might say that a book that seeks to It is a funny old time 1970 and the pair are in their final year with Suzanne Steinbruckner is from Readings reimagine Aury’s motivations for writing to be writing political promising careers ahead of them. Annette’s Carlton The Story of O could never be written by a satire. I mean, satire is thesis supervisor Professor Aled Wray has man, but I would argue Carroll has done everyday reality in our year called for volunteers at a new The Imitator a spectacular job. O is beautifully written, 2021. And so, when a archaeological site on the Rebecca Starford at once a heartbreaking love story and a political satire comes deft exploration of just why The Story of south coast. Annette and Sue are keen to be A&U. PB. $29.99 along, I am eager to see O so offends those who despise it. The involved firsthand in this exciting and Available now where it can possibly go. significant discovery which may prove that multifaceted conversations between In writing this The answer is inwards, and in Martin local First Nations people were less Carroll’s Dominique and her married lover review I simply can’t McKenzie-Murray’s The Speechwriter, we nomadic than previously believed. Jean (also her publisher) enthral the reader, ignore the fact that 2021 explore the inner workings of a nascent Later that year, Wray and his wife conveying the progression of this unique will mark the 70th political powerbroker. return from the coast after finding a cave relationship, and provoking deeper thought anniversary of the Toby has grown up with the collected they believe will link the two sites and as to why the world finds the baring of defections of Soviet speeches of Churchill and the injustice solidify the hypotheses. At this new site female desire so appalling, even frightening. agents Guy Burgess and of being denigrated for his seriousness Sue develops feelings for an engineering Carroll is known and celebrated for Donald Maclean across at school. In the first of many literal student, Brian, and their tentative his talent in writing all-encompassing the Iron Curtain. Both were high-ranking embodiments of frustrated ideals, a young friendship results in Sue being the one historical novels, often focusing on other double agents embedded in the upper Toby with gastro literally soils his collected Brian turns to when he notices features that writers, their skill with words and their echelons of the British civil service. These speeches of Churchill before he has had point to further archaeological discoveries. imagined motivations for writing. Were two, along with Antony Blunt, John a chance to read them. In Toby we have a Tensions and secrecy on camp are already Aury alive to read O, I have no doubt she Cairncross and Kim Philby, were all frustrated idealist: frustrated by growing high due to the importance of the work, would be well pleased with his portrayal recruited while at Cambridge University in up in an environment that doesn’t seem to when one of the party goes missing. of her: a woman brave even when afraid, the 1930s. The growing threat of fascism, care about lofty ideals, and frustrated by thrilled by secrecy and danger, most free The Beach Caves is a fascinating civil war in Spain and the decline of the his own inability to transcend them. when defeated and occupied. book that left me eager to find out what aristocracy in the UK were all factors that This is a satire for all of us who can see happened next; whether this be what’s drove men and women into the clandestine Tye Cattanach is from Readings Carlton ourselves in Toby. He is McKenzie-Murray’s FICTION February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 9

everyman of early 21st century political home with machinery than people rescues discard without hesitation. finds her joy in spoonfuls of Splenda, low- idealism, crystallised by The West Wing and a drowning kitten. Populated with This unvarnished, unflinching portrait cal protein bars, and best of all, her daily running afoul of the growing tide of populist eccentric, compelling characters, Pushing of millennial womanhood is so frank as cup of fat-free, sugar-free, low-carb frozen rhetoric. As each day of the last few years Back features John Kinsella’s most to be sometimes shocking, but Oyler’s yoghurt (no toppings) from the Yo!Good seems to have brought a new level of crisis haunting and timely short stories to date. grasp of the modern world and those who yoghurt bar near her work. to the world and the absurdity of political inhabit it is extraordinarily witty, wry, and Prompted by her questionable response, I take heart in one of Toby’s early Repentance oh so incisive. Fake Accounts is perfect for therapist, Rachel begins a no-contact detox acts of government service. In a moment Alison Gibbs fans of Sarai Walker, Kristen Roupenian or from her mother and uses “Theraputticals” more Parks and Recreation than The West Scribe. PB. $32.99 Patricia Lockwood. putty to craft an overweight doll that is Wing, Toby and a local constituent share a Available now Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager meant to resemble her worst fears. The moment of connection while burying birds It’s the summer of 1976, at Readings doll goes missing and, soon after, the that have been the victims of feral cat attacks and the winds of change Yo!Good counter boy is replaced with an on the median strip: ‘Silently we dug six small are blowing through the orthodox Jewish girl with light blue eyes, trenches with our hands. I slowed my pace to The First Woman small town of Repentance. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi pink lips, rolls of fat under her clothes, match Arthur’s, who seemed to be struggling, and three moles on her neck that look like The old families farmed Oneworld. HB. $34.99 uncomplainingly, with arthritic fingers.’ chocolate drops. Her name is Miriam and cattle and cut timber, but Available now A satire needs heart as much as not only does she wilfully ignore Rachel’s the new hippy settlers have 1970s Uganda: cleverness to be effective, and in these instructions to only fill the cup to the line, a different perspective on halfway through Idi moments Martin McKenzie-Murray she thoroughly covers the yoghurt with free the natural order. A tale of a country town Amin’s terrible reign. The delivers – on the median strip. rainbow sprinkles. The dam cracks, and and its rhythms, Repentance is also the story First Woman details the Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton Rachel finds herself sliding into a world of of modern Australia at one of its flashpoints. coming of age of Kirabo, a flavour, feasting, lust and obsession that headstrong young woman may not be as bad for her as she thinks it is. Eye of a Rook Sargasso from a small Ugandan Broder has written another story about Josephine Taylor Kathy George village who begins to feel chasing desire, but this time it’s hopeful. Fremantle Press. PB. $32.99 HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 the terrible absence of her unknown mother You can taste all the food in this book and Available now Available now as she enters her teenage years. A stunning the sex scenes are excellent, but aside from In 1860s London, Arthur’s As a child, Hannah lived at epic and breathtaking tour de force that its sensuous triumphs, there is a deep wife is struck down by a Sargasso, the isolated spans generations, the novel explores the sweetness and generosity at the heart of pain for which she can find beachside home designed very concept of Ugandan womanhood while this story that is downright moving. no words. In modern-day by her architect father. tracking Kirabo’s first , first love and Perth, Alice and her older Hannah’s idyllic childhood first betrayals in a rapidly changing world. Anna Thwaites is from Readings St Kilda husband find their ended in tragedy, but now The novel is a particularly successful marriage threatened as as an adult she is back to example of the coming-of-age story due to its A Net for Small Fishes Alice investigates the relive the memories of her careful blend of universality and specificity. Lucy Jago history of hysteria and the treatment of the past. With its empty houses and lonely What does it mean to be on the brink of Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 female body. A compassionate debut that shores, Sargasso is a journey into the dark womanhood? As a feminist – or rather, Available 16 February explores literary history and the relationship lands of the Australian Gothic with echoes mwenkanonkano (a Ugandan movement that Last year’s big between body and self. of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. predates Western feminism)? In a country in historical fiction turmoil? As a girl without a mother? Author release was Hilary The Funny Thing about Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi draws upon Mantel’s hefty conclusion Norman Foreman International mythology, folklore and biblical tales to build to her brilliant Tudor-era Julietta Henderson Fiction a story that transcends the expectations of a trilogy The Mirror and the Bantam. PB. $32.99 bildungsroman or a feminist take on a classic Light. This year’s could Available now trope. The characters and situations are too well be historian Lucy Norman’s mum Sadie Fake Accounts present, too real, to act merely as allegory. Jago’s A Net for Small Fishes. Kirabo refuses to act as a stand in for all knows she won’t win Lauren Oyler Fast forward from the death of Thomas young women – her voice is too loud, her Mother of the Year anytime Fourth Estate. PB. $29.99 Cromwell in 1540 to 1616, during the reign perspective too unique. And don’t even get soon. But when Norman’s Available now of James I of England, and you’ll come me started on her grandmothers. best friend dies, she I know it takes years across the Overbury murder scandal upon resolves to do anything to for a book to be Published overseas last year, which this novel is based. In a nutshell, make her grieving son’s written, edited and Makumbi’s novel made it on to most of Thomas Overbury died while imprisoned wishes come true: ‘Find printed, but Lauren Oyler’s the ‘Best of’ lists of 2020 and I would in the Tower of London, but his supporters Dad’ and ‘Get to the Edinburgh Fringe’. With debut novel Fake Accounts be shocked if it didn’t find its way onto weren’t satisfied he died from natural their friend Leonard and his vintage Austin feels so immediate that it’s Readings’ Best of 2021. The book has causes, and it later transpired he was Maxi, mother and son set off from Cornwall hard to believe it wasn’t earned well-deserved comparisons to Tsitsi poisoned. An investigation instigated on a road trip that will change their lives. written last week and just Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and by the King revealed the architects of beamed into my hands via some kind of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. It has the murder plot: Robert Carr, Earl of Low Expectations publishing magic. Even from the very first the same mastery of language and ability Somerset, a court favourite; his wife Stuart Everly-Wilson page it’s painfully relatable, imbued with to transport the reader to another time and Frances Carr (nee Howard), formerly the Text. PB. $32.99 that feeling that we’re spiralling inexorably place. And as we pass our first COVID-19 wife of Robert Devereux; as well as the Available now towards our own doom but we’re too anniversary, who wouldn’t want to be in Somersets’ accessories, Anne Turner and another time and place? Read immediately. 1975, Western Sydney. A numbed by the 24-hour news cycle, our Richard Weston. street where dependence on social media, and our own Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton Four people were hanged at Tyburn keep an eye on everyone impotence to do anything about it. gallows, including Turner, while the else’s business. A boy and Told in an almost stream-of- Milk Fed Somersets were spared from the noose his mum – and a family consciousness first person, this novel Melissa Broder by the King. Through the lens of fiction, secret. Devon flies under sweeps you through the unnamed narrator’s Bloomsbury Circus. PB. $29.99 however, Jago reclaims Anne Turner and the radar and does nothing life as she makes two discoveries: one, that Available now Frances from extant, libellous historical to correct any assumptions her boyfriend was secretly an influential Milk Fed, Melissa accounts that malign these women, and of his low intelligence. But when the chilling conspiracy theorist; and two, that he has Broder’s latest novel focuses on their transgressive womanhood revelation of his mother’s past unexpectedly died unexpectedly (and, annoyingly, before (following The Pisces), is a instead. English women, according to blows open his view of himself, Devon she has a chance to confront him about his funny, sexy feast of a story Jago, were regarded as ‘too independent’, realises he has a score to settle. secret identity and dump him). Fleeing to about indulgence, self- particularly of their spouses. Here, both for reasons that are unclear even to denial and female love. women are presented as highly intelligent, Pushing Back herself, she embarks on her own campaign Rachel is a bored, and with far more complex motives for John Kinsella of dissimulation, recreating herself again lonely and cynical their actions. Under Jago’s careful hand, Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 and again for the people she meets. atheistic Jewish girl in her mid-20s Frances and Anne both have a strong resolve Available now Whether she’s a freelance chartered who works as an assistant for a talent that fuels their sense of self and underpins A couple make love in an accountant with a suspiciously poor grasp management company in . She their unlikely friendship across the social abandoned asbestos of tax law, or a massage therapist with has no partner or friends to speak of. She divide. The large ensemble of characters house; a desperate carpet a calling for acupuncture, she analyses lives alone and her days are dominated by who occupy these pages add colour and cleaner beholden to the every encounter with a forensic precision thoughts of food and the anticipation of her substance to the plot as it wends its way gig economy begs a that’s equally profound as it is narcissistic. next meal. But thanks to a life under the towards its bitter end. A Net for Small Fishes financially distressed The result is a disorientating portrait of judgement of her fat-phobic mother, Rachel is a great read, full of scandal, illicit activity client not to cancel his a person who doesn’t exist except as a is also obsessed with remaining skinny. and the buzz of a gossipy court. booking; a man more at character she’s trying on for size and will She counts her calories meticulously, and Julia Jackson is from Readings Carlton 10 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 FICTION

The Prophets with feeding her next-door neighbour’s cat Beowulf: A New Translation mesmerising story about the tangled Robert Jones Jr. while Mrs Orchard is in hospital. So when she Maria Dahvana Headley nature of parent-child relationships. Riverrun. HB. sees an unfamiliar man enter the house with Scribe. PB. $27.99 $32.99 (hardback at paperback boxes, she is shocked and confused. Available now Florence Adler Swims Forever price) Liam has moved into the house – left A man seeks to prove Rachel Beanland Available now to him by Mrs Orchard – following a bitter himself as a hero. A S&S. PB. $29.99 Though we’re only at breakup and quitting his accounting job in monster seeks silence in Available now the start of 2021, Toronto. He can’t work out what to do with his territory. A warrior Atlantic City, 1934. Esther Robert Jones Jr.’s debut his life and he hopes temporarily living in seeks to avenge her and Joseph Adler are living The Prophets already feels the house will give him some breathing murdered son. A Beowulf in an apartment above like one of the big books of space. However, the house is in disrepair, for the 21st century. This their bakery with their two the year. Set on an and to sell it he needs to spend longer new, feminist translation daughters Florence and antebellum plantation in in the aptly named town of Solace. He is of Beowulf by the acclaimed author of The Fannie. Florence has the deep south of unaware that Clara is spying on him. He is Mere Wife brings to light elements and returned from college, Mississippi, The Prophets is Jones’s answer also puzzled why Mrs Orchard would leave interpretations never before translated determined to train for the to the question: ‘did Black, queer people him the house. into English. English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant exist in the distant past?’ The answer is of The third character is Mrs Orchard. In again after recently losing a baby, is on course they did, and in this exquisite hospital with a terminal heart condition, her A Bright Ray of Darkness bedrest. Over the course of a summer, three imagining, he explores what that existence story is narrated as if to her late husband. Ethan Hawke generations must grapple with heartbreak, could have been like. Toward the end of her story, we learn about William Heinemann. PB. $32.99 romance, and the weight of family secrets. her connection to Liam in his younger years, The novel is told from the perspectives Available now and their bond, which ends in catastrophe. of several characters, principally Isiah William Harding is a man The Four Winds This novel is literary fiction at its and Samuel, two young enslaved men in torment, disgusted with Kristin Hannah finest, without a word out of place. It also whose relationship grants them an almost himself after the collapse of Pan Macmillan. PB. $32.99 manages to be a page turner as the reader Edenic sweetness against the daily terrors his marriage, still half- Available now races to find the connection between Mrs of slavery. Their love is a quiet rebellion, hoping for a reconciliation. Elsa had everything she’d Orchard and Liam. There is also the search a deliberate choice in which they can, He throws himself into his ever wanted: a family, a for 16-year-old Rose, which frustrates however briefly, escape the physical and latest gig: a challenging home and a farm on the police, and devastates her parents and spiritual deprivation the White slave performance of Henry IV Great Plains. When little sister. owners inflict on them. under the leadership of a brilliant director. A drought hits and her How Isiah and Samuel’s relationship Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn blistering story of an actor making his husband leaves, Elsa is unfolds is seen through the eyes of a Broadway debut as his marriage implodes, forced to choose between sprawling cast, including the other slaves The Arrest Ethan Hawke’s novel explores shame, fighting for the land she on the plantation, who respond in different Jonathan Lethem beauty and the moral power of art. loves or taking her children west in search ways to this relationship in their midst. Atlantic. PB. $29.99 of a better life. Set against the backdrop of One of them, Amos, has newly found Available now The Children’s Train the Great Depression, The Four Winds is a Christianity and sees Isiah and Samuel as Sandy Duplessis led a Viola Ardone & Clarissa Botsford stirring journey of survival and hope. people to be saved. The slave owners also good life as a screenwriter (trans.) get their own point-of-view chapters, and until the Arrest: a HarperVia. PB. $32.99 Fragile Monsters their careless cruelty is chilling; you’re mysterious event that Available now Catherine Menon constantly tense with dread at what their caused the world’s Though Mussolini has Viking. PB. $32.99 every capricious whim could mean for the technology to just stop been defeated, the war Available now people they control. Readers should be working. Post-Arrest, has devastated Italy, On a visit to her childhood aware that Jones’s writing, while rich with Sandy lives with his sister especially the south. home in rural Malaysia, feeling and metaphor, is unflinching at on her organic farm. But then an old Thousands of southern Durga finds herself stuck cataloguing the dehumanising effects of Hollywood colleague explodes back into children are sent away to with her sharp-tongued slavery. Jones has described the writing of his life in a retrofitted nuclear-powered spend the harsh winter grandmother. In the rising his novel as an act of witnessing, and no supercar, with plans for producing one with families in the north. heat, both women must matter what your knowledge of this era is, more extravaganza. Seven-year-old Amerigo is one of them, untangle the truth from witnessing the reality of slavery through and through his curious, innocent eyes, we the myth of their family’s fiction – an empathetic medium – is by The Art of Losing see a nation rising from the ashes of war past. Fragile Monsters traces one family’s necessity hard. Alice Zeniter & Frank Wynne and the possibilities for a brighter future. story from 1920 to the present day, However, Jones also finds power in (trans.) unravelling a spellbinding tale of love, war, the small details. Every act of tenderness Picador. PB. $32.99 A Crooked Tree betrayal and redemption. and care, every decision people choose Available 9 February Una Mannion for themselves is magnified. And there Naïma has always known Faber. PB. $27.99 are moments of beauty and defiance in How the One-Armed Sister that her family came from Available now the novel where I felt fiercely elated. The Sweeps Her House Algeria, but as a child born Prophets feels like Jones’s attempt to reach Rage. That’s the feeling in Cherie Jones and raised in France, that Tinder Press. PB. $32.99 across history, to create a link in a narrative the car as Ellen’s mother meant very little to her, of love and resistance led by Black queer swerves over and orders Available now particularly given her people and Black women. This is an ever- her daughter out onto the When Lala’s waters break family’s silence on the shifting, polyphonic epic that leaves you roadside. Ignoring the unexpectedly during the subject. Now Naïma is shaking with rage, love and a desire for protests of her other night, her husband is heading to Algeria for herself, in search of justice and freedom. It is an astonishing children, she accelerates nowhere to be found. the answers to her history. Spanning three achievement that lives up to the enormity away. What would you do Adan has been out doing a generations and 70 years, this translated of its subject matter. as you watch your little sister getting burglary that has gone novel is a powerful and moving family story. smaller in the rear-view window? How far horribly wrong, and now Jackie Tang is the editor of Readings Monthly would you be willing to go to help her? The he’s killed a white man. At Night All Blood Is Black Gallagher children are going to find out. Mira has only recently married Peter, the A Town Called Solace David Diop & Anna Moschovakis husband who now lies dead. Set in Mary Lawson (trans.) A Feather on the Breath of God Barbados, this kaleidoscopic debut follows Chatto & Windus. PB. $32.99 Pushkin. HB. $24.99 Sigrid Nunez four people, each desperate to escape a Available 16 February Available now Virago. PB. $22.99 legacy of violence in so-called ‘paradise’. It’s wonderful to start Alfa Ndiaye and Mademba Available 9 Februrary the year reading a Diop are two of the many A young woman looks How We Are Translated novel that’s tender, well- Senegalese tirailleurs who back to the world of her Jessica Gaitán Johannesson written and hard to put fight in the Great War immigrant parents: a Scribe. HB. $29.99 down. This book is set in under the French flag. Chinese-Panamanian Available now rural Toronto in 1972, and When Mademba is father and a German Swedish immigrant the landscape and weather mortally wounded, Alfa mother, who meet in Kristin won’t talk about affect the mood of the story. throws himself into post-war Germany and the Project growing inside The story is told from the perspective of three combat with so much renewed vigour that settle in . her. Her Brazilian-born characters; the first one we meet is eight- he begins to scare even his fellow Growing up in a housing project, the Scottish boyfriend Ciaran year-old Clara, a hyper-vigilant girl who comrades. David Diop captures the tragedy narrator escapes into dreams inspired by won’t speak English at all; stands at the window waiting for her runaway of a young man’s mind hurtling towards her parents’ stories. From award-winning he’s trying to immerse sister Rose to come home. Clara is tasked madness with hypnotic, powerful prose. author of The Friend, comes this himself in Swedish. Their FICTION February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 11

Edinburgh flat is starting to feel very small. War II story, this is a stirring novel of heroism As this young couple is forced to confront found in the quietest of places. the thing that they are both avoiding, they must reckon with their place in the world. Prosopagnosia Sonia Hernandez & Samuel Rutter Insatiable (trans.) Daisy Buchanan Scribe. PB. $24.99 Sphere. PB. $32.99 Available now Available 9 February Fifteen-year-old Berta Stuck in a dead-end job doesn’t believe she and estranged from her deserves beautiful things. best friend: Violet’s life is Her mother feels it is her not going to plan. When responsibility to make her glamorous Lottie offers and her daughter’s lives as A reimagining of what might ‘This novel made me want to Violet the chance to join happy as possible. When a have been, the story of a novel retire from contemporary reality. her exciting start-up, she famous artist gifts Berta a that took on a life of its own I loved it’ bites. Only it soon becomes painting, it sets in motion an uncanny game and mirrored its times in a way ZADIE SMITH clear that Lottie and her husband Simon of shifting identities that tests the limits of the author never dreamt of. are also inviting her into their lives. Sad, what one wants and what one can achieve. funny and hopeful, Insatiable is about lust, longing and the need to be loved. A River Called Time Courttia Newland Little Scratch Canongate. PB. $29.99 Rebecca Watson Available now Faber. PB. $27.99 The Ark was built to save Available now the lives of the many, but little scratch tells the story rapidly became an of a day in the life of an enclosure for the elite. unnamed woman, living Armed with a secret in a lower-case world of power, Markriss Denny is demarcated fridge shelves one of a select few from and office politics; the masses who wins a clock-watching and chance to live within its walls. Once inside WhatsApp notifications. In the Ark, however, Denny learns of another A human history of land around Discover a magical world the experimental tradition of Grief Is the of his kind, whose existence could spell the world – who mapped it, where lost things are found ... Thing with Feathers comes this original novel catastrophe for him and for humanity. owned it, stole it, cared for it, that reveals one young woman’s every fought for it and gave it back – thought over the course of 24 hours. The Shape of Darkness from bestselling author Laura Purcell Simon Winchester. Open Water Raven Books. PB. $29.99 Caleb Azumah Nelson Available now Viking. HB. $29.99 As the age of the Available now photograph dawns in Two young people meet at a Victorian Bath, silhouette pub in South East London. artist Agnes is struggling to Both are Black British, both keep her business afloat. won scholarships to private One by one, her clients start schools, both are now being murdered shortly artists trying to make their after sitting for Agnes. Why mark. Tentatively, tenderly, is the killer targeting her business? Turning they fall in love. At once an to a spirit medium, Agnes attempts to find aching love story and a potent insight into out, but in doing so, may have unleashed race and masculinity, Open Water asks what something that she can never put back. it means to be vulnerable, and to find safety in love, only to lose it. These Ghosts Are Family KRISTIN HANNAH KATE MOSSE Maisy Card Outlawed S&S. PB. $29.99 ‘Powerful and compelling, I loved it’ A breathtaking novel of revenge, persecution Anna North Available now Delia Owens and loss, sweeping from and Chartres to W&N. PB. $32.99 Stanford Solomon has A deeply moving, powerful story about the the City of Tears itself – the great refugee city of Amsterdam – this is a story of one family’s Available now done something no one strength and resilience of women and the bond between mother and daughter, by fight to stay together, to survive and to find It is every woman’s duty to could ever imagine. He is a the multi-million-copy number one each other, against the devastating have a child, and after a man who faked his own bestselling author. tides of history . . . year of marriage and no death and stole the pregnancy – in a town identity of his best friend. where barren women are Now, nearing the end of hanged as witches – Ada his life, Stanford is about must flee to survive. She to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley. joins the Hole in the Wall A transporting debut novel that reveals the Gang, whose leader wants to create a haven ways in which a Jamaican family forms and for women outcasts, but is Ada ready to fractures over generations. make the necessary sacrifices to make this dream a reality? We Are Not in the World JAMES COMEY ELIZABETH FARRELLY Conor O’Callaghan The Paris Library Doubleday. PB. $29.99 This will not come as a surprise to anyone, Janet Skeslien Charles Available 16 February ‘Great cities need great champions. Sydney including even to the President’s most ardent needs Elizabeth Farrelly.’ Two Roads. PB. $32.99 Heartbroken after a painful defenders: Donald Trump lied to me Adam Spencer from the start. Available 9 February affair, a man drives a lorry Columnist Elizabeth Farrelly brings her unique Odile Souchet is obsessed from England to France Saving Justice is James Comey’s searing perspective as architectural writer and former memoir and guide to reclaiming truth in the city councillor to a burning question for our with books, and her new with his off-the-rails institutions of justice, which have been so times: how will we live in the future? job at the American Library twenty-something daughter badly damaged under Trump. in Paris is a dream come in tow. As they journey true. When war is declared, along the motorways and

the Library is determined service stations, father and Love talking about books? to remain open. But then daughter must repair their deeply scarred Find us online at Pan Macmillan Australia the Nazis invade Paris, and relationship. Emotional and literary, this is everything changes. Based on a true World an exquisite portrait of grief and shame. 12 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 CRIME

their lives. His job is not to help, but just to to her father, who is dying, and who be present, and on his latest visit, he makes a horrifying confession. The very Dead brings a young trainee Exiteer with him. next day he is dead – but not of natural When things on the visit turn horribly causes. Add in the investigating police Write wrong, Felix goes on the run, unable to officer who can’t stop thinking of the turn himself in until he’s figured out what disappearance of a child 20 years earlier with Fiona Hardy has happened – and who can look after his and you have an intriguing and shocking beloved dog when he’s arrested. Amid all debut thriller. this death and deception, Felix may just I could tell you that Iain Ryan’s The Spiral is an find himself a reason to live. BOOK OF THE immersive, captivating crime book, but that wouldn’t be True Crime MONTH enough to explain it. I could say it’s a twisted, psychological fever dream, but that’s not quite it. I could tell you it’s an The Second Son Crime Australian campus thriller, and that wouldn’t be wrong, but Loraine Peck The Schoolgirl Strangler it’s not quite right either. What I know for sure is this: you Text. PB. $32.99 Katherine Kovacic Available now won’t have the same experience of this book that I did. Echo Publishing. PB. $32.99 Have you ever read a Available now The Spiral keeps you constantly book and imagined it Crime fiction writer as a gripping, Katherine Kovacic wrongfooted: it’s a book where truth 10-episode Australian and memories cannot be trusted; where turns her hand to crime drama? The historical Australian violence and darkness are not always the Second Son is like that: true crime with this most terrifying paths you could take. action-packed, full of horrific story of a serial surprises, and with killer and the years of Dr Erma Bridges works at the University of , enough family tension botched investigations studying the works of Archibald Moder, the author of the to keep you hooked with every chapter. that saw more deaths choose-your-own-adventure Zone Mover series. Jenny, her The death of Ivan, the eldest son of the and false accusations before the Novak family, sees Ivan’s brother Johnny The Spiral assistant, has vanished, along with the dictaphone that held perpetrator was eventually caught. In her interview with the reclusive, ageing Moder. Erma sets out given an ultimatum by his crime boss November 1930, 12-year-old Mena Iain Ryan to find the missing Jenny, but it turns out Jenny is hunting father: kill the man who did it. But Griffiths was led from a park to a horrific Echo Publishing. PB. Johnny isn’t so sure that the killer his $29.99 Erma too – and she has a bloodthirsty plan in store. As Erma fate, and found hours later strangled to father suspects is the person behind his Available now recovers from what happened, she attempts to find out what death in an abandoned house. After a sent Jenny into a spiral of violence, and to track down the beloved brother’s death – though second girl was killed months later, it elusive dictaphone. All the while, at night, she dreams of something is definitely simmering in became clear that this was no one-off, but one of Moder’s creations, Sero the Barbarian, who wreaks havoc across the lands trying to Sydney’s underbelly. The solution seems Melbourne’s police force had no prior reclaim their lost memories, following a path only the reader can set for them. simple: one last heist before Johnny working knowledge of how to deal with a ditches crime forever to keep his wife The Spiral keeps you constantly wrongfooted: it’s a book where truth and memories case like this. Here, Kovacic tells the story Amy and young son Sasha safe. But of cannot be trusted; where violence and darkness are not always the most terrifying paths of how the case was finally solved, and course, nothing is ever that simple. you could take. In here, the only person you can really trust is yourself, the reader, turning the devastation it left in its wake. Besides, Amy has her own opinions on those pages, following Erma to her absolution, trying to find the best path – if only you what’s going on and her own opinions on could find it for her. what she’ll do to protect her family. Also out in My Best Friend’s Murder January and The Paris Affair her place of shelter seems under threat – Polly Phillips Pip Drysdale but how did anyone find them? Who is it S&S. PB. $29.99 February: S&S. PB. $32.99 that is tracking them down, and are they Available now Available now after Nerine, or Meg herself? This is a Bec’s best friend, Izzy, is Kellie McCourt’s deliciously spicy- Harper is on the other tense, unpredictable thriller. dead, lying in a pool of looking Heiress on Fire (HQ Fiction, PB, side of a bad relationship blood at the bottom of a $29.99); Femi Kayode’s Nigerian academic when she bags the job The Reach staircase. Izzy and Bec thriller Lightseekers (Bloomsbury, PB, she’s coveted for ages: an B. Michael Radburn have been there for each $29.99); J.P. Pomare’s new psychological arts and culture Pantera. PB. $29.99 other during so many thriller Tell Me Lies (Hachette, PB, journalist for The Paris Available now life-changing moments – $24.99); Jeff Noon’s mystery House Observer. To focus on her When riverboats nearly grief, love, engagements, with No Doors (Doubleday, PB, $32.99); career, she decides she two hundred years old babies – and yet, Bec is the one most likely Will Dean’s claustrophobic kidnapping needs to keep a lid on are discovered buried at to have a motive to kill her. So what thriller The Last Thing to Burn (H&S, PB, her love life, but stealing a moment in a Devlin’s Reach, on happened between the two women to $29.99); Gary Bell’s second Elliot Rook romantic city with somebody now and then Sydney’s Hawkesbury bring them to this point? This thriller QC book Post Mortem (Raven, PB, $29.99); is not so bad, right? So when Harper feels a River, archaeologists, takes its time, exposing the frayed edges of ex-spy Jack Beaumont’s spy thriller The spark with artist Noah at his exhibition’s journalists, and local the decades-long friendship between two Frenchman (A&U, PB, $29.99); Heine opening night, she takes that moment, but kids are all sniffing women who take passive-aggressive to a Bakkeid’s Scatter Her Ashes (Raven, their rendezvous opens the door to a whole around – until they whole new level. If you’re looking for a PB, $29.99); C.J. Tudor’s The Burning heap of trouble and genuine danger that discover three bodies hidden in the boats compulsive read with flawed characters Girls (Michael Joseph, PB, $32.99); Faye Harper is not prepared for. This literary that are much more recent. Parks Ranger and a skewed relationship with the truth, Kellerman’s The Lost Boys (HarperCollins, crime novel of a young woman, the internet, Taylor Bridges, an unwilling expert in look no further. PB, $29.99); Lara Thompson’s One and a beautiful location is something like crimes on national parkland, is called in to Night, New York (Virago, PB, $32.99); Emily in Paris but with a killer. It will dazzle help, but this small logging town, The Silent Listener S.J. Bennett’s Queenly whodunnit The and scare in turn. accessible only by ferry, is full of history, Lyn Yeowart Windsor Knot (Zaffre, PB, $29.99); Robert secrets, and now, death. As a storm swells Viking. PB. $32.99 Thorogood’s The Marlow Murder Club overhead, Taylor’s hunt for the killer he’s Shelter Available now (HQ Fiction, PB, $29.99); Emma Rous’s now trapped with becomes more rain- Catherine Jinks A richly layered and The Perfect Guests (Piatkus, PB, $32.99); soaked and terrifying than ever. Text. PB. $32.99 beautifully written Anders Roslund’s Knock Knock (Harvill Available now story, The Silent Secker, PB, $32.99); Sarah Pearse’s The When Meg takes in Exit Listener is Australian Sanatorium (Bantam, PB, $32.99); Gytha Nerine and her two Belinda Bauer Gothic at its most Lodge’s Lie Beside Me (Michael Joseph, little girls, it’s because Bantam. PB. $32.99 devastating. Spanning PB, $32.99); Ben Sanders’s The Devils You she knows what it’s like Available now four decades and Know (A&U, PB, $29.99); Gregg Hurwitz’s to run from a partner In this darkly comic and fluidly travelling Prodigal Son (Michael Joseph, PB, who’s making your life oddly wholesome tale through all of them, $32.99); Allie Reynolds’s Shiver (Hachette, miserable. And she’s by Booker-longlisted this is the story of Joy Henderson, a child PB, $32.99); Mick Herron’s Slough House determined to help this author Belinda Bauer, of the sixties, who lives in constant fear of (John Murray, PB, $32.99); Cate Quinn’s family by hiding them 75-year-old widower domestic violence at the hands of her Black Widows (Orion, PB, $32.99), and in out in her home: a tiny place in a rural Felix Pink is an Exiteer: father, a beloved member of their rural true crime news, Eliot Higgins’s We Are town where nobody will ever find them. somebody who sits with farming community. In the forties, Joy’s Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency for the But soon Meg realises that something is those who choose parents meet during the height of World People (Bloomsbury, PB, $29.99) … and, if wrong, that they aren’t alone at night, and assisted dying to end War II. In the eighties, Joy returns home you can believe it, more! NONFICTION February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 13

Wayne Quilliam. Through the images in a roadmap for urban living, analysing the this stunning photography book, Quilliam history of cities themselves to study why Nonfiction explores the nuances of identity and and how we can live together. focuses on how First Nations people view their place within the contemporary Renewal: Five Paths to a Fairer culture of Australia. Australia Sam van Zweden’s debut book, Eating with My Mouth Sophie Cousins Open, is a collection of essays that dismantle the ideas BOOK OF THE Griffith Review 71: Text. PB. $29.99 and expectations around weight and well-being through the Remaking the Balance Available now MONTH lens of food writing. Her story will be familiar to many, Ashley Hay (ed.) What would the ideal Cultural especially if you are a woman. It is not a story that you will Griffith Review. PB. $27.99 Australia look like – a fair consider unusual, but you will be struck by her tenacity in the Studies Available now and equal, green and telling of it. Griffith Review 71: healthy, secure and In these essays, she writes about a range of topics: her Remaking the Balance smarter Australia? In childhood on Philip Island; the television shows she has features essays, Renewal, Sophie Cousins watched; octopus eating their own limbs; the pervasiveness of reportage, memoir, identifies five major areas diet culture; and what it is like to have a weight that bounces fiction and poetry that of discussion – politics around, not finding a place yet to settle. She celebrates the examine our relationship and government, health and education, sensations food gives her and how those tastes can be mediated with resources both welfare, Indigenous affairs, and industry by different experiences, including trauma and sadness. tangible and intangible, and climate change – and talks to some With a curious and sharp insight into modern life, van physical and personal. What we grow, eat, leading thinkers about what it would take Zweden asks herself difficult questions and ponders on the mine, burn, transform and manufacture to get there. emotional responses to shame, guilt, love and empathy. all place increasing stress on the world’s She introduces us to her friends and family and allows us ecosystems. How can we change what we to see what they see, for better and for worse. As she shares Truth-Telling: History, do with what we have? Eating with My experience after experience, her wicked and wonderful Sovereignty and the Uluru Mouth Open humour leaven the larger question she’s posing: how have we Statement Sam van Zweden all become victims in this ridiculous endless chain of bodily Killing Sydney: The Fight for a Henry Reynolds NewSouth. PB. $34.99 NewSouth. PB. $29.99 shame and dissatisfaction? City’s Soul Available now Available now Van Zweden is an engaging writer and one that is willing to Elizabeth Farrelly Picador. PB. $34.99 sharpen her knife against some crucial questions around body A book about the present Available now politics, mental health and ‘wellness’. To have an Australian as much as the past, voice like this is a gift to all those who enjoy the writings of Roxanne Gay, Nigella Lawson and How will cities survive in historian Henry Reynolds’ Lindy West. Above all, however, Eating with My Mouth Open is an invitation to a seat at van the future? How will Truth-Telling shows Zweden’s very own table and it is an invitation that should not be refused. communities withstand exactly why our national pandemics, natural war memorial must Chris Gordon is the programming and events manager for Readings disasters, overcrowding, acknowledge the frontier government greed and wars, why we must big business? Using her change the date of our national day, and adopted city of Sydney, why treaties are important. Reynolds Australian Black Summer columnist Elizabeth Farrelly brings her makes it urgently clear that the Uluru Studies Michael Rowland (ed.) unique perspective as an architectural Statement carries the weight of history ABC Books. PB. $34.99 writer and former city councillor to create and law and gives us a map for the future. Available now Growing Up Disabled in Told by ABC journalists Australia who were on the ground Carly Findlay (ed.) and broadcasting during Black Inc. PB. $29.99 the unprecedented fire Available now season of 2019–2020, Black Summer is both a record of Compiled by celebrated the shocking catastrophe, author and activist Carly as well as a tribute to the Findlay, Growing Up stories of courage and sacrifice that arose Disabled in Australia is a from the disaster. Featuring updates, new rich collection of writing stories and overviews, Black Summer from more than 40 reflects on how such a catastrophe occurred disabled writers and and what we have learnt from it. writers living with chronic illness. With contributions from senator Jordon Steele-John, paralympian Isis Dead in the Water Holt, Dion Beasley, Sam Drummond, Richard Beasley Astrid Edwards, Sarah Firth, Jessica A&U. PB. $29.99 Walton and more, this anthology centres Available now the stories of a community whose voices A provocative and very are not heard often enough. personal battle cry to save our most precious water Black, White and Exempt: resource and avert an Aboriginal and Torres Strait environmental Islander Lives under Exemption catastrophe – the death of Lucinda Aberdeen & Jennifer the Murray-Darling basin. Jones (eds.) Fed up with the lies, the Aboriginal Studies Press. PB. $39.95 climate change denial and the political Available now expediency warping the plans to save the Murray-Darling basin, Richard Beasley In 1957, Ella Simon applied pulls no punches in this blistering for and was granted a condemnation of Australia’s water policy. certificate of exemption, which gave her legal freedoms denied to other Culture Is Life at Wayne Quilliam that time but cut her off Hardie Grant. HB. $39.99 from her community and Available now family. Black, White and Exempt explores Culture Is Life is a the personal and often painful histories of modern, photographic those who sought exemption to obtain celebration of the freedom from hardship and regulation, as diversity of Aboriginal well as their struggles to advance Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, resist state control and abolish the people by pre-eminent exemption system. Aboriginal photographer 14 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 NONFICTION

against Soviet infiltration. Compelling and library records to construct a history of Biography funny, With My Little Eye is the true story of Cultural Studies book in editing in Australia. Editors are too a very peculiar childhood in 1950s often – by nature of their work – invisible. Aftershocks suburban Australia. Coming of Age in the War on Importantly, Munro follows the lives of Nadia Owusu Terror prominent editors from the late 1800s through to the 1990s. Despite being well- Sceptre. PB. $29.99 The Dead Are Arising: Randa Abdel-Fattah read in colonial Australian literature and its Available now The Life of Malcolm X NewSouth. PB. $34.99 publishing history, I learned a tremendous When her mother Les Payne & Tamara Payne Available now amount from Munro. abandoned her, Nadia Viking. HB. $59.99 Since 9/11, Muslim Prominent throughout the book are Owusu was thrown into a Available now communities have A.G. Stephens, Xavier Herbert, Joseph tumultuous upbringing The life’s work of Pulitzer become one of the most Furphy and P.R. (Inky) Stephensen, that would reverberate Prize-winning journalist frequently targeted along with mentions of many celebrated throughout her life. A Les Payne, The Dead Are minorities in Australia. Australian writers. At times I grew a little woman of multiple Arising is an epic From tabloid media and tired of this heavily masculine narrative, languages, homelands and biography of Malcolm X political rhetoric to the which draws on the various screw-ups of identities, she started to feel fault lines in that draws on hundreds of national curriculum, the Inky Stephensen, so I was pleased that her sense of self. Aftershocks is the account hours of Payne’s Australian imaginary still reduces, the later chapters focused on the strong of how she hauled herself out of the interviews. Completed marginalises and demonises Muslims. influence of Beatrice Davis and Rosanne wreckage and an intimate story of family after Payne’s death by his daughter and While the irony of the colonial project’s Fitzgibbon on the contemporary industry. and belonging in a globalised world. primary researcher, Tamara, this hostility towards outsiders is lost on pundits Both were esteemed for their nurturing penetrating and riveting work affirms the and politicians alike, in the measured approach to editing – building lifelong Between Two Kingdoms centrality of Malcolm X to the African terrain of government policy the lens of relationships with authors in order to Suleika Jaouad American freedom struggle and the story counter-terrorism views every Muslim as a understand how they thought and how Bantam. PB. $32.99 of the 20th century. pre-terrorist vulnerable to radicalisation. they wrote. Although the industry is facing Available 16 February Mosques, community groups and schools more economic stress than ever before, this Suleika Jaouad was 22 when The World Is Not Big Enough: are under constant surveillance and their is the approach that I still see reflected in she was diagnosed with The Truth Is a Foreign Country leaders are pressured by authorities into my peers and mentors. leukemia. For five years, her for a Refugee preaching moderation at every turn, leading This is definitely a book that suits writing world comprised four white Vanessa Russell to a culture of guilt, confusion and self- and publishing students and professionals. walls and a hospital bed. At Hardie Grant. PB. $29.99 censoring in the Muslim community. Members of the general public similarly 27, in her first year of Available now In this climate, writer and academic curious about the ins-and-outs of the book remission, Suleika realised The World Is Not Big Randa Abdel-Fattah interviews both world will find topics of interest here too, that having been so focused Enough follows Vanessa Muslim and non-Muslim students in particularly those readers who have enjoyed on surviving, she had no idea how to live. This Russell on her journey to Sydney and asks what impact they believe recent literary biographies such as Brenda moving memoir of illness and recovery traces uncover the truth behind the War on Terror has had on their lives. Niall’s Friends and Rivals and Jacqueline one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to the murder of Abed Ahmad These youth, ranging in race, class, Kent’s A Certain Style. remission, to healing and self-discovery. Shah, a detained Afghan gender, sexuality and local geography, are asylum seeker she’d articulate and frank, displaying an often Clare Millar is from Readings online Promises to Keep exchanged letters with acute awareness of their relation to the Joe Biden years earlier before losing touch. Russell greater political discourse of terror and A Swim in the Pond in the Rain Scribe. PB. $35 interviews Ahmad Shah’s friends, other Australian identity. While many non- George Saunders Available now refugees, even the murderer himself. What Muslim youth believe the War on Terror Bloomsbury. HB. $34.99 First published in 2007, she uncovers is the multi-layered and often doesn’t affect their lives directly, Muslim Available late February Promises to Keep is Biden’s untold story of detention in Australia and its interviewees speak of their difficulty in For the last 20 years, Booker own recollection of his life very human consequences. performing their identity while managing Prize-winning author and career prior to his both community and institutional racism George Saunders has taught term as Barack Obama’s Consent: A Memoir and micro-aggressions. Abdel-Fattah, an a class on the Russian short vice president. From his Vanessa Springora Arab-Australian Muslim activist, revels in story. In this book, he shares upbringing in a Catholic HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 the words of students who attempt to speak a version of that class. family, to the tragedies Available now truth to power while also displaying great Paired with short stories by that have shaped his life, to his long- Thirty years ago, French empathy toward youth who are struggling Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy running political career, this compelling publisher Vanessa to come to grips with the implications of and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are a story offers a personal glimpse of the 46th Springora was the teenage their identity. literary masterclass for anyone interested in President of the United States. “muse” of one Both devastating and affirming, this is a what makes great stories work and what they of the country’s most book which gains momentum, building in can tell us about ourselves. The Puzzle Solver celebrated writers. In her pitch and intensity as Abdel-Fattah’s prose Tracie White & Ronald W. Davis memoir, she reclaims leans in and she lays to waste the neoliberal Buried Not Dead state’s damaging attempts to counter terror. A&U. PB. $32.99 her own story and lays Fiona McGregor You feel Abdel-Fattah’s care and passion, it Available now bare the manipulation, trauma and cultural Giramondo. PB. $26.95 moves us and rewards us with a rare critical Based on the award- complicity that allowed the abuse of a Available now insight into the socio-political psyche of winning article by 13-year-old girl to go unremarked and Artist and novelist Fiona Australian youth during the folly of the War co-author Tracie White, unchecked by a chauvinistic literary world. McGregor’s Buried Not on Terror. The Puzzle Solver is the Powerful and bracing, Consent is a story of Dead is a collection of gripping medical mystery power, recovery and ultimately resilience. Ender Başkan is from Readings online essays on art, literature story of Ron Davis, a and performance, Stanford geneticist who Business Literary Lion Tamers sexuality, activism and the has put his career on the Craig Munro life of the city. Featuring line to find the cure for chronic fatigue Scribe. PB. $29.99 written portraits of artists syndrome, the disease killing his son. With FLY: Financially Literate Youth Available now such as Marina Abramović and Mike Parr, no cure or successful treatment in sight, Marlies Hobbs & Jai Hobbs Everyone who knows McGregor’s writing features the author as a Davis found himself in a race against time to Penguin. PB. $29.99 me knows I’m participant as well as a witness – she sees understand his son’s debilitating condition. Available now obsessed with publishing, through an artist’s eyes and records what she From the basics of living and I frequently read perceives with a novelist’s insight. With My Little Eye with a budget, to books about books, so I Sandra Hogan understanding debt, to was thrilled to see Literary White Feminism A&U. PB. $29.99 saving for the big-ticket Lion Tamers published. Koa Beck Available now items, FLY: Financially Craig Munro has had an S&S. PB. $32.99 Growing up, the three Literate Youth is a impressive career – over 30 years in the Available now Doherty children were handbook for every publishing industry, primarily at University A bold, razor-sharp piece taught to memorise car young person who wants of Queensland Press. This is far from his of cultural commentary, number plates, to spot to be armed with the fundamentals of first book on publishing, too, as he has White Feminism draws unusual behaviour and financial knowledge. Whether they are published his 2016 memoir of working in attention to the ways above all, to avoid drawing contemplating leaving the nest or are the industry Under Cover, among others. elitism and racial prejudice attention to themselves. already beginning to spread their wings, Literary Lion Tamers is an impressive have driven the narrative Without their knowledge, this convenient resource will help them historical record, making use of the of feminist discourse. they were foot soldiers in ASIO’s battle start preparing for all of life’s milestones. University of Queensland’s expansive Fryer Timely and impassioned, it NONFICTION February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 15 explores how our society has commodified unparalleled scale of the trauma inflicted The Diet Compass powerfully describes the Maori reasons for feminism and continues to systemically on the land and all its inhabitants. Bas Kast fighting the Land Wars, placing them in the shut women out of the movement, and how Kara Nicholson is from Readings online Scribe. PB. $32.99 wider context of the Maori struggle to things can be done better to change things Available now retain their sovereign estates. for a new generation. How to Avoid a Climate Bas Kast breaks down diet Disaster myths in this practical The Japanese: A History in In My Past Life I Was Bill Gates science-based guide to Twenty Lives Cleopatra Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 eating well and living Christopher Harding Amal Awad Available 16 February longer. What do people Allen Lane. HB. $69.99 Murdoch. PB. $32.99 In this urgent, with a long lifespan eat? Available 12 February Available now authoritative book, Bill From how much sugar you Christopher Harding Amal Awad has tried a lot Gates sets out a wide- should consume, to the distils Japan’s long, when it comes to spiritual ranging, practical and impact of supplements, to whether you complex history into the advice and she’s well- accessible plan for how should drink tea or coffee, Kast sorts through stories of 20 remarkable versed in the boundless the world can avoid a thousands of sometimes conflicting research individuals, whose lives healing modalities on climate catastrophe. With to present his key takeaways. reveal insights into the offer, from religious the help of experts in the extraordinary changing devotion to New Age love fields of physics, chemistry, biology, The Miracle Pill society around them. and light. In this book of engineering, political science and finance, Peter Walker From lesser-known individuals to shrewd observations, Awad considers the Gates tackles the crucial enterprise of this S&S. PB. $32.99 historical heavyweights such as Tale of explosion of spiritual practices people are generation, making clear the necessary but Available now Genji author Murasaki Shikibu, Harding’s turning to in our ever-expanding retail difficult steps to achieving net-zero In The Miracle Pill, Peter vivid and lively portraits showcase Japan’s universe and explores whether they can emissions of greenhouse gases and what Walker explores the history of modernity and tradition with an help us, harm us or do both in the quest individual can do to keep governments, increasingly sedentary accessible freshness. for enlightenment. employers and ourselves accountable. nature of modern life, arguing that if people Land: How the Hunger for The New Climate War could bring more Ownership Shaped the World Environmental Michael E. Mann opportunities for Simon Winchester HarperCollins. PB. $34.99 Scribe. PB. $35 incidental daily movement Studies into their everyday schedule, it would be the Available now Available now most valuable pill in the world. This book is Bestselling author Simon Deflect. Discredit. Blame. a chronicle of this very modern and largely Winchester turns his eye Summertime: Despair-mongering. unexplored problem, and the story of the to the history of land Reflections on a Vanishing Fossil-fuel companies people trying to turn it around. around the world: who Future have waged a 30-year mapped it, owned it, stole Danielle Celermajer campaign to delay action it, cared for it, fought for it Hamish Hamilton. PB. $24.99 on climate change. In History and gave it back. Available now The New Climate War, Complicated and opaque, In January of 2020, climate scientist Michael How to Teach Classics the ownership of land has resulted in at the height of what E. Mann offers a battle plan on how to to Your Dog significant shifts in history. Winchester has come to be known as harness collective action to urge explores what that ownership might really Black Summer, Danielle governments and corporations into Philip Womack Oneworld. HB. $29.99 mean – not in dry-as-dust legal terms, but Celermajer wrote an making real change and resist the Available now for the people who live on it. article about Jimmy the immensely powerful vested interests pig. Celermajer lives on a defending the fossil-fuel status quo. Learn to tell your Odysseus property in rural New from your Oedipus and Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and your Polyxena from your the History of a Common Fate South Wales where she provides refuge for There Is No Planet B: Polydorus with this unique Mark Kurlansky an eclectic assortment of animals. Jimmy Updated Edition and quirky introduction to Oneworld. HB. $39.99 and Katy were two pigs who had been left Mike Berners-Lee to die on the floor of a factory farm. They the art, history, politics, Available now CUP. PB. $19.95 had been together through their traumatic society and literature of Most of what is done on Available now beginning and stayed side by side in an Ancient and Rome. land ends up impacting the Featuring new material on animal sanctuary before making their way Small and giftable, How to Teach Classics to ocean, but never is that protests, pandemics, to Celermajer’s property to spend the rest Your Dog teaches novices, both human and clearer than in humanity’s wildfires, investments, of their days in each other’s company. canine, the myths that underpin so much of relationship to salmon. carbon targets and In December 2019, the unprecedented modern culture and civilisation. Mark Kurlansky, the individual action, this size and scale of the bushfires that bestselling author of Cod updated edition of There surrounded Celermajer’s home forced Hitler’s Horses and Salt, traces the history Is No Planet B is a timely her to move the animals to another Arthur Brand of the world through humankind’s answer to the growing list property where she had hoped they would Ebury. PB. $35 misdirected attempts to manipulate this fish. of concerns facing the planet. What on be safer. Despite the move, Katy died. Available 16 February From to the Atlantic, through earth can any of us do, as individuals? Mike When Jimmy returned to Celermajer he Arthur Brand is one of the Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, Japan Berners-Lee has crunched the numbers was consumed by grief and he searched world’s most prominent art and Siberia, Kurlansky shows how the two and offers a course of action that is hopeful constantly for Katy. Then one day he detectives, whose work has species’ fates are inextricably intertwined. and practical. just stopped, lay down on the ground recovered artworks valued and did not get up. This article became at over 220 million euros. Music the basis for Summertime, a moving and Health Hitler’s Horses is a thrilling personal reflection on the overwhelming retelling of one of his most devastation of uncontrolled bushfire in a extraordinary undercover A Year with Swollen changing climate. Ageless: The New Science heists, as he infiltrates an underworld of Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary: Celermajer is a Professor of Sociology of Getting Older Without neo-Nazis and former KGB agents to recover 25th Anniversary Edition and Social Policy at the University of Getting Old the Striding Horses – Hitler’s favourite statue Brian Eno Sydney and she lends her academic Andrew Steele that was lost during the bombing of Berlin. Faber. HB. $34.99 and philosophical eye to a challenging Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Available now analysis of not only the human tragedy Available now Wars Without End At the end of 1994, Brian but also of the impact on the animals who Why do we age? Why do Danny Keenan Eno resolved to keep a suffered so brutally. But it is her personal we need to age? In Penguin. PB. $34.99 diary. The result is a experience of living on the land and her Ageless, Andrew Steele Available now fascinating look into an relationships with the animals who share draws on recent scientific Written by senior Maori artist’s process, featuring her home that makes this a compelling findings to explain what historian Danny Keenan, ruminations on his reading experience. is happening as we get Wars Without End is a collaborations with David For now the pandemic seems to have older and how we can captivating and incisive Bowie, U2, Derek Jarman eclipsed the urgency for real change better manage the account of ’s and Jah Wobble, as well as correspondence that was felt in the aftermath of Black process. Along the way, he introduces new Land Wars, a moment that and essays dating back to 1978. Reissued for Summer, but this book is the important cutting-edge research that is signalling a casts a long shadow over its 25th anniversary in a beautiful reminder we all need of the devastating bold revolution in medicine and in our race relations in modern- hardback, Eno’s classic is ready to be effects of climate change and the understanding of ageing. day New Zealand. It eloquently and discovered by a new generation. 16 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 NONFICTION

Natural History where we’ve been. Bag Man How Wild Things Are Rachel Maddow & Michael Yarvitz Analiese Gregory This Is Why I Resist Crown. HB. $45.99 Hardie Grant. HB. $45 100 Australian Birds Shola Mos-Shogbamimu Available now Available now Georgia Angus Headline. PB. $32.99 Is it possible for a sitting If the title of How Wild Explore Australia. PB. $29.99 Available now vice president to direct a Things Are conjures up Available now ‘There is no freedom vast criminal enterprise? images of dancing to the With a foreword by Tim without rights and no Based on the award- beat of your own drum, Flannery, 100 Australian rights without the freedom winning podcast, Rachel then this cookbook is for Birds is an illustrated to exercise those rights.’ In Maddow and Michael you. Analiese Gregory is a and jargon-free This Is Why I Resist, Shola Yarvitz’s Bag Man details trailblazing young chef beginner’s guide for the Mos-Shogbamimu digs the investigation that with a string of enviable kitchen credits to her new generations of into the deep roots of exposed Spiro T. Agnew’s crimes during his name, including Sydney restaurant Quay. Australian birdwatchers. racism and anti-Blackness time in office, the attempts at a cover-up About four years ago she moved to Hobart It features insights into 100 key native in the UK and the US, including subjects and the backroom bargain that forced where she headed up the acclaimed species, as well as the author’s original such as racial gatekeepers, white Agnew’s resignation but also spared him restaurant Franklin. Her first cookbook illustrations, distribution maps, ingratitude, performative allyship, current years in federal prison. celebrates nature and the slow-food life on identification methods, behavioural identity politics and abuse of the Black the rugged and sometimes wild island of information and contributions from First trans community. Greetings from Trumpland Tasmania. Included in this beautiful book are Nations people on Taungurung, Zoe Daniel & Roscoe Whalan recipes, stories and stunning photography. Gumbaynggirr and Wiradjuri names for ABC Books. PB. $34.99 This cookbook is a manual of sorts on how to particular birds. Personal Available 17 February live freely, kindly and with courage. Development In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election loss to 28 Days Vegan Psychology Joe Biden, Zoe Daniel Lisa Butterworth & Amelia Wasiliev Intimacy and Solitude looks at how Trump’s Smith Street Books. PB. $29.99 The Act of Living Stephanie Dowrick one-term presidency Available now changed America and the 28 Days Vegan is a Frank Tallis A&U. PB. $29.99 world and the far-reaching starter’s guide to making Little, Brown. PB. $34.99 Available now and longstanding sustainable changes that Available now In a world of where people consequences it will have. Via travels keep the dinner table The goals of feel more distant than through America, and interviews conducted delicious. With shopping psychotherapy are not so ever, the quality of your with real people over five years, Daniel lists for every week, very different from the personal relationships has explores the changed boundaries and breakdowns of vegan goals of everyday life. never mattered more. And expectations in a world of unprecedented staples and 28 full days of meals (including People want to be happy the key starts with the political partisanship and populism. snack-time cravings), this book has and optimise outcomes. most fundamental everything you need to start a plant-based The Act of Living treats relationship of all: how to diet with ease. psychotherapy as a understand and care for your own self. So Mission Economy: A Moonshot single, cohesive philosophical tradition. argues Stephanie Dowrick in her Guide to Changing Capitalism It synthesises the thinking of the bestselling guide to self-trust and intimacy, Mariana Mazzucato In Good Company principal figures in the history of which has been reissued this year with a Allen Lane. PB. $35 Sophie Hansen psychotherapy with a view to providing new introduction. Available now Available April 2021 the reader with an accessible and The efforts that took I loved Sophie Hansen’s A practical guide to optimal living. Think Again mankind to the moon Basket by the Door, and her Adam Grant required more than new sweet-as-apple-pie WH Allen. PB. $35 scientific endeavour; it collection of recipes will Science Available now required new forms of give you the confidence to collaboration. In Mission Organisational share meals again. It’s all Economy, economist psychologist Adam Grant about gatherings, The Beat of Life: Mariana Mazzucato asks: is an expert on opening generous recipes and ideas for get-togethers, A Surgeon Reveals the what if the same level of boldness – the other people’s minds and with the aim of taking the angst out of Secrets of the Heart boldness that set inspirational goals, took has identified mental cooking for friends. This book will be perfect Reinhard Friedl risks, and recognised the need for spending flexibility as a key skill for those who want a little inspiration as we Black Inc. PB. $34.99 in exchange for long-term growth – was for handling a rapidly start inviting people back to our homes. Available now applied to the biggest problems of our time? changing and divisive Having witnessed the world. In Think Again, he invites readers Cheese, Wine and Bread: extraordinary complexity to let go of views that are no longer Discovering the Magic of and unpredictability of serving them well and to prize mental Fermentation in England, Italy human hearts in the flexibility, humility and curiosity over and France operating theatre, heart At home foolish consistency. Katie Quinn surgeon Reinhard Friedl with Chris Gordon Available July 2021 sets out in search of why Is there literally nothing the human heart is so Politics Regular readers will understand that better to feast on than central to all major human cultures as a although one of the bestselling cookbooks cheese, wine and bread? I source of love, strength and wisdom. Using over the festive season was all about air cannot wait to get my riveting personal stories, Freidl illustrates Is It Tomorrow Yet? frying, this is not something that I’m hands on this beautiful complex relationship between the heart, Paradoxes of the Pandemic automatically drawn to. I favour cookbooks book that celebrates how the brain and the human spirit. Ivan Krastev that have a certain largesse about their each of these European Allen Lane. HB. $22.99 content, a style that inspires, delights even, staples are made, from harvest to Flesh Made New: The Available now every sense within your being, and one fermentation. This book is truly the best Unnatural History and Broken The Coronavirus that you know you will savour for years means of armchair travel and I just know it Promise of Stem Cell Research pandemic has exposed to come. I often think of cookbooks as will be filled with accessible ideas, beautiful John Rasko & Carl Power the frayed contradictions having an anthropological element; this images and mouthwatering recipes. ABC Books. PB. $34.99 of modern life and is what we are eating now and this is why. Available 17 February distorted things that For example, baking books in 2020 were The dazzling, regenerative seemed simple and huge because we had the time and we truly And in other completely excellent news, two promise of stem cell settled. In this thought- needed comfort food. of my food heroes are releasing books later treatment: does it work provoking essay, Ivan This year I predict we will want to trim this year. Karen Martini’s next book, Cook, and will it save us? Two Krastev explores the pandemic’s up a tad, tighten our belts, so to speak, has been three years in the making and is experts take readers on a immediate consequences and predicts its and therefore air frying makes sense, but 900 pages long! She says she is not trying wild historical tour of this long-term legacy. What will change for the so does a lean towards a vegan diet, or a to create an encyclopedia like Stephanie scandal-prone field, young and for the old? Will things be weekend spin through Europe from the Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion, but she exposing the dirty little different for the communities most comfort of home. To that end let me tell is offering advice. Talking of Ms Alexander, I secrets that the hype merchants prefer to harmed, and for those who escaped the you about the books that I am looking am delighted to let you know that she is also ignore, and insisting that we can only know worst? And how do we think our way forward to hitting our bookshelves in the releasing a book this year. Foodwise, we are where we’re going if we have a sense of through the unthinkable? first half of the year. all in for a treat! YOUNG ADULT February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 17

Concrete Rose while it can be overwhelming at times, you Angie Thomas can’t help but turn the page to discover what Young Adult happens next. For readers 14+. Walker. PB. $18.99 Available now Claire Atherfold is the manager at Readings In Garden Heights, State Library 17-year-old Maverick Gary Lonesborough’s debut YA novel is an extraordinary Carter is many things: a coming-of-age story of first love, community and Furia BOOK OF THE dutiful son, a loving discovering who you are. Seventeen-year-old Jackson lives Yamile Saied Méndez boyfriend and a conflicted Workman. HB. $26.99 MONTH with his family on the Mish in rural NSW. It’s summer, and member of the King Lords Young Adult Jackson’s aunty and cousins are visiting from Sydney. This Available 8 February gang. The one thing he’s year, they’ve brought Tomas with them, and Jackson is stuck It feels like there is not prepared to be is a sharing his room and showing Tomas around. always room for father, but when he finds out he has a Jackson has just broken up with his girlfriend, and he’s more books about young three-month-old son, that’s exactly what he struggling with his conflicted feelings and confronting parts people playing sport and has to become. Responsibility is thrust upon of himself he has always kept secret. Tomas has just gotten Furia, a novel about a teen him, forcing him to make tough choices and out of a juvenile detention centre, and he’s trying to figure out soccer player, is one of the learn what it really means to be a man. Set where he might fit in the world and how to avoid any more highest quality. 17 years before Angie Thomas’ critically trouble. They’re both a little lost, unsure of their futures and Argentinean teenager acclaimed novel The Hate U Give, Concrete who they want to be. As the two grow closer, feelings surface Camilla is known as ‘Furia’ by her fútbol Rose is ostensibly a prequel but stands on its and a relationship forms between them. teammates. She loves the game and is own as an earnest and heartfelt story of dynamite on the field. Camilla has been love, fatherhood, and growing up. Maverick playing in a women’s league but she hides The kind of gentle, tender romance that is a brilliant protagonist who tells his story this from her family; while a career in will make your heart swell. with an intensely expressive and football is an option for her brother, Camilla The Boy from the infectiously likeable voice, all while facing has been banned from playing by her cruel Mish Lonesborough is a young Yuin man, and The Boy from the world with a kindness and honesty that father. Camilla is a determined young Gary Lonesborough the Mish is an Own-Voices story that explores identity, is inspiring to see in a male hero. Indeed, woman aware of her own potential with an A&U. PB. $19.99 masculinity, racism, belonging, queerness, art and more. Concrete Rose is full of good men: fathers, irrepressible passion for the game. When her Available 2 February Authentic, funny and rich in themes to discuss, this book cousins and mentors who aren’t afraid to team is given the opportunity to play at a should be on the radar of both general YA readers and every show love or share their feelings – men who higher level, it’s clear that Camilla must English teacher and school librarian. are sometimes flawed but never prioritise her dreams, but of course this is At its heart, this novel is a gorgeous and compelling love story between two Aboriginal irredeemable. Although it lacks the not without consequences. Recent social boys. It’s the kind of gentle, tender romance that will make your heart swell, and leave you electrifying political immediacy of The Hate justice movements such as the Green Wave thinking about Jackson and Tomas long after you’ve finished. For ages 14+. U Give, Concrete Rose never shies away from that saw Argentinean women fighting for confronting social issues, whether it’s the their rights also provide a backdrop for the Nina Kenwood is the marketing manager at Readings cycles of violence that fill graves with novel. Violence against women is fathers and sons, or the way drug dealing commonplace, but the tide is turning and offers a costly and dangerous escape from the women in the book find strength to fight poverty. Maverick’s story is equal parts Tiger Daughter Love Is a Revolution back and support each other. Camilla heartbreaking and empowering; it’s the experiences first love, and is an enriching Rebecca Lim Renée Watson perfect excuse to revisit The Hate U Give, presence as she teaches English to young A&U. PB. $16.99 Bloombury. PB. $15.99 but also stands tall as an excellent novel in students. Her determination to carve out Available 2 February Available 2 February its own right. For ages 14+. her own career path and to be independent Thirteen-year-old When Nala sees Tye Joe Murray is from Readings Kids is constant even as she faces tough decisions Wen lives in a house Brown on stage at an that will shape her future. Furia is a great governed by rage and fear. open mic night run by read. Inspirational and empowering, Yamile As the first-generation youth activist group Inspire All Our Hidden Gifts Saied Mendez has given Camilla a voice that daughter of Chinese Harlem, she’s instantly Caroline O’Donoghue is strong and true. Fans of Angie Thomas migrant parents, she is smitten by his good looks Walker. PB. $18.99 and Elizabeth Acevedo should definitely expected to keep her head and his caring manner. Available 3 February check this one out. For ages 12+. down and focus solely on Nala is there for her Caroline O’Donoghue Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda her studies. While life at home is spent ‘cousin-sister-friend’ Imani’s birthday; she is an Irish author and under her parents’ watchful gaze, Wen doesn’t really get along with the other journalist who also hosts secretly spends her time at school studying woke-as-can-be Inspire Harlem members. the acclaimed podcast Game Changer with her close friend Henry for a place at a When Nala and Tye strike up a conversation, Sentimental Garbage. Her Neal Shusterman select-entry high school, something that in the heat of the moment Nala pretends to new novel, All Our Hidden Walker. PB. $18.99 they believe could launch them into a future be the person she thinks Tye will be attracted Gifts, pivots from her darkly Available 17 February ripe with opportunity. Two weeks before the to: vegetarian, political and a volunteer for an humourous and searingly High school American school’s entrance exam, however, tragedy arts and craft program at her grandmother’s smart adult novels (Scenes of a Graphic footballer Ash is used to strikes, leaving Henry reclusive and shut off retirement home. Often in a teen romance, Nature and Promising Young Women) to taking hits on the field, from the outside world. It is up to Wen to the tension comes from whether a crush is bring us a new supernatural series for young until he takes one that seek the help of her parents, and coax her requited or not, but in Love Is a Revolution adults. The story focuses on the beautifully doesn’t just impact his friend out of his shell so that they can realise it’s clear right from the start that Tye likes complex world of teenager Maeve Chambers. body, but his whole reality. their dreams. Tiger Daughter is an insightful Nala. The more pressing question is: does At home, Maeve feels inadequate compared With every new hit, Ash portrayal of the Australian migrant Nala like herself? Nala feels judged by Imani to her family of geniuses, and at school, she is finds his reality shifting experience that will feel familiar to many and her friends for so many things: below average in both studies and status. further from his original life, experiencing readers. Wen’s father, previously a medical straightening her hair; buying bottled water; Sometimes it feels like she is just keeping her new perspectives that cause him to question practitioner in China, has no choice but to enjoying make-up; not being politically head above water. That is until she finds an the world. Game Changer is an ambitious spend his nights waiting tables at the local active; not knowing more about Black old tarot card deck and discovers her natural story of parallel worlds that explores themes Chinese restaurant to earn a measly income. history. As her relationship with Tye deepens talents for giving scarily accurate readings to of race, gender and privilege. Meanwhile, her mother spends her days and tensions with Imani grow worse, Nala is the other students. For a time, Maeve rides cooking and cleaning the house while caring forced to consider why she feels so inferior. the wave of popularity, but when she The Girls I’ve Been for Wen, having long ago abandoned her Love Is a Revolution isn’t just a novel about performs a reading for her ex-best friend Lily, Tess Sharpe former life as a socialite. As Wen works to young love and self-acceptance, or even an the mysterious card she draws, The Hodder Children’s. PB. $17.99 break out of a life that has been prescribed exploration of grassroots activism. What Housekeeper, initiates Lily’s disappearance. Available 9 February for her, she too begins to challenge the really drew me in was the thoughtful With her new friend Fiona and Lily’s For five years, former con cultural conceptions that have long held her exploration of how complicated relationships gender-fluid sibling Roe, Maeve is drawn into artist Nora has been living family back. The novel does not shy away with family, friendships and community can a world of magic and horror set against an a normal teenager’s life. from tackling heavy topics around mental be. The friction between Nala and Imani has Irish town where new ideas are attempting to When she and her friends health, parental pressure and racial abuse, deep historical roots, involving both their break free from traditional religious ideals. In are held hostage during a but it also weaves in tender moments full of mothers, and it’s the older generation at trying to solve the mystery of Lily’s bank heist, Nora will have compassion and hope. Rebecca Lim has Sugar Hill retirement home that give the vanishing, Maeve and her friends must to use all of her con written a powerful Own-Voices story about greatest insight into the situation. This was confront a secretive and chaotic world where artistry skills to get the perseverance and determination that will an immersive and uplifting read, depicting mysticism and religion are twisted, and hate group out alive. Perfect for fans of Karen M. completely and utterly win over readers’ multi-dimensional teenagers with passions, attempts to take hold. All Our Hidden Gifts is McManus, The Girls I’ve Been is a slick, hearts. For ages 11+. doubts, fears and dreams. For ages 13+. a jam-packed paranormal YA fantasy. There fast-paced psychological thriller that will Xiao-Xiao Kingham is from Readings Kids Leanne Hall is from Readings online is a lot happening within this novel, and have readers guessing until the final page. 18 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 KIDS

no bounds when a child creates and explores a wiggly, BOOK OF THE edible alphabet. My Spaghetti ABC is a colourful riot of MONTH saucy strands and rhyming messiness. Kids will love it, but maybe the book should have come with a warning Middle Fiction on the cover saying, ‘Don’t Try This at Home’. Then again, maybe it would be fun to try! For ages 2+. Kids Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn

Stand Up! Speak Up! Andrew Joyner Schwartz & Wade. HB. $32.99 Available now An uplifting picture book about activism, community The World and hope, Stand up! Speak up! Between Blinks follows a young girl who is Amie Kaufman & empowered to act against The most Ryan Graudin climate change after HarperCollins. PB. $16.99 attending a climate march. Available 3 February From organising volunteers, anticipated to making composting bins, to bhosting a clothing swap, this story serves as an important reminder that The World Between Blinks is the place where no act is too small to make a difference. kids’ and things, buildings, cities and people end up when they are truly lost. So it’s a bit of a surprise when Iceberg Marisol and Jake, who are certainly not lost, end up Claire Saxby & Jess Racklyeft (illus.) YA books there. Almost as soon as they arrive, they are tricked A&U. HB. $24.99 into stealing a book. This leaves them with only a Available 2 February of 2020 small amount of time to undo their wrong and save the world(s) before they lose their memories and are stuck An iceberg is born into spring and travels through the seasons While 2020 had some absolute gems, I am excited there for good. I thoroughly enjoyed The World before dying in a new spring. This to read all the work that authors have been writing, Between Blinks, the new co-written middle-grade evocative portrayal of the life polishing and polishing again during this past year. novel by bestselling authors Amie Kaufman and Ryan Graudin. The book conjures a world so rich and cycle of an iceberg is a stunning, We are going to be spoiled for choice for middle- lyrical story about life in grade readers in 2021. Nicki Greenberg has an exciting well-thought-out with detail that it’s almost a character in its own right. The hodgepodge collection unexpected places, from jewel heist story set on an ocean liner (The Detective’s penguins trekking across the ice Guide to Ocean Travel, March), while local favourite of lost things Marisol and Jake encounter include a fair once held on the frozen-over Thames, the lost city to birds flying above on their long migrations, to the Nova Weetman’s The Edge of Thirteen (March) will thrill teeming living organisms in the sea. current fans and win her many more. Weetman is also of Atlantis, and even a Tasmanian tiger. The kids’ co-authoring a book with friend Emily Gale in May journey sees them unearth new places to explore, called Elsewhere Girls (May) that I can’t wait to read. amazing pieces of magic, and notable machinery and people from history. The World Between Blinks makes Junior Grade Look out for Shirley Marr’s breakout debut A you feel like there truly is a magical place just a simple Glasshouse of Stars in May. It encompasses a touch blink-of-an-eye away. It explores the themes of family, of magical realism and is predicted to tug at our Little Gem culture, and the environment, and it’s such a joy to heartstrings. Anna Zobel read. For ages 9+. In July, Monica McInerney, who normally writes for Puffin. PB. $14.99 adults, is dipping her toe into the world of children’s Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids Available now books with junior fiction (Marcie Gill and the Caravan When student witch Gem Park Cat), and 2020 CBCA winner Pip Harry returns attempts a travelling spell to with a new book called Are You There, Buddha? go to the classroom next door, she is For teen readers, the year starts off with a bang. Board Books very surprised to find herself in a I have just devoured an advance copy of the new seaside town, and even more YA novel by Readings’ own Leanne Hall (The Gaps, surprised to learn that her spell has March). Set in an exclusive private school featuring ABC Alphabet sent her 100 years into the future! two very different girls and their responses when one Chihiro Takeuchi Little Gem is welcomed by the of the students is kidnapped, it has powerful themes of Berbay. HB. $19.99 town, and even though some of her spells go wrong feminism, racism and the insidious impact of the male Available 3 February she may be of some help after all. There are rumours gaze on young women. I was utterly transfixed. From acclaimed children’s of a beast – and the local weatherman has Gabriel Bergmoser, whose debut novel was book creator Chihiro Takeuchi, disappeared – so Gem teams up with her new friends shortlisted for our Readings YA Prize, has a coming-of- ABC Alphabet is a fun and to figure out what is going on! This is a lovely book age novel set around the world of skiing (surely a first creative new search-and-find from a Melbourne author. There are gorgeous little in Australia?). Look for The True Colour of a Little White board book for young families. pictures throughout and I was so pleased to learn Lie in April. Using creative die-cut pages there will be more books in this series. Little Gem is a Jessica Walton has a debut graphic novel coming throughout, readers are sweet adventure with shades of Kiki’s Delivery out with illustrator Aska. Based on Walton’s brilliant encouraged to find different Service. It’s the kind of book that is perfect for a short story in the 2019 YA anthology Meet Me at the animals and objects hidden within a colourful world of family reading aloud and will also be a hit with newly Intersection, it’s set at a fan fiction convention and discovery and delight. independent readers. Fans of Sally Rippin’s Polly and features disabled, queer characters. Buster series will love this one! For ages 7+. I’m also excited about a new YA anthology by Afro- Picture Books Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Black and First Nations writers. Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak+Black Fiction will be the Beneath the Trees book to read in October. My Spaghetti ABC Christy Burne In nonfiction, Archie Roach’s memoir Tell Me Deborah Niland Fremantle Press. PB. $14.99 Why is being adapted for young adults in March. It’s a Puffin. HB. $24.99 Available 2 February wonderful story of overcoming adversity that is sure to Available 2 February Cam and Sophie have travelled to the be inspirational to young people. Spaghetti as an art rainforest with their cousins on a quest Did I mention a new Scot Gardner, a new Lynette medium wouldn’t be to see a platypus in the wild. When Noni, a second novel from Sophie Gonzales, the finale every parent’s choice – but oh, they see one in need of help, their to Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Aurora Cycle what fun in the hands of a rescue attempt goes horribly wrong trilogy, not to mention all the recommendations this young child, with their baby and soon it’s not just the platypus that month? Excuse me, I really need to get back to my sibling and even Nana joining needs saving. Beneath the Trees is a reading pile... in! In Deborah Niland’s new wilderness survival story that is full of Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids picture book, creativity knows practical advice for independent young adventurers. KIDS February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 19

animosity between the villagers may be the key to different places all around the world, including in Middle Grade helping Jimmy feel as if he belongs. This is an Australia. There are facts about the potential uses of impressive debut with friendship and mystery at its seaweed, from biodegradable plastic to biofuel. The Amari and the Night Brothers heart. Suitable for readers aged 9+. book explores the amazing role seaweed can have in B.B. Alston & Brittany Jackson (illus.) Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids mitigating climate change and provides tips for activities, including seaweed foraging. The stunning Hardie Grant. PB. $17.99 oil-based illustrations by Liz Rowland and the large Available now Footprints on the Moon coffee table format of this book make it as appealing to Amari Peters misses her older Lorraine Marwood adults as kids. With a comprehensive glossary, a visual brother Quinton, who has been UQP. PB. $16.99 guide to common seaweeds, a foreword by Damon missing for six months. When Amari Available 2 February Gameau and an endorsement by Tim Flannery, it’s an receives a mysterious delivery, It’s 1969 and Sharnie is starting high utter delight from beginning to end for children and supposedly from Quinton himself, it school. As the world waits to see if adults alike. For ages 7+. seems like she might be getting humans will land on the moon, the closer to finding out where he is. But War rages overseas, and Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids to go further, she has to take an Sharnie’s older sister starts getting enormous leap of faith, and attend summer camp at a involved in anti-war protests, causing Kid Reporter covert supernatural organisation. Amari enters the a rift in their family. Told in verse, this Saffron Howden & Dhana Quinn intensive training program at the Bureau of coming-of-age middle-grade novel is NewSouth. PB. $27.99 Supernatural Affairs, competing with hundreds of about finding the courage to make your own way in a Available 1 February other kids for coveted traineeships. She tries to stay new world. You don’t need to be an adult to break focused on finding out what happened to Quinton, but news and change the world. Packed gets swept up in the Bureau’s battle against an evil The Last Bear full of tips for young readers aged 10 magician. I haven’t been this excited about a fantasy Hannah Gold & Levi Pinfold (illus.) and up, this fun and easy-to-use guide series since Jessica Townsend’s Nevermoor series or HarperCollins. HB. $19.99 teaches young would-be journalists all Scarlett Thomas’s Worldquake Sequence. Amari and Available 3 February the tricks of the trade: how to the Night Brothers contains all the ingredients I love in There are no polar bears left on Bear research, interview, produce, write, a magical middle grade (dangerous tests; magical Island. At least, that’s what April’s fact-check and edit, as well as how to specialties; a dastardly villain) but it is thrillingly fresh father tells her when his scientific navigate the deluge of media and misinformation in and original. While there’s action, plot twists and a research takes them to this remote our modern age. great cast of instructors and students, what really sets Arctic outpost for six months. But this book apart for me is the way the real and the one endless summer night, April North and South supernatural worlds mirror each other. Amari is meets one. He is starving, lonely and Sandra Morris bullied at school and, as a young Black girl, is a long way from home. A celebration Walker. HB. $27.99 frequently limited by other people’s perceptions of of the love between a child and an animal, this moving Available 17 February her. Within the Bureau, she’s seen as an outsider story is also a battle cry for our world. In this engaging and beautiful because of the nature of her talents, and it’s still the introduction to the natural kids with access to resources and opportunities who world, young readers can learn excel. This is an inventive, fun and heartfelt debut; it’s Nonfiction about some of the world’s guaranteed to please young readers who love magic, most-loved northern and friendship and adventure. For ages 9+. southern hemisphere animals Leanne Hall is from Readings online Plantastic! and the ways the climates in Catherine Clowes & Rachel Gyan (illus.) those regions affect the way they The Mysterious Disappearance CSIRO Publishing. HB. $29.99 breed, feed, adapt, hide and survive. Illustrated in soft of Aidan S. Available 1 February watercolour, each spread takes readers around the David Levithan Plantastic! is a beautifully world, month-by-month, to explain how these animals Text. PB. $16.99 illustrated introduction to 26 survive in their respective hemispheres. Available 2 February of Australia’s unique native plants For six days, Lucas’ brother Aidan and its friendly, chatty style delivers was missing. Then, just as suddenly fascinating information in a way Classic of the Month as he vanished, Aidan reappears, but that is accessible (and fun). Did you when he’s asked what happened, the know gum trees are the tallest story Aidan tells is simply impossible. flowering plants on Earth? Or that The Westing Game Is he telling the truth? Or is there tree ferns existed long before dinosaurs? And some Ellen Raskin more to Aidan’s story? And can Lucas plants spread their seed in poo, while others eat Puffin. PB. $13.99 believe in the impossible when insects? Normally challenging scientific concepts are Available now everything and everybody is telling him not to? In his brilliantly communicated within these pages – for Six apartments are rented to six debut middle-grade novel, bestselling author David example, the exploration of plant classification families in the exclusive Sunset Levithan takes readers on a twisting journey through (families, genera and species) through the analogy of Towers, a building that has a perfect truth, reality, and fantasy and belief. mixed lollies is inspired. You can read it from beginning view to the mansion of reclusive to end or start anywhere you like; this book is so much millionaire Samuel Westing. When The Valley of Lost Secrets fun you’re bound to read from cover to cover. There’s so Westing suddenly dies, they are much here to learn for both children and adults. Lesley Parr summoned to his mansion and told Plantastic! is ideal for families to share and will delight Bloomsbury. PB. $14.99 that one among them has murdered anyone curious about Australia’s unique plants. This is Available 2 February him. Whoever can solve the puzzle of his murder will a ‘must-have’ for all family (and school) libraries. Stories of children escaping to become heir to his enormous estate. What an intriguing Highly recommended for ages 6+. the countryside during the Blitz beginning! This surprisingly slim novel has bombings in the Second World War are Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern and blizzards, red herrings and genuine clues, unique perennially popular, from Goodnight characters, and a race to discover who murdered Mr Tom to The War That Saved My With a Little Kelp from Our Friends Samuel Westing. Is it Mr Hoo, the unhappy Life. This debut novel takes a slightly Mathew Bate & Liz Rowland (illus.) restauranteur who claimed Westing stole his invention? different tack with an intriguing T&H. HB. $29.99 Is it Grace Wexler, the status-seeking mother? Could it mystery. A classroom of children from Available now be Otis Amber, the 62-year-old delivery boy? Surely it London are sent to a small town in Wales, where strong Subtitled The Secret Life of can’t be Turtle, the 12 year old who likes to play the friendships are broken, and new alliances are formed. Seaweed, this is an utterly stock market and glimpsed the body when she snuck Jimmy and his younger brother, Ronnie, are placed fascinating look at an into the mansion on a dare? The Westing Game is not with a kind couple, the Thomases. But there is ill will underappreciated plant in its very well-known in Australia, but it won the 1979 between them and the local priest, Reverend Evans, numerous guises. Written by Newbery Medal in America. I was thrilled to discover it whose son thrives on bullying others. Jimmy’s best Melbourne author Mathew Bate, it is as a child and was captivated by the way every friend has been placed with the Reverend and his packed with fascinating bits of character in the diverse cast was given both equal friendship can no longer be relied upon. When a information about the importance of respect and suspicion. Each time I re-read it, there is desperately unhappy Jimmy retreats to an old oak tree, different seaweeds in oceans, and how they help the more brilliance to admire. I highly recommend this he makes a gruesome discovery: a skull hiding among whole ecosystem to function efficiently. We also learn cracking mystery for readers aged 9 and up. its roots. Solving the mystery of the skull and the about the role seaweed has played in human culture in Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids 20 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 BARGAINS

Featuring supermarket ingredients, simple predator and prey, of a ferocious contest Our Universe: An methods, and tips and tricks to make no-fuss between present and past, between royal Astronomer’s Guide Bargains healthy food it includes tempting breakfasts, will and a common man’s vision: of a Jo Dunkley lunches and family dinners, as well as modern nation making itself through HB. Was $49.99 Now $14.99 satisfying snacks, baking, desserts and drinks. conflict, passion and courage. What happened in the first The Art of Making Memories: moments after the Big How to Create and Remember France: A History – From Gaul Good Night Stories for Rebel Bang? What are the Happy Moments to de Gaulle Girls: 100 Immigrant Women mysterious ‘dark’ parts of Meik Wiking John Julius Norwich Who Changed the World the universe? And what HB. Was $29.99 Now $15.99 PB. Was $29.99 Now $15.99 Elena Favilli happens in those parts of Every year, we are given a Legendary historian John HB. Was $46 Now $24.99 space where conditions are fixed number of days. Julius Norwich’s final Accompanied by so intense that our laws of Some days pass us by book is a vibrantly gorgeous, colour physics break down? Astrophysicist Jo without leaving a trace and colourful chronicle of his portraits and illustrated Dunkley guides us through the history of some days we remember beloved France. From by female artists from all the universe and its enduring mysteries forever. Using research on frowning Roman generals over the globe, this third and takes us to the heart of these many happiness, including and belligerent Gallic volume in the unsolved questions. interviews, data and chieftains through bestselling series real-life behavioural science and happiness Charlemagne, Marie Antoinette and the recognises the lives of Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s experiments, Meik Wiking explores how we storming of the Bastille, Vichy, the 100 extraordinary immigrant women from Guide can learn to create happy memories and be Resistance and beyond, his tale is packed the past and the present, who left their Richard Dawkins better at holding on to them. with heroes and villains, adventures and homeland to seek refuge, to realise their HB. Was $32.99 Now $10.99 battles, romance and revolution. dreams, and to share their invaluable Should we believe in God? The Book of Ikigai: Discover contributions with the world. Addressing some of the the Japanese Secret to a Long Freud: The Making of an Illusion most profound questions and Happy Life in Just Twelve Frederick Crews Olivia human beings confront, Weeks HB. Was $54.99 Now $16.99 Ian Falconer Richard Dawkins marshals Caroline de Surany Since the 1970s, Sigmund HB. Was $24.99 Now $12.99 science, philosophy and HB. Was $29.99 Now $16.99 Freud’s scientific Olivia is a gorgeous little comparative religion to Ikigai is the Japanese reputation has been in an pig who likes to dress up, interrogate the hypocrisies secret to living happily accelerating tailspin – but sing songs, dance, think, of all the religious systems. For anyone and in good health. It nonetheless the idea snooze (sometimes) and hoping to grapple with the meaning of life gives us the feeling that persists that some of his even build sandcastles. and what to believe, Outgrowing God is a our life makes sense. To contributions were Her days are filled with challenging and revelatory read. find our Ikigai, Caroline visionary discoveries of the minutia that makes de Surany has devised a lasting value. Drawing on rarely consulted up a small child’s life and, at the end of Selected Letters 12-week program with archives, Frederick Crews has assembled them, when she snuggles up in bed and her Cicero relatable anecdotes, inspiration from evidence that reveals a surprising new mother reads her a story (or three), Olivia PB. Was $27.99 Now $12.99 ancient tradition and playful exercises to Freud and puts an end to the myth of the little pig feels very full of love. The greatest orator in help move you towards a way of life that psychoanalysis and its creator. Roman history, Marcus brings peace of mind and lasting joy. Olivia the Spy Tullius Cicero remained A Gentleman in Moscow Ian Falconer one of the republic’s chief A Cook’s Tour of France: Amor Towles HB. Was $24.99 Now $12.99 supporters throughout his Regional French Recipes HB. Was $24.99 Now $19.99 Everyone’s favourite pig is life. A chronicle of a Gabriel Gaté On 21 June 1922, Count about to have a surprise crumbling civilisation HB. Was $34.99 Now $15.99 Alexander is escorted out trip to the ballet! But during the era when his This beautiful cookbook of the Kremlin, across Red when Olivia overhears her beloved republic disintegrated and was gathers the best classic Square and through the mother complaining replaced by despotism, his letters also recipes of regional France elegant revolving doors of about her recent naughty reflect the complex personality of a selfless from chef and television the Hotel Metropol. behaviour, her man whose refusal to compromise presenter Gabriel Gaté’s Deemed an unrepentant imagination runs wild and she decides to ultimately cost him his life. annual gastronomic aristocrat by a Bolshevik find out everything being said about her … journey along the course tribunal, he has been sentenced to house until her eavesdropping leads her to believe The Sleeping Beauty of the Tour de France. arrest. Rather than his usual suite he is to she is being carted off to prison! New York City Ballet & Valeria Visiting many famous cities and regions, it spend the decades of upheaval in an attic Docampo (illus.) features superb dishes such as Chicken room. Can a life without luxury be the Oscar and Lucinda & True HB. Was $29.99 Now $13.99 Casserole Vallée d’Auge from Normandy and richest of all? History of the Kelly Gang This lavishly illustrated the strawberry tart from the Loire Valley. Peter Carey picture book follows the The Lost Art of Scripture HB. Was $39.99 Now $15.99 storyline, choreography, The Dark Interval: Letters for Karen Armstrong This hardback gift edition costumes, and sets of the the Grieving Heart PB. Was $35 Now $15.99 brings two classic Peter New York City Ballet’s Rainer Maria Rilke In our increasingly secular Carey novels together in production of The HB. Was $27.99 Now $10 world, holy texts are at one volume. Oscar and Sleeping Beauty. With Gleaned from Rainer Maria best seen as irrelevant, Lucinda is a sweeping, beautiful art illustrated by Valeria Rilke’s voluminous, and at worst as an excuse irrepressibly inventive Docampo, this magnificent retelling is a never-before-translated to incite violence, hatred novel of love, commerce perfect gift for an aspiring ballerina or any correspondence, this book and division. So what and colonialism set in family who wants to add this enchanting collects the poet’s best value, if any, can scripture nineteenth-century England and Australia, fairy tale classic to their library. writings on grief and loss. It hold for us today? Karen and in True History of the Kelly Gang Carey is a profound vision of the Armstrong shows that through history, brings the legendary Australian bushranger Women Warriors: An mourning process and a these texts were once viewed as spiritual unforgettably to life. Unexpected History meditation on death’s place in our lives, as tools and if used in more meaningful and Pamela D. Toler well as a compilation of sensitive and moving compassionate ways, we would find The Ottoman Endgame HB. Was $47.99 Now $15.99 expressions of consolation and condolence. scripture has a great deal to teach us. Sean McMeekin Who says women don’t go PB. Was $27.99 Now $12.99 to war? From Vikings and Eat Happy: 30-Minute The Mirror and the Light The Ottoman Endgame is African queens to Feelgood Food Hilary Mantel the first, and definitive, cross-dressing military Melissa Hemsley HB. Was $45 Now $22.99 single-volume history of doctors and WWII Russian HB. Was $49.99 Now $12.99 Hilary Mantel’s long- the Ottoman Empire’s fighter pilots, these are With 120 flavourful and awaited The Mirror and the decade-long war for the stories of women for veg-packed quick and easy Light brings the prize- survival. Beginning with whom battle was not a recipes that can be winning Wolf Hall trilogy Italy’s invasion of metaphor. By considering the ways in whipped up in 30 minutes to a triumphant close. She Ottoman Tripoli in which their presence has been erased from or less, Eat Happy is traces the final years of September 1911, the book concludes with history, Toler reveals that women have designed to see you Thomas Cromwell, offering the establishment of Turkish independence always fought – not in spite of being through the whole week. a defining portrait of in the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923. women but because they are women. DVDS February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 21

Room 212 the same name. Lee’s latest joint brings all $29.95 this joyous stagecraft to the screen in a vital Film & TV call to connect with one another, to protest Available now After 20 years of marriage injustice, and, above all, to celebrate life. Maria decides to leave her home, check in to the hotel is a master at depicting big feelings. In across the street and TV DVD OF THE his most celebrated films, I Am Love (2009), A Bigger contemplate her life. Room Splash (2015), and Call Me by Your Name (2017), he travels deep MONTH 212, by acclaimed writer/ inside the emotional landscapes of his characters as they director Christophe Honoré, is a light and Season 1 TV experience love, shame, desire, joy and jealousy. Guadagnino’s playful new comedy about love and fidelity $24.95 visual style is intimate and sensual, drawing audiences close to set over the course of one life-changing night. Available now the passions that make hearts beat. More than any filmmaker Set 40 years in the future, working today, he understands that humans are contradictory when traveling the solar creatures, always in the process of becoming who they are. Documentary system is a booming We Are Who We Are is Guadagnino’s first venture into business, Avenue 5 is the new television and episodic storytelling. Unsurprisingly, he’s well comedy series from Armando suited to exploring adolescence, a time of colossal feelings and Three Identical Strangers Iannucci, the creator of beautiful messes. Co-written by Guadagnino, Paolo Giordano $29.95 and The Thick of It. Season one follows the and Francesca Manieri, this eight-part coming-of-age tale is Available now troubled crew of luxury space cruise ship set on a U.S. army base in Chioggia, near Venice. It’s summer An amazing, remarkable true Avenue 5, who must try and keep the rich, when 14-year-old Fraser Wilson (Jack Dylan Grazer) arrives story. In 1980 New York, three snotty tourists calm after their ship gets in Italy with his two mums – Colonel Sarah Wilson (Chloë young men, who were all thrown off course into space. Sevigny), the base’s new commander, and her wife Maggie adopted, meet each other, We Are Who (Alice Braga), a Major and a medic. and find out they’re triplets The Cliff Seasons 1 & 2 We Are Fraser is shy, lonely and restless, but connects with Caitlin who were separated at birth. $34.95 $29.95 Poythress (Jordan Kristine Seamón) who lives next door. If an Their quest to find out why turns into a Available now Available now army base is a space that rewards conformity, these teens are bizarre and sinister mystery. A detective from Reykjavik is fearless in their refusal to play by its rules. Caitlin is exploring sent to a small rural her gender identity, shaving her head and dressing in typically masculine clothes; Fraser is Water Lilies of Monet community in Iceland to help her fiercest ally and making his own discoveries on the way. $29.95 a young local police officer We Are Who We Are has a strong sense of place, a brilliant soundtrack and bold Available now investigate a suspicious performances from its young leads and wider supporting cast. It’s a series that speaks A journey through the accident. Together they must to our current cultural moment: each episode is entitled ‘Right here, right now’ masterpieces and obsessions unravel the mystery, while grappling with (differentiated only by number) and represents a raw, unprocessed experience. Watching of the genius of local superstitions and the growing We Are Who We Are feels a lot like being a teenager. It’s a physical, emotional, strange, and Impressionism with the tensions around a controversial sometimes unnerving rollercoaster ride. And it’s quite brilliant. invaluable contribution of hydroelectric development. This Icelandic Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton Monet biographer Ross King. four-part crime drama is a moody, dramatic Water Lillies of Monet is a tour of the mystery for fans of Nordic noir. museums displaying many of Monet’s Film whose hopes and dreams are lost, and the masterpieces: the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Star Trek Picard Season 1 redemptive power of love. Musée Marmottan Monet, the Musée $34.95 d’Orsay, and ending in Monet’s house and Available now gardens at Giverny. Dirt Music Of Love and Lies 14 years after Captain $29.95 $29.95 Jean-Luc Picard retired from Available now Available now David Byrne’s American Utopia Starfleet, Patrick Stewart is A gripping drama with a An uplifting story about $24.95 back to reprise his iconic role. haunting love story at its football and the measures one Available now After the destruction of the heart, set against the powerful small 12-year-old will take to Spike Lee documents former planet Romulus, Picard backdrop of Western help get his father’s life back Talking Heads front man tracks down a series of mysteries about his Australia’s evocative on track. Director Julien David Bryne’s brilliant, timely past. Star Trek Picard sets out on a new landscape. Based on the Rappeneau brings empathy, 2019 Broadway show, based adventure against a legion of dangerous acclaimed novel by bestselling author Tim humour and charm to the lives of ordinary on Byrne’s recent album foes, with the help from a few returning Winton, Dirt Music is a film about people people with this rousing and heartfelt story. American Utopia and tour of characters and a whole new crew.

Melbourne’s favourite independent cinema!

HIGH GROUND Now Showing (MA15+) ANOTHER ROUND Opens Feb 11 (M) MINARI Opens Feb 18 (PG) A frontier western about colonial violence that deeply resonates Intrigued by an obscure philosophical theory that humans The winner of multiple awards since its debut at the Sundance in today’s Australia, director Stephen Johnson's HIGH GROUND should have been born with a small amount of alcohol in our Film Festival, Lee Isaac Chung's MINARI is a heartfelt drama of is inspired by true events. Travis (Simon Baker), a policeman in blood, Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) and three of his friends embark one family's experience after moving from Los Angeles to the vast empty spaces of Northern Australia, loses control of an on a risky experiment to maintain a constant level of intoxication Arkansas to start a farm in the early 1980s. Steven Yeun operation that results in the massacre of an Indigenous tribe. throughout the workday. Initial results are positive, but as (Burning) and Yeri Han star as Jacob and Monica, parents to two Co-starring Ryan Corr, Sean Mununggurr, Jacob Junior stakes are raised, it becomes increasingly clear that some bold young children whose family's fragile dynamic is upended by the Nayinggul and Jack Thompson, HIGH GROUND is a remarkable acts carry severe consequences. From director Thomas arrival of Monica's headstrong mother Soonja (Yuh-jung Kim). film that explores the nature of loyalty and the ability to Vinterberg (The Hunt, Far From The Madding Crowd) ANOTHER Beautifully photographed and featuring outstanding distinguish freely between right and wrong, in opposition to the ROUND is an acclaimed comedy-drama that took the London performances from the entire ensemble, MINARI is a tender and dogmas of the age in which you live. and San Sebastian International Film Festivals by storm. sweeping story about what roots us. "Gripping, visually spectacular." - Hollywood Reporter "Mads Mikkelsen Is Intoxicating" - Consequence Of Sound "The movie we need right now." - LA Times

Visit our website for film information and tickets, plus Australia's largest selection of quality cinema and special events. 22 READINGS MONTHLY February 2021 MUSIC

Acoustic Love is the King Popular Eva Cassidy Jeff Tweedy $16.95 $21.95 | Also on vinyl Available now Available 12 February Music This year marks the First conceived 25th anniversary of during the pandemic Eva Cassidy’s lockdowns of 2020, legendary Blues Love Is the King is Jeff Acclaimed Gumbaynggirr, Dunghutti and soul Alley concert in Tweedy’s follow-up ALBUM OF queen Emma Donovan returns after a six-year absence Washington, DC. to the 2018 album THE MONTH with Crossover, another cracking album made with her Cassidy, who died Warm and 2019’s long-time collaborators the Putbacks. from melanoma in 1996 at the age of 33, has Warmer. An honest ode to love and hope, Pop/Rock/Alt A born musician, Donovan grew up singing gospel songs continued to resonate with listeners. This the 11 vignettes on this album are being with her grandparents on the north coast of New South Wales, new posthumous acoustic album features released in conjunction with Tweedy’s and, at the age of seven, joined her mother and five uncles 20 of Cassidy’s best loved acoustic tracks, second book, How to Write One Song. in the family band the Donovans. She was also a founding led by her signature rendition of Cyndi member of the award-winning, all-Aboriginal female folk Lauer’s classic, ‘Time After Time’. Medicine at Midnight outfit the Stiff Gins, as well as the now legendary Black Arm Foo Fighters Band. During this period, she met the musicians who would Fibatty! $21.95 | Also on vinyl go on to become her band the Putbacks. Taking their cues Glenn Richards Available 5 February from some of the great soul house bands of the 1960s and $21.95 Medicine at Midnight 1970s, the Putbacks are a rhythm section in the mould of Available now is the Foo Fighters’ the MGs or the Meters, and despite the lack of horns, they’re The start of 2020 saw Crossover 10th studio album, damn funky. Together, Donovan and the band burst onto the Glenn Richards in a Emma Donovan & packing nine songs scene in 2014 with their album Dawn, announcing themselves studio with his Augie The Putbacks into a tight 37 as a new and undeniable voice in Australian soul music. March bandmates $22.95 | Also on vinyl minutes. Produced Now, six years later, they’re back with Crossover, a planning for a new Available now by the band and Greg fantastic follow-up destined to be a new Australian classic. album. Unfortunately Kurstin, the album features a brighter, Most of the songs on the album are originals apart from the world had other more pop-orientated outlook. Described by the song ‘Yarian Mitji’, which is sung in the South Australian language plans. Undeterred, Richards started on the Dave Grohl as an ‘up, fun record’ filled with of Ngarrindjeri, and ‘Warrell Creek Song’, a traditional Gumbaynggirr song about the journey that would lead to this new self- ‘anthemic, huge rock songs’, it includes the sighting of a strange vessel off the New South Wales coast, which Donovan sings in her made pop album that sparkles and shines Foo Fighters’ latest single ‘Shame Shame’. grandmother’s mother tongue. Crossover is a soul album reminiscent of the Stax or and is ‘very far from your typical solo album Atlantic record labels, but equally a protest album in the tradition of pioneering First by a sensitive bloke with an acoustic ’. Nations artists such as Coloured Stone, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. One of the The New OK Drive-By Truckers standouts in this vein is ‘Mob March’, a stirring anthem that also speaks to the Bla(c)k Herald Lives Matter movement in Australia. As Donovan says: ‘Get on ya feet, we’re takin it to Odette $21.95 | Also on vinyl the streets.’ Available now $21.95 | Also on vinyl Drive-By Truckers Dave Clarke is the music and DVD manager for Readings Available 5 February released The Sydney singer- Unraveling in early songwriter Odette 2020 and set out for follows up her what was supposed to Jazz/Blues Children’s acclaimed two-time be a full year of ARIA-nominated touring. Needless to debut To a Stranger Becoming (Soundtrack Bluey: The Album say, it did not go as planned. Made up of with Herald. Leaving from the Netflix Original Various songs left over from The Unraveling no stone unturned, the album covers love, Documentary) $19.95 sessions and new ones written and heartbreak, grief, anger, self-analysis, Kamasi Washington Available now recorded since, The New OK balances out accountability and more. It is led by the The perfect the darkness of our current situation with a $22.95 | Also on vinyl stunning singles ‘Dwell’ and ‘Feverbreak’. Available now soundtrack for hope for better days ahead. The Emmy- Bluey fans of any Sweet Inspiration nominated original age, Bluey: The Song Gifts Kate Ceberano score for the Album features 17 Rob Snarski documentary film that songs, all original $21.95 $29.95 provided an intimate compositions, from Available 5 February Available now glimpse into the life of season one of the beloved children’s show. Containing A deeply personal Michelle Obama. Featuring both upbeat and tranquil tracks, ruminations on life, double album Composed and produced by jazz saxophonist this album includes music from fan nature and the written and Kamasi Washington, who joined the film favourite episodes such as ‘ Keepy Uppy’, human spirit, Sweet recorded during the project in its embryonic stage, the score fuses ‘Here Come the Grannies!’, ‘Pool’ and ‘The Inspiration is the depths of a sense of melancholy joy with bright Creek’, and two new version of the show’s 28th album of Kate Melbourne’s homages to Motown. Among Washington’s 15 catchy theme tune. Ceberano’s career. lockdown. Rob short tracks are meditative piano pieces and Written during Melbourne’s pandemic Snarski created most of these songs as powerful and lush orchestral themes. Pop/Rock/Alt lockdown, it features two new original presents for loved ones – separated by songs plus covers of some of the greats, distance and a virus, relying on email and Chris Wilson Live at the including Dolly Parton, Leonard Cohen, home studio finessing and tweaking. Continental Greenfields: The Gibb Paul McCartney, Carole King and more. Bittersweet, nostalgic, light-hearted, funny Chris Wilson Brothers Songbook Vol. 1 and lovelorn, this is a remarkable chronicle of creativity, longing and collaboration. $24.95 | Also on vinyl Barry Gibb & Friends Ignorance Available now $21.95 | Also on vinyl The Weather Station An Australian classic, Available now $19.95 | Also on vinyl Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) Chris Wilson Live at Living legend Barry Available 5 February Kurt Vile the Continental is Gibb’s latest full-length In late 2020, Tamara $19.95 | Also on vinyl getting a long- album, Greenfields: Lindeman’s project Available now deserved re-release, The Gibb Brothers The Weather Station Kurt Vile’s Speed, remastered and Songbook Vol. 1, released its first new Sound, Lonely KV was expanded with extra features new country- music in three years recorded with a cast tracks for a new double CD. Originally inflected renditions of with the single of local heavies released in 1994, this is an intimate some of the Bee Gees’ biggest hits. Recorded ‘Robber’, a bold shift including Bobby recording of the Melbourne blues, country, by Gibb in Nashville, guest appearances in sound and tone for the Toronto songwriter. Wood and Dave Roe, folk and roots-rock master, accompanied include some of the world’s biggest country Lindeman’s new album Ignorance continues and includes covers by long-time sideman Shane O’Mara on artists, including Dolly Parton, Brandi Carlile, to build on this new direction, creating rich as well as two originals. The album also guitar, and luminary Jex Sheryl Crow, Alison Krauss, Miranda Lambert, new sonic landscapes and bright moments of features a rare musical moment: Vile’s Saarelaht on piano. This album holds a Olivia Newton-John, David Rawlings, Keith pure pop, all while maintaining her duet with the late John Prine on Prine’s singular place in a singular career. Urban and Gillian Welch. trademark lyricism. well-loved tune ‘How Lucky’.

MUSIC February 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 23

Violins of Hope: Concerto, though inescapable, was Live at Kohl Mansion minimised in a populist, vernacular idiom Classical Various Artists that absorbed native and jazz. Pentatone. PTC5186879. Was $29.95 Music $24.95 (limited stock at this price) Art of the Mandolin Violins of Hope Avi Avital presents instruments DG. 4838534. $24.95 that were owned by Art of the Mandolin is From 1890 through to the revolution and the first two Jewish musicians Avi Avital’s first ALBUM OF decades of the 20th century, Russia was gripped with before and during recording program THE MONTH creative fever. The poets, musicians and artists of the era were the Holocaust, consisting all producing great works and it was dubbed ‘The Silver Age’, to Classical representing exclusively of pieces differentiate it from ‘The Golden Age’ a century earlier. During strength and optimism for the future originally written for this time Scriabin was ‘combining all aesthetic experience in a during mankind’s darkest hour. On this the mandolin. From single, mystical, musical vision’, while Stravinsky album, recorded live at Kohl Mansion, the Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Mandolins in G revolutionised ballet, and Prokofiev ‘embraced cinema as the instruments are used to perform two major through Beethoven’s seldom most complete and modern synthesis of the senses’. string quartet masterpieces by Schubert performed Adagio in E flat major to Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov has taken these three and Mendelssohn, alongside a new contemporary pieces commissioned over giants of composition and, together with Valery Gergiev and composition by Jake Heggie, inspired by the last few years by Avi himself, this the Mariinsky Orchestra, has created this somewhat epic the violins’ histories. project represents a return to the heart of two-disc set featuring their piano repertoire. The first disc is the instrument. exclusively solo piano repertoire, including the delightfully Songs of Comfort and Hope named ‘Sarcasms for Piano’ by Prokofiev and three movements Yo-Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott Nick Cave & Nicholas Lens: Silver Age: arranged by Stravinsky from his Firebird Suite, with all the Sony. 19439822372. $19.95 L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S Scriabin, spiky edges you’d imagine. Scriabin’s Piano Concerto is on Songs of Comfort and Denzil Delaere, N.L. Noorenbergh, Stravinsky & the second disc and has a lyricism I had never previously Hope was conceived Claron McFadden & Clara-Lane Lens Prokofiev associated with his style; the opening strings of the Andante in April 2020 when DG. 4839745. $24.95 Daniil Trifonov are gentle and sing so beautifully. As each variation continues DG. 4835331. people everywhere Perhaps best-known to evolve through this movement, you feel Trifonov’s musical 2CD $24.95 were entering a for his distinctive shaping take hold and get a sense of how Scriabin evolved into dramatic new world, vocal style, Australian the mystic, synaesthesia-experiencing composer he became. one in which we have polymath Nick Cave The true highlight of this recording, however, is Trifonov’s interpretations of each of been separated from our loved ones and here steps into the these works. The Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 8 starts with an odd-shaped theme that can’t many filled with fear and isolation. spotlight as librettist quite seem to get a hold of itself – though at no point do you feel lost as the listener, or at Featuring 21 new recordings, ranging from rather than performer, least no more lost than Prokofiev was when he wrote it during WWII. In complete contrast fresh arrangements of traditional folk tunes, for a second operatic project with Belgian are the Three Movements from Petrouchka by Stravinsky with their bright, balletic themes. pop songs and jazz standards to mainstays composer Nicholas Lens. They joined forces As there are no dancers, Trifonov takes them and does whatever he wants with them, and from the western classical repertoire, the during the global lockdown to create this new it’s simply fun. songs on the album bring a sense of work, L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S. At Lens’s request, Cave Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings community, identity and purpose, crossing penned 12 litanies – ‘petitions to a divine boundaries and binding us together in maker’ – simple, moving texts which the thanks, consolation and encouragement. composer then wove into what he calls a ‘modest chamber opera of sleeping dreams’. Serenades: Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns: Sonates & Trio Rodrigo: Concierto de There is a clear unity of purpose about the Elgar & Mozart Renaud Capuçon, Edgar Moreau & Aranjuez and works by finished opera, a work of gentle beauty. Daniel Hope & Zürcher Bertrand Chamayou Francisco Coll & Pete Harden Kammerorchester Erato. 190295167103. $26.95 Jacob Kellerman, LPO & Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas DG. 4839845. $26.95 Saint-Saëns Christian Karlsen Jörg Widmann & András Schiff ‘I’m inclined was a child BIS. BIS2485. Was $29.95 ECM. 02894819512. $29.95 to knock prodigy, a prolific $24.95 (limited stock at this price) Two great artists, music’, my colleague composer and Joaquín Rodrigo’s pianist András Schiff Phil wryly jokes at celebrated soloist Concierto de Aranjuez and composer/ the mention of into his final years. is the perfect opening clarinettist Jörg Mozart’s oft- Although best- to guitarist Jacob Widmann, join forces performed serenade remembered for his humorous Le Kellermann and for the first time on Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Overdone carnaval des animaux suite and opera conductor Christian record, performing though it may be, in the hands of the Samson et Delila, the chamber music Karlsens’s new Brahms’s late masterpieces, the Clarinet right musicians we are reminded of the presented on this disc – performed by recording. Their intention was to conjure Sonatas op. 120, written in 1894. In between genius and inventiveness of Mozart’s Renaud Capuçon (violin), Edgar Moreau up Spain ‘as if through a prism – as a the sonatas Schiff plays Widmann’s supposedly hackneyed music. Under the (cello) and Bertrand Chamayou (piano) concept rather than a place’. To achieve evocative Intermezzi for piano. As Jörg direction of violinist Daniel Hope, the – is worthy of equal recognition. this, they have enlisted the help of Widmann explains in a program note, these Zurich Chamber Orchestra proves to be Accompanied by Chamayou, Capuçon Francisco Coll and Pete Harden, who have are works inspired by his friendship with up to the task, giving an effervescent and and Moreau each take a sonata (violin each contributed a concertante work. Also András Schiff and by a shared love of brilliant performance of Eine Kleine and cello respectively), and all three included is music from Manuel de Falla Brahms, to whom they pay tribute. Nachtmusik for this recent recording of finally unite for a trio. and Isaac Albéniz. string serenades. The Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor La Peste The album opens with Tchaikovsky’s (1885) presents a ferocious technical Richard Strauss: Duet Les Barocudas luscious Serenade for Strings, about which challenge for both violinist and pianist. Concertino for Clarinet and Atma Classique. ACD22809. $29.95 the composer himself earnestly declared, Capuçon and Chamayou give an exciting Bassoon, Prelude to Capriccio Known for its daring ‘it is a heartfelt piece and so, I dare to performance, together making easy & Aaron Copland: Clarinet and youthful think, is not lacking in real qualities’. work of Saint-Saëns’s demanding score. Concerto, Appalachian performances, the I am of the same mind: the sweeping Saint-Saëns composed his Cello Sonata Spring Suite ensemble Les melodies and lush textures speak straight No. 1 in C minor during 1872 – a year Richard Stamp, Academy of Barocudas’s new to the heart, and – just as the lightness of of both personal sadness and national London & Ernst Ottensamer recording La Peste is Mozart’s serenade can cheer a grump – difficulty. His inner grief is evident in Signum. SIGCD654. Was $29.95 a musical journey the warmth of Tchaikovsky’s music is an the brilliant, dramatic and occasionally $24.95 (limited stock at this price) that explores the theme of the plague. antidote to bleak times. Rather than giving dark cello writing, played with passion Mellifluous, They have compiled a program in which into the temptation of sentimentality and assurance by Moreau. The Piano Trio retrospective and each piece corresponds with an episode and an overabundance of rubato, the No. 2 in E minor (1892) is the latest work playful, the Duet or aspect of this 17th century pandemic. Zurich Chamber Orchestra approaches the presented here, with any hint of youthful Concertino and All of the composers selected for this serenade with athletic precision, allowing verve now overtaken by seriousness and Prelude to Capriccio recording were violinists, and all of them the emotional directness of Tchaikovsky’s subtlety. Capuçon, Moreau and Chamayou were works of Richard were affected by the plague, in some music to express itself. share a fine rapport, and give an exquisite Strauss’s ‘Indian cases, fatally. Les Barocudas have Elgar’s more intimate offering completes and fervent interpretation of Saint-Saëns’s Summer’ – an old man’s refuge from the established themselves as a bold and this enjoyable survey of string serenades. often solemn trio. barbarism of war and its aftermath. The energetic ensemble whose presence on Alexandra Mathew is from Readings State Alexandra Mathew is from Readings State European influence of Aaron Copland’s the early music scene is as formidable as Library Victoria Library Victoria Appalachian Spring and the Clarinet it is eccentric. REOPENING SALE % OFF 20all books at READINGS STATE LIBRARY

Terms and conditions: This special 20% off sale is available in-store only at the Readings State Library Victoria shop from 15-28 February 2021, and is not available online, or at any other Readings shop. The discount applies to the recommended retail price, and is not valid with any other offers or discounts.