FREE APRIL 2021

20% sale at our St Kilda shop

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New books from Haruki Murakami, Stan Grant, Emily Maguire, Kate Ellis, Rachel Kushner and more!

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

CHRISTINA ÅSTRAN MARC MARTIN page 22 page 18 HARUKI LECH BLAINE MONICA DUX KATE ELLIS MURAKAMI page 12 page 12 page 13 page 6

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 VICTORIA 285-321 RUSSELL ST 8664 7540 | SEE SHOP OPENING HOURS, BROWSE AND BUY ONLINE AT READINGS.COM.AU %% 2020OFFOFF selectedselected cookbookscookbooks inin shopsshops andand onlineonline

PurchasePurchase in-storein-store forfor youryour chancechance toto winwin aa cookbookcookbook library.library.

See Sales & Promotions column for details. NEWS April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 3

April Sales & News Promotions

The Stella Prize 2021 shortlist 20% off all books at Readings The Stella Prize shortlist for 2021 has been St Kilda announced, celebrating Australian women’s We’re offering 20% off all books at contribution to literature. The six books on our St Kilda shop from Monday 19 to the 2021 Stella Prize shortlist are: Fathoms Sunday 25 April. This special 20% by Rebecca Giggs, Revenge by S.L. Lim, off sale is available in-store only at The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean Readings St Kilda, and is not available McKay, Witness by Louise Milligan, Stone online, or at any other Readings Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe and shop. The discount applies to the The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld. The prize recommended retail price, and is not awards $50,000, and both fiction and valid with any other offers or discounts. nonfiction books are eligible for entry. The 2021 Stella Prize will be awarded on Thursday 22 April. Buy all six books on the 20% off selected cookbooks Stella Prize 2021 shortlist to receive $45 off If you read one thing on this page, in-store and online. Not valid with any other make it this. For all the beginner cooks, offer. While stocks last. devoted foodies and aspirational READINGS MOTNHLY CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR masterchefs out there, we have two Free, independent monthly newspaper Phil Richards exciting offers on a range of essential published by Readings Books, Music & Film The Women’s Prize for Fiction cookbooks. Throughout April, take EVENTS & PROGRAMMING 2021 longlist 20% off selected cookbooks and go SUBSCRIBE Chris Gordon The longlist for the Women’s Prize for in the draw to win a cookbook library! You can subscribe to Readings Monthly Fiction has been announced. The 16 books There’s something for everyone, with and our e-news by visiting our website: ADVERTISING on the longlist are: Because of You by Dawn instant classics from Ottolenghi, Natalie French, Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi, Consent readings.com.au/sign-up Lucie Dess Paull, Hetty McKinnon and many more. by Annabel Lyon, Detransition, Baby by This offer is available until 30 April on [email protected] Torrey Peters, Exciting Times by Naoise select in-stock, full-priced items, online DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Dolan, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps (use the code 20COOKBOOKS) and ONLINE, MAIL-ORDER & OVER- CARTOON THE-PHONE PURCHASES Her House by Cherie Jones, Luster by Raven in all Readings shops. Buy any of the Oslo Davis Leilani, No One Is Talking About This by selected cookbooks in store and go $6.50 flat rate to anywhere in Australia for Patricia Lockwood, Nothing but Blue Sky by into the draw to win a cookbook library: orders under $120. Free shipping for orders FRONT COVER Kathleen MacMahon, Piranesi by Susanna 10 more books of your choice from the $120 and over. The April Readings Monthly cover Clarke, Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, selected titles. features an image of our St Kilda shop. Summer by Ali Smith, The Golden Rule EDITOR © Chris Middleton Photography by Amanda Craig, The Vanishing Half by Jackie Tang Brit Bennett, Transcendent Kingdom by Buy two Vintage Classics and Yaa Gyasi and Unsettled Ground by Claire receive a FREE vintage tea towel [email protected] PRICES AND AVAILABILITY Fuller. The Women’s Prize awards £30,000 From 15 to 30 April, buy two Vintage Please note that all prices and release EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS to a work of fiction written in English by a Classics and receive a gorgeous vintage dates in Readings Monthly are correct woman of any nationality. The winner will be Judi Mitchell & Lucie Dess tea towel. Offer available in-store only at time of publication, however prices announced on Wednesday 7 July. until stock runs out, and not available and release dates may change without PROOFREADER online. Valid on in-stock items only. notice. Special price offers apply only for Joanna Di Mattia the month in which they are featured in Clunes Booktown Festival Save on the Stella Prize 2021 Readings Monthly. The annual Clunes Booktown Festival is back KIDS & YA CURATORS in 2021 and will run over three weekends in shortlist bundle Angela Crocombe & Dani Solomon May. Each event is ticketed across the three Buy all six books in the Stella Prize Readings donates 10% of its profits each weekends, with tickets starting at $15. To see shortlist to receive $45 off in-store and MUSIC & DVD CURATOR year to the Readings Foundation: the program and for more information, visit: online. Not valid with any other offer. Dave Clarke readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation clunesbooktown.com.au While stocks last.

Melbourne’s favourite independent cinema!

SUPERNOVA Opens April 15 (M) THE DISSIDENT Opens April 22 (CTC) NT LIVE: A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Opens May 1 (E) A heart-rending modern love story about a couple struggling From Academy-Award winning filmmaker, Bryan Fogel, comes Filmed live onstage from London’s West End, Arthur Miller’s with a diagnosis of early-onset dementia, Sam (Colin Firth, A the explosive story of the murder that shocked the world. When dark and passionate play A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE returns to Single Man) and Tusker (Stanley Tucci, The Children Act) have Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappears in the Nova screen. In Brooklyn, longshoreman Eddie Carbone spent twenty years together, and are as passionately in love as Istanbul, his fiancée and dissidents around the world piece (Mark Strong, The Imitation Game) welcomes his Sicilian cousins they have ever been. Featuring stunning cinematography, together the clues to his murder and expose a global cover up. to the land of freedom. But when one of them falls for his SUPERNOVA is an intimate drama about love and mortality with Chillingly powerful and heartbreakingly candid, THE DISSIDENT beautiful niece, they discover that freedom comes at a price. Ivo beautifully tender performances delivered by Firth and Tucci. is an intimate portrait of a man who sacrificed everything for Van Hove (All About Eve) directs this ‘magnetic, electrifying, freedom of speech. astonishingly bold’ production (Evening Standard).

- The Guardian "Riveting" - Variety - The Times "A masterfully directed ode to the power of love." - Deadline "Emotionally devastating. Unforgettable” - Independent

Visit our website for film information and tickets, plus Australia's largest selection of quality cinema and special events. 4 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 COLUMNS Mark’s Say with Mark Rubbo

Lygon Street in Carlton and Acland Street in St Kilda were vibrant local shopping strips and wonderful areas to hang out. Sadly, they’ve lost some of their vitality. Both derived much of their energy from the wave of immigrants who came to Australia after the Second World War. In Lygon Street, Italian immigrants opened small businesses and THE 2021 brought Italian food culture, and especially the espresso, to Melbourne and Australia. They attracted the university and arts communities and made fertile ground for places STELLA PRIZE such as Readings, La Mama Theatre, the Poppy Shop and Professor Longhair’s Music Shop to grow. Iconic businesses with an Italian heritage such as Donati’s, King & Godfree, SHORTLIST Jimmy Watson’s, Bottega Tasca and Tiamo still continue and have been joined by D.O.C. CELEBRATING AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WRITING In St Kilda, the Jewish refugees escaping from the horror of the Holocaust tried to recreate a bit of the society they had lost in the safety of the wide tree-lined walkway of Acland Street, opening cafés and delicatessens where they could gather and meet and endlessly argue and shop. The most famous was Café Scheherazade that was immortalised in Arnold Zable’s beautiful book of the same name. The delicious food and the European exoticness also attracted the Australian community to Acland Street, as well as the thrills of Luna Park. It was no accident that the Melbourne Film Festival made its home in St Kilda’s grand Palais Theatre in the 1960s and 1970s, and its first director, Erwin Rado, was a Hungarian of Jewish descent. In 1960, Gerhard Sawatzky, another European, opened Cosmos Bookshop which later became Readings St Kilda. But today, if you walk down Acland Street, there are only a few signs left of its heritage. Monarch Cakes survives as does the Europa Cake Shop. Readings (formerly Cosmos) is still there, as is the wonderful Cicciolina a few doors up. What is notable about these streets now is the number of vacant shops; just a few weeks ago the café Trotters closed after almost 40 years in Lygon Street. Some of the shops have been vacant for two or three years. I often wonder why these great streets are going through such a rough patch now. Obviously the pandemic hasn’t helped but in these successful streets, rents have been rising at astronomical rates forcing out the interesting businesses that made the streets vibrant and ironically making them less attractive. Rents are now starting to come down; that might encourage a rebirth but I think it requires more. In my experience both the local councils and the State For author interviews, judges’ notes and Government have been missing in action while these two important streets, which have more, visit thestellaprize.com.au given so much to Melbourne’s culture, stumble towards possible collapse. Another factor of course is the growth of online shopping. Danny Caine, the #2021StellaPrize owner of the Raven Bookstore in Kansas, America, has been railing against the ‘Amazonification’ of our communities for several years and has combined those thoughts in a new book, How to Resist Amazon and Why. He argues that while you might save a few dollars buying from Amazon and their like, you are ultimately paying for it with the degradation of your local communities. It’s an interesting read. While the reach of Amazon is not yet as great here, Danny’s book sounds warning bells for us.

On Events with Chris Gordon

We are keeping our events program out of our shops for the time being. This is good news for those of you who want a guaranteed a seat at our discussions and book launches or indeed, for those of you who would prefer to stay at home. Our events will be staged at external venues near our shops, as well as continuing online via Zoom. My hope is that by offering this hybrid style of programming, there will be no excuse for you not to join us as we set about tackling the meaning behind the words. We have never been afraid of change here at Readings. We want our events program to ignite discussions and consider the experiences we all grapple with. I am delighted to tell you that we have some exceptional thinkers and leaders coming up, whose insight will hopefully provide you with some clarity around the issues facing our beautiful country. For example, we are delighted to have our own managing director Mark Rubbo talking with Stan Grant about Grant’s new book With the Falling of the Dusk. Grant is one of our foremost observers and chroniclers of the world in crisis. His new book combines his personal experiences reporting from the world’s flashpoints with his deep understanding of politics, history and philosophy, to explore what is driving the world to crisis and how it might be averted. To be honest, he does fear the worst, but he also provides ideas for our future. Those of you interested in thinking about the future should also book into our event with Hugh Mackay and Paul Barclay. Together they will examine the ideals of kindness, forgiveness and indeed, hope, asking us to imagine how different our society could be if we applied those ideals more widely. Reading novels can also give us fodder for examination. I recently read journalist Jacqueline Maley’s book The Truth About Her, in preparation for her event with Melissa Fyfe in April. This is a tender, intelligent and moving exploration of guilt, shame, female anger and motherhood, with all its trouble and treasure. Mostly, it is a story about the nature of stories – who owns them, who gets to tell them, and why we need them. Books like Maley’s are the reason Readings events are so very good. Hearing the author speak about the stories behind the book gives us an extraordinarily lucky opportunity to reflect on our own positions, beliefs and reading choices. It can give us the stories to share at dinner parties, at book groups and at work. It can give us more than we ever bargained for. Do keep abreast of our programming by signing up for our e-newsletter or by checking our events page on the Readings website (www.readings.com.au/events). You’ll find an answer there, I promise. FEATURE April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 5

Preserving the Italian Way by Pietro Demaio, published by Plum, is available at all Readings shops and online.

© Chris Middleton Photography

Anita’s green olives Le olive della Signora Anita

Autumn is the perfect time to start pickling and preserving. This delicious recipe is from Pietro Demaio’s cult favourite Preserving the Italian Way.

Select larger green olives (verdale or kalamata) for When you want to use the olives, remove them from the brine, this recipe. Once you have prepared them with the place in a sieve or colander and wash quickly under running water flavourings, you can place them under olive oil in jars, to remove as much salt as possible. freeze them, seal them in vacuum bags, or just eat them Place the olives in a large bowl and add a good splash of olive oil, straight away. (I prefer the last suggestion!) the garlic, oregano and a little chilli, if you like. Eat straight away or transfer to clean jars (ensure jars are properly sterilised) and 1 kg hard, fresh green olives completely cover with olive oil. Seal and store in a cool, dark place for 1 month before eating. The olives will keep for up to 2 years 100 g table salt unopened. Once opened, store in the fridge for up to 1 month. extra-virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced Variation 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes (optional) As with so many Italian recipes, the ingredients might be the same but it is the person’s method that is special! This is Tony Fedele’s variation Special equipment on the above recipe. Tony got in touch with me after I self-published the original version of Preserving the Italian Way – it turned out that his Preserving the Italian 10 litre plastic container father, Pasquale, and my father were both interned as Italian prisoners Way of war during World War Two, where their job was to cut wood for a 10 kg weight (about 4 bricks is ideal) Pietro Demaio local hospital in Warburton, Victoria. Our mothers’ villages in Calabria were 10 kilometres apart too. Plum. PB. $39.99 Place the olives in the 10 litre plastic container. Cover with cold, Available now The amazing twists life brings! fresh water and allow to stand for 3 days, replacing the water every For Tony’s variation, follow the recipe above but once the olives are day. under the salt, agitate them every day and they will be read to use After 3 days, drain the olives and crush each one with an empty after 14 days. beer bottle (the indention in the bottom of the bottle will stop the olives flying in all directions). Remove the pits from the crushed olives. (Ideally have someone else on hand to do this for you!) Pietro Demaio is a Melbourne GP with a passion for the traditional preserving recipes from his homeland of Italy. Place the pitted olives back in the plastic container and cover with the salt. Cover with a plate or wooden tray, then place a 10 kg Throughout April, we are offering 20% off Demaio’s book and a range weight on top. of other essential cookbooks including titles from Ottolenghi, Natalie Paull, Hetty McKinnon, and many more. This offer is available in-store Now comes the hard part. Leave the olives in the salt for 3 months, and online (use the code 20COOKBOOKS). Read more about this agitating them every 2–3 weeks. You can leave the olives like this offer on page 3. for up to 1 year, until you want to use them. 6 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 FICTION

she meets her beloved niece Lena – the addictive tale is not your ordinary love person she is closest to in the world – for a story. There is romance, but it is mainly Fiction lunch out. One Sunday Nic doesn’t show an exploration of the love between up. Lena travels back to Nic’s house which mothers and their daughters, a love which she hasn’t visited since she was a child. She can last a lifetime. gets the shock of her life – finding her Kate McIntosh is the manager of Readings A traveller takes a drink with a melancholy monkey aunty unconscious among what appears to Doncaster BOOK OF THE working in a run-down inn. A writer stumbles across a be a lifetime of junk and rubbish. fictitious jazz record he made up for an old review as a joke. A Emily Maguire’s Love Objects is a MONTH man finds himself drawn to a mysterious woman based on A Million Things character-driven novel, and the three main International their shared love of Schumann. Haruki Murakami’s singular Emily Spurr characters – Nic, Lena and Lena’s older blend of the ordinary and surreal is on full display in this Text. PB. $32.99 Fiction brother Will – are all beautifully formed, collection of eight mesmeric short stories, all linked by their Available now with the help of dialogue that is both funny shared use of the first-person perspective. Some of these Emily Spurr’s A and heartbreakingly sad. This tight focus stories have previously appeared in literary journals, while Million Things is an on character lends psychological insight others are available here in English for the first time. enthralling, devastating and empathy to each unfolding scene of debut. Shortlisted for the upheaval: Nic cannot see that her stuff Unpublished Manuscript Murakami’s singular blend of the almost killed her, and this sets in motion Prize in the 2020 Victorian events that will prove deeply distressing for ordinary and surreal is on full display. Premier’s Literary Awards, all of them. this is a story about love, Fans of Murakami will undoubtedly enjoy this grab bag Maguire spent a year researching family and letting go. the science behind hoarding and its of many of the writer’s repeated motifs and themes: baseball, Ten-year-old Rae has a terrible secret – approaches, and her insight enriches the memory, loneliness, the capricious path of fate, youthful it’s the reason she’s all alone, and the reason work with startling observations around longing, and the sweet airs of music. One of the collection’s she sleeps on the couch at night. Except for what types of behaviour are considered highlights, ‘Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova’, unfolds like her dog, Splinter, Rae has never had anyone safe or unsafe, and why we choose to a score; at times the prose cranks the tension with neurotic really look out for her before. But when make something our business. This allows First Person staccato beats, others it swells with nostalgia-infused Rae inadvertently befriends Lettie, the ‘old Maguire to layer broader societal questions Singular dreaminess. In just a few, fleeting pages, it had me fully goat’ living alone next door, her carefully around possession and intervention, not Haruki Murakami & immersed – ‘Go back!’ I was mentally shouting at the narrator constructed façade begins to crumble. only with regards to Nic’s behaviour but in Philip Gabriel (trans.) – and left me grinning at its punchy blast of a final line. The complex, genuine friendship Lena and Will’s lives as well: Lena’s private Harvill Secker. HB. That immersive quality and masterful control of prose is, of between Lettie and Rae is the absolute Was $39.99 life becomes very public, exposing her to course, what makes Murakami’s magical realism so transfixing soul of this book and prevents it from $34.99 public objectification and abuse, while a and what keeps his devotees camped out for more. Murakami becoming relentlessly bleak. Spurr brings past mistake encroaches on Will’s present. Available 6 April seems fully aware of (and wryly bemused by) his cult-like the reader in on Rae’s secret early on, and Unapologetic, yet compassionately status, and stories like ‘The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection’ so it is there, lurking in the background for written, Love Objects is at its core about and ‘With the Beatles’ raise tantalising questions of how closely they hew to autobiography. the entirety of the novel. Despite this, she family, betrayal, forgiveness and love, and Murakami has his detractors as well, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that some of these has found an elegant balance between the what we do to fill the empty spaces. stories are taking playful shots at his critics – particularly those who have commented on book’s inevitable consequences and the his portrayal of women – but to varying degrees of success. However you feel, First Person Carolyn Watson is from Readings Doncaster small moments of wonder and care between Singular contains much to discuss and savour. Readers new to this fascinating writer’s work Rae and Lettie. Like Rae, Lettie struggles will find these short, odd pieces an inviting and accessible entry point. The Truth About Her to come to terms with past grief and loss, Jackie Tang is the editor of Readings Monthly Jacqueline Maley hiding painful memories beneath stacks of Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 hoarded objects. Through their friendship, Available 7 April Spurr explores themes of aging, motherhood and grief with great compassion. swings between aloof and emotionally When I reached the A Million Things recalls books like Spotlight wounded, just one element of his end of this book and The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna in its unreliability as a narrator. As he moves read the author bio on the on a Classic depiction of childhood trauma and neglect. between the boarding house where he lives, back page, I was not in the While the voice of Spurr’s protagonist his job at the local mechanic and the pubs least bit surprised to doesn’t come alive with quite the same This Is How around town, the reader is hardwired into discover Jacqueline Maley sparkle as Laguna’s, Rae is spunky and true. M.J. Hyland the grim volatility of his interior life. This is, just like the main Her attempts to stay under the radar in a Text. PB. $23.95 closeness between reader and narrator character in her debut world she’s been taught to believe doesn’t Available now creates an uneasy feeling of complicity novel, an award-winning journalist. Maley care are desperately sad. A Million Pieces is This Is How is M.J. as things fall apart. Hyland subtly can, without doubt, tell a story. Not only a shattering novel that perfectly captures Hyland’s third and manipulates this compact with the reader, that, she has created a recognisable and the fractured moments between loss and – though over a decade having us confront questions of blame, intimate world filled with characters I letting go; between childhood and growing has passed since its circumstance, crime and punishment. This could have lived with a great deal longer. up, in which anything could change once publication in 2009 – most Is How – despite its seaside setting – is not The Truth About Her centres on Suzy the pieces fall. recent novel. It received a ‘beach read’. Patrick’s lonely fate lingers Hamilton, an award-winning Sydney high critical praise upon long after turning the final page on this journalist who writes an article exposing Bec Kavanagh is from Readings Kids its release, including Australian classic. a social media influencer as a fraud. superlative reviews from Helen Garner and Tracey Doran, the fraud in question, then Smokehouse Michael Skinner is from Readings St Kilda Hilary Mantel, but in the intervening years kills herself, and so begins a summer of Melissa Manning it has become something of a forgotten unfortunate events for Suzy. Single mother UQP. PB. $29.99 classic. This is perhaps due in part to the Australian to adorable pre-schooler Maddy (I’m not Available now prize-winning status of Hyland’s first two one to get sentimental about other people’s One of the joys novels – How the Light Gets In and Carry Fiction children, especially fictional ones, but of a collection of Me Down – which have entered the Maddy really is adorable), Suzy keeps most interlinked short stories Australian canon, as part of Penguin and people, especially men, especially the two is that it illuminates Text’s respective classics series. Love Objects men she is currently sleeping with, at arms- different aspects of Of all her work, This Is How deserves Emily Maguire length. However, when her affair with one character and location to be remembered as Hyland’s true A&U. PB. $32.99 of them results in the loss of her job, the from multiple masterpiece. It is an unnerving portrait Available now poverty line moves uncomfortably close perspectives. Two of the of a young man slowly lurching towards Nic is smart, proud and she has some difficult choices to make. best examples of this are Pulitzer Prize- tragedy and its aftermath – a deliberate and quick-witted. Working at a bar in the evenings and winners Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth and worthy reply to Camus’s The Outsider. She is 45-years old and as a freelance writer during the day only Strout and A Visit from the Goon Squad It was also a stand-out novel for me during sees her home as a just pays the bills, so when the opportunity by Jennifer Egan. Melbourne’s lockdown. The book’s tightly sanctuary, yet to the to write the story of Tracey Doran’s life Melissa Manning’s Smokehouse wound narrative seemed to tap into last outside world it becomes presents itself, the money is hard to resist. examines a close-knit community living year’s collective anxiety, with both reader something else entirely. It may also help assuage some of the guilt in Kettering and on Bruny Island in and narrator bound up claustrophobically Nic could tell you the Suzy feels about the young woman’s death. Tasmania. The stories that bookend the in Hyland’s artful use of the present tense. story about each ‘special’ thing in her As Suzy begins to discover the truth about collection feature Nora and Tom, and in Patrick, her young narrator, moves to collection, even as those memories lie Tracey, she also starts down a path of self- the initial story, their focus is on building a a holiday town on the English coast after buried under piles of newspapers, toys, discovery, a journey which will lead her to house. Nora hopes that moving away from his fiancée calls off their marriage. On the furniture and enough clothes and shoes to some unexpected places. the suburbs in Hobart will repair the rifts question of this inciting incident, Patrick fill Big W three times over. Every Sunday This rewarding, enjoyable and utterly in their marriage, and give her and Tom FICTION April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 7

something to work on together. Without quite as they seem at this mysterious the routine of work each day, however, she estate. With echoes of Rebecca and The feels lost, while Tom goes interstate for his Secret River, this is a tale of survival written work, and her daughters settle into their in Gemmell's signature lyrical prose. new school quickly. Another critical character, Ollie, features Tussaud in many of the stories. Escaping a string of Belinda Lyons-Lee losses in Germany, he moves to ‘the bottom Transit Lounge. PB. $32.99 of the earth’. The person he is closest to – Available 1 April his uncle Herman – encourages Ollie’s new Haunted by the French life and supports him from afar. Walde, a Revolution, Marie stonemason living in Kettering, builds Nora Tussaud has locked and Tom’s fireplace. He is a solitary figure herself away in her shop dealing with a history of trauma. He is good with her wax figures. On a with his hands but not with people. Walde disastrous tour to London, features in a number of stories yet remains she meets the eccentric alone, even when he finds out he has a son Duke, William Cavendish, with an old girlfriend. who invites her to stage a show in his Much is made of the chasm between underground ballroom in exchange for a Tasmania’s main island, where Kettering private commission: a wax automaton of a is located, and Bruny Island. Characters beautiful girl who disappeared. This drive to the water’s edge to contemplate delicious novel of twists and turns is full of the lives they’d wished for. The ferry secrets and assumed identities. dictates the timing between the main island and its satellite. This divide is a Where the Line Breaks metaphor for all the ways characters don’t Michael Burrows connect – for ruined relationships and Fremantle Press. PB. $32.99 losses that can’t be rectified. Available now Smokehouse contains 11 stories, and The Unknown Digger is part of the joy of an interlinked collection Australia’s most famous is fitting these stories and characters WWI poet. But for together like jigsaw pieces. The book is decades, his identity has enhanced by the beautifully described remained a mystery. Enter Tasmanian landscape and weather. There PhD student Matthew are multiple themes running through the Denton who believes the book, and the depth of characterisation unknown digger to in fact makes it a perfect choice for book clubs. be one of Australia’s greatest war heroes: Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn Lieutenant Alan Lewis VC of the 10th Light Horse. This debut is an enticing blend of The Last Reunion literary detective story and moving Kayte Nunn historical fiction. Hachette. PB. $32.99 Available now Sincerely, Ethel Malley Burma, 1945. Bea, Plum, Stephen Orr Bubbles, Joy and Lucy are Wakefield Press. PB. $34.95 attached to the Fourteenth Available 1 April Army, running a mobile Miles Franklin longlisted canteen and fighting a author Stephen Orr forgotten war in the delivers a surreal, dryly jungle. A half century funny fictional take on later, on the eve of the new the infamous Ern Malley millennium, the women reunite at a party affair – perhaps EMILY MAGUIRE held deep in the Irish countryside, where Australia’s most infamous friendships will be tested as secrets kept for literary hoax – in a novel A clear-eyed, heart-wrenching and deeply more than 50 years are spilled. that expertly blends fact and fiction, and compassionate novel about love and family, questions the very nature of authenticity betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to Like Mother fill our empty spaces, from the acclaimed author and creativity. A dark literary mystery, of An Isolated Incident. Cassandra Austin Sincerely, Ethel Malley explores freedom of Hamish Hamilton. PB. $32.99 speech and the blurred line between truth ‘Bold, furious, unapologetic and Available now and lies, tradition and modernism. deeply insightful.’ It’s 1969 and Louise SOFIE LAGUNA, Ashland is exhausted. author of Infinite Splendours With a screaming baby, an International absent husband and a Fiction mother who won’t leave her alone, she is on the edge of unravelling. One Ariadne suspiciously quiet Jennifer Saint morning, Louise wakes and discovers her Wildfire. PB. $32.99 baby is missing. Over the next 24 hours, her Available now desperate search will lead her straight to There’s been a old secrets her mother – and perhaps her flush of novels own mind – have buried. based around feminist retellings of ancient The Ripping Tree myths lately. The Silence A World War II story of female friendship, Nikki Gemmell of the Girls by Pat Barker longing and sacrifice, bringing Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 and A Thousand Ships by together the present and the past. Available 7 April Natalie Haynes depicted Early 1800s. Thomasina is the fall of Troy as seen through the eyes ‘An epic novel about women, love bound for Australia, when of women. Circe by Madeline Miller and heartbreak. A triumph!’ a storm wrecks the ship reimagined Homer’s oft-misunderstood SALLY HEPWORTH, and leaves her washed up witch from The Odyssey. Now debut author of The Good Sister near a grand European novelist Jennifer Saint has turned her attention to the legend of Ariadne, house, Willowbrae. A OUT NOW chance for a new life who gave Theseus the means to defeat opens up, but things aren't the Minotaur. 8 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 FICTION

An immersive and engaging novel that storylines Resi imagines for her friends and a wolf mask with an intriguing mission: if read the original too. This book truly is brings to life the story of the Labyrinth, family, recollections of past events, and Kokoro can find the special key that unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and I Ariadne also seamlessly includes many imaginings of three significant moments in unlocks the Wishing Room she will be doubt I’ll read anything like it again. familiar Greek myths including the fall of her mother’s life. Resi’s mother was skilled granted any wish her heart desires. But Alison Huber is the head book buyer at Icarus, Midas of the golden touch, and the at keeping the peace but lacked agency, Kokoro is not the only one on the hunt for Readings terrible story of Medusa’s transformation space or visible desire for more from the key. Six other teenagers with into the gorgon. life. Resi’s own writing space is a broom mysterious pasts and their own reasons for No One Is Talking About This Ariadne leans harder into the fantastic cupboard and she wonders how many avoiding school have also been transported Patricia Lockwood learned behaviours she has unintentionally to the Lonely Castle. There is, of course, a aspects of the mythology than some of the Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 passed on to her own children. But fear not, catch. The seven students only have the other books in the genre: Saint’s Greek gods Available April 2 and goddesses are unambiguously present, this novel is not all judgement and dread. length of the school year to find the key and Patricia Lockwood is malicious, capricious, and all-powerful. There is hope in new understanding and they all have to leave the castle at 5pm known for – among Humankind – particularly womenkind – is acceptance – in the choices we make and everyday or else be eaten by a big bad wolf. other things – saying very very much at their mercy, as revenge for the desire to forge ahead. Will any of them be able to find the key clever things on the the slights and sins of men are visited upon before time runs out? Suzanne Steinbruckner is from Readings internet. The unnamed their wives and daughters with impunity. Already a bestseller in Japan, Lonely Carlton protagonist of her highly This concept of women suffering for the Castle in the Mirror is bound to delight anticipated first novel sake of male pride and ego is a timely one, English-language readers as well. Hot Stew seems to have the same gig: and it’s unsurprising that the Greek myths Drawing on European fairytales and the Fiona Mozley she reckons she’ll be best remembered for are providing a rich strain of inspiration for painful moments that are universal to all John Murray. PB. $32.99 asking the denizens of ‘the portal’ if ‘a dog authors who want to unpack the origins of adolescents, Mizuki Tsujimura crafts an Available now can be a twin’ and for photoshopping bags our centuries-old patriarchy. Ariadne does absolutely beautiful book about the power ‘And I’m just fed up with of peas into photographs of historical this, and more. of human connection and belonging. Like the hypocrisy. People have atrocities. But her existence online doesn’t many books with fantastical elements, it Blood-soaked and visceral, Ariadne sex for loads of different prepare her for the crisis that hits her family, has great crossover appeal: an amazing isn’t simply the story of the naive princess reasons. And, well, we have and after receiving urgent texts from her read for teenagers and adults alike. Dark, of Minos who betrays her family for love sex for money.’ mother – ‘something has gone wrong … how and is betrayed herself. It is the story playful and so full of heart. Precious didn’t ask soon can you get here?’ – she’s shaken out of of a girl who grows into adulthood and to be the figurehead Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton her online life and into a much more learns her own strength. It’s the story of of a movement. But when unsettling reality. two sisters who are bound by the violence the brothel where she lives and works is No One Is Talking About This is written in committed against their mother. And it’s On the Line: under threat of demolishment from its fragments, operating as a sort of prose poem, the story about how history celebrates Notes from a Factory billionaire owner, she has no choice but to and these moments of poetry, humour and the glory of men, when perhaps it should Joseph Ponthus & stand up against the gentrification that is anecdote build towards something greater remember the sacrifices of women. Stephanie Smee (trans.) rapidly changing her Soho community. than the sum of its parts. In many ways it Black Inc. PB. $27.99 Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager Precious’s livelihood (and the livelihood of reminded me of Jenny Offill’s Weather: an Available now at Readings the women she lives with) isn’t the only exploration of the fragmented pieces that I’ve been thinking a lot thing at stake. The brothel is the centre of a make up modern American life. Like many about On the Line since Higher Ground neighbourhood composed of dying contemporary American novels, Lockwood’s I read its final pages. Written Anke Stelling & Lucy Jones (trans.) restaurants, struggling artists and activists, debut can’t resist engaging with ‘the dictator’. in French (À la ligne) this Scribe. PB. $29.99 people experiencing homelessness and Much like the protagonist, ‘the dictator’ book is a piece of autofiction Available 15 April drug addiction, and men with dark pasts remains unnamed but it isn’t difficult to work in verse. Its narrator, like its I have not been who populate the run-down pubs nearby. out which recent American leader stares author, is a social worker by able to stop Fiona Mozley has crafted a novel that directly at eclipses. education, who finds himself needing to thinking about Anke is Dickensian in scope but without all This is a novel fully steeped in the labour in Brittany’s factories of industrial Stelling’s brilliant novel the exhaustive (and exhausting) detail. alarming present (although there are no food production and animal processing, Higher Ground. In trying Hot Stew is populated by a broad cast of mentions of COVID) in a way that reminded including at an abattoir and a fish and to nail down just what instantly memorable characters ranging me of Ali Smith’s Seasons Quartet. It’s not seafood plant. It is also an unusual made me want to pick it across the entirety of the social spectrum. a book that could have been written ten contemporary record of a kind of workplace up again and again, I’d This Soho is a bustling, dirty, exciting, or even five years ago. I’m always going and work practice that is largely unfamiliar say the primary reason is the protagonist seedy and, at moments, fantastical place. to be a Lockwood fangirl, but I admit her to the middle classes, but upon which Resi’s voice – a voice that is unapologetic in It is a much more intriguing portrayal of work isn’t for everyone. It may not suit access to everyday commodities depends. its anger and rage. This is a character who the infamous London city sector than I those with more traditional tastes, but for Most striking in the narrative are the knows she sees the world though her own personally remember – the Soho I worked those willing to brave it, No One Is Talking many descriptions of the mechanics of a particular lens but is adamant this does not near during 2014–2016 seemed to mostly About This is richly rewarding – equal parts long day’s hard work in these factories. diminish her right to speak on what she consist of themed cocktail bars and farm- pathos and hilarity. More importantly, it’s This very long-time vegetarian found sees and feels. to-table vegan restaurants. an indication of where the novel is heading some of the scenes pretty challenging, Resi is a 40-something writer living in Is it possible to be shortlisted for the in the 21st century. but also oddly compelling, partly because Berlin with her artist partner Sven and their Booker Prize and still be underrated? they go some way toward explaining the Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton four children. Her latest book, a savage Mozley has fashioned a completely detachment that is required for workers to critique of Berlin’s urban gentrification different story here to her 2017 Booker- encounter the death of animals as routine We Run the Tides and of aspirational models of family, nominated debut Elmet. I can only hope – something I’ve always struggled to Vendela Vida motherhood and success, was poorly that she will continue this trajectory of understand. Alongside this is the internal Atlantic. PB. $27.99 received by her dearest friends; they felt it constantly reinventing herself and her voice of a person whose ambitions and Available now read too much like a criticism of their own writing, reimagining what contemporary imagination are elsewhere; as his aging Coming-of-age middle-class lives. Following the book’s fiction can and should do. She deserves a body enacts the repetitive tasks on the novels about female publication, Resi receives emails severing much larger readership. line, he thinks about literature and history, friendship are always lifelong friendships and an eviction notice Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton about films and war and Marx, about his going to the top of my for the apartment in which her family wife and his desire for his shift to end, reading pile, especially if live; the lease is controlled by one of these Lonely Castle in the Mirror about the exploitation of this casualised you add in a mysterious friends. Having grown up observing how Mizuki Tsujimura & labour force which is often employed via a disappearance, and tie the societal, patriarchal and class structures Philip Gabriel (trans.) third-party agency, about the camaraderie whole thing together with permeated and shaped her parents’ lives, Doubleday. PB. $32.99 with his fellow workers. All the while, a wickedly funny 13-year-old narrator. I’ve Resi has spent her adulthood trying to live Available 13 April he expresses the contradictory feelings been eagerly anticipating Vendela Vida’s free of these constraints. But she has learnt Kokoro doesn’t want of being trapped by, but reliant on and latest, We Run the Tides, since the release of far too late how little she was prepared for to go back to school. complicit in, late capitalism. her previous work The Diver’s Clothes Lie the realities of life. And her hope now is After enduring painful This book was a bestseller in France Empty five years ago. That novel confirmed to save her daughter, Bea, from the same bullying at the hands of and won many literary awards in the year Vida’s assured, inventive skill; it was a joy to mistakes using the best tools she has at her her classmates, her whole following its publication. It’s confronting read and a book I still recommend eagerly disposal – words. body seems to rebel at the and awash with sadness, but also the and often. So I’m thrilled to report that We Stelling’s writing doesn’t shy away idea of returning to hope of the things – books, love, ideas, Run the Tides is another novel that I’ll be from Resi’s feelings of inadequacy, Yukishina No. 5 Junior companionship – that give life shape, while enthusiastically pressing into the hands of inefficiency, revenge, helplessness or High. Barricading herself at home, one day acknowledging the essential work of the friends and strangers. shame with the world she’s inexpertly her mirror begins to emit a strange glow body that helps feed the mind and soul. It’s 1984 in Sea Cliff, San Francisco, an constructed for herself and her family. and, in a Narnia-like sequence, Kokoro is Stephanie Smee’s sensitive translation oceanside neighbourhood with views of Structured as a letter to her daughter, the transported through the mirror to a magical of this unique work made me wish my the Golden Gate Bridge, where teenage book is a mix of day-to-day observations, castle. On arrival she meets a young girl in schoolgirl French were better so I could Eulabee and her magnetic best friend, FICTION April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 9

Maria Fabiola, roam the streets. They walk Common Ground to and from their fancy all-girls school with Naomi Ishiguro a group of firm friends, scramble around Tinder Press. PB. $32.99 the cliffs that surround their local beaches, Available now and keep their eyes wide open for boys who Starting over at a new might notice them. ‘Separately we are good school isn’t easy for Stan. girls. We behave. Together, some strange That is until he meets alchemy occurs and we are trouble.’ Charlie. Fearless and The trouble in question starts with clever, Charlie infects Stan a disagreement about what they did or with his bright curiosity. didn’t witness on the way to school one When they cross paths as morning: Maria Fabiola claims they were adults in London years harassed by a stranger on the street, later, their fortunes are reversed: Stan is Eulabee contradicts her and suddenly revelling in city life while Charlie seems to finds herself socially outcast. When Maria have hit a wall. Can their friendship survive Fabiola disappears suddenly, We Run the a world that seeks to divide them? Tides expands into a compelling mystery. Where this novel shines is in its witty and Temporary constantly surprising narrative voice. Hilary Leichter Eulabee is the most engaging character I’ve Faber. PB. $27.99 spent time with in years – I laughed out Available 13 April loud at her wry observations, and found ‘There is nothing more myself utterly swept away by the dreamy personal than doing your yearning of girlhood she conveys. This slim job’. So goes the motto of novel will leave you thinking about the the Temporary. Happy to complicated nature of friendship and the fill in for anyone – grey space between truth and lies, and I Chairman of the Board, a couldn’t recommend it more highly. ghost, a murderer, a Stella Charls is from Readings Carlton mother, even you and me – the Temporary takes job after job, in search How Beautiful We Were of steadiness, belonging, and something to Imbolo Mbue call her own. A smart, humane story of what Canongate. PB. $29.99 it is to work and live, here and now. Available mid-April The villagers of Kosawa How Do You Live? are living in fear amid Genzaburo Yoshino & environmental Bruno Navasky (trans.) degradation wrought by an Rider. HB. $29.99 American oil company. Available 13 April Left with few choices, they The streets of Tokyo swarm decide to fight back. Told below 15-year-old Copper through the perspective of as he gazes out into the the generation who grow up amid the city. Struck by the crowds struggle, How Beautiful We Were explores of people, he begins to what happens when the drive for profit, wonder, how do you live? coupled with the ghost of colonialism, He turns to his uncle for comes up against one community’s advice, and the old man determination to reclaim its ancestral land. guides the boy on a journey of philosophical discovery. This 1937 Great Stories Uncovered Another Life Japanese classic offers a poignant Jodie Chapman reflection on what it means to be human. Michael Joseph. PB. $32.99 Available now Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd. Responsible, sensible Nick Jonas Jonasson falls in love with Anna HarperVia. PB. $24.99 over the course of one hot Available 14 April summer. But when Anna’s Victor Alderheim has a lot strict religion threatens to answer for. Not only has their relationship, Nick is he tricked his young too scared to fight, letting ex-wife, Jenny, out of her Anna walk away. Years inheritance, he has also Get out. A bright and funny later, Anna is drawn back into Nick’s life, abandoned his son, Kevin, Before they save you. romantic comedy about just as his relationship with his brother to die in the middle of the small lies and big mistakes reaches breaking point. A tender story Kenyan savanna. When about dysfunctional families, and what it Kevin and Jenny meet up, they naturally means to truly love another. bond over a shared desire to get even. So it’s convenient when they run into a man Civilisations selling revenge services… Laurent Binet & Sam Taylor (trans.) An Ordinary Wonder Harvill Secker. PB. $32.99 Buki Papillon Available 13 April Dialogue Books. PB. $32.99 1000 AD: Erik the Red’s Available now daughter heads south Richly imagined with art from Greenland. 1492: and folk tales, this moving The story of one woman’s One of Australia’s leading Christopher Columbus and modern novel follows attempt to exorcise her commentators on our world does not ‘discover’ 14-year-old Oto through religious upbringing, told and the crises, challenges America. 1531: the Incas life at home and at with wry humour and and opportunities we face invade Europe. The stage boarding school in razor-sharp observations is set for a great war that Nigeria, through the will change history forever. A stunningly heartbreak of living as a ambitious and entertaining novel that boy despite their profound belief they are gives us a counter-factual history of the a girl. An extraordinary literary debut Out now from modern world, fizzing with ideas about from a Nigerian-born author, An Ordinary colonisation, empire-building and the Wonder is a story of the courage needed to eternal human quest for domination. be yourself. 10 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 FICTION

Touring the Land of the Dead she forms an obsessive friendship. own experiences. Maki Kashimada & Unsettling and compulsive, The Girls Are This collection drew me into the Haydn Trowell (trans.) All So Nice Here is a gripping exploration poet’s experiences of her grandmother’s of the brutal lengths girls will go to, to take passing, cancer, miscarriages, Europa Editions. PB. $27.99 what they think they are owed. hysterectomy, but most of all, the Available now complexities of love. The collection Taichi was forced to stop presents a story of family love – a working almost a decade The Black Cathedral: love that often goes unspoken and is ago and since then he and A Novel enveloped in cultural differences through his wife Natsuko have Marcial Gala & the effects of migration and language been getting by on her Anna Kushner (trans.) barriers. At times I felt Chong’s immense part-time wages. When Picador. PB. $34.99 anger and grief for the lives she wanted Natsuko sees an ad for a Available 1 April to live, but her carefully considered spa, she decides to take In a neighborhood that words also convey a sense of healing and Taichi, despite the cost. But the spa’s roils with passions and acceptance: ‘my soul will find my body connection to her past triggers buried conflicts, at the foot of a / and my body will wake’. In one poem, memories, and Natsuko is forced to cathedral that rises Chong says, ‘I am without shell’, and this confront her family’s history. higher day by day, there vulnerability and exploration of self is grows a generation true of the whole collection. marked by violence, Raft of Stars These poems are not needlessly Andrew J. Graff cruelty, and extreme selfishness. Told by a chorus of narrators complicated; while they reward rereading HQ Fiction. PB. $29.99 – including gossips, gangsters, a ghost, for the serious poetry reader, they are Available 7 April and a serial killer – who flirt, lie, argue, also inviting for the less confident or Tired of seeing his best and finish one another’s stories, The experienced reader. Perhaps this is friend Dale Breadwin Black Cathedral is a darkly comic because each image Chong presents (Bread) abused by his indictment of modern Cuba. is so layered in emotion that I cannot alcoholic father, Fischer help but be held captive. In ‘Spring Branson (Fish) takes Festival’, Chong muses that she often action. A gunshot rings Invisible Ink: writes poems in tercet form: one line for out, and Bread and Fish A Novel the past, one for the future, and one ‘for flee into the woods. They Patrick Modiano & the hours / I do not notice as they pass’. build a raft, but the river quickly leads Mark Polizzotti (trans.) Through this, Chong invites the reader Yale University Press. PB. $32.99 them into even greater danger. A group of to wander through these tenses with her Available 2 April adults, determined to save the boys, follows and to perceive time and memory as she in pursuit, but the further they travel, the The latest work from perceives them. more the wilderness starts to change them. Nobel laureate Patrick As a reader of poetry, I feel it is an Modiano, Invisible Ink is a immense privilege to be trusted with a Fidelity spellbinding tale of poet’s life, albeit a curated presentation. memory and its illusions. Marco Missiroli & A Thousand Crimson Blooms is a treasure, Private detective Jean Alex Valente (trans.) and has prompted me to read more of receives an assignment to W&N. PB. $32.99 Chong’s work. locate a missing woman. Available 13 April Clare Millar is from Readings online While the case proves fruitless, the clues Carlo and Margherita, a along the way continue to haunt Jean. happily married couple in Decades later, he resumes the Homecoming their mid-thirties, are investigation for himself, compelled by Elfie Shiosaki perfectly attuned to each reasons he can’t explain to follow the cold Magabala. PB. $24.99 other’s restlessness. They trail and discover the shocking truth. Available 1 April are in love, but they also Homecoming pieces harbour flickering desires The Missing together fragments of and secrets. After eight stories about four Dirk Kurbjuweit & years of repressed desires and the birth of a generations of Noongar Imogen Taylor (trans.) son, when the past resurfaces in the form of women and explores Text. PB. $32.99 books sent anonymously, will love be how they navigated the Available now enough to save them? changing landscapes of Hanover’s boys are colonisation, vanishing, one after Verge protectionism and assimilation to hold another, without a trace. Lidia Yuknavitch their families together. This seminal Police suspect political Riverhead. PB. $25.99 collection of poetry, prose and historical motivations – perhaps the Available 13 April colonial archives tells First Nations truths missing boys are Lidia Yuknavitch’s short of unending love for children – those that communists, or victims of story collection, Verge, is were present, those taken, those hidden the rising Nazi Party. peopled with characters and those that ultimately stood in the Soon, however, Inspector Robert who are innocent and light. Elfie Shiosaki has restored Lahnstein begins to believe even more imperfect: an eight-year- humanity and power to her family in this sinister forces are at play. Can Lahnstein old black-market medical beautifully articulated collection and has track down the murderer before he takes courier, a restless lover given voice to those silenced by our another victim? A dark portrait of justice haunted by memories of brutal past. during the Weimar Republic. his mother, a teenage girl gazing out her attic window at a nearby prison. Clear- The Hill We Climb: eyed yet inspiring, this mosaic of human Poetry An Inaugural Poem resilience on the margins challenges us Amanda Gorman with moments of uncomfortable truth. Chatto & Windus. HB. $19.99 A Thousand Crimson Blooms Available 13 April The Girls Are All So Nice Here Eileen Chong On 20 January 2021, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn UQP. PB. $24.99 Amanda Gorman HQ Fiction. PB. $29.99 Available now became the sixth and Available 7 April Poetry can be so youngest poet to deliver When Ambrosia first incredibly personal, a poetry reading at arrives at prestigious and Eileen Chong’s A a US presidential college Wesleyan, she’s Thousand Crimson inauguration. Taking the desperate to fit in. But Blooms is no exception. stage, Gorman captivated Amb struggles to As a writer, Chong audiences worldwide. Her poem ‘The Hill navigate the rules of this describes needing poetry We Climb’ can now be cherished in this strange, elite world – in order to process the special gift edition – a keepsake that until she meets the world, and there is almost nothing off celebrates youthful promise and affirms charismatic but troubled Sully, with whom limits here as she works through her the power of poetry. CRIME April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 11

thriller? Your reviewer is very pleased. In beauty and horror on show. – FH this second book in the series, Nikki is Dead hired by the son of a wealthy family to The Lady with the Gun Asks find out who conned his mother out of a the Questions Write bunch of money – but that’s just the start Kerry Greenwood of a chain of bad guys that she needs to with Fiona Hardy and Kate McIntosh A&U. PB. $29.99 work through. Tearing after them on her Available now motorcycle with some unexpected One cannot go past a new sidekicks, Nikki is not holding back. At a prison in Nevada, the annual friendly baseball game Phryne Fisher book when This modern noir thriller is one for between the officers and the minimum-security inmates one spies it on the shelf. BOOK OF THE vengeance-fuelled booklovers – and isn’t is due to take place. A bus load of family members is coming Fortunately, there is a that all of us? – FH MONTH to cheer on the guards, as they have done every year for the resplendent new Kerry Crime past decade or so. Only this year, someone knows they’re Greenwood to be placed coming. This year, someone is going to take advantage of that Tall Bones reverently on one’s fact and hold the bus full of people hostage until the prison Anna Bailey bedside table. With officers let every last inmate out of jail, all 650 of them. Doubleday. PB. $32.99 pearl-handled pistol in hand and her band Available now of friends, foes and lovers in orbit, Phryne Highly addictive, constantly surprising In the small Rocky glides with her usual aplomb through this Mountains town of collection – which includes four entirely and with enough suspense to keep you Whistling Ridge, there’s a new stories – getting up to her typically guessing page after page. party one night at the Tall luxurious, alarming and wildly Bones, a circle of six entertaining escapades. When Phryne As the prison inmates scatter across the country, the race white stones. Seventeen- asks, you can but only say yes. – FH is on to find out who the mastermind was behind the escape year-old Emma leaves her and what they plan to do next. In the meantime, death row best friend Abigail behind Mirrorland inmate John Kradle is determined to use this unexpected at the party without thinking much of it – Carole Johnstone opportunity to prove his innocence. However, the prison she doesn’t realise that will be the last HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 The Chase officer he has been goading for the past five years won’t time anybody sees Abi. This is a town Available 7 April Candice Fox let him get away that easily. That officer, Celine Osbourne, where the devastating secrets keep its When Cat’s twin sister El Bantam. PB. $32.99 experienced horrific family violence when she was a teenager. inhabitants trapped, but the vanishes on a sailing trip, Available now Now she hates those accused of murdering their families more disappearance of Abi will be what finally Cat is over in Los Angeles, than anyone, and in her eyes, John Kradle shot his wife, his brings everything to the surface. From living a life far away from sister-in-law and his son. He deserves to rot in a cell until his Abi’s dysfunctional family whose El and the ominous own day of execution comes and there’s no way he is ever going to convince her otherwise. members are under the spell of the local Edinburgh home where Except when Celine starts to investigate John’s past, nothing quite adds up. preacher, to Emma’s own family with the two of them grew up. Roll Prison Break, Con Air and The Fugitive into one, put them in a book, add some their deeply buried mysteries, this is an Unlike Cat, El hadn’t seriously kick-ass female characters, and you have The Chase. Highly addictive, constantly unsettling and eerie debut psychological escaped that life, and she and her husband surprising and with enough suspense to keep you guessing page after page, it is impossible thriller. – FH Ross – the man both sisters loved – were not to admire Candice Fox’s crime writing skills. By the end of this book, she will make living in the gothic house of the twins’ sure you never trust anyone again. We Wish You Luck childhood. The house was where Cat and Kate McIntosh is the manager of Readings Doncaster Caroline Zancan El invented Mirrorland: a place under the Riverhead. PB. $27.99 stairs that the two girls would escape to, Available now with pirates and witches and their wildest One day, in their college imaginations. Now, all these years later, Greenwich Park comes to Joe, things have a way of adjusting writing class, a visiting Cat has to return to the house – only to Katherine Faulkner to what he wants. – FH professor-turned find that it still has the ability to haunt Raven. PB. $29.99 bestselling author her. There are nightmares in every room, Available now Every Vow You Break commits an unthinkable and messages just for her – and they all At an antenatal class in Peter Swanson act in front of a group of lead her back to Mirrorland. This is a anticipation of her Faber. PB. $29.99 students. When the clever, twisted dose of magical realism and upcoming birth, Helen sits Available now wronged student reacts terror. – FH alone. Neither her Abigail is faltering. She’s devastatingly to what happened, two of husband, her brother nor thinking of leaving New his classmates – already infamous her also-pregnant sister- York to move back with throughout campus – vow to make the Also out in-law turn up as her parents, when she professor pay for what she’s done. Told promised. Instead she meets Bruce. He’s a through the collective voice of the Master this month meets somebody new: the younger, bolder start-up investor, of Fine Arts students who lived through Rachel, who strikes up a friendship that is ridiculously rich, equally these highly charged semesters, this Andrea Camilleri’s twenty-seventh not necessarily wanted. As Rachel starts into horror movies, and in ornately written, unique tale is a character Inspector Montalbano book: turning up everywhere in Helen’s life, the love with her. So they plan a wedding, have study of a university class caught up in lives of all her loved ones start to splinter – their bachelor and bachelorette parties, get competition, love and revenge – and a The Cook of the with secrets leaking out of all the cracks. A married, then head to their romantic skewering of how creativity can get Halcyon stellar, intricately plotted debut. – FH honeymoon – on a secluded island with all caught up in academia. – FH Andrea Camilleri they could need, no wi-fi, and barely Mantle. PB. $32.99 You Love Me anybody else around. Unfortunately, one of Blackout Available now Caroline Kepnes those people is all too familiar to Abigail: Simon Scarrow S&S. PB. $32.99 the man she slipped up and slept with at Headline. PB. $32.99 Available 7 April her bachelorette party. How did he get all Available now Peter May’s French COVID lockdown Caroline Kepnes’s first Joe the way here? And what does he want with It’s a bitterly cold Berlin thriller: Goldberg book, You, was so her? Peter Swanson is always excellent at December in 1939, and popular it was turned into simmering tension and lingering suspicion Criminal Inspector Horst The Night Gate a Netflix show, the kind about what’s going on; his newest shows Schenke is feeling the Peter May everybody talks about. The he’s still at the top of his game. – FH freeze from more than Riverrun. PB. $32.99 second, Hidden Bodies, did just the weather. After Available now the same. Now we’re with One Got Away refusing to join the Nazi Joe for his third journey S.A. Lelchuk party, he’s forced to head through love and terror and madness, as he S&S. PB. $29.99 up an investigation into the brutal assault moves to a tiny island in the Pacific Available now and murder of a celebrity with Northwest with a hell of a lot of money and Okay, hear me out: P.I. connections to Joesph Goebbels. With the Peter Robinson’s new mystery suspense: the kind of past you can never mention to Nikki Griffin is a private Gestapo watching him at every turn, and Not Dark Yet anybody. There, he volunteers at a library, investigator and she runs another, similar murder committed in the Peter Robinson where he meets one Mary Kay DiMarco and a bookshop and her life’s city, Schenke must solve the case and H&S. PB. $32.99 knows that she’s the one for him. But he work is to make sure that survive in a time when nobody trusts Available now can’t pursue her the way he’s done in the men who hurt women get anyone. This is a devastatingly authentic past, and she’s got other people in her life. what’s coming to them? A and atmospheric historical thriller, So all he can to do is wait. Because when it bookseller-based revenge featuring a snowy Berlin with all its 12 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 NONFICTION

Lapsed Monica Dux Nonfiction ABC Books. PB. $34.99 Available 7 April

Lech Blaine’s debut memoir starts with a car crash. At 17, BOOK OF THE Blaine is sitting in the passenger seat of a 1989 Ford Fairlane, surrounded by six of his mates (two piled in the MONTH boot). It’s 2009, and the group of teenagers are driving home Biography from a house party in Toowoomba, Queensland. A routine error made by the sober driver leads to a head-on collision, killing three of the boys and leaving two comatose. Blaine walks away from the scene without a scratch.

Blaine’s thoughtful, tender reflections on his friendships with other young men in Toowoomba were the stand-out aspect of Car Crash for me.

Lapsed Car Crash kicks off with Blaine’s memory of the violent incident and its aftermath, recounted with vivid, often unsettling detail. His account is immediately compelling, energetic and intense – I tore through the opening pages with Lapsed is the story of one woman’s attempt to exorcise her religious Car Crash: my heart racing. But the story soon expands into something upbringing, told with wry humour and sharp observations from The Age A Memoir much deeper and, ultimately, more moving. In sharing the columnist Monica Dux. Read an edited extract below and turn to the next Lech Blaine years that followed the accident with his readers, Blaine page for our bookseller’s review. Black Inc. PB. $29.99 considers the lifelong consequences of the crash, his resulting Available now grief, survivor’s guilt and depression, and the ways in which his relationships and sense of self are affected. Once while tidying up, my cleanliness-obsessed mum lifted my mattress and was Blaine evidently loves language – he plays with poetic stunned to find a stash of kitchen knives, my final line of defence against intruders. phrasing and surprising metaphors, on top of some witty one-liners to lighten the mood. When I said that I was a frightened child, I really meant it. However Blaine’s thoughtful, tender reflections on his friendships with other young men Of course, I’d secreted those knives for the purpose of fighting off corporeal in Toowoomba were the stand-out aspect of Car Crash for me. He writes with emotional burglars. If Jesus had appeared, I certainly wasn’t planning on menacing Our intelligence and honesty – teenage Blaine can come across as pretty insufferable at Lord with a Gillette Stay Sharp. My usual approach when I got freaked out about times – and it’s clear how important it is for Car Crash to honour the boys who lost their supernatural visitations was to abandon my bed, race into my parents’ room and lives in the accident and their families. Blaine’s own parents also feature heavily, and it’s climb in with them. After a while Mum would kick me out, so I’d go straight to through exploring his relationships with both his Mum and his Dad that Blaine grapples Matt’s bed and settle in for the night because I knew I could trust him to put up with engagingly with issues of class, masculinity and mental illness, and the role alcohol plays all my terrors. in relation to all three. Yet on that Good Friday evening as I lay in bed awaiting the appearance of Car Crash brought to mind Elspeth Muir’s Wasted, another memoir by a young Jesus, I was panicked to the point where I couldn’t even make this dash to safety. I writer from Queensland that expertly employed a personal trauma narrative to astutely just cringed under the doona, getting more and more frightened as I imagined what consider wider social issues. In the same way Car Crash will appeal to all fans of He might say to me. Australian narrative nonfiction, and I look forward to reading more from this talented young writer. Like a lot of childhood fears, this whole thing seems more or less ridiculous Stella Charls is from Readings Carlton now. And to be fair to Young Monica, I sensed it was ridiculous even at the time. For a start there was a paradox in my Jesus fear, because I’d been taught that God knew what I was thinking anyway due to His divine telepathic powers. This meant Jesus knew it too, since they were sort of the same guy. He didn’t have to loom over my agreements. Though these are weighty sleeping form to discover I found Him a bit of a turn-off. And why was I so sure He’d Australian topics, Grant does provide some relief, be angry about it? As a post-Vatican II kid, I’d grown up with the friendly, loving Studies some means out of the darkness and into Christ. Not quite the hoodie-wearing Bro Jesus of Make Jesus Real, but still warm a world of equality and kindness. He is not and fuzzy, not mean and judgey. What, then, was my problem? an optimist though, more a realist and one that does not suffer excuses. When I told Kris about this, he didn’t interpret my childhood Jesus fears With the Falling of the Dusk After reading this book, you will find the way I’d expected. ‘You were raised to believe in magic – to think the ghost Stan Grant yourself keen to deliberate and think of a dead guy could appear out of nowhere and bleed on your bed. And instead HarperCollins. PB. $34.99 more about the global issues it raises. You of reassuring you, telling you that spooks aren’t real, your mum told you more Available now will find yourself asking how you can do spooky stories and insisted they were true. Who wouldn’t be scared?’ While Stan Grant’s new better and be better. We want to believe saying this he looked at me like he’d just discovered I was raised in the Louisiana book is not a long we are all in it together, that we are all badlands, on a hog farm. His smug, judgemental attitude annoyed me, even book. It will only take you equal, until as Grant points out, we are though he was basically right. an evening to read, but my not. Consider this read the start of your advice is to take your time ‘Obviously none of the holy spooks were intended to scare me,’ I protested. own response to dismay and outrage, but with it. In With the Falling ‘Very much the opposite. And it’s not like my mum was lying. She believed it all also to understanding how small changes of the Dusk, Grant has herself.’ can have global consequences. With the created his snapshot of Falling of the Dusk is a wake-up call. Read To which my husband simply shrugged while flicking through the Netflix the world, and an overview of the it so you are in the know. menu. ‘You know, I don’t think you were scared of Jesus at all. You were scared consequences of the world’s development Chris Gordon is the programming and events you’d disappoint your mum by not being a good enough Catholic.’ and greed. This is a book about crossroads manager at Readings A comment that annoyed me even more – although this time, I didn’t think he and certain points in history that illustrates was entirely right. Sure, as a kid I’d known that if a holy visitation occurred, I was where we are right now, how we arrived supposed to be proud, humbled and honoured, not to cover my face with my pillow here and why we are here. It makes for Radicals: Remembering the and start shrieking for it to go away. But I think what really scared me about all this compelling reading. Sixties was that it represented a first glimmer of doubt. If I didn’t really love Jesus, if I was Grant is a precise writer; he uses his Meredith Burgmann & never going to love Him, if the very idea of loving Him was vaguely ridiculous, what decades of experience as a correspondent Nadia Wheatley NewSouth. PB. $39.99 did that say about my future as a Catholic? covering global conflicts and political upheaval, as well as his own philosophical Available 1 April For Devout Monica, that was an unthinkable thought. So, I told myself, the love reading, to provide you with this portrait The Sixties: an era of of Jesus would come. All I needed to do was stay focused. of our times. In particular, he draws on protest, free love and civil his time as a correspondent in Asia to disobedience that marked document shifts in global power. Think a turning point for Monica Dux is a writer, commentator and columnist. A founding board member of the Stella Prize and the of this book as a tool to reflect on the way change. In Radicals some Feminist Writers Festival, Dux’s books include Lapsed (2021), Things I Didn’t Expect (when I was expecting) we live and the immediate consequences of the people doing the (2013), and Mothermorphosis (2015). of our collective inability to question our changing, including

David Marr, Margret This is an edited extract from Lapsed, published by ABC Books and available at all Readings shops on 7 April. governments regarding environmental crisis, media ownership and our trade RoadKnight, Geoffrey Robertson and NONFICTION April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 13 more, reflect on how the decade changed The Shape of Sound memories of childhood. She talks about Francis Bacon: Revelations them and Australian society forever. Fiona Murphy the plays, the hymns and her Catholic Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan Radicals: Remembering the Sixties will Text. PB. $34.99 childhood milestones as well as her daily HarperCollins. HB. $59.99 make you feel like you were there, whether Available now prayer rituals. As she throws her net Available 14 April or not you really were. ‘The hearing world wider, she examines her relationship with Francis Bacon described rarely welcomes religion as a parent. She travels overseas himself as an asthmatic White Russians, Red Peril: deaf bodies,’ writes Fiona with her family to further investigate the child in Ireland with A Cold War History of Murphy in her impact of the Catholic Church on her foxhunting parents and a Migration to Australia heartbreakingly honest own way of childhood. She is not afraid tyrannical father, but he Sheila Fitzpatrick memoir The Shape of to address the anger and hurt caused by was also rescued by a La Trobe University Press. PB. $34.99 Sound. Murphy kept the Church. Likewise, she does not steer series of formidable Available now secret that she is deaf in away from examining some fairly extreme women. He was never just More than 20,000 ethnic her left ear for 25 years. In her debut, she religious practices. a dissolute young man but was also a Russians migrated to explores the social, environmental, Lapsed is a personal story that is an passionate reader, largely self-taught. This Australia after World War economic and political impacts of easy read. It is Monica Dux’s own story is a deeply researched and masterfully told II, yet we know very little deafness. She weaves research on deaf of how to be free from religious dogma. story of a sickly boy who became one of the about their experiences. public figures such as Churchill and With a light touch, she scrutinises every great artists of his time. Sheila Fitzpatrick Beethoven – as well as facts and statistics part of her history and owns her own examines the early years – with her own personal experience to contradictions. This is a brave book, Plunder and Dux uses humour and her relentless of a diverse Russian- create a brilliant and touching memoir Menachem Kaiser intellectual curiosity to protect the Australian community and how that completely draws the reader in. Scribe. PB. $32.99 reader and herself. She owns every Australian and Soviet intelligence Murphy doesn't hold back, and I laughed Available now part of the story and she finishes her agencies attempted to track and influence with her and cried with her. There is Woven from improbable acknowledgements with a sense of them. This is immigration history at its complete vulnerability and honesty on events and profound freedom. And as she says, ‘that’s just as vivid, grounded best. every page. revelations, Plunder it should be’. The Shape of Sound covers Murphy’s follows Menachem Kaiser story from the age of five to the woman Chris Gordon is the programming and events as he takes up his Biography she is today. We witness the discovery manager at Readings Holocaust-survivor of her deafness and the struggles she grandfather’s battle to faces learning and fitting in at school, The Beauty of Living Twice Sex, Lies and Question Time reclaim the family’s where she is initially ashamed of her Sharon Stone Kate Ellis apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. disability, and thinks of it as something A&U. PB. $29.99 Hardie Grant. PB. $32.99 Featuring long-lost families, a Polish to ‘overcome’. She withholds her deafness Available now Available now lawyer known as ‘The Killer’ and a band of when applying for university and jobs She was one of the most Silesian treasure seekers, this is a deeply Well, this book and hides it from anyone who enters her renowned actresses in immersive adventure story and an could not have life. We see her slowly withdraw. But her the world – until a irreverent, daring interrogation of come at a better time, strength and persistence force her out of massive stroke cost her inheritance. could it? Sex, Lies and her isolation and drive her to learn how to not only her health, but Question Time came to me celebrate her disability. her career, family, for review hot on the Elizabeth & Margaret: ‘I now see that society has been sold fortune and global fame. heels of International The Intimate World of the a simple story about hearing loss when In The Beauty of Living Women’s Day, allegations Windsor Sisters it’s really not simple at all’. With this Twice, Sharon Stone chronicles her efforts of horrific sexual assaults at the heart of Andrew Morton book, Murphy invites readers along a to rebuild her life, and the slow road back the Government, and the nationwide Michael O'Mara Books. HB. $29.99 similar path of unlearning assumptions to wholeness and health. In an industry protests that occurred these Ides of March. Available 21 April around deafness and being Deaf. Reading that doesn’t accept failure, Stone found Former MP Kate Ellis’s book – and yes, this Elizabeth and Margaret Murphy’s story made me realise how little the power to return. is a ‘must read’ – offers a unique insider were the closest of sisters I understand about deafness and my own view of what life is like for women at the and the best of friends. ableism. The media has led us to believe seat of power in Australia. It is frank and Black and Blue: A Memoir of But when their uncle hearing aids are an easy fix for deafness. revealing. The responses from the wide- Racism and Resilience decided to abdicate the But Murphy shows just how wrong that ranging interviews conducted with a Veronica Gorrie throne, the dynamic is. Her experience with hearing aids was gamut of sitting and former MPs and Scribe. PB. $32.99 between them was heartbreaking and eye opening. This is senators seek to get at the heart of the Available now dramatically altered. This a devastatingly powerful memoir that is culture in this messy, adversarial Veronica Gorrie is a proud biography offers unique insight into these full of hope, loneliness and resilience. workplace. From ‘slut-shaming’ to hateful Gunai/Kurnai woman two drastically different sisters and the Murphy forced me to acknowledge innuendo, to being ‘briefed against’ from who worked as a police lasting impact they’ve had on the Crown, my own privilege and, in doing so, within your own caucus, Ellis lays bare the officer and fought for the royal family and the way it’s adapted completely reframed my understanding toxic culture of Parliament House. You justice both within and to the changing mores of the 20th century. of the world. may not like what you read, but for several beyond the Australian Lucie Dess is the marketing assistant at women, then and now, this is what they police force. With a great Readings experienced and continue to experience. gift for storytelling and a Cultural It’s clear that this culture has been wicked sense of humour, Gorrie frankly Studies festering for some time, along with the Lapsed and movingly explores the impact of deeply entrenched practices and Monica Dux racism on her family and her life, the procedures that present logistical ABC Books. PB. $34.99 impact of intergenerational trauma No Document nightmares to parliamentary parents, Available 7 April resulting from cultural dispossession, and Anwen Crawford mainly women. None of it is OK. It’s Monica Dux is a the difficulties of making her way in the Giramondo. PB. $26.95 disgraceful that those who are best placed funny woman. white- and male-dominated workplace of Available 1 April to enact meaningful change often fall far Thank God, because in the police force. I place my review short of doing so, particularly when such Lapsed she is taking on copy of Anwen changes directly affect colleagues within the world by examining Duchess Countess Crawford’s No Document their caucus, or across the political chasm. the Catholic way of life Catherine Ostler on the ledge under the Happily I can report that Ellis devotes from all angles. Dux does S&S. PB. $32.99 mirror at my hairdresser chapters to the positive, progressive what so many good Available now appointment. The book changes to better the lives of sitting feminist writers do: she makes the When the glamorous is full of coloured tags women parliamentarians, but there’s personal political. Starting with her own Elizabeth Chudleigh, and my hairdresser, who clearly much room for improvement, on experiences with the church, Dux looks Duchess of Kingston and has just told me she was born in the same several fronts. The refusal to take any around, peers under stones and Countess of Bristol, went town as Chekhov, takes note. I still have a of these issues seriously has resulted in contemplates her role within the ‘Great on trial for bigamy in handful of pages left, I admit to her, and the we’ve-had-a-gutful-Nancy-and-Ann- Catholic Church’. Her personal approach April 1776, the story drew I’m waiting for something that I know will Wilson-Barracuda rage manifesting in gives readers insight into the complexities more attention than the not come. these recent protests. This book calls of Catholic life, but it also allows Dux’s US War of Independence. My own statement catches me by for sweeping change: because we do ‘all humour to shine. It is that layer of Now, in Catherine Ostler’s evocative surprise. It rings true but throws my deserve far better than the manner in self-deprecation that gives this biography, Duchess Countess, we get the hairdresser off track. No Document is which our parliament currently works’. examination its heart and soul. full story of a vibrant woman’s attempt to a poetic book-length essay that makes Julia Jackson is the assistant manager of Dux begins her story of leaving the plough her own path in a world which use of collage and repetition, it does Readings Carlton Catholic Church by regaling us with her sought to circumscribe her. not contain or enclose a narrative but 14 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 NONFICTION

entangles Crawford’s grief for the loss writer and a thinker, allowing the reader a chauvinistic, male-dominated industry. achieve their goal and become an of her friend, art-collaborator and singular glimpse inside her talented and My Rock’n’Roll Friend is named after accomplished ‘BuildHer’. comrade in the narrative of several creative mind. a Go-Betweens song attributed to Robert vexed histories – our relationship with Kara Nicholson is from Readings online Forster and Grant McLennan, who are After The Australian Ugliness animals, the disappearing Sydney of their lauded in countless articles, books and Naomi Stead, Tom Lee, Ewan youth, Australia in the age of mandatory Let Me Tell You What I Mean documentaries while Lindy is remembered McEoin & Megan Patty detention, and the horizon of revolution as too emotional, a drummer, muse or Joan Didion T&H. HB. $90 during the perpetual brutality of late girlfriend, if she’s mentioned at all. Lindy Fourth Estate. HB. $27.99 Available now capitalism. In this context Crawford asks was integral to the band, organising them, Available 7 April Robin Boyd’s The not merely who are we, but what is ‘we’? lending her musical muscle to the strange From the iconic and Australian Ugliness It is a book of melancholies, I say to and unwitting time signatures of their influential Joan Didion: 12 was published in 1960 my hairdresser, of approaching forty, of songs, and ‘honing their sound’. pieces never before and quickly took its recalling twenty, of losing your comrade ‘From the start the boys know collected that offer an place as a key work of at thirty. Wistful? she asks. No no, I that having Lindy makes them more illuminating glimpse into architectural and protest. To read this book is to witness a interesting, but later they will start to the mind and process of cultural critique. This writer’s struggle to elegise her friendship undermine her role, try to take away this legendary figure. new book responds to against the spectre of sentimentality. her creative input, diminish her power, From a Gamblers Boyd’s most well-known text with new As one of Australia’s sharpest critics of downplay her importance, and ultimately Anonymous meeting, to a visit to William critical and creative writing by authors music, art and pop culture, Crawford will reframe themselves as having always Randolph Hearst’s castle, to a reunion of from a range of disciplines. Through not, I know, write a wistful book. In her been a duo.’ The pages reverberate with WWII veterans in Las Vegas, this wide- different styles and approaches, each writing the feeling of loss is not inert, feminist anger and indignation as Thorn ranging collection of essays are drawn author makes Boyd’s work live in the but, powered by the text’s symphonic places Lindy Morrison back in her rightful primarily from Didion’s early career. contemporary moment, exploring form it swirls with potential. In the few place in the band’s history. enduring questions about the elusive, pages left there will be no easy way out, Essentially, though, this book Old Seems to Be Other People sometimes lucky and sometimes ugly no revelation and nothing neat but a celebrates a friendship that continues character of Australia today. becoming future. In Chekhov we face Lily Brett today, presented via anecdotes, diary Hamish Hamilton. HB. $24.99 death, wasted potential and the atrocity entries and the numerous letters they Available 13 April of history but must resist bitterness and wrote to one another. Thorn’s writing Interior Design vengeance. Instead we must learn how ‘People assume that if is unflinchingly honest, vivid, eloquent to pursue justice. In Crawford, one of my you are female and over and intimate. This respectful paean to coloured tags marks the line, ‘what do we 70 you are oblivious to Thorn’s friend, confidante and mentor is Living in Nature: do / when we bring the fences down?’ men’s good looks. No one a revelation and an important historical Contemporary Houses in the would blink if a 99-year- Natural World Ender Başkan is a bookseller at Readings account. How different that history Carlton old man wearing an appears when viewed through the eyes of Phaidon Editors oxygen mask mentioned a woman and a friend. Phaidon Press. HB. $59.95 a good-looking woman.’ Available now Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton The Hard Crowd In this disarming and gently self- Living in Nature Rachel Kushner deprecating collection of vignettes about showcases a Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 ageing, Lily Brett gives us snapshots of A Restless, Hungry Feeling: selection of Available 13 April her everyday life in New York. In true The Double Life of Bob Dylan architect-designed Rachel Kushner is a Brett style, these stories are hilarious, Vol. 1: 1941-1966 houses that all masterful serious and utterly irresistible. Clinton Heylin feature a special storyteller. Her fiction is Bodley Head. HB. $65 relationship with the sharply insightful, The Muslim Problem Available 13 April natural world. Each completely original and Tawseef Khan The definitive biography of the book’s 50 homes is carefully chosen always entertaining. This of one of contemporary Atlantic. PB. $29.99 for its stunning location, whether collection of short pieces culture’s most iconic and Available now cocooned within the earth itself or proves her nonfiction to mysterious figures, A What does it mean to soaring high amongst treetops. With a be just as engaging and provocative. Restless, Hungry Feeling believe in Islam today, wealth of photographs showcasing each Appearing in print over the last 20 tells the story of Bob to have forged your house inside and out, Living in Nature years in publications such as the New Dylan’s meteoric rise to beliefs and identity in the offers inspiration – and tranquillity. York Times Magazine, London Review of fame. Clinton Heylin’s shadow of 9/11 and the Books and Paris Review, this is an eclectic meticulously researched, all- War on Terror? Tackling A Room of Her Own group of essays that (among other things) encompassing and consistently revelatory stereotypes from both Robyn Lea interrogates the political history of account of these early years is a inside and outside the T&H. HB. $65 particular moments in visual art, literature fascinating portrait of an artist and faith, The Muslim Problem is both a Available now and film. Kushner’s writing on other musical revolutionary who has been the wake-up call for non-believers and a Meet the creative writers such as Denis Johnson, Marguerite lodestar of popular culture for six decades. passionate new framework for Muslims women who are living Duras and Clarice Lispector is particularly to navigate a world that is often set life on their own terms imaginative and enlightening. against them. in this stunning There are personal essays here Architecture & photographic survey of too; ‘Girl on a Motorcycle’ recounts Building the most original homes in blistering detail competing in (and Music and interiors. A Room of crashing out of) one of the most gruelling Her Own features the motorcycle races in the world held on the BuildHer: Empowering Women dazzling homes of 20 extraordinary women Baja California Peninsula. Another piece, My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend to Build & Renovate Their artists, designers, makers and curators ‘Not with the Band’, tells of Kushner’s Tracey Thorn Dream Home around the globe, who have carved out time working behind the bar at the Canongate. PB. $29.99 Rebeka Morgan & their own space to live creatively. legendary Warfield and Fillmore Theatres Available now Kribashini Hannon in San Francisco. She worked while In 1983, backstage at Smith Street Books. PB. $45.00 watching the likes of Johnny Cash, Sonic the Lyceum in Available 7 April Art & Design Youth and the Rolling Stones perform. On London a young and Renovating or one occasion she tended the bar beside terrified Tracey Thorn was building your own Keith Richards as he fulfilled a Stones grappling with insecurity home is one of the The Mirror and the Palette tradition of serving drinks to the crew and inexperience. With biggest investments Jennifer Higgie at a private party. It was a P.J. Harvey her band on the verge of (financially and W&N. HB. $39.99 gig that convinced Kushner to quit her breaking up, Thorn was emotionally) you can Available now job and become a writer. As she watched close to tears when the door to her ever make. In this An ambitious 500-year Harvey sing until dawn at an afterparty, dressing room opened and a woman burst book, Australian duo history of women’s Kushner was impressed by her stamina in like a breath of air, all blonde-haired, Kribashini Hannon and Rebeka Morgan self-portraits, The Mirror and the sheer enjoyment Harvey took in brash and lurex-clad, a force of nature share their building expertise. Whether and the Palette is packed the performance of her music. It made searching for lipstick. you’re contemplating a renovation, or with tales of rebellion, Kushner understand that to be truly great That woman was Lindy Morrison of flipping your third property, BuildHer is adventure, revolution, at something you needed to completely the Go-Betweens who were playing on the written for women of all experience travel and tragedy immerse yourself in it. same bill. An enduring friendship formed levels. Using case studies and stories enacted by women who This collection shows Kushner has out of this meeting, strengthened by their from the BuildHer community, Kribashini turned their back on convention to pursue achieved this with her own work as a shared experiences as women working in a and Rebeka show how anyone can lives of great resilience, creativity and NONFICTION April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 15

bravery. This is a dazzlingly original book by one of the most well-respected art Gardening critics at work today. Around the World in 80 Plants Georgiana Houghton: Jonathon Drori & A Gift from Spirit Lucille Clerc (illus.) Alan Bennett & Lorraine Lee Tet Laurence King. HB. $39.99 Victorian Spirtualists' Union. PB. $100 Available 15 April Available now In Around the World in Georgiana Houghton 80 Plants, Jonathan was a 19th-century Drori reveals how the British Spiritualist and plant world is intricately abstract artist, whose entwined with works are compiled in humankind’s history, this new art book. culture and folklore. Featuring descriptions From the seemingly on Houghton’s way of familiar tomato to the eerie mandrake, working, and investigations into her each of these stories is full of surprises. materials and equipment, this beautifully With a colourful cast of characters all designed large format, full-colour book brought to life by illustrator Lucille contains copies of all 35 Houghton Clerc, this is a botanical journey of watercolour and gouache paintings held beauty and brilliance. at the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union in North Melbourne. Enviromental Nature’s Palette Patrick Baty Studies T&H. HB. $70 Available now Under a White Sky First published in 1814, Elizabeth Kolbert Syme’s edition of Bodley Head. PB. $29.99 Werner’s Nomenclature Available now of Colours attempted to Elizabeth Kolbert has establish a universal become one of the most colour reference system important writers on the to help identify, classify environment. In Under a and represent species White Sky, she takes a from the natural world. In Nature’s Palette hard look at the new world this technicolour trove has been enhanced we are creating. Along the with additional illustrations and expert text way, she meets biologists explaining the uses and development of trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish; colour standards in relation to zoology, engineers turning carbon emissions to botany, minerology and anatomy. stone; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds Utsuwa: Japanese Objects for into the stratosphere to cool the earth. Everyday Use Kylie Johnson & Tiffany Johnson ‘Loved it. I read it in one sitting — couldn’t put it down. T&H. HB. $59.99 History What an incredible woman.’ MELISSA LUCASHENKO Available now Japanese craft has long been revered for its Cleopatra: The Queen Who quality, and skilled Challenged Rome and craftwork remains an Conquered Eternity important part of Alberto Angela & Japanese life. ‘Utsuwa’, Katherine Gregor (trans.) meaning ‘for everyday HarperCollins. PB. $34.99 use’, embodies the ethos Available 7 April of handmaking in Japan, where Our world today would handcrafted wares must be as practical as not be the same without they are beautiful. Utsuwa guides us Cleopatra. While she is through some of Japan’s most exciting one of the most famous artisans and colourful marketplaces, figures in history, the where the provenance of a piece is central legendary Egyptian to its story. queen remains, in many ways, an enigma. In this mesmerising history, Alberto Angela offers Photography a fresh portrait of this extraordinary ruler, revealing a strikingly modern woman born Small Business in an ancient era, skilled in the art of David Wadelton diplomacy and war. M.33. HB. $70 Available now The Bookseller of Florence Small Business is a Ross King companion volume Chatto & Windus. PB. $35 to David Wadelton’s Available now Suburban Baroque In the mid-1400s, – with the focus this Vespasiano da Bisticci’s time on work rather bookshop in Florence was than domestic said to contain all the ‘Ronnie Gorrie’s journey as an Aboriginal woman spaces. Wadelton’s considerable wisdom of the world. At shows the different levels of power in our country photographic archive looks at the small this shop, the most and is as radical as it is moving.’ NAKKIAH LUI but enduring family-run businesses – formidable minds of the often tucked away on suburban streets – city would gather. That that are now rapidly fading away. This is a all changed in 1476, when a convent of time-capsule of a generation who toiled in nuns in the city acquired a printing press their shop for decades. from a bankrupt German printer. A 16 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 NONFICTION gripping story of ancient wisdom, new anthology, which gives voice to those Sharing the latest research-based The God Equation: technology, and a local battle that would often silenced. techniques and her own personal The Quest for a Theory have far-reaching consequences. experience, Woodhouse guides readers of Everything towards breaking the trauma loop and Michio Kaku The Invention of Miracles Reference reclaiming the future. Allen Lane. HB. $35 Katie Booth Available 13 April Living While Black Scribe. PB. $35 Reading the Seasons In The God Equation, Available now Guilaine Kinouani renowned theoretical Germaine Leece & Ebury Press. PB. $29.99 physicist Michio Kaku A revelatory revisionist Sonya Tsakalakis biography of Alexander Available 13 April takes the reader on a T&H. PB. $32.99 Graham Bell – renowned In Living While Black, mind-bending ride Available now inventor of the telephone anti-racist psychologist through the twists and Reading the Seasons and powerful enemy of Guilaine Kinouani turns of humankind’s charts the evolution of a the Deaf community. The explores the diverse search for a Theory of friendship through Invention of Miracles tells experiences of Black Everything. As he guides us through the candid letters between the dual stories of Bell’s people around the world key debates in modern physics, what bibliotherapists remarkable, world-changing invention and uses case studies and unfolds is a tale of dazzling breakthroughs Germaine Leece and and his dangerous ethnocide of Deaf exclusive research to offer and crushing dead ends, illuminated by Sonya Tsakalakis. Ignited culture and language. It also charts the guidance on how to set boundaries and Kaku’s clarity, storytelling flair and by a shared love of rise of Deaf activism and tells the process microaggressions; protect infectious enthusiasm. reading and finding a book for every triumphant tale of a community children from racism; navigate the dating occasion, their conversations confront reclaiming a once-forbidden language. world; and more. Kinouani empowers life’s ups and downs. From Stephen King Black readers to thrive, not just survive, Humour to Helen Garner to Maggie O’Farrell, while also offering useful resources for Victoire: A Wartime Story of Leece and Tsakalakis’s reflections affirm allies on how they can help. Resistance, Collaboration and the power of books to console, heal and Turns Out, I’m Fine: How Not Betrayal hold us together. to Fall Apart Roland Philipps Science Judith Lucy Bodley Head. PB. $35 S&S. PB. $32.99 Available now Politics Available 7 April Mathilde Carré, Forces of Nature In the space of 24 hours, codenamed ‘La Chatte’ Anna Reser & Leila McNeill Judith Lucy came apart. A (the cat) and then known American Kompromat Frances Lincoln. HB. $39.99 broken heart became the as Agent Victoire, was the Craig Unger Available now catalyst for a complete exceptionally charismatic Scribe. PB. $35 From the ancient world existential meltdown. She and daring founder of the Available now to the present, women was nearly 50, suddenly first Allied intelligence Based on exclusive have been critical to alone and unsure about network in Occupied interviews with high-level the progress of science, every aspect of her life. In France. But her allegiances became more sources in the KGB, CIA, yet their importance is her most candid and insightful book yet, complex when the network was rolled up and FBI, American overlooked. Forces of Lucy figures out what went wrong and then by the Germans. An incredible story of Kompromat unravels the Nature sets the record turns her attention to trying to set it right. heroism, complicity and survival about a Russian-influenced straight and charts the double-agent who played a major role in operations that amassed fascinating history of women’s World War II. the secrets of the richest discoveries in science. This thoroughly Travel and most powerful men on earth. From researched, authoritative work charts Writing Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein,American how women have navigated a male- Anthologies Kompromat shows how Russian operations dominated culture – showing themselves transformed the darkest secrets of the most to be pioneers and trailblazers, often Islands of Abandonment: Life powerful people in the world into potent without any recognition at all. in the Post-Human Landscape Lines to the Horizon: weapons that served its interests. Cal Flyn Australian Surf Writing Math Without Numbers HarperCollins. PB. $27.99 Jock Serong (foreword) Personal Milo Beckman Available 14 April Fremantle Press. PB. $32.99 Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 Islands of Abandonment Available now Development Available now explores the extraordinary From Gold Coast surf Math Without Numbers is places where humans no culture to the a vivid and wholly longer live to give us a relationships of humans Heartsick original guide to the three possible glimpse of what to the sea, Lines to the Jessie Stephens main branches of abstract happens when mankind’s Horizon features six Pan Mac. PB. $34.99 math – topology, analysis, impact on nature is forced authors writing about the Available now and algebra – which turn to stop. From Tanzanian surf and the ocean in six Claire has returned to her out to be surprisingly easy mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, Cal very different ways. childhood home, only to to grasp. Math prodigy Flyn brings together some of the most Reverential, energetic and mystical, these realise something is Milo Beckman upends the conventional desolate, eerie and polluted areas in the stories span thousands of kilometres of wrong with her partner approach to mathematics, inviting you to world – and shows how, against all odds, coastline, at home and away. Featuring Maggie. Patrick is a lonely think creatively about shape and they offer opportunities for writing by Sally Breen, Jake Sandtner, Mark uni student, until he dimension, the infinite and infinitesimal, environmental recovery. Smith, Emily Brugman, Madelaine Dickie meets Caitlin. Ana is symmetries, proofs, and how these and Readings Prize-winner Sam Carmody. happily married with concepts all fit together. The Women I Think About three kids. Then, one night, she falls in at Night Queer: LGBTQ Writing from love with someone else. Based on three Remember Mia Kankimäki & Ancient Times to Yesterday true stories, Heartsick is a narrative Lisa Genova Douglas Robinson (trans.) Frank Wynne (ed.) nonfiction account of the many lows and S&S. PB. $32.99 S&S. PB. $27.99 Head of Zeus. HB. $49.99 occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. Available now Available 7 April Available 14 April Just because your What can a 40-something Featuring 100 of the You’re Not Broken memory sometimes fails childless woman do? finest stories celebrating Sarah Woodhouse doesn’t mean it’s broken Bored with her life, Mia LGBTQI+ love, this Penguin Life. PB. $34.99 or succumbing to disease. Kankimäki leaves her job, anthology straddles the Available now Forgetting is part of being sells her apartment, and spectrum of queer In one way or another, we human. In Remember, decides to travel the experience, from all carry trauma. In You’re neuroscientist Lisa world, following the Verlaine’s sonnet in Not Broken, research Genova delves into how paths of the female praise of his lover’s anus, psychologist and trauma memories are made and how we retrieve explorers and artists from history who to Emily Dickinson’s exhortation of a specialist Dr Sarah them. Once you understand the language have long inspired her. The Women I woman’s beauty, to Oscar Wilde’s De Woodhouse teaches you of memory and how it functions, you can Think About at Night is part travelogue Profundis. With stories, poems, extracts what trauma is, and how both vastly improve your ability to and part thrilling exploration of the lost and scenes from countries the world over, to recognise when, why remember and feel less rattled when you women adventurers of history who Queer is an unabashed and unapologetic and how your past is holding you back. inevitably forget. defied expectations. NONFICTION April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 17

Campari as you decide which delicious dish At home to serve. I favour the pizza, of course. with Chris Gordon One Year Vegan Have your pick of the bunch Seher Istar Australia: The Cookbook Seher Istar. PB. $35 Ross Dobson & Alan Benson Available now this Mother’s Day Phaidon. HB. $65 Seher Istar decided to be Available now vegan for just one year. You may already have a Ross No big deal, she would Dobson book on your take the challenge and shelves. He is after all a see if her health and highly acclaimed chef who happiness improved. It has written many cookbooks did and she wanted to before. But this one, well, share her good fortune. I am so pleased she this is his masterpiece. With did because the recipes in her book are a over 350 recipes from all over the world, treat for us all. Included are Istar’s favourite this enormous tome recognises all our dips, soups, salads and cakes. I love this foodie influences. And because it’s Dobson book because without the title, I wouldn’t writing, there are also special treats to have even noticed it was all fruit- and make using our own flora and fauna. vegetable-based. It has that kind of magic. Purchase this one-stop shop of a collection if you love history mixing up your dishes. Super Natural Simple Heidi Swanson From Our Kitchen to Yours Hardie Grant. PB. $39.99 Country Women’s Association of Available 7 April Victoria We already acknowledge Murdoch Books. HB. $36.99 that we need to eat with Available 13 April mindfulness. We already We all know it truly does know we are pushed for not matter how many time, for energy and for cookbooks you have in ideas. Well, allow your collection, because bestselling author and like your clothes there are blogger Heidi Swanson to give you a helping favourites. For me, hand. This cookbook makes everything anything by the Country seem very easy, relaxed and delicious. This Women’s Association gets a special tick; is the type of book you use on weeknights, their recipes are like pulling on your comfy when you are half mad from hunger and trackie pants and relaxing. The recipes exhaustion and you need a little spark. gathered here come from the wonderful Visit thamesandhudson.com.au cooks of the Country Women’s Association The Lost Art of Baking with for the whole gift range of Victoria, tested through countless Yeast: Delicious Hungarian fundraising tables and events. Whether Cakes and Pastries you’re after a hearty soup, an orange Baba Schwartz poppyseed cake or some preserves, these Black Inc. HB. $34.99 185 recipes just work. Available 19 April My bloke is Hungarian In Good Company and often yearns for the Sophie Hansen dishes his Nagayama Murdoch Books. HB. $39.99 made for him as a child. Available now I’ve tried but not been Every now and then I successful at recreating dream of the lifestyle that his yeasty childhood Sophie Hansen has memories. In this book, Baba Schwartz takes created. She lives in the me by the hand and introduces the principles the hope flower country and creates of yeast baking with very handy hints for JOY DETTMAN JESSIE STEPHENS beautiful cookbooks that kneading and proving dough to perfection. From the bestselling author of Mallawindy Based on three true stories, Heartsick is a are brimming with These recipes, with their distinctive and the Woody Creek series comes a story of compelling narrative nonfiction account of the love and survival. emotional intelligence, kindness and truly Hungarian flavour, will delight your family many lows and occasional surprising highs of ‘The texture of the writing as well as the heartbreak. delicious feasts. In her second book she and friends as it did my poor long-suffering mind-boggling plots give her books a fatally ‘Thought-provoking, highly original and shows you how to entertain again – how to partner. In my home, it seems, any night is addictive attraction’ beautifully nuanced. Jessie Stephens’ throw a casual meal together whether it be now good for golden dumpling cake. Saturday Age journalistic skill shines’ a picnic, a family gathering or simply Jane Harper Tuesday night dinner. My advice is to light World Travel: An Irreverent Guide that candle and follow Hansen’s sensible Anthony Bourdain & advice on how to live a very good life. Laurie Woolever Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Ombra: Recipes from the Available 20 April Salumi Bar This book is a celebration of Carlo Grossi the life and legacy of one of Lantern. PB. $39.99 the most important food Available now writers of all time. Anthony We know Carlo Grossi Bourdain saw more of the The TREEHOUSE understands simple Italian world than nearly anyone. THE SLOW COOK food because we know his His journeys took him from JOKE BOOK 2 JUSTINE SCHOFIELD father, Guy. We know that his hometown of New York to every corner ANDY GRIFFITHS Nothing beats slow cooking when it comes & TERRY DENTON the Italians create feasts of the globe, and allowed him to offer to convenience. With minimal preparation, The latest addition to the internationally from small goods, cheeses essential advice on what to eat and where. simple ingredients and just one pot, you can phenomenal Treehouse series. Andy and Terry set and forget, then enjoy hearty, wholesome and baked goods. We know Alongside Bourdain's words are essays by have made the world’s funniest joke book. meals every night of the week. Slow cooking Melbourne is renowned for its bar life. friends, colleagues, and family that share Again! From fairytale fun to classroom capers is clever cooking ... and, as they say, good and movie madness, there are jokes galore for These are the three facts I want you to even deeper stories about the man. This is things come to those who wait. the whole family. consider when admiring the mouth- an ode to a much-loved, much-missed watering beauty of Grossi’s cookbook ambassador for living an adventurous life. Love talking about books? Ombra. There are family secrets and It’ll make you cry, it’ll make you laugh and Find us online at Pan Macmillan Australia instructions in this wonderful collection of it will remind you how good food is all recipes that will have you stretching for that about who you are with and why. 18 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 KIDS

Junior Grade BOOK OF THE MONTH Nonfiction Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds (Arlo & Pips, Book 1) Kids Elise Gravel HarperCollins. PB. $12.99 Available 14 April Arlo is a crow who is very keen for his friend Pips, a little yellow bird, to know exactly how clever he is. Pips mostly tolerates his new friend’s Masters of boasting but also calls him out a Disguise couple of times – ‘you brag too much’ Marc Martin – to which Arlo cheerfully replies: Read with Mum Puffin. HB. $26.99 ‘Sorry about that, I can’t help it!’ And really when you Available now learn how clever crows are, you can’t blame Arlo for being proud. Every time Arlo does something new in the story there is a little disclaimer on the page that Looking to prepare for Mother’s Day early Melbourne artist and storyteller Marc Martin has clarifies, yes actually crows really are this clever. By this year? From heartwarming baby board created a stunning, highly illustrated children’s the end of this short, junior graphic novel I had books, to rib-tickling read-alouds, to iconic book about animals that have adapted to their learned five new and fascinating things about crows characters kids love, these books celebrate environments so well they often blend into them. In that I couldn’t wait to share! the power of mums in all their glory. Masters of Disguise, readers will have fun learning There is so much for kids to love in this book: the unique facts about each animal (did you know that nifty facts, the bright clear logical illustrated panels, sloths only poop once a week?) and searching for these the expressive and cute animals, and Pips’ slightly Board Books camouflaged creatures in lushly illustrated scenes grump face as Arlo’s boasting gets a little too much. reminiscent of their natural environments. Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds is a great little graphic chapter book, and the first in a new early reader series This is a fascinating animal book for for children ages 4–7. Blooms for youngsters that will enthral them with Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids Miffy’s Mother fun facts, engage them with search and Dick Bruna finds, and delight them with Martin’s The Emu Who Ran Through the Sky Hardie Grant. BB. $12.99 (Tales from the Bush Mob, Book 2) Available 21 April always glorious watercolour images. Helen Milroy The habitats featured span all continents except Magabala. PB. $22.99 Antarctica, including the Redwood Forests that are Available now Mummy home to the barn owl, the northern hemisphere ice caps Emus can’t fly but they sure can run. Leslie Patricelli where the polar bear resides, and the eucalypt forests of Except for clumsy young Lofty, Walker. BB. $14.99 Australia, home to 150 different species of stick insect. who desperately wants to win the big Available 7 April Animals range from large mammals and birds, through emu race. Lofty asks his Bush Mob to insects, snakes and sea creatures. The informative friends Eagle, Sugar Glider and Bat to text is short and sweet, with lots of fun details that kids teach him how to fly so he can win, There’s Only One will love – look for the vine snake that does defensive but the Bush Mob’s inventor, Mum Like You farts to scare away predators! Platypus, has a better idea. The second book in First This is a fascinating animal book for youngsters Jess Racklyeft Nations author Helen Milroy’s Tales from the Bush that will enthral them with fun facts, engage them with Mob series about cooperation and perseverance. Affirm Press. BB. $14.99 search and finds, and delight them with Martin’s always Available now glorious watercolour images. It can be read aloud with children ages 3 and up or devoured by independent Middle Grade readers ages 7 and up. No matter how old the reader, this Picture Books wondrous volume deserves a place on every bookshelf. Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids Heroes of the Secret Underground Susanne Gervay HarperCollins. PB. $16.99 Available 7 April How to Spot a Mum Picture Books Twelve-year-old Louie loves living Donna Amey in Sydney with her Hungarian Wide Eyed Editions. HB. $19.99 grandparents, helping them run the Available now Don’t Forget beautiful Majestic Boutique Hotel. But Jane Godwin & Anna Walker (illus.) when she finds an antique rose gold Puffin. HB. $19.99 locket, dropped by a mysterious girl, her Available now tranquil world is upended – Louie and Wild About Mums There are all the ordinary her brothers are plunged back through time to Nazi- Philip Bunting things that children are occupied Budapest. Little Hare. HB. $19.99 reminded not to forget, such as While stuck in the past the siblings become Available 7 April brushing your teeth and doing caught up in the heroic deeds of the secret Jewish your homework. But what about underground, working together to follow the clues the more intangible things, the to uncover their grandparents’ history and return to building blocks that are often their own time. Through discovering the truth about A Mother Is a House forgotten or ignored in busy lives and yet help nurture a her Jewish heritage Louie learns that we all need Aurore Petit child’s soul and senses: to wonder; to listen to the music to remember and honour the past in order to truly Gecko Press. HB. $27.99 of the trees; to enjoy moments of solitude. This is a understand our present. Available now beautiful, quiet book that gently nudges caregivers and Louie and her brothers encounter danger at every children beyond a routine of well-meaning habits turn, displaying tenacity, intelligence and empathy as toward thinking about a holistic life of wonder. they are confronted by the shocking realities of a war My Mum Is the Best Anna Walker’s illustrations delicately interpret Jane they knew little about. Inspired by the experiences Godwin’s words, and as in the best collaborations, they of Susanne Gervay’s own parents, Heroes of the Bluey and Bingo add an extra depth to the story. Don’t Forget is a joy Secret Underground is a powerful introduction to the Puffin. HB. $16.99 from start to finish from this much-loved Australian Holocaust for readers ages 10 and up, and a reminder Available now team. For ages 3+. of the importance of hope and resilience in dark times. Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Daniella Robertson is from Readings Malvern KIDS April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 19

Huda and Me of a bride’s wedding dress. Plum and Woo find themselves many years, and highly recommended for ages 8+. H. Hayek in the heart of a mystery where they must use all their wits Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern A&U. PB. $14.99 to take on a villain and embark on a noble quest to save a Available now wedding – and the hotel itself – from potential ruin. Earth Matters: Loving Our Planet Author Lisa Siberry was the 2019 Ampersand Prize Meet vivacious, courageous, Carole Wilkinson & Hilary Cresp (illus.) winner for her debut The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green, precocious Huda and her quiet, Wild Dog. HB. $24.99 and her new series is quirky, fun and certain to appeal patient, big-hearted older brother Akeal. Available now to adventure seeking readers ages 8–12. Their parents were unexpectedly called The Earth’s climate is changing. It’s away to Beirut, leaving them in the Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster getting hotter. In Australia over the past hands of their horrible babysitter, Aunt 50 years, maximum temperatures have Amel. They have a plan. Well actually, You’ve Let them In been creeping higher. There have been it’s really Huda’s plan and Akeal is just going along to Lois Murphy record droughts, floods and bushfires. protect her like a big brother should. Not that Akeal is Transit Lounge. PB. $16.99 Why is this happening and what can we too sure it’s such a good idea for them to have run away Available now do to stop it getting worse? From our from home, and to be boarding a plane flying to Scott is shocked when his family move to a atmosphere to fossil fuels, Earth Matters explains the Lebanon alone. What with him being only 12. And Huda rundown house on the outskirts of town, science of climate change in a child-friendly way. … well, Huda is much smaller, and no matter what she with a menacing garden that refuses to be may think, someone does need to keep an eye on her. tamed. When strange and scary things Perhaps their parents will understand, when they show start occurring and the creatures from Graphic Novel up unexpectedly on the other side of the world, that the trees begin to invade the house, Scott Aunt Amel was truly awful after all. must face the peril of an unknown force The Girl and the Galdurian (Lightfall, This is where H. Hayek’s debut middle-grade novel that threatens to turn his world upside down. Huda and Me starts. Hayek’s novel is a cheeky, fun and Book 1) Tim Probert heartfelt adventure that will have you laughing out The Blackbird Girls loud. It provides a wonderful insight into the lives of a HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 Annie Blankman loving Lebanese-Australian family, with all its complex Available 14 April Puffin. PB. $14.99 relationships to culture, religion, family and food, as In the past few years children’s Available 13 April they navigate their adventure both at home and abroad. graphic novel publishing has One morning, neighbours Valentina and This tale of sibling love and learning to embrace exploded and it’s so exciting to have Oksana wake up to an angry red sky. A difference teaches as it entertains, with a fresh fast- such a beautiful range of books available reactor at the nuclear power plant where paced text and style. Perfect for readers ages 8+. for young graphic novel fans. The Girl their fathers work has exploded. Despite and the Galdurian is the first book in the Claire Atherfold is the manager of Readings State Library being enemies, they are evacuated Lightfall series. It’s a fantasy adventure together to Leningrad to stay with set in a world inspired by nature, and gorgeously Paws Valentina’s grandmother. In this new illustrated with an autumnal palette. Kate Foster city, the two girls must learn the meaning of trust, while Bea spends her days assisting her grandfather, the Walker. PB. $16.99 confronting the buried secrets in their families’ pasts. Pig Wizard, in his potion shop until one day he goes Available 7 April missing. Naturally, Bea is very worried, but while out in The transition from primary The Treehouse Joke Book 2 the forest she meets a new friend. Cad is a Galdurian. school to year seven is a challenge Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton It’s a very unlikely friendship because Galdurians are most 11-year-olds must face but for Alex, Pan Mac. PB. $14.99 thought to be extinct. Bea takes a cautious approach adapting to a new experience is simply Available now to life while her new buddy is goofy and good-hearted. terrifying. Interactions most children Andy and Terry live in the world’s They make a good team, and their friendship grows wouldn’t think twice about – team sports craziest treehouse. They like making as they set out together to find the Pig Wizard. With and communication with teachers and books and telling jokes. And now they’ve humour and warmth, they see each other through peers – are challenging Alex on a daily basis; his made the world’s funniest joke book. some hairy situations. They even fight giant crabs and problems seem insurmountable. Again! From fairytale fun to classroom narrowly avoid being cooked for dinner. Even with the support of his loving family, capers and movie madness, there are Fans of the Hilda books will love this great addition understanding teachers and best mate, Kevin the dog, jokes galore for the whole family. to our graphic novel shelves, and readers ages 8 and up Alex desperately wants to find a friend. Alex sets out will be eager for more from this new fantasy series. a plan to impress the children at school by winning a competition and as a result, win over their admiration. Nonfiction Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda But when a new family moves into his neighbourhood, a fresh opportunity for friendship presents itself. If only Fossils from Lost Worlds Classic of the Month Alex wasn’t too single-minded to notice. Hélène Rajcak, Damien Laverdunt & This is a story of friendship, understanding and Daniel Hahn (trans.) empathy. I loved its honest, perceptive portrayal of Olivia Gecko Press. HB. $37.99 Alex, his challenges with autism and the story’s gentle Ian Falcolner Available 7 April and positive resolution. Wonderfully insightful, it will S&S. HB. Was $24.99 I admit to a penchant for definitely strike a chord with confident, independent $12.99 interesting and informative books readers ages 9 and up and make for a satisfying read- that inspire curiosity in young people. Have you ever been woken up by aloud story for the classroom. Fossils from Lost Worlds is such a book. a prodigious drum solo at Athina Clarke is from Readings Kids At first glance it looks like a Tintin-style 5:00am, or found yourself receiving adventure (just with dinosaurs) but cooking advice from a pint-sized The Puzzling Pearls (Plum & Woo, Book 1) look again – there’s a tremendous depth gourmand? Do you have a little person Lisa Siberry of science, history and high adventure in this large-format in your life who reckons her Hardie Grant. PB. $16.99 picture book, taking young readers on an unforgettable sandcastle building abilities were Available 7 April journey through the fossil record. vastly underutilised during your recent reno, or perhaps you have your very own cat-mover-remover? Plum and Woo: The Puzzling Pearls is In easy-to-understand language that’s laced with the first in an ongoing adventure a disarming whimsy and illustrated in a lively graphic If this is the case, then Olivia is the perfect book to series featuring a mismatched pair of novel style, Fossils from Lost Worlds brings astounding share with the energetic and imaginative young person amateur sleuths. Mystery reader/ facts and stories to life, revealing insights into the in your life. Olivia is a feisty piglet who lives with her enthusiast Patti Woo has little in common rich complexity of palaeontology and the scientific parents and younger brother. She likes to dress up, sing with fashion tragic Hannah Plum. The two method. Piecing fossils together is like trying to solve songs, dance, think and snooze (sometimes). girls find themselves reluctant poolside multiple jigsaw puzzles that have been mixed together, Olivia is an enjoyable ‘just one more’ bedtime companions at the Heartbreak Hotel, while Hannah’s dad scattered, crushed and then buried beneath solid addition – a win-win for everyone. If your young reader and Patti’s mum embark on daily birdwatching rock – it seems almost impossible yet scientists have can’t get enough of this charming world, they can expeditions together outside the hotel grounds. imagined, persisted, rethought and succeeded! also join Olivia on her exploits in Ian Falconer’s other Things get interesting when a series of suspicious Covering a staggering amount of information, this picture books: Olivia Goes to Venice, Olivia the Spy and events occur at the hotel, and the girls are drawn from their multi-layered book is a must for anyone interested in Olivia …and the Missing Toy. poolside vantage point into the unfolding drama. There palaeontology. And if that’s not you, it will definitely Lose a little bit of your heart to one precocious are surreptitious drop-offs, cloaked escapades, coded change your mind. This is a treasure trove of piglet in this modern classic. Move over Peppa! signals and a slew of stolen valuables, including the theft information the whole family can savour and enjoy for Bianca Looney is from Readings Kids 20 READINGS MONTHLY April 2021 YOUNG ADULT

from Jonathan Stroud. For any readers who omissions that propel him into a terrifying like adventure stories and/or dystopia ages ski race and some hard conversations. That’s Young Adult 12 and up, this novel will not disappoint. when Nelson learns his second lesson: that Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings honesty is sometimes the best policy. Kids The True Colour of a Little White Lie is a light-hearted romp with a big heart – a story The third novel from Australian Krystal Sutherland is a for every self-proclaimed loser who finds gothic horror story about a trio of sisters that is The Prison Healer BOOK OF THE themselves wanting more from life. Whether delightfully scary to read. The Hollow sisters – Grey, Vivi and Lynette Noni it was the incredibly cosy setting of the MONTH Iris – are survivors of a mysterious kidnapping that occurred Penguin. PB. $24.99 ski lodge, or the cast of vibrant characters when they were kids. One minute they were on a Scottish Available now Young Adult who felt like they lived beyond the page, street with their parents; the next moment they were gone. The first in a new I loved following Nelson on his journey They reappeared on the same street a month later, with fantasy trilogy by of self-discovery and seeing him learn absolutely no memories, black irises and white hair. Ten years acclaimed author Lynette some valuable lessons about confidence later, the eldest of the sisters, Grey, now an internationally Noni, The Prison Healer is and honesty: about not just being true to famous model and fashion designer, has again disappeared. an enthralling read that is yourself, but being true to everyone else as not to be missed. It follows well. For ages 12+. Kiva Meridan, a hardened This is not only a contemporary twisted 17-year-old who has spent the past 10 years Joe Murray is from Readings Kids fairytale; it is also an evocative rendering captive in the infamous prison of Zalindov of the bonds of sisterhood. where she is tasked with the role of prison When We Are Invisible healer. Life there is far from easy, with Claire Zorn Written from the perspective of Iris, the youngest, as she danger from prisoners and guards alike UQP. PB. $19.99 and Vivi try to discover what happened to Grey, the narrative is lurking around every corner, but Kiva holds Available now creepy and compelling. I have rarely read a book so infused with onto the hope that one day she will be In the midst of a nuclear House of Hollow scents – rotting, noxious and gut wrenching – they practically released and reunited with her long-lost winter, Lucy, Fin and Max Krystal Sutherland ooze from the page. Flowers growing where they shouldn’t – out family. When the kingdom’s Rebel Queen is flee the chaos of Sydney Penguin. PB. $19.99 of bodies, walls and cavities – add to the novel’s spooky vibe. captured and brought into Zalindov, Kiva is with blood on their clothes, Available now This is not only a contemporary twisted fairytale; it is also given the opportunity to earn her freedom; a gun and handwritten an evocative rendering of the bonds of sisterhood: the almost all she has to do is keep the Rebel Queen directions to safety. When instinctive telepathy that can sometimes occur between sisters, and the lengths they will alive as the Queen undergoes the they reach Wattlewood, it go to protect and keep one another safe. Sutherland’s first novel, Our Chemical Hearts, was notoriously impossible Trial by Ordeals – a seems like their struggle to survive might shortlisted for the Readings YA Prize and has now been made into a Netflix movie. House of series of challenges that will earn prisoners be over. There is food, warmth and adults Hollow is even more exceptional storytelling by Sutherland that is bound to receive critical their freedom if completed successfully. in charge. So why can’t Lucy shake the praise as well as commercial success. Outstanding reading for ages 13+. With the Rebel Queen deliriously ill, feeling they’re still in danger? however, Kiva has no choice but to step up Angela Crocombe is the manager at Readings Kids to the Trial in the Queen’s place in a fight to win freedom for them both. The Project It’s easy to see why there is so much Courtney Summers Wednesday Books. PB. $21.99 and thoughtful moments, making it great impressive international buzz for this book. Off the Map Available 13 April for all readers ages 13+. Noni has brilliantly crafted a tale that fully Scot Gardner embraces the intricate world building, high Lo Denham has spent the A&U. PB. $19.99 Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids stakes plotting, and fantastical magic that last six years trying to Available now make the fantasy genre so beloved. Painted expose the Unity Project Off the Map is a The Outlaws Scarlett and where her sister, Bea, is a Browne in rich detail, the prison makes for a short-story collection unique backdrop, lending an undercurrent member. When a man shows Jonathan Stroud featuring all the things Scot of danger and tension to Kiva’s story. up at Lo’s magazine Walker. PB. $18.99 Gardner writes about best: Though life at Zalindov is often grim, a claiming the Unity Project Available 7 April families (dysfunctional budding romance and a touch of humour killed his son, Lo seizes the opportunity to As a first-time reader ones, functional ones and along the way lightens some of the book’s investigate. As she spends more and more of Jonathan Stroud, I all the varieties in between); darker moments. time with its members – and with its snapshots of mundane summer days; and am seriously impressed with The Prison Healer is gripping and fast charismatic and mysterious leader Lev those unseen moments where someone’s his style. This is a great paced with an ending that will leave readers – can Lo keep her grip on the truth? world is silently, slowly imploding. Bonnie & Clyde-style outlaw reeling. For the many readers who will be Gardner’s best known for showing us the adventure set in a post- desperate for the second book, worry not: the Dirt Circus League complex inner lives, thoughts, questions apocalyptic England that next instalment’s release date has already Maree Kimberley and emotions of teenage boys, from the has become brutal and intolerant. been announced for October 2021. Highly Text. PB. $19.99 rowdy boys at the back of the bus to the We first meet kick-ass bank robber, recommended for those who adore Sarah J. Available now quiet, almost invisible boys who slip by Scarlett McCain, on the job using her Maas, and for fantasy readers ages 14+. Asa’s running from a unnoticed. Off the Map is no different, but superior bank-robbing skills in a remote troubled past. To a remote this time the protagonists include young walled town. During her escape through Xiao-Xiao Kingham is from Readings Kids outback town, a women and LGBTQIA+ teens as well the harsh forests known as The Wilds, disappointing father and a (although LGBTQIA+ representation is not she discovers a blown-up abandoned bus The True Colour of a Little fresh start that’s already unusual in Gardner’s previous work). and a solitary survivor, Albert Browne, a White Lie souring. But then the There are 15 stories in Off the Map, all young, puppy-ish boy who seems sweet Gabriel Bergmoser notorious Dirt Circus League set in the same group of small fictional and helpless – or so she thinks. It’s not until HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 arrives – a troupe of outcast teens towns. The protagonists are as different they have been chased and nearly captured Available 7 April performing spectacular fight sequences as can be, but each one has a unique and by people far more dangerous than her If you’re a high school and challenging anyone who dares to take honest voice. Some of the characters in the usual pursuers that Scarlett realises this nerd with a severe case part. Asa is drawn to the league’s stories overlap, which allows you to see boy may have some hidden special powers. of social anxiety, there’s mysterious community, but will she be able them from different perspectives, forcing The pair travel across this very different nothing quite so liberating as to face the violent secrets at its heart? you to rethink your initial assumptions England, robbing a bank along the way to going somewhere completely about those characters. Two highlights get Scarlett out of debt. They sail along the new, where no-one knows for me were Ryan’s and Amy’s stories. waterways on a raft owned by an old man who you are. That’s the first Sunburnt Veils Ryan’s is about a boy who, when tasked by and his mute granddaughter and forge an lesson 14-year-old Nelson learns in Gabriel Sara Haghdoosti a school guest speaker to do 10 minutes unlikely friendship with them. Scarlett and Bergmoser’s newest YA novel, The True Wakefield Press. PB. $24.95 of free writing, takes the opportunity to Browne are searching for the Free Isles, Colour of a Little White Lie. When Nelson’s Available now philosophise about the meaning of life, where people with special powers like parents start working at the local ski lodge, Tara wears her hijab even sexuality and gender, before concluding Albert are reputedly safe from the Faith he gets the chance to reinvent himself, though her parents hate it, that ‘until you die, you’re free to muck Houses, religious enclaves that govern the relishing the opportunity to ski and read and in a swipe right world around with all the knobs and buttons on lands and maintain order with an iron fist. books every weekend without having to hide she’s looking for the ‘will go the mixing deck of life’. In Amy’s story, a But Albert is on the run from someone far from bullies. Soon enough, things get even to the ends of the earth for Japanese exchange student responds so worse, a powerful woman who will pursue better when Nelson’s new-found confidence you’ type of love. Or, she beautifully and publicly to a prank, it made him to the ends of the earth and will do helps him befriend two girls whose families would be, if she hadn’t me howl with laughter in my lounge room; anything to capture him – dead or alive. visit the lodge on alternating weekends. sworn off boys to focus on her studies. I wish I could reveal more details about it, Beautifully written, as well as being Trouble is, Nelson’s attempts to impress the When a bomb threat on her first day of but you’re going to have to read the book. genuinely thrilling and action-packed, this girls leaves him caught in a chaotic web of university throws her together with the Off the Map is full of these kinds of funny is a brilliant start to a new young adult series white lies, half-truths and delicate entitled Alex, things get complicated. BARGAINS April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 21

everything that makes it unique, but it Frostrup and the Erotic Review. Whether fabulous carriages, and art the envy of could light the way to a better future. you're looking for love, lust or something in connoisseurs across Europe. This is the story Bargains between, this gorgeous anthology is the of a remarkable woman who, though her The Blossom Cookbook: perfect gift, or bedside companion. roots were lowly, never stopped aiming high. Classic Favorites from the Restaurant That Pioneered a A Force So Swift: Mao, Starry Night: Van Gogh at the 4 3 2 1 New Vegan Cuisine Truman, and the Birth of Asylum Paul Auster Ronen Seri & Pamela Elizabeth Modern China, 1949 Martin Bailey HB. Was $59.99 Now $16.99 HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.99 Kevin Peraino HB. Was $49.99 Now $19.99 On March 3rd, 1947, Blossom has been HB. Was $39.99 Now $13.99 Starry Night is a fully Archibald Isaac Ferguson, changing the face of Drawing on Chinese and illustrated account of Van the only child of Rose and vegan food in America Russian sources, as well as Gogh’s time at the asylum Stanley Ferguson, is born. for more than a decade. recently declassified CIA of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole From that beginning, In this long-awaited documents, A Force So Swift is in Saint-Remy. Despite the Ferguson's life will take four cookbook, home cooks a gripping narrative of the challenges of ill health and simultaneous paths. Four will learn their chefs’ Truman Administration's asylum life, Van Gogh Fergusons will go on to lead four different secrets for preparing elegant vegan entrées, response to the fall of continued to produce a series of masterpieces lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and comfort food favorites, brunch, dessert and Nationalist China and the triumph of Mao – cypresses, wheatfields, olive groves and friendships and passions contrast. 4 3 2 1 is a more. Including vegan lifestyle tips and 80 Zedong's Communist forces in 1949. An sunsets. This book sets out to give an sweeping story of birthright and possibility, inventive recipes, this book will excite extraordinary political revolution it continues impression of his life during this time and of love and the fullness of life itself. anyone who loves eating healthy, delicious, to shape East Asian politics and relationships looks at Van Gogh through fresh eyes. sustainable meals. between China and the world to this day. Atlas of Vanishing Places Melbourne: Then and Now Travis Elborough Civilisations: How Do We Look Found in Translation (Compact Edition) HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.99 / The Eye of Faith Frank Wynne (ed.) Heather Chapman & Cities forgotten under the Mary Beard HB. 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Érard piano and a violin by Guaneri, never-before-heard gems. Phantasm offers recreating the composer’s sound world. a wealth of insights into these highly Music & DVD artistic works revealing sonorities and Cellopera: Operatic colours that are both dynamically Transcriptions for Cello and expressive and revelatory. now have a satisfyingly substantial album Orchestra J.S. Bach: St. Matthew Passion Classical Music devoted to the composer. Ophélie Gaillard, Morphing Gaechinger Cantorey & Hans- The album features the Piano Sonata Chamber Orchestra & Christoph Rademann in B Minor, S. 178, but also has something Frédéric Chaslin Aparté. AP248. Was $32.99 Accentus. ACC30535. 2CDs. Was $44.99 for the opera lovers with ‘Réminiscences $36.99 (Limited stock at this price) ALBUM de Norma’ from Bellini’s opera. The $26.99 (limited stock at this price) Hans-Christoph OF THE sweet and contemplative Berceuse is From well-loved arias to new discoveries, this Rademann and the MONTH at the centre of the album and made me realise something about why I love recording journeys Gaechinger Cantorey Classical Grosvenor’s playing: it’s not just his through over a century ensemble and chorus, phrasing and technical command, but of opera, with together with an his use of silences between notes that is transcriptions for cello extraordinary group of and orchestra stretching from Mozart to soloists, set out to lend a new and fresh Romance: Music for Violin and truly delightful. Grosvenor lets the sound Puccini and including Verdi, Tchaikovsky perspective to Bach’s timeless masterpiece Orchestra by Danish Composers hang in the air, allowing the piano itself to take centre stage with its sonorous tone and Offenbach. The curtain goes up on of raging choirs, intimate chorales, and Christina Åstrand, Turku Philharmonic rather than distracting listeners with fast some of Ophélie Gaillard’s favourite emotionally charged arias. With its drama Orchestra & Jukka Iisakkila fingers or showmanship. The quote that pieces, which explore human passions and pictorial quality, it allows the listener Dacapo. 6220652. $26.99 immediately came to mind for me was through the voice of the cello, that most to experience the well-known Passion story from Aldous Huxley’s essay, ‘Music at human of instruments. again and again as something completely new and unheard-of. A lustrous pearl adorns the cover of Night’: ‘After silence, that which comes this album and it is a perfect nearest to expressing the inexpressible is Paris: Works for Violin and representation of this repertoire. Warmth music.’ Here, Grosvenor uses both silence Orchestra by Chausson, À l’opéra permeates every note of these Danish and music to speak to your heart. This is Prokofiev & Rautavaara Natalie Dessay masterworks thanks to the beauty of the true mark of a musical master. Hilary Hahn, Orchestre Erato. 0190295057787. 3CDs. $44.99 violinist Christina Åstrand’s playing. Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Philharmonique de Radio France & Natalie Dessay is a Whenever I first listen to an album for these Mikko Franck dazzling opera singer. reviews, I like to do a full listen, with no Beethoven: DG. 4839847. $29.99 Her charisma, captured preconceived ideas about the repertoire or Works for Flute ‘I doubt whether [the on the stages of the world’s great opera performers (if possible). Only after that is Emmanuel Pahud & Prokofiev] has ever been houses and in the complete do I start researching the Daniel Barenboim played “better” than it is recording studio, illuminates the opera composers, their eras and why the Warner Classics. 0190295139742. $29.99 here. While others find performers chose this repertoire. I fell so additional pockets of arias and scenes in this collection. From Why is Beethoven much in love with this album from the very charm and tenderness, Mozart’s furious Queen of the Night to so delightfully first notes, I ended up listening to it three few demonstrate Hahn’s grip on the Massenet’s capricious Manon and Verdi’s cute on the flute? times through before I even thought to start argument … The performance is good passionate, tragic Violetta, Dessay proves Beethoven might be looking anything up. enough to have one constantly reassessing irresistible in repertoire that spans three rolling in his grave as I firm favourites … Fans will already have centuries and a wealth of musical and The album starts with the dark opening say this, but as I marked this one down as a compulsory dramatic possibilities. of the ‘Concert-fantasie’ by Otto Malling. Its listened to this album, I just kept finding purchase and likely Awards contender. opening lilt morphs into a bouncy tune that myself smiling at the cheeky phrases They’re not wrong.’ – Gramophone allows the violin to merrily chat with other effortlessly tossed off by flautist Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 8 instruments in the accompanying orchestra. Emmanuel Pahud, pianist Daniel & 2 & Wagner: Meistersinger While all the works on the album hark from Barenboim and their colleagues. Starting Arvo Pärt: Miserere Prelude the Romantic era of composition, many of with an enchanting arrangement of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks Gewandhausorchester Leipzig & them are also simply titled ‘Romance’ with Violin Sonata No. 8, the album also & Howard Arman Andris Nelsons offerings from Peter Erasmus Lange-Müller, includes the Serenade in D major for Flute, BR Klassik. 900527. Was $29.99 DG. 4839834. 2CDs. $26.99 August Enna and Johan Svendsen. With a Violin and Viola, as well as the Trio in G $22.99 (Limited stock at this price) ‘In this new account of deft hand, Jukka Iisakkila leads the orchestra Bruckner’s Eighth major for Flute, Bassoon and Piano. More than almost any through their paces. At no point do you feel Symphony, Andris Last year marked the 250th other contemporary like they are swamping Åstrand and yet, in Nelsons and his Leipzig anniversary of Beethoven’s death and composer, Arvo Pärt has their moments to shine they are sublime. players provide a ABC Classic celebrated by playing every succeeded in bringing Listeners who are familiar with Åstrand masterclass in the work he ever wrote. If you missed these sacred music back to a as the current leader of the Danish National creation of a sound world that perfectly sweet little chamber works you must listen broader audience and Symphony Orchestra will already know serves their larger purpose. It’s a palette, to this album. Not only are the works away from the confines of the church that she is noted for her performances of what’s more, that’s been created from within themselves purely delightful, but the service. The meditative character of his contemporary works and has premiered the ensemble, not imposed from without … musicianship is superb. What particularly works, and his return to the simplest and many modern Danish composers’ violin This, then, is a performance whose tickled my fancy though was in the most basic musical forms, convey concertos. This latest release through orchestral playing alone would guarantee it inclusion of the Beethoven Duo for Two moments of intense spirituality. Pärt’s Dacapo, however, is devoted to the memory a place in the pantheon.’ – Gramophone Flutes in G major. Did you even know this tintinnabuli style of composition (from of some of the greatest historical Danish existed? I bet you didn’t! I play it almost the Latin word for a bell) is a key feature of composers. Often very popular during their every week with my students as sight- the choral and instrumental works on this lifetimes – mostly during the late 1800s and reading practice and it’s yet to get old. new recording. Jazz/Blues Music early 1900s – these composers seem to have Give yourself a treat with this pick-me-up been forgotten in our southern edge of the from Beethoven. world. This should be rectified immediately, J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered The United States vs. Billie Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings and it would be great to see some of these Consort II Holiday (Music from the pieces grace our local concert halls. Phantasm & Laurence Dreyfus Motion Picture) Linn. CKD657. Was $32.99 Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Fauré: Works for Violi n & Piano Andra Day Jane Gordon & Jan Rautio $26.99 (Limited stock at this price) $29.99 Resonus Classics. RES10275. Was $29.99 This is the second Available now $24.99 (Limited stock at this price) instalment by the viol Singer Andra Day makes Liszt: Works for Solo Piano Gabriel Fauré is consort Phantasm her feature-film debut Benjamin Grosvenor considered to be one of dedicated to the starring as Billie Holiday Decca. 4851450. $24.99 the most important keyboard music of in The United States vs. British pianist French composers of the Bach. This new Billie Holiday. Day’s Benjamin 19th and early-20th recording explores further riches from iteration of the jazz- Grosvenor has been a centuries. His music is a both volumes of Bach’s Well-Tempered infused soundtrack adheres to the cool, regular in these pages testament to the seismic changes that he Clavier. Reimaging Bach’s keyboard sultry stylings of Holiday’s original. By for many years now. lived through, undoubtedly reflected in his polyphony as consort music has the dual stepping into her predecessor’s persona, Electrifying the distinctive writing. This collection of benefits of expanding Bach’s chamber Day brings the past to the present, adopting classical music community in 2011 with Fauré’s works for violin and piano is oeuvre, while also presenting these highly a vocal approach and musical sensibility his first foray into Liszt’s repertoire, we performed on period instruments: an 1890s cherished works as seemingly new, that’s nothing short of a classic. MUSIC & DVD April 2021 READINGS MONTHLY 23

Tone Poem classics ‘I Fought the Law’ and ‘Rudie Can’t Runnin’ Down a Dream: funeral of his childhood friend, who Charles Lloyd & the Marvels Fail’ with his band, the Mescaleros. All A Tribute to Tom Petty allegedly murdered his wife and child $21.99 tracks have been remastered by Grammy- Lucinda Williams before taking his own life. When Falk Available now winner Paul Hicks and include liner notes $21.99 | Also on vinyl agrees to stay on and investigate the Tone Poem is the third from musician Jakob Dylan. Available 16 April crime, he opens up an old wound – the album by Charles Lloyd American alternative decades-old, unsolved death of a teenage & the Marvels, the Promises country stalwart Lucinda girl – and suspects the two crimes might genre-straddling quintet Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders Williams launches the be connected. that features the master & The London Symphony first volume of ‘Lu’s saxophonist with Bill Orchestra Jukebox’, an initiative in Frisell, Greg Leisz, Reuben Rogers, and Eric $19.99 | Also on vinyl which she covers songs Classic Film Harland. The nine instrumental tracks on Available now by a single artist and donates the proceeds on DVD the album include new Lloyd originals This sensational to struggling independent venues. Runnin’ along with pieces by Ornette Coleman, collaboration between Down a Dream marks what would have been Thelonious Monk, Leonard Cohen, Gabor Sam Shepherd (Floating Tom Petty’s 70th birthday and contains 13 Breathless Szabo, and Bola de Nieve. Points) and Pharoah versions of tracks from his career. $14.99 Sanders with the Available now London Symphony Still Woman Enough To celebrate its 60th Pop/Rock/Alt Music Orchestra is a sonically spectacular and Loretta Lynn anniversary, Breathless has beguiling continuous piece of music in $16.99 been stunningly restored. Obviously nine movements for saxophone, strings, Available now Based on a crime story by Lake Street Dive keyboards and electronics. Composed by American music icon François Truffaut and $26.99 Shepherd, this is the first new music from Loretta Lynn’s 50th photographed by New Available now 80-year-old jazz luminary Sanders in more studio album Still Wave legend Raoul than a decade. Woman Enough Coutard, Jean-Luc Godard’s jazzy riff on Lake Street Dive’s celebrates women in film noir features iconic performances wide-ranging taste in country music. On the from Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. pop, rock, R&B, and jazz 1970 (2021 Wide Release album she pays homage to originators With non-stop pace, it reinvented film have been blended Version) Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter language and changed the course of together on Obviously to Bob Dylan with special guest family, sings duets with stars such as Reba international filmmaking forever. make an impressively George Harrison McEntire, Margo Price and Tanya Tucker, cohesive sound, combining retro influences $49.99. 3CDs and has recorded a new interpretation of with a contemporary attitude. With the Available now her very first single ‘I’m a Honky Tonk Girl’. TV on DVD permanent addition of touring keyboardist After a limited edition Akie Bermiss and produced by the Grammy was released late last Award-winning Mike Elizondo, they year, Bob Dylan’s 1970, Vinyl Re-issue The Mallorca Files continue to grow and challenge themselves. is finally becoming Season 1 widely available. With $29.99 Roses new cover art and liner Big Science (Red Vinyl) Available now The Paper Kites notes by Michael Simmons, the three-disc Laurie Anderson Among the vibrant $19.99 | Also on vinyl collection includes Dylan’s long-sought- $49.99 international community Available now after studio recordings dating from March Available 9 April of Mallorca, an ambitious to August 1970. Included are unreleased Roses is Australian Laurie Anderson’s 1982 young British detective outtakes from the sessions that produced indie-folk stalwarts The debut album, Big Science, and her laid-back German Self Portrait and New Morning, as well as Paper Kites’ fifth studio returns to vinyl for the partner look like the nine rare tracks of Dylan’s studio jam album and continues first time in 30 years with perfect team – if only they sessions with George Harrison. their legacy of a new red vinyl edition. could see it. But as this mismatched thoughtful song-writing The vinyl includes the partnership starts to solve some of the and gorgeous harmonies. This 10-track Music Is Love (1966–1970) remastered original album first released on island’s most mysterious cases, the album is a deeply moving collection of Richard Clapton CD for the 25th anniversary of Big Science on chemistry starts to build. Shot on songs, helmed by a cherished selection of $24.99 | Also on vinyl Nonesuch in 2007. Big Science foresaw the spectacular locations across Mallorca, this artists including Julia Stone and Nadia Available 9 April future, mixing performance art, pop, and drama lifts the veil on the many unknown Reid. ‘[It is a] collection of songs we had Music Is Love electronics, most hauntingly on the hit sides of this picturesque island. written and wanted to record with these (1966–1970) is single, ‘O Superman’. ‘[Anderson’s work]’, artists,’ says lead vocalist Sam Bentley. legendary artist notes the New York Times, ‘is unlike anything The Undoing Richard Clapton’s first else in music’. $39.99 House Music covers album. It is a Available now Bell Orchestre deeply personal Film on DVD Grace (Nicole Kidman) and $22.99 | Also on vinyl collection that reconnects him with his Jonathan Fraser (Hugh Available now musical origins and provides insight into Grant) are living the only Described as ‘an the songs that shaped him as an artist. Promising Young Woman lives they ever wanted. 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Federal Agent Aaron Falk but an upright piano for the journey. But solo work. The album Exploring the emotions brought up by the returns to his drought- his plans are soon turned upside down includes a never-before- moment, they recorded the 12-track stricken hometown after when he meets the runaway teenager Meg heard acoustic home recording of ‘Junco They’re Calling Me Home which speaks of an absence of more than (Milly Alcock), who’s dealing with some Partner’ and live versions of The Clash the longing for the comfort of home. 20 years to attend the family demons of her own. Books for you, books for Mum FICTION HISTORICAL FICTION HISTORICAL FICTION HISTORICAL

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