FREE SEPTEMBER 2019

The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2019 shortlist

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Our annual Father’s Day gift guide

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BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

MARTIN SIMPSON page 23 THE FINAL JOEY BUI MARGARET TYSON FIONA HARDY QUARTER page 7 ATWOOD YUNKAPORTA page 21 page 22 page 9 page 16

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 The Wheeler Centre presents

MIND. FULL.

Season Two 2019

SUBSCRIBE NOW to our podcasts and e-news at wheelercentre.com TOXIC FEMININITY KRACK!N THE INDUSTRY White Tears/Brown Scars Inclusion on Screen

In 2018, Sydney journalist Ruby Hamad wrote an article for the Finally, Australian comedy is seeing a broader range of Guardian that touched a nerve with readers around the world. voices represented in writers’ rooms, on screen and behind The article, ‘How white women use strategic tears to silence the scenes. For season two of Get Krack!n co-creators women of colour,’ was about the special and dangerous claims Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney made inclusion and white women make to victimhood and how these adversely accessibility a production and creative focus. affect and are wielded against women of colour. In this discussion, hosted by Alistair Baldwin we’ll feature She has since adapted the article into a new book, White artists who worked on that hilarious and game-changing Tears/Brown Scars. Hosted by Hella Ibrahim, Hamad will be series. They’ll address how the screen sector can, more broadly, MON 30 SEPT joined by Arrernte activist and social commentator Celeste go about making space for people who have not traditionally at the Wheeler Centre Liddle for a discussion about what happens when racism and WED 25 SEPT been represented across, and behind, our screens. Time: 6.15pm – 7.15pm, FREE sexism collide. at the Wheeler Centre 3 This event will be Auslan Time: 6.15pm – 7.15pm, FREE Presented in partnership with The Other Film Festival. interpreted.

DOUBLE BOOKED CLUB WRITING IN EXILE BLAK & BRIGHT Sarah Bailey and Mark Brandi Hawzhin Azeez Read a Blak Book Lately?

Meet two talented Australian crime writers for a fascinating When there is no home to return to/no safety known/and not We open this year’s Blak & Bright festival with a Welcome to hour-long conversation, hosted by crime-fiction buff Christian an inch of this world/that you can call your own Country, ceremonial song and speeches. Then, hosts Daniel White. Then flee the scene. Browning and Evelyn Araluen discuss and review some of the The haunting refrain from Hawzhin Azeez’s poem, No Home latest – and some of the greatest – Blak books. Hear excerpts Sarah Bailey is the author of three riveting crime novels, all To Return To, encapsulates the sense of absence and loss and, if you’re lucky, glimpse an author or two. starring the young detective sergeant Gemma Woodstock. that drives much of the poet’s writing, research and activism. The third novel in the series, Where the Dead Go, sees Gemma Born in South Kurdistan (north Iraq) during the first Gulf War, Visit blakandbright.com.au for the full festival programme. investigating a murder in a small coastal town. Azeez’s family fled Saddam Hussein’s regime and lived for This event is presented in partnership with Blak & Bright First Nations eight years in Iran. Mark Brandi’s new novel, The Rip, is about a young Literary Festival and Melbourne Writers Festival. woman sleeping rough, it’s set in inner-Melbourne and With Sami Shah, this exceptional young writer, poet and it draws on Brandi’s own experience from working in the creative powerhouse will discuss what it takes to reconstruct criminal justice system. cities – and stories.

FRI 13 SEPT at the Wheeler Centre THUR 12 SEPT Time: 12.30pm – 1.30pm, FREE at the Wheeler Centre FRI 6 SEPT Lunch available for purchase from the Moat when booking. Time: 6.15pm – 7.15pm, FREE at the Wheeler Centre This event will be live-streamed. 3 This event will be Auslan interpreted. Time: 6.00pm – 7.30pm, FREE

BOOK NOW at wheelercentre.com NEWS September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 3

by Alice Robinson. This year’s guest judge sale includes recordings from Australia’s of four recipients for the Booksellers in is author (and 2018 Readings Prize winner) own ABC Classics label as well as DG, Residence program, an initiative run by September Jennifer Down. She will join our staff judging Decca, Signum Classics, Sony Classical, the Melbourne City of Literature. Ellen will panel to select a winner from the shortlist. Brilliant Classics and DVDs from Australian spend a week, early next year, at Third The winning book will be featured in the Opera. The sale is available in all Readings Place Books in Seattle sharing ideas, News November edition of Readings Monthly and shops (except Readings Kids and Readings observing and learning how things are done the author will receive a $3000 prize. Read State Library Victoria) and online from now on the other side of the world. more about the shortlisted titles on page 6, until 30 September, while stocks last. and at readings.com.au/the-readings-prize- Indigenous Literacy Day for-new-australian-fiction Booker Prize shortlist dinner This year Indigenous Literacy Day is on Australian Reading Hour Join us on Monday 14 October for our Wednesday 4 September. The Indigenous The Australian Reading Hour is an initiative sit-down Booker Prize shortlist dinner at Literacy Foundation (ILF) aims to raise 2020 Readings Diary that encourages all Australians to take Tolarno’s, St Kilda. Discuss which Booker literacy levels and improve the opportunities We have created a limited edition diary an hour out of their day on Thursday 19 Prize-shortlisted book you think should win; of Indigenous Australians living in remote for 2020 that is ideal for booklovers. The September to pick up a book. Reading is which book you think probably will win; and and isolated regions. Ten per cent of funds Readings Diary has a week-to-a-view proven to reduce stress levels even more which book will win over your dead body from books sold in our shops on Wednesday layout, a monthly literary trivia question, than activities like going for a walk or (chances are, that’s the one that will get the 4 September will be donated to the ILF. For and is full of first lines from some of our listening to music, and it increases empathy. gong!). Mark Rubbo, Readings’ managing more information about the ILF, please visit favourite Australian books, photographs See our events pages for information about director, will be your host du jour and Jane indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au. from our seven shops, and even sections to what we’re doing for Reading Hour. Sullivan, literary journalist from The Age, keep track of your reading (and who you’ve will give you her insider knowledge on how lent books out to). The Readings Diary awards work and what judges look out for. Readings Kids’ Book Subscription is available from all Readings shops, and Booksellers in Residence Tickets are $125 per head and include wine, Our Kids’ Book Subscription is the perfect online from 29 August. We are delighted to announce that Ellen food and a $50 donation to The Readings gift for the little people in your life – a book Cregan, our talented marketing and events Foundation. For more information see in the post every month to share. There coordinator, has been selected as one readings.com.au/events are two options to choose from: a six- The Melbourne Writers Festival month subscription ($185) and a ten-month The 2019 Melbourne Writers Festival subscription ($300). Each book will be runs from Friday 30 August to Sunday selected monthly by our expert children’s 8 September. Some highlights of this booksellers, and then posted out by us. We year’s festival include international visitors recommend this subscription for children Tayari Jones, Becky Albertalli and DeRay aged 0–4 years old. The subscription Mckesson, as well as local authors Bruce is available for purchase exclusively Pascoe, Andrea Goldsmith, Clementine in the Readings online shop. For more Ford and many more. You can browse the information about the Readings Kids’ Book full program and make bookings at mwf. Subscription, please see: com.au. This year, MWF will be held in readings.com.au/the-kids-book-subscription multiple venues within walking distance of Melbourne’s iconic State Library Victoria, and you can find books from the artists The Readings Prize for New Australian featured at the festival at the Readings Fiction 2019 Shortlist State Library Victoria shop (open daily). This year’s shortlist for the Readings Readings is proud to be the official Prize for New Australian Fiction has bookseller of Melbourne Writers Festival. been announced. The shortlisted books are A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop, Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman, The Flight Classical Music Sale of Birds by Joshua Lobb, A Superior Spectre The Readings classical music sale is on by Angela Meyer, This Taste for Silence by again, with discounts of up to 60% on CDs, Amanda O’Callaghan, and The Glad Shout classical box-sets and DVDs. This year’s

READINGS MONTHLY EDITOR EVENTS & PROGRAMMING PRICES AND AVAILABILITY Free, independent monthly newspaper Elke Power Chris Gordon Please note that all prices and release published by Readings Books, Music & Film [email protected] dates in Readings Monthly are correct at ADVERTISING time of publication, however prices and SUBSCRIBE EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Ellen Cregan release dates may change without notice. You can subscribe to Readings Monthly Judi Mitchell and Ellen Cregan [email protected] Special price offers apply only for the and our e-news by visiting our website: month in which they are featured in the readings.com.au/sign-up PROOFREADERS GRAPHIC DESIGN Readings Monthly. Judi Mitchell, Ellen Cregan and Marie Cat Matteson DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Matteson Readings donates 10% of its profits each MAIL-ORDER PURCHASES FRONT COVER year to The Readings Foundation: $6 flat rate for anywhere in Australia KIDS/YA CURATORS The September Readings Monthly cover readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation Angela Crocombe and Dani Solomon and Father’s Day Gift Guide feature DELIVERY CHARGES FOR artwork by Carla McRae. See more at ONLINE PURCHASES MUSIC CURATOR thepaperbeast.com.au $6 flat rate for anywhere in Australia for Dave Clarke orders under $100. Free delivery on orders CARTOON $100 and over. CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR Oslo Davis Phil Richards oslodavis.com

DVDS CURATOR Lou Fulco 4 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 EVENTS

including The Last Dragonslayer series, Tuesday 10 September, 6.30pm which has been adapted for television. Hear Thursday 19 September, 6.30pm September Fforde talking about his new standalone JANE GILMORE IN novel, Early Riser, and more, with award- SARAH THORNTON IN Events CONVERSATION WITH winning writer Alison Croggon. CONVERSATION WITH CLEMENTINE FORD Readings Hawthorn SARAH BAILEY 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn Join us to hear journalist Jane Gilmore Together with Sisters in Crime, we are discuss her powerful new book, Fixed It: Tickets are $5 per person, redeemable off a delighted to have Sarah Thornton joining Event times and locations are subject to change. Violence and the Representation of Women Fforde title on the night. us to discuss her debut novel, Lapse, with For the most up-to-date information on in the Media, with Clementine Ford. Please book at readings.com.au/events award-winning crime writer Sarah Bailey. events, please check readings.com.au/events Church of All Nations Readings St Kilda Please note, for our free, in-store events, your 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton 112 Acland Street, St Kilda booking may not always guarantee a seat. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Friday 13 September, 6.30pm Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events ANTONY LOWENSTEIN IN

Wednesday 11 September, 6.30pm CONVERSATION Friday 20 September, 6.30pm Antony Lowenstein’s Pills, Powder and, JOSEPHINE ROWE IN Smoke is an incredible investigation into the ORIES ANNELISE NIELSEN ON ST never-ending global war on drugs. Join us AN LI CONVERSATION WITH MONEY SPINNERS A as Lowenstein discusses his new book. R T S 50 Australian JUSTINE HYDE Annelise Nielsen travelled the country U A Stories event series Come along to hear acclaimed Australian Readings St Kilda covering the Hayne Royal Commission author Josephine Rowe in conversation 112 Acland Street, St Kilda and then did a deep dive into the history of about her new short-story collection, Here Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events financial advisers in Australia. Join Nielsen for Readings is celebrating our 50 year Until August, with fellow writer Justine Hyde. a discussion of her book, Money Spinners. history in 2019. To honour the stories Readings Hawthorn that have emerged from the books on Readings Carlton 309 Lygon Street, Carlton Monday 16 September, 6.30pm 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn our shelves, we are hosting 50 special events that illustrate passion, artistry Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events and Australian literature. CLARE G. COLEMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH Wednesday 11 September, 6.15pm TONY BIRCH Saturday 21 September, 10.30am–11am Claire G. Coleman’s second novel, The Old Monday 9 September, ELIZABETH JOLLEY Lie, asks what we have learned from the STORY TIME WITH EMMA 6pm–7pm 46 SHORT STORY PRIZE past. Hear Coleman discuss her new book MIDDLETON with fellow author Tony Birch. ANNABEL CRABB IN AWARD NIGHT Join Emma Middleton as she performs a puppet show while she reads from her CONVERSATION WITH The Australian Book Review Elizabeth Readings Carlton Jolley Short Story Prize is one of Australia’s 309 Lygon Street, Carlton delightfully interactive book for energetic VIRGINIA TRIOLI young readers, Can You Guess? leading prizes for an original short story. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events We are thrilled to be hosting the celebration Join us as Maxine Beneba Clarke, one of Readings Kids of the 75th Quarterly Essay. Join us to hear this year’s judges, awards the prize for 2019. 315 Lygon Street, Carlton renowned political commentator Annabel Tuesday 17 September, 6.30pm Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Crabb in conversation about her essay Readings Hawthorn 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn ‘Men at Work – Australia’s Parenthood Trap’ with the ABC’s Virginia Trioli. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events JANE R. GOODALL ON THE COMMON GOOD Monday 23 – Monday 30 September The Athenaeum Theatre 188 Collins Street, Melbourne Hear Jane R. Goodall discuss her book, The Thursday 12 – Monday 30 September Politics of the Common Good, in which she KENNY PITTOCK ART Tickets are $45 per person and include a argues that the principle of ‘the commons’ copy of Quarterly Essay 75: Men at Work – EXHIBITION Australia’s Parenthood Trap. MELBOURNE FRINGE should be restored to the heart of our politics. Visual artist Kenny Pittock makes ceramic sculptures of his favourite books and takes Please book at readings.com.au/events FESTIVAL: KRISTAN Readings Hawthorn EMERSON 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn them to book launches to show the authors. To help celebrate Readings’ 50th birthday, We are delighted to play a small part in the Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events fifty ceramic books will be on display from 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival by hosting an Monday 9 September, 6.30pm Pittock’s collection. Just this once, come exhibition by Kristan Emerson, a legally blind along and judge books by their covers! photographer. His ‘Blurry Borders’ exhibition DENNIS ALTMAN IN Tuesday 17 September, 6.30pm aims to promote access and inclusion for those Readings Carlton shop window CONVERSATION WITH with visual impairment and other disabilities. 309 Lygon Street, Carlton ANDREA GOLDSMITH GABRIELLE JACKSON IN Readings Carlton side wall (Tyne Street) Join us to hear Dennis Altman chat with CONVERSATION WITH 309 Lygon Street, Carlton fellow author Andrea Goldsmith about VAN BADHAM Monday 23 September, 10.30am–11.15am his memoir Unrequited Love: Diary of an Join Guardian journalist Gabrielle Jackson Accidental Activist. as she discusses her potent new book, Thursday 12 September, 6.30pm–7.30pm Pain A DRAWING WORKSHOP Readings St Kilda and Prejudice: A Call to Arms for Women WITH NICKY JOHNSTON 112 Acland Street, St Kilda and Their Bodies, with writer Van Badham. MATT SIMONS ON MORAL Under the Same Sky by Robert Vescio and Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events CHOICES Readings Carlton illustrated by Nicky Johnston celebrates 309 Lygon Street, Carlton friendship transcending cultural differences, In Dancing with the Bull, Matt Simons language barriers and distance. Join Johnston examines the fundamentally flawed ways in Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events for an interactive drawing workshop. Tuesday 10 September, 6.15pm–8.30pm which large organisations often thrive at the expense of the people working for them. Join Readings Kids DOGS IN SPACE us for a discussion about corporate culture. Thursday 19 September, 6.30pm–7.30pm 315 Lygon Street, Carlton Readings, Melbourne Books and Cinema Tickets are $25 per child and include a copy Readings St Kilda Nova invite you to enjoy a conversation of Under the Same Sky and a drawing to take 112 Acland Street, St Kilda AUSTRALIAN READING between director Richard Lowenstein, Ann home. This workshop is suitable kids aged 4–7 Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events HOUR WITH BENJAMIN Standish and Helen Bandis about their new years old. Places are limited and bookings are book, Dogs in Space: A Film Archive, and a LAW essential at readings.com.au/events screening of Dogs in Space afterwards. To celebrate Australian Reading Hour, join Thursday 12 September, 6.30pm us for a glass of wine and to hear Benjamin Cinema Nova Law reading opening lines from his favourite Monday 23 September, 2.30pm 380 Lygon Street, Carlton JASPER FFORDE IN books, with prizes up for grabs for those Tickets are $10 per person, redeemable off who are able to guess the books’ titles. the price of Dogs in Space: A Film Archive if CONVERSATION WITH STORY TIME WITH STEF purchased at the event. ALISON CROGGAN Readings Carlton GEMMILL 309 Lygon Street, Carlton Seating is limited, and bookings are essential at Since his debut with The Eyre Affair, Jasper We are delighted to have author Stef Gemmill readings.com.au/events Fforde has written another twelve novels, Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events joining us to read from A Home for Luna, her EVENTS September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 5

gorgeous book for readers 8 years old about Tahbilk, together with author Richard of Things, discuss her new novel, The two young boys and the first prison for children. friendship, migration and fear of the unknown. Allen and photographer Kim Baker, as we Weekend, with Sophie Cunningham. This Wednesday 4 September, 6.30pm launch Australia’s First Families of Wine. It event is supported by the Stella Prize. Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. Readings Kids celebrates eleven of Australia’s iconic wine 315 Lygon Street, Carlton The Rising Tide by Tom Bamforth families and the businesses they have built. Church of All Nations Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton Tom Bamforth’s The Rising Tide tells true stories Readings Hawthorn Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events of the people and cultures at the frontline of 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn climate change in the Pacific Ocean. Tickets are $70 per person, or $100 per couple, Thursday 5 September, 6.30pm Tuesday 24 September, 6.30pm and include tastes and a copy of Australia’s Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Monday 28 October, 6.30pm–8pm First Families of Wine. PEGGY KERN & KELLY- Hasina by Michelle Aung Thin & Lyn Bookings are essential at readings.com.au/events White (series ed.) ANN ALLEN ON BOOSTING CLARE BOWDITCH ON New to the Through My Eyes series, Hasina by SCHOOL BELONGING YOUR OWN KIND OF GIRL Michelle Aung Thin is the story of one child’s In her new, no-holds-barred memoir, Your experience of the refugee crisis in Myanmar. Boosting School Belonging provides Thursday 26 September, 6.30pm activities that help secondary students Own Kind of Girl, ARIA Award-winning Thursday 5 September, 6.30pm develop a sense of belonging. Join authors singer–songwriter and actress Clare Readings Kids | Free, no booking required. SPRING POETRY READING Bowditch confronts her inner critic and Peggy Kearn and Kelly-Ann Allen as they When You’re Not OK by Jill Stark We are delighted to host an evening of reveals a childhood punctuated by grief, discuss the evidence-based strategies that Jill Stark’s When You’re Not OK: A toolkit poetry at our beautiful State Library shop. anxiety and compulsion. Join Bowditch as make this book an invaluable resource for for tough times is an emotional first-aid kit Join us as poets Rosalee Kiely (Creature), she celebrates this heartbreaking, wise and teachers, psychologists and counsellors. written by someone who’s been there too. Henry Briffa Walking( Home) and Edward playful memoir. Tuesday 10 September, 6.30pm Readings Hawthorn Caruso (Blue Milonga) read their work. 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn The Athenaeum Theatre Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Readings State Library Victoria 188 Collins Street, Melbourne Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Abandoned Australia by Shane Thoms 285-321 Russell Street, Melbourne Tickets are $45 and include a signed copy of Ingrid Josephine will launch Shane Thoms’ Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Your Own Kind of Girl. Abandoned Australia, which chronicles an Bookings are essential at readings.com.au/events evolving Australian story with photographs. Wednesday 25 September, 10.30am–11.30am Thursday 12 September, 6.30pm Monday 30 September, 6.30pm Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. A WEAVING WORKSHOP Wednesday 30 October, 6.30pm The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling WITH PILGRIM LEE CHRISTIAN WHITE IN by Wai Chim The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling by We are delighted to have Readings’ own CONVERSATION CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS ON Wai Chim is a nourishing YA novel about the Pilgrim Lee taking us through another DAMASCUS Set against the backdrop of an eerie island crevices of culture, mental wellness and family. wonderful arty workshop. This time: We are delighted to have Christos Tsiolkas town in the dead of winter, Christian White’s Thursday 12 September, 6.30pm bookmark weaving. second novel, The Wife and the Widow, is a joining us to discuss his new novel, Readings Kids | Free, no booking required. thriller told from two perspectives. Join the Damascus. It’s a work of soaring ambition and Readings Kids author of the bestselling The Nowhere Child achievement, taking as its subject nothing We Refugees 315 Lygon Street, Carlton as he discusses his new book. less than the establishment of Christianity. We Refugees will be launched by Julian Tickets are $10 per child and include materials. Burnside and is the third anthology in a series Suitable for children aged 7–10 years old. Readings Carlton Church of All Nations to spark conversation, promote awareness, 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton Bookings are essential at readings.com.au/events 309 Lygon Street, Carlton and amplify the voices of the marginalised. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Monday 16 September, 6.30pm Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required.

Wednesday 25 September, 6.30pm–8pm What We Tell Them by David Blumenstein Thursday 7 November, 6.30pm–7.30pm Cartoon artist David Blumenstein’s What We BILL HENSON IN Coming Tell Them illuminates the words and actions of CONVERSATION ARCHIE ROACH ON TELL Australia’s most accidental PM, Tony Abbott. Wednesday 18 September, 6.30pm Join us for an evening of food and wine ME WHY Up Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. in the cellar at King and Godfree with Tell Me Why is the intimate, moving and often eminent Australian artist Bill Henson as he shocking memoir from legendary singer– The Economics of Arrival by Dr Katherine discusses his recent exhibition and book, songwriter and storyteller Archie Roach. Trebeck The Light Fades but the Gods Remain. Celebrate the publication of this stunning A pioneer in the global ‘beyond GDP Sunday 6 October, 3pm account of resilience – and great love movement’, Dr Katherine Trebeck is visiting King and Godfree, Cellar story – by hearing from the author himself. from the UK to launch her book The 293/297 Lygon Street, Carlton Economics of Arrival. Tickets are $45 per person and include a glass HILARY MCPHEE IN The Athenaeum Theatre Thursday 19 September, 6.30pm of wine and shared antipasto plates. Bookings CONVERSATION WITH 188 Collins Street, Melbourne Readings SLV | Free, but please book at are essential at readings.com.au/events KATE LEGGE Tickets are $50 per person, and include a copy readings.com.au/events of Tell Me Why. We are delighted to have publishing legend Drawing Power Hilary McPhee joining us to discuss her Bookings are essential at readings.com.au/events A collection of nonfiction comics from female Thursday 26 September, 10.30am–11.15am memoir, Other People’s Houses, with cartoonists, Drawing Power will be launched author Kate Legge. Fleeing the aftermath by Mary Crooks (Victorian Women’s Trust) A DRAWING WORKSHOP of a failed marriage, McPhee embarks on and contributors Sarah First and Rachel Ang. WITH BEN SANDERS a writing project in the Middle East, and Book Friday 20 September, 5.15pm from apartments in Cortona and Amman Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Illustrator Ben Sanders will take us through and an attic in London, she watches other Nobody’s Soldier by Peter Antonenko an interactive workshop while he reads women managing magnificently alone as Launches Nobody’s Soldier: The Life of Andrii from his hilarious new book, My Book, she flounders through extreme loneliness. Antonenko by Peter Antonenko gives a about a bewildered sloth who just wants McPhee’s memoir is full of insights into snapshot of a glossed over yet critical time to express himself, and a sly old fox who different worlds, and of the friendships in the history of Ukraine. keeps stealing the limelight. which sustained her. About a Girl by Rebekah Robertson Rebekah Robertson’s About a Girl is her Wednesday 25 September, 6.30pm Readings Kids Cinema Nova profoundly moving true story of raising her Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. 315 Lygon Street, Carlton 380 Lygon Street, Carlton transgender child, activist Georgie Stone. Special by Melanie Dimmitt Tickets are $25 per child and include signed Tickets are $30 per person, and include Tuesday 3 September, 6.30pm Lee Kofman will launch Melanie Dimmitt’s copy of My Book and all art supplies. Suitable for champagne and afternoon tea. Readings Hawthorn | Free, but please book at Special, an uplifting and candid companion for children aged 4–8 years old. Places limited and readings.com.au/events bookings are essential at readings.com.au/events Bookings are essential at readings.com.au/events those new to the special-needs community. Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui Wednesday 25 September, 6.30pm Jennifer Down will launch Joey Bui’s debut Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. short-fiction collection, Lucky Ticket, which Wednesday 23 October, 6.30pm–7.30pm Thursday 26 September, 6pm–7.30pm prompts us to think differently about cross- How to be a Big, Strong Man by Samuel Leighton-Dore cultural differences and migrant experiences. JOY FM’s Dean Arcuri will be in CHARLOTTE WOOD IN Wednesday 4 September, 6.30pm WINE TASTING AT conversation with artist Samuel Leighton- CONVERSATION WITH Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. READINGS HAWTHORN Dore about his tongue-in-cheek book of Come along for a wine-tasting event with SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM The Lost Boys of Mr Dickens by Steve Harris illustrations, How to be a Big, Strong Man. family members from iconic Victorian Join us to hear Charlotte Wood, the Stella Geoffrey Blainey will launchThe Lost Boys of Thursday 26 September, 6.30pm wineries Brown Brothers, Campbells and Prize-winning author of The Natural Way Mr Dickens by Steve Harris, the true story of Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. 6 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 COLUMNS | FEATURE

The Readings Mark’s Dear Prize for Say Reader New Australian 2019 Fiction

My father was a scientist Deborah Levy is a shortlist and head of the University favourite author of many It has been a privilege to judge this year’s Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction during of Melbourne’s of our staff. Her last two our 50th Birthday year. I would conjecture that no one in Australia other than the annual Department of books (the novel, Hot Milk judging panel reads this group of books together – all the eligible first and second novels Bacteriology, (2016) and the memoir, or short story collections from Australian authors in a year period (amounting this round affectionately known as ‘The Bug School’. It The Cost of Living (2018)) both featured on to nearly fifty works) – and so it gives us four judges a unique perspective on publishing was located in an old building on Swanston Readings’ ‘best of the year’ lists, which are in the emerging writing field. We can report that this year’s offerings included many Street (now the Ian Potter Museum of Art). compiled from staff votes. It might be works that were original, daring, challenging, and extremely accomplished, and it was a He assembled around him a dedicated and, presumptuous to suggest so at this early genuine challenge to make a shortlist of only six books. There were tears of passion in our from memory, eccentric, team. It included stage, but I foresee The Man Who Saw meeting (no, seriously, there were!). I extend this year’s shortlisted authors the sincerest of Holocaust survivors, Nobel Prize winners, Everything (Levy’s new novel and our congratulations from the judging panel, and from the Readings family at large. and aspiring musicians. For us kids, visits Fiction Book of the Month) making it onto The 2019 judging panel is Christine Gordon (events & programming manager for were a source of stationery, test tubes and 2019’s list with ease. Just read our brilliant Readings), Sharon Peterson (manager at Readings St Kilda), Amanda Rayner (senior staff other exciting paraphernalia, as well as the review and believe the hype. This month we member at Readings Carlton), and Alison Huber, Readings’ head book buyer. Our managing occasional rabbit or guinea pig rescued also recommend many fine books, director, Mark Rubbo, and 2018’s winner, Jennifer Down, will join the panel to select the from an experiment. One of his colleagues including from Lucy Treloar, Claire G. winner. The winner will be announced online in late October, and will be featured in the was Adrien Albert. When Uncle Adrien Coleman, Salman Rushdie, Nicole Dennis- November issue of Readings Monthly. The winner will receive $3000 in prize money. moved away to the ANU, he would often Benn, Amanda Niehaus, Joey Bui, Marcy send me a carefully chosen book. They Dermansky, and Josephine Rowe. I’m didn’t seem to mark any particular pleased to see that one of Sigrid Nunez’s occasion, but I remember the intense earlier novels, The Last of Her Kind, is being A Constant Hum A Superior Spectre excitement and pleasure when the parcel reissued; we all loved The Friend so much. Alice Bishop Angela Meyer arrived. I can’t remember many of the titles It was sad to learn of the death of Text. PB. $29.99 Ventura. PB. $29.99 but Orlando The Marmalade Cat and This is Andrew McGahan in February this year. A riveting collection of This novel is weird in the Rome by Miroslav Sasek stick in my mind. His writing inspired a genre (1992’s Praise stories assembled around best kind of way. Taking When my grandchildren were born, I is perhaps the defining ‘grunge-lit’ novel), the aftermath of the 2009 readers on a trip through wanted them to experience the delight of won numerous literary prizes, including Black Saturday bushfires time, space, and that surprise parcel arriving. So I’d ask our the Miles Franklin in 2005 (for 2004’s The and told with a poignancy consciousness, A Superior wonderful children’s booksellers to select White Earth), and has been part of the that respects both reader Spectre is an something for me, as Uncle Adrien probably Australian cultural landscape for going on and subject, A Constant unconventional story did, but I was disorganised and erratic. I thirty years. McGahan’s final novel, The Hum is short fiction at its starring a flawed longed for someone to organise it for me. Rich Man’s House, is published this month. best. This skilful and assured debut protagonist. Lush with the detail of its Each month our booksellers sift through September also brings us the explores themes of loss and renewal, and period settings in Scotland and beyond, hundreds of new titles. I wondered, could international event that is the publication what it means to survive when so much, this genre- and mind-bending piece of they pick one outstanding book for me each of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, and so many, did not. writing is utterly unique. month? Ever accommodating, the response which takes up Offred’s story twenty years was yes! It occurred to me that I probably after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale. wasn’t alone in this desire, that there are Even we at Readings have to wait until the lots of other grandparents, uncles, aunts or worldwide embargo is lifted to read this other people with special children in their new work from one of the most important Inappropriation This Taste for lives who are busy, but would also love to writers of our (or any) age. Be sure to Lexi Freiman Silence have a beautiful book delivered to that child preorder your copy! A&U. PB. $29.99 Amanda O’Callaghan once a month. So, if you are one of those Our Nonfiction Book of the Month, Inappropriation is a sharp UQP. PB. $22.95 people, you can now have a carefully Sand Talk, has a compelling and urgent and uncompromising A seamlessly curated selected book sent every month with a subtitle: How Indigenous Thinking Can feminist satire of identity collection of short stories, special message from you. It’s a great deal Save the World. This book is challenging politics in the new This Taste for Silence and we have six- and ten-month packages and exhilarating in its scope; hearing millennium. It is also a showcases the talents of a that include delivery. You can arrange a the author, Tyson Yunkaporta, speak campus novel of the writer in complete control subscription online at readings.com.au/ was a highlight of this year’s Australian highest order. Set in a of her craft. Inventive in the-readings-kids-book-subscription. Booksellers Association Conference in prestigious girls school in its themes and by an It’s been five years since we established June, and I think his book couldn’t come inner Sydney as a group of teenage girls try to author unafraid to enfold The Readings Prize for New Australian at a better time. Also out this month are work out who they are and how they can be, her readers into unsettling reading Fiction. Since then, we’ve added a prize anticipated books from Ruby Hamad, Jane this clever, funny, and incredibly confident experiences, this is an exceptional debut, for books for younger readers, and most Gilmore, Chloe Higgins, Sally Rugg, and debut novel lays bare the anxieties of our age. featuring startlingly effective recently, an award for Young Adult writing. Annabel Crabb’s new Quarterly Essay, plus microfictions alongside longer stories. As you may have noticed, this year’s winner a major intellectual biography of Susan of The Readings Young Adult Book Prize Sontag which appears mid-month. Neal was Eleni Hale for her remarkable novel, Drinnan’s The Devil’s Grip promises to be, The Flight of Birds Stone Girl. As you can imagine, running in the words of our reviewer, ‘unlike any The Glad Shout the prizes takes a lot of effort, particularly other true-crime book [you’ve] read’. I can’t Joshua Lobb Sydney University Press. Alice Robinson on the part of our staff judges, and a not wait to get myself a copy of Meera Sodha’s PB. $35 Affirm Press. HB. $32.99 inconsiderable cost as each winner receives new cookbook, East. It has been twenty The Flight of Birds is an The Glad Shout is a award money. We started the prizes to bring years since the publication of Naomi affecting novel whose topical and thought- new Australian writing to the attention Klein’s No Logo, a book whose message narrative arc unfolds provoking second novel of readers and to encourage new and was both timely and prophetic in ways we across twelve short that explores themes of emerging writers in their endeavours. We couldn’t see clearly at the time; her new stories. Thoughtfully motherhood and the think we achieve this, but were all very work is On Fire. exploring the myriad survival of family in the pleased to get a lovely message from Eleni: And finally, dear reader, I’m delighted ways in which humans chaos generated in the ‘… please know it has been a great gift. Some to congratulate our talented ‘Dead Write’ interact with nature, this near future of our of the ways the Readings’ Book Prize has columnist, beloved Carlton staffer, and exploratory and at times melancholy book climate crisis. Warm and benevolent, and had a positive impact includes: the many 2016 Text Prize shortlistee, Fiona Hardy, challenges the conventions of the novel, and with a heart-stopping ending, this is a emails I have received from new readers, new on the publication of her debut novel, How shows how creative practice can intervene generous book about love and how speaking engagements including The Today to Make a Movie in 12 Days. This book is in debates around climate and extinction. essential it is in the darkest of hours. Show and Jon Faine, multiple producers just like Fiona: funny, smart, warm, and have been in touch since the prize to discuss hugely imaginative. Joyous in its portrayal an option to turn Stone Girl to film and it has of friendship and family, and an unabashed Alison Huber, Readings’ head book buyer and chair of the 2019 judging panel, on behalf of the judges. raised the profile of the Make it 21 campaign championing of popular culture’s role in that seeks to increase the age foster kids are giving our lives shape, this book marks the You can find more information about The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2019 shortlist at pushed out of home from 18 to 21.’ start of a brilliant new career. readings.com.au/the-readings-prize-for-new-australian-fiction. FICTION September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 7

and it has been taken by the sea. All the experience a late-term pregnancy loss and islands are slowly submerging; most of the are plunged into despair. Both have New landscape is now only accessible in Kitty eagerly anticipated baby William’s arrival Hawke’s memories. into their lives. The question at the heart Fiction Kitty is from Wolfe Island; her people of this emotionally complex novel is: can have been there for centuries and she is the they find a way to come together, and offer last remaining inhabitant. An artist, Kitty each other comfort after the loss? prefers solitude with her wolfdog, Girl, and Elise, a biologist, returns to work as There is nothing ordinary about Deborah Levy’s new her memories, to what is happening on the soon as possible, telling Dan she needs to BOOK OF THE novel, her first since 2016’s Booker Prize-shortlisted Hot mainland. But she is pulled back into the complete important fieldwork. She sets up Milk. As a result, it isn’t an easy one to condense here, but world by the arrival of her granddaughter camp in the bush near the Sunshine Coast, MONTH what I’ll say, with little difficulty, is that it’s one of the finest and her granddaughter’s friends. They are trapping and tagging small mammals; International novels of the year – deep with ideas, rich with sensual, running from a world Kitty has already doing the work she is renowned for – Fiction specific prose, elegant in its construction, mysterious and left. This world is an America in which recording breeding patterns. moving in its execution. As soon as I closed The Man Who climate crisis is literally eating away at the In alternating chapters, we learn about Saw Everything, I wanted to start reading it again. coast. It’s a world in which people seeking Dan. He still struggles with the loss of his The Man Who Saw Everything tells a similar story, refuge from ‘down south’ are called first love, and of his mother. But it is the twice. In its first iteration, the year is 1988 and Saul Adler, ‘runners’, and are locked up. father-figure he never had whose absence a twenty-eight-year-old historian, is preparing to visit East If this sounds like a climate-change is most intense. Dan is a writer struggling Berlin for research when he’s struck by a car while crossing dystopia – well, it is, and it isn’t. It is to complete a commissioned biography of Abbey Road. His injuries are minor, but his heart takes a foremost a story of individual separateness his reclusive, controversial artist uncle. beating when his girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau, dumps him. In and grief, of strength and love, and of the Elise urges Dan to abandon the project Germany, Saul falls in love with Walter Müller, the translator way seismic change happens and people and return to writing fiction, but he feels assigned to him by the university, and fails to deliver a tin choose to look away. It is a story of now. I compelled to finish, especially when he of pineapple to Walter’s Beatles-obsessed sister Luna. In the loved it, and I loved the grief it brought me. meets and is entranced by his uncle’s second version of events it’s 2016, and Saul, in his fifties, is Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton much younger muse, Hannah. again hit by a car while crossing Abbey Road. This time, his Elise propels herself further away from injuries put him in hospital, where he drifts in and out of Here Until August: Stories Dan – emotionally and geographically – and her traumatic past is revealed. With no The Man Who consciousness, haunted by spectres from his past. Josephine Rowe family to reach out to, she buries herself in Saw Everything This synopsis really doesn’t do Levy’s achievement justice. Black Inc. PB. $29.99 research, and fellow scientists. Deborah Levy The Man Who Saw Everything has a rapturous, exhilarating Available 3 September effect that extends well beyond story or structure. Central here The Breeding Season is comparable Hamish Hamilton. HB. In Here Until August, a Was $32.99 are ideas about looking – Jennifer is a photographer – and to the works of Emily Bitto, Jennifer young man rows across $29.99 what is seen and hidden. Saul is a self-absorbed narrator; there Down and Peggy Frew in its emotional an azure lake above a sunken Available 3 September are events and people in his life that he has forgotten or failed complexity. While Niehaus can be a little town, carrying the ashes of to see. Enveloping it all is history, especially the personal and heavy-handed with the darker themes, his mother in a biscuit tin; the intimate, which Levy subtly elevates to the status of world- metaphors and plot turns, her writing is an insular couple weathers shattering events. History is a hefty burden – its injuries ricochet through time. I love that lyrical and descriptive. She also creates an icy Canadian winter, no book by Levy is like the last, and this one is quite simply unforgettable. credible multi-dimensional characters for listening to the comings and goings of their whom the reader cares greatly; an enviable Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton neighbours as they wait for spring; a taxi skill, especially for a debut novelist. driver drives a once-drowned man cross- country; and a prodigal son returns home to Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn a broken city. With these stories, and others Australian Fiction Vietnam at all, but with other migrant like them, the internationally acclaimed The Old Lie communities. In a writing culture that is author Josephine Rowe weaves a Claire G. Coleman often awash with tales of middle-class, beautifully crafted collection that leaves Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 Lucky Ticket white suburbia, Bui centres on people the reader breathless with its beauty. $29.99 Joey Bui whose lives have been touched (and Every sentence in this book, in fact, Available 27 August Text. PB. $29.99 oftentimes totally reshaped) by migration. every word, feels carefully considered Claire G. Coleman’s This is a welcome, and much needed, Available 3 September and delicately placed, and the result is a debut novel, Terra shift. While many true stories have been There is nothing quite collection of stories both individual and Nullius, made waves as it fictionalised here, imbuing the book with like reading a cohesive as a collected work. These stories was shortlisted for the 2018 real-life histories gives the collection a wonderful collection of short are elegant, intimate, dreamy – and they’re Stella Prize, along with sharpness and sense of unease that makes stories – I believe that the best savoured, not devoured in one hit many other awards. This scenes from its pages hard to shake. power of fiction to mentally (although, that’s tempting). Each story is year she’s back with a new Bui is an incredibly talented young transport us is at its strongest unique, with its own style, its own voice, science-fiction novel, exploring belief in writer, and we should all be taking note of in this shorter, punchier and yet it is testament to Rowe’s skill as one’s country, war, and Indigenous history. her name. format. Joey Bui’s debut collection is a writer that they are all unmistakably The title comes from a poem by polished, wide-ranging, and absolutely has Ellen Cregan is the marketing and events hers, and all unmistakably belong to this Wilfred Owen, a poet who fought in World the capacity to transport the reader. coordinator for Readings collection. Rowe is a writer fully coming War I and died a week before Armistice. into her strength; her writing is subtle, but The stories here engage with themes of He was a pacifist and wrote his poetry devastating – she speaks to those truths migration, expected roles within families, Wolfe Island in part as protest and also as a record of universally felt but little spoken; shines race and class privilege, and loneliness. Lucy Treloar what happened. The ‘old lie’ is that it is a light in dusty, still corners; finds the Bui writes with great intelligence, and has Picador. PB. $29.99 honourable to die for one’s country, that unspoken in the gaps between words. It’s a a precise ability to balance the good with Available 27 August war is a part of nationalism. Coleman strong writer who can craft a collection that the bad, and the abject with the banally There is a lyrical sense uses this poem, and others of Owen’s, as feels so cohesive. familiar – some of her stories have a that is not to be inspiration for the war in her latest book. Stand-outs are ‘Post-structuralism for feeling of passed-down family tales, but hurried in Lucy Treloar’s This war is fought largely in space, Beginners’, ‘The Once-Drowned Man’ and under her authorial hand, they manage to writing. She writes you between the Federation (Earth) and the ‘Sinkers’, but you’d be hard-pressed to find be simultaneously contemporary and real. slowly into the world of her Conglomeration (other planets). Everything a story in Here Until August that doesn’t The prose here is juicy, polyphonic, novels and you need to is almost like life as we know it – but not sing with its own power. and refreshing – so many sentences spend some time and pay quite. Human characters interact with warrant underlining. Bui writes what she attention. In her first novel, Salt Creek, she Georgia Brough is the digital content other species during the war. The story knows, but applies this aphorism with wrote us into the world of a young white coordinator for Readings begins with several different characters in flexibility. She is a Vietnamese–Australian woman moving to the Coorong in the different places, and it takes the narrator a who has studied in Abu Dhabi and the US, nineteenth century, learning to live in an The Breeding Season while to weave a sense of how everyone fits and this lived experience runs through unfamiliar landscape and growing in to her Amanda Niehaus together. Shane Daniels and Romany Zetz the book, but in ways you might not awareness of all that the presence of her A&U. PB. $29.99 are two strong women thrown together in expect. Some of the stories in Lucky Ticket people destroyed. In Wolfe Island, we start Available 3 September the unfortunate war, and these characters are based on interviews she conducted again in an estuary, we start again with a Debut novelist are the highlights of the book. with Vietnamese people who have refugee woman of hardy mind and strong spirit, but Amanda Niehaus is Ultimately, this is a novel about backgrounds. There are stories set in we are at an end point now, the destruction both a scientist and a writer, connection to family, Country and culture, Vietnam and amongst the Vietnamese has been wrought. Though a date is never and she brings these and how these connections cannot be diaspora. Some are gritty, some are fable- given, it is sometime in the very near future. passions to The Breeding forgotten. It is a novel that questions the like. All of them have something to say. Wolfe Island is part of the Chesapeake Season. Elise and Dan, a lengths to which people will go to protect Others don’t have anything to do with Bay estuary off the east coast of the US couple in their thirties, their country – and Country. It forces 8 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 FICTION

us to bear witness to the truth of how secret that has poisoned the lives of three Jamaica and New York City as Patsy’s story Indigenous peoples in Australia have been generations is finally revealed. International alternates with the story of her daughter treated across the Stolen Generations, Fiction Tru, who must fit in with her father’s how Indigenous Australians have been The Rich Man’s House family and navigate her own conflicting erased from Australian war history Andrew McGahan experiences with sexuality and gender. and mythology, and to the little-known A&U. PB. Was $32.99 Patsy This is a rich novel that histories of nuclear testing sites on this $29.99 Nicole Dennis-Benn challenges cultural expectations of continent. It is a book without many Available 3 September Oneworld. PB. $29.99 motherhood, gender, race and class. It surprises, but it uses the form of science- is a sharply observed story and, in the In 2016, at the foot of an Available 3 September fiction to masterfully explore its themes. acknowledgments, Dennis-Benn thanks unearthly mountain in Nicole Dennis-Benn her homeland of Jamaica ‘for the lush, Clare Millar is from Readings Hawthorn Tasmania, a controversial dedicates her second but mostly untold stories’. We don’t hear and ambitious dream home, novel to the ‘memory of the enough stories about women like Patsy and Wild the Observatory, is untold stories of I would urge everyone to read this one. Nathan Besser painstakingly constructed undocumented immigrants’. Vintage. PB. $32.99 by an eccentric billionaire. We first meet Patsy in 1998 Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton Available 3 September When cataclysmic circumstances in Jamaica; she is standing Broke author Daniel Defoe intervene to trap a handful of guests in the in the hot sun in a long queue at the U.S. Quichotte visits Newgate Prison with Observatory, they slowly begin to learn an Embassy. She is waiting for an interview to Salman Rushdie the intention of chronicling unsettling truth. This is Andrew gain a tourist visa and knows she must Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 the stories of its inmates. McGahan’s eleventh and final novel, a convince the American behind the glass Available 3 September There he meets a young novel he found himself writing with the partition that she will return to Jamaica. This book is one wild man with a story to tell extraordinary knowledge that it would be Patsy has a five-year-old daughter, and ride: a hectic riffling about Jonathan Wild – a his last. It is a poignant, gripping and what mother would leave their child with through the back catalogue wealthy and feared official. Wild is a unique thriller from an already much- no intention to come home? But life is not of literature, a throwing of delightfully outrageous period drama that missed Australian literary talent. so simple for Patsy and many others like her books into the back seat of charts the rise and fall and rise again of who dream of a different life but whose an unglamorous car, and a two men whose lives become intertwined Meet Me at Lennon’s options are limited. helter-skelter drive across in the most surprising of ways. Melanie Myers Patsy’s childhood friend and lover, an America heaving and straining under UQP. PB. $29.95 Cicely, lives in New York City and she is the the forces that gleefully assemble to tear it The Collaborator Available 3 September one person who really understands who apart. Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte is, yes, a Diane Armstrong As university student Olivia Patsy is and who she wants to be. Patsy re-writing of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, set in HQ Fiction. PB. $32.99 Wells sets out on her quest arrives in Brooklyn, but Cicely has made a current-day America and starring, like the Available now to find an unpublished new life for herself and there is no place for original, an elderly gent deranged by TMS Annika Barnett sets out manuscript by Gloria Patsy in it. We then follow Patsy over a ten- (too many stories) Syndrome. Rushdie’s from Sydney on a journey Graham – a now obscure year period as she experiences the poverty Quichotte has had his mind that takes her to Budapest mid-twentieth century and racism that undocumented workers discombobulated not by an oversupply of and Tel Aviv in search of feminist and writer – she are relentlessly subjected to. tales of chivalry and knights-errantry, but the truth about the man unwittingly uncovers details about a young Dennis-Benn’s debut novel, Here by an over-viewing of daytime and reality who rescued her woman found murdered on the banks of the Comes the Sun, is set entirely in Jamaica TV. Our new Sancho is not a faithful grandmother from the Nazi river in wartime Brisbane. Can Olivia and received widespread praise for its retainer but Quichotte’s phantom son, a regime in 1944. By the time her odyssey is rewrite history to bring justice to the river thoughtful examination of sexuality, class quest for filial contact reminding this over, past and present collide, and the girl, whose life was so brutally taken? and race. This second novel shifts between reader of Rushdie’s 1990 Haroun and the FICTION September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 9

Sea of Stories. This book, like that one, is a The Testaments rediscover strengths they have forgotten. back, and in this escalating game of cat picaresque adventure tale, tumbling freely Margaret Atwood and mouse, there can be only one winner. from one madcap episode to the next. C&W. HB. Was $42.99 The Institute As with Cervantes, the writer of $34.99 Stephen King The Peppermint Tea Chronicles: Quichotte’s story also makes it into Available 10 September H&S. PB. $32.99 A 44 Scotland Street Novel Rushdie’s book, as the character Brother. When the van door Available 10 September Alexander McCall Smith His story is given its own chapters and we slammed on Offred’s future Deep in the woods of Maine, Polygon. HB. $34.99 observe how Brother’s life (estranged sister, at the end of The there is a facility where kids Available 27 August prodigal son, etcetera) mirrors and shapes Handmaid’s Tale, readers are incarcerated and It is summer in Scotland Quichotte’s. This doppler structure gives had no way of telling what subjected to a series of Street (as it always is) and for Rushdie a rich vein to work in terms of lay ahead. With The procedures meant to the habitués of Edinburgh’s implied and overt observations regarding Testaments, the wait is over. enhance their telekinetic favourite neighbourhood, written fictions and the fictions within Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the ‘gifts’. Twelve-year-old Luke extraordinary adventures lie which we live. story fifteen years after Offred stepped Ellis is their latest super-intelligent recruit. in wait. Take a few minutes Quichotte is both joyous and deeply into the unknown, with the explosive But he also has another gift they want to to relax with a cup of tea and melancholy in its treatment of familial testaments of three female narrators from use. Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking, savour the affairs of the world in microcosm, relations and the state of the union. It Gilead. This book is not to be missed. The Institute is a stunning novel of teeming with life’s loves and challenges. steers vertiginously between despair for a childhood betrayed and hope regained. Little dramas writ large by the master broken world and hope for the possibility Arturo’s Island chronicler of modern life and manners. of forgiveness and love amongst the Elsa Morante & Ann Goldstein Lampedusa pieces. Quichotte is a dance to the crazy (trans.) Steven Price Polite Society syncopation of an America lumbered with Pushkin. PB. $19.99 Picador. HB. $29.99 Mahesh Rao an idiot president, manic lying (‘errorism’), Available 3 September Available 10 September Tinder. PB. $32.99 and a plague of opioids. There’s an awful In this little-known classic Set among the decadent Available 27 August lot to like in this overstuffed armchair, of Italian literature, young Italian aristocracy of the late Ania is the beautiful, clever this elegant echo-chamber, this polyglot, Arturo grows up in near- 1950s, Lampedusa explores and very slightly bored scion messy, infinitely literate book. isolation on the island of the final years of Giuseppe of a rich Indian family Bernard Caleo is a member of the Readings Procida in the Bay of Naples. Tomasi as he struggles to whose machinations soon events team The boy’s world is upended complete his only novel, The lead her down the primrose when his father arrives from Leopard. Adhering intensely path of match-making – first Very Nice Naples with his new wife Nunziata. Their to the facts of Lampedusa’s life, but moving for her aunt, and then for her Marcy Dermansky presence shatters Arturo’s childhood idyll, deep into the mind of the author, Lampedusa friend Dimple. Rich with stiletto-sharp Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 drawing the family towards painful inhabits the complicated interior of a man observation, this novel is a delightful and Available 3 September conflict. This is a moving and dramatic struggling to make something of lasting poignant social comedy set against the Booksellers are portrayal of the loss of childhood and the worth, while there is still time. background of ‘polite’ Delhi society. frequently asked for inescapable force of desire. recommendations for Lie With Me Sarong Party Girls ‘uplifting’ books. Whether Chances Are Philippe Besson & Molly Ringwald Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan as an antidote to turbulent Richard Russo (trans.) Corvus. PB. $19.99 times, for a relative in Atlantic. PB. $29.99 Penguin. PB. $22.99 Available 3 September hospital, or for a holiday Available 3 September Available 5 September Just before her twenty- read, a novel with wit and levity is a One beautiful September Just outside a hotel in seventh birthday, Jazzy wonderful thing. day, three sixty-six-year old Bordeaux, a famous writer hatches a plan. This year, Marcy Dermansky has delivered a men convene on Martha’s chances upon a young man she and her friends will all panacea for booksellers. Very Nice explores Vineyard. Each man holds who bears a striking have spectacular weddings the world of the Klein family. Rachel is his own secrets, in addition resemblance to his first love. to rich ang moh – Western home for summer in Connecticut after her to a mystery that they have What follows is a look back to expat – husbands. As Jazzy first year of college. She has fallen in love puzzled over together since Philippe’s teenage years, and fervently pursues her quest, the with her creative writing professor, Zahid, 1971. Now, forty-four years later, the a carefully timed encounter between two contentious gender politics and class and hopes that dog-sitting his beautiful distant past confounds the present. seventeen-year-olds. Dazzlingly rendered by tensions thrumming beneath Singapore’s poodle, Princess, will lead to something Chances Are is an absorbing saga of how Molly Ringwald, in her first-ever translation, shiny exterior are revealed. Vividly told, more between them. friendship’s bonds are as constricting and Besson’s exquisitely moving coming-of-age Sarong Party Girls brilliantly captures the Zahid is a migrant from Pakistan. rewarding as those of family. story captures the tenderness of first love unique voice of a young, striving woman Despite winning accolades and a and the heart-breaking passage of time. caught between worlds. substantial literary prize for his first novel, Devotion he now has writer’s block. His two-year Madeline Stevens Lost in the Spanish Quarter Shelf Life teaching contract is over and he has run Faber. PB. $29.99 Heddi Goodrich Livia Franchini out of money. Available 3 September HarperVia. PB. $29.99 Doubleday. PB. $32.99 Improbably, Zahid comes to stay in the Available 10 September Lonnie is twenty-six, rich, Available 3 September beautiful Connecticut home with Rachel talented and beautiful – with Several years after leaving Ruth’s fiancé has just broken and her mother, Becca. Becca is pleased to a husband and son to match. Naples, Heddi receives an up with her, and all she has have some adult company since her husband Ella is also twenty-six, but email from Pietro, her first left of him is their shopping has left her. Soon Becca and Zahid settle into lonely, hungry and far from love, admitting an old list for the upcoming week. an easy rhythm of swimming in the pool, home. Their fates intertwine wrongdoing. Immediately Looking over that list, Ruth eating Becca’s gourmet lunches and walking the day Ella is hired as the Heddi is transported back to realises that her identity has the dog. Zahid finds himself able to write family’s nanny. She finds herself mesmerised her college days in that been crafted from the people again, and inevitably they begin an affair. by Lonnie, but soon resentment grows too. heartbreakingly beautiful city. In this she serves: her patients, her friends, and, Dermansky’s novel is clever and Devotion is a dizzying thriller in which roles poignant, atmospheric coming of age tale of most of all, her partner of ten years. Who is comedic. Zahid falls into the role of are confused and reversed and nothing is first love – of a place, of a person – she when she stands alone? the hapless author; he’s also incredibly ever quite as it seems. languages and cultures collide while narcissistic. Rachel and Becca are vying dreams soar and crash in spectacular ways. A Single Thread for the same suitor and this sets up tension Doxology Tracy Chevalier between them. Rachel’s father begins to Nell Zink Never Have I Ever HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 realise living with his younger girlfriend in Fourth Estate. PB. $29.99 Joshilyn Jackson Available now a cramped apartment in the city is not as Available 2 September Raven. PB. $29.99 It is 1932, and the losses of idyllic as he imagined. Available 3 September As Pam, Daniel, and Joe the First World War are still Dermansky turns political correctness struggle to make it in the Amy Whey has done keenly felt. Violet on its head, and plays with issues of race ’90s punk scene of NYC, something she shouldn’t Speedwell, mourning for and sexuality. She introduces a large cast of they are waylaid by have. And Roux, the both her fiancé and her people into the story, yet manages to make surprising arrivals – a baby glamorous newcomer to brother, is regarded by each person multi-dimensional. There for Pam and Daniel, and a Amy’s suburban society as a ‘surplus are touching moments of connection and solo hit single for Joe. The neighborhood, knows woman’. So, she resolves to strike out disconnection between characters, and this years pass, and the three friends share in exactly what that is. Roux alone. But as the almost unthinkable combined with plenty of plot builds to a one another’s successes. When the country promises she will go away if Amy plays by threat of a second Great War appears on dramatic and satisfying conclusion. faces an astonishing new threat, this her rules, but Amy isn’t prepared to lose the horizon, Violet collects a few secrets of Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn family will have to look to the past to everything she’s built. She’s going to fight her own that could just change everything. 10 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 FICTION

The Club The Truants Takis Wurger & Charlotte Collins Kate Weinberg (trans.) Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Grove. PB. $29.99 Available now Discover Available 3 September Jess Walker, middle child of Hans Stichler’s a middle-class family, has a new favourite uncomplicated German perfected the art of childhood ends abruptly vanishing in plain sight. when his aunt invites him to But when she arrives at About a Girl study at Cambridge, where university, her world flares Rebekah Robertson she teaches. She will ensure with colour. Drawn into a Part memoir and part his application is accepted, tightly-knit group of rule breakers, Jess inspirational message of hope for those navigating a similar path, but in return he must help her investigate begins to experiment with a new version of About a Girl is Rebekah Robertson’s an elite university society. Hans soon finds herself. But soon she is thrown up against extraordinary personal story of himself in the inner sanctum of an the question she fears most: what is the raising her transgender child. increasingly dangerous institution, forced true cost of an extraordinary life? Talking to Strangers to grapple with the notion that sometimes Malcolm Gladwell one must do wrong to do right. From international bestselling author Say Say Say Malcolm Gladwell, this is a powerful Lila Savage and provocative exploration of what our interactions with strangers tell The Falconer Serpent’s Tail. HB. $27.99 us about who we are. Dana Czapnik Available 3 September Faber. PB. $19.99 Ella is a care worker nearing 'My daughter is so much more than her gender Available 3 September thirty, but not yet living the identity. Yet at key moments in her life her Seventeen-year-old Lucy life she imagined. One humanity has been reduced to this one fact.' Adler, a street-smart, spring, she is hired by Bryn to REBEKAH ROBERTSON, ABOUT A GIRL trash-talking baller, is often look after his wife, who has a the only girl on the public brain injury. The tenderness Fixed It Jane Gilmore courts. But her inner life is a in their marriage causes Ella Fixed It demonstrates the myths contradiction. As Lucy to reassess all kinds of relationships. about violence against women bristles against her own Humane and insightful, Say Say Say is a that we’re unconsciously sold by hunger for male approval, she is drawn the media, and undercuts them in riveting story about what it means to love in a clear and compelling way. into the world of two provocative female a world where time is always running out. artists, who will change her outlook on life, Quichotte Salman Rushdie authenticity and love. The Collection The epic new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, Nina Leger & Laura Francis (trans.) internationally bestselling author Going Dutch Granta. PB. $22.99 Salman Rushdie – a playful James Gregor Available 3 September inversion of Don Quixote set in contemporary America. S&S. PB. $29.99 Jeanne moves from room to Available now room in the anonymous On top of being exhausted by hotel bedrooms of Paris, dead-end forays in the gay undressing man after man, Read more at penguin.com.au dating scene and drifting forgetting faces, names, into academic abyss, pleasures, thoughts, and all twenty-something graduate physical attributes but one. student Richard is suffering a In her head, a palace of memories is being bout of writer’s block. When built, image by new image, lover by new his brilliant classmate Anne offers to help lover. This novel is a candid exploration of write his papers, their relationship soon sexuality, desire and compulsion. blooms into something more complex. Going Dutch is an incisive portrait of relationships in an age of digital romance, and a Science Fiction a true story of humorous exploration of love and sexuality. shame, sheep The Last of Her Kind Earwig Sigrid Nunez Brian Catling and shotguns Virago. PB. $22.99 Coronet. PB. $32.99 Available 10 September Available 10 September Ann Drayton and Georgette Earwig is employed to look George meet in 1969 as after a strange little girl in a college roommates. Ann is flat in Liege. When a black cat rich and radical; Georgette is is delivered to the flat, the leery and introverted, a child girl forms an immediate of the poverty her new friend bond with it, but Earwig finds so noble. Two years identifies the cat as the later, after a violent fight, they part ways. enemy. As the story goes on, Earwig is When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a caught up in a web of increasingly violent New York cop, Georgette comes back to their coincidences. Not since Edgar Allan Poe has shared history in search of an explanation. there been such a masterly tale of feline evil.

The Secrets We Kept Hollow Earth Lara Prescott John Kinsella Hutchinson. PB. $32.99 Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 Available 3 September Available 27 August A celebrated Russian author Manfred discovers a path is writing a book, Doctor through to another realm Zhivago. The Soviets, afraid via a Neolithic copper mine. of its subversive power, ban The world of Hollow Earth, it. But it’s fast becoming a while no utopia, is a global sensation, and the sophisticated civilisation. CIA plans to use the book in Its genderless inhabitants their favour. Two typists – Sally and are respectful of their environment, and Irina – are charged with the mission of a tolerant of religious and cultural lifetime: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago back differences. Yet Ari and Zest accompany into Russia. It will not be easy, but they Manfred back to the surface world. They NEAL DRINNAN cannot fail – this book has the power to must wander the Earth like Virgil’s Aeneas, change history. and seek re-entry to their own world. FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 11

GIFT GUIDE FATHER’S DAY

Frankissstein Minotaur Jeanette Winterson Peter Goldsworthy Jonathan Cape. PB. $29.99 Viking. PB. $32.99 What will happen when homo Peter Goldsworthy’s new novel The Subjects sapiens is no longer the smartest features a blind detective being on the planet? Jeanette determined to deliver justice to Sarah Hopkins Winterson’s Frankissstein weaves the man who shot him. Cleverly Text. PB. $29.99 together narratives across time, structured around the five Following a courtroom from Mary Shelley’s 1816 to senses, it’s a pacey and taut story. intervention, sixteen-year-old Brexit-era Britain, to tell a story Goldsworthy is interested in all that Daniel is taken to a deluxe outback of transhumanism, artificial his protagonist cannot see, as he is facility for ‘gifted delinquents’. intelligence, and queer love. Funny forced to meet evil, acting on a trust He is sure that he’s part of an and furious, bold and clear-sighted, in his senses, and the ineluctable experiment. But he doesn’t know this is a love story about life itself. mystery that is memory. who’s running it or what they are trying to prove. And he has no way of knowing what the next seven Shepherd months are going to do to him. Taking Tom Murray Home Catherine Jinks Tim Slee Text. PB. $29.99 HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 From Here On, Monsters Fourteen-year-old convict Tom Bankrupt farmer Tom Murray Clay lives in a shepherd’s hut in Elizabeth Bryer would rather burn down his own the bush, protecting his master’s Picador. PB. $29.99 house than hand it to the bank. But sheep from wild dogs. When a Within the pages of a rare codex, tragically, he dies in the blaze. His vicious fellow shepherd returns to antiquarian bookseller Cameron wife Dawn decides to hold a horse- ensure there are no witnesses to his Raybould makes a discovery. drawn funeral procession for Tom crimes, the bush-crafty Tom and Although seemingly ancient, the as a protest. But as the procession his hapless mate Rowdy face a life- codex tells of a modern mystery. passes through Victoria, mysterious and-death battle to survive. As finding the truth becomes an arson attacks follow. Taking Tom obsession, something frightening Murray Home is a timely Australian and unknown is taking place … This story like no other. is a timely, imaginative work from a startling new voice. The Returns Snake Island Philip Salom The New Girl Ben Hobson Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 Daniel Silva A&U. PB. $29.99 Elizabeth posts a ‘room for rent’ HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 Vernon Moore never wants to see his notice in Trevor’s bookshop and At an exclusive private school in son Caleb again. Not after he hit his is caught off-guard when Trevor Switzerland, a girl arrives each wife and ended up in gaol. But when answers the advertisement himself. morning in a heavily protected he hears that Caleb is in trouble She expected a young student, motorcade. She is said to be the behind bars, he knows he has to act. not a middle-aged bookseller daughter of a wealthy international Reading like a morality tale Western whose marriage has fallen apart. businessman. She is not. When but in a starkly beautiful Australian The Returns is a novel that pokes she is brutally kidnapped, Gabriel setting, Snake Island is a propulsive fun at literary pretensions while Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli literary thriller written with great celebrating the expansiveness of intelligence, is thrust into a deadly clarity and power. art, kindness and friendship. secret war with an old enemy. 12 READINGS MONTHLY FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE 2019

Where the Dead Go Salt Arab, Australian, Other Sarah Bailey Bruce Pascoe Randa Abdel-Fattah & Sara A&U. PB. $29.99 Black Inc. PB. Was $34.99 Saleh (eds) The morning after a teenage girl $29.99 Picador. PB. Was $32.99 goes missing in a sleepy coastal This volume of Bruce Pascoe’s best $29.99 town, her boyfriend is found stories and essays, collected here Although there are twenty-two brutally murdered. DS Gemma for the first time, ranges across his distinct Arab nationalities, the Woodstock is assigned the case, long career, and explores Australia’s portrayal of Arabs in Australia tends but is increasingly haunted by a landscape, culture, land management to range from homogenising to racist similar missing persons case she and history. This collection is perfect pop-culture caricatures. Edited by worked on previously – one that for Pascoe fans and new readers alike. author and academic Randa Abdel- ended in tragedy. A riveting thriller It’s time all Australians saw the range Fattah, and activist and poet Sara by the author of the international and depth of this most marvellous of Saleh, this collection includes stories bestseller The Dark Lake. local writers. of family, ethnicity, history, grief, isolation, belonging and identity. Lapse Bowraville Sarah Thornton Dan Box Heartland Text. PB. $29.99 Viking. PB. $34.99 Joe Gorman All it took was a lapse to bring A true crime story cannot often be UQP. PB. $32.95 Clementine Jones’ world crashing believed, at least at the beginning. For more than forty years, Rugby down. Now she’s living in small- In Bowraville, all three of the victims League has embodied all the hopes town Katinga, coaching the local were Aboriginal. All three were and dreams, contradictions and footy club, who are on the cusp of killed within five months, between tensions of life in the Sunshine their first premiership in fifty years. 1990 and 1991. The same white man State. Weaving together stories So why the hell would her star was linked to each, but nobody was of diehard supporters and game- player quit? Clem’s not the only one convicted. This account asks painful changing players, from Arthur with a secret, and as tension builds, questions about what ‘justice’ means Beetson to Johnathan Thurston, the violence just below the town’s and how it is delivered. Heartland is a revealing account of surface threatens to erupt. Queensland’s coming of age, both on Banking Bad and off the field. Adele Ferguson ABC Books. PB. $34.99 Against all the odds, Australia held a royal commission into the banking and financial services industries. Cold Case Investigations Its revelations rocked the nation. In Dr Xanthé Mallett Banking Bad, Adele Ferguson tells Pills, Powder, and Smoke Pan Mac. PB. $32.99 the full story of the power imbalance, Antony Loewenstein Available 27 August toxic culture and cover-ups rife in the Scribe. PB. $35 banks. This is a book for every person From the Beaumont children to Like the war on terror, the drugs war with a bank account. William Tyrrell, criminologist Dr is a multi-billion-dollar industry that Xanthé Mallett is determined to won’t go down without a fight. Pills, expose the truth behind tragic The Wooleen Way Powder, and Smoke investigates the murders and disappearances. Here, David Pollock individuals, officials and victims she talks to experts to uncover the Scribe. PB. $35 caught up in this deadly war. Antony hows and whys, introducing readers This is an urgent story of political Loewenstein argues for legalisation to new forensic techniques and irresponsibility, industrial and regulation of all drugs, and the scientific methods that could – or monopolisation, and, above all, evidence presented in this book will did – help move the case forward. ecological illiteracy in a vast segment persuade many readers that he’s right. of the Australian continent. Here pastoralist David Pollock outlines a Plots and Prayers specific and comprehensive plan to Niki Savva reverse the ecological damage done to Scribe. PB. $35 the land since European colonisation. In an enthralling sequel to her bestselling The Road to Ruin, Niki A Wunch of Bankers Gun Control Savva reveals the inside story of a Daniel Ziffer Tom Frame bungled coup that overthrew the Scribe. PB. $32.99 UNSW Press. PB. $34.99 Liberal prime minister, Malcolm It was a complicated, galling, and Available 27 August Turnbull, and installed a surprise gasp-inducing year at the Royal In the aftermath of the Port successor, Scott Morrison, who went Commission into Misconduct in Arthur massacre, John Howard, a on to take the party to a miraculous the Banking, Superannuation and conservative prime minister who electoral victory. This is the inside Financial Services Industry. A Wunch had been in office for just six weeks, story of what happened. of Bankers covers not just the big moved swiftly to revolutionise shocks, but the small moments that Australia’s gun control laws. Gun reveal how huge companies have Control draws on interviews with used the law, limp enforcement, those who supported and opposed and basic human behaviour to take the new laws, and analyses whether advantage of everyone. the Australian Government achieved its intention. Lawless The Enchantment of the Kimberley Motley Long-haired Rat Major Thomas A&U. PB. $29.99 Tim Bonyhady Greg Growden In the summer of 2008 Kim Text. PB. $32.99 Affirm Press. HB. $32.99 Motley quit her job as a defence The long-haired rat is a much- Opinion is still divided on attorney in Milwaukee to help train maligned native Australian rodent. whether Breaker Morant and his lawyers in war-torn Afghanistan. Here, Tim Bonyhady explores the co-defendants were criminals, What she brought with her was a place of the rat in Aboriginal culture, or scapegoats used by the British fundamental belief in everyone’s and recounts how Europeans Empire. Major Thomas, the bush right to justice. Kimberley’s responded to and learned about it. An lawyer drafted in to defend them, is story is both the memoir of an astonishing history, The Enchantment invariably depicted as either a hero extraordinary woman fighting of the Long-haired Rat illuminates a or an incompetent fool. Now, for the in one of the most dangerous species, a continent, its climate and first time, Greg Growden attempts to countries in the world, and a page- its people like never before. unravel the truth about the lawyer. turning nonfiction legal thriller. FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 13

A Lot with a Little Home Brew Beer Tim Costello DK. HB. $34.99 Hardie Grant. HB. $45 Home Brew Beer explains how to make In this evocative memoir, Tim Costello beer from a basic kit, brew using malt extract or using the full-mash method explores the people and experiences Women, Men & the Whole favoured by professional brewers. that have shaped him into a socially Damn Thing active fighter for the world’s most Updated with a contemporary design David Leser challenging issues. More than a simple and revised content, including new A&U. PB. $29.99 life story, this is a book about faith and recipes and enhanced coverage of In February 2018, the Good its power. Challenging and thought sour beers and mixed fermentations, Weekend cover story by David provoking no matter what your beliefs, this is the must-have guide for any Leser, ‘Women, men and the whole this is a book to savour and re-read. home brewer. damn thing’, had an extraordinary response. Leser received messages The Joy of High Places from readers around the world Patti Miller – both women and men – urging NewSouth. PB. $32.99 him to expand his story. This In this extraordinary book, Patti book is that expansion: a brilliant, Miller tells the story of her walking impassioned, unflinching account over hundreds of kilometres and of of #MeToo, how we got there and Chinese Spies her brother Barney’s paragliding where we must now go. Roger Faligot & Natasha accident. The story of his struggle Lehrer (trans.) to walk again intersects Patti’s Scribe. PB. $39.99 long-distance journeys, creating Unearthing previously unseen a narrative of determination and papers and interviewing countless triumph. The Joy of High Places insiders, this astonishing book combines physical adventure with a reveals a century of world events powerful emotional journey. shaped by Chinese spies. This Veg fascinating narrative exposes the Poster Boy Jamie Oliver sprawling tentacles of the world’s largest intelligence service, from the Peter Drew Micheal Joseph. HB. Was $49.99 very birth of communist China to Xi Black Inc. PB. $29.99 $44.99 Jinping’s absolute rule today. Peter Drew’s posters are a familiar Available 22 August sight across Australia – his ‘Real Jamie Oliver is back with brilliantly Australians Say Welcome’ and easy, healthy, flavour-packed, ‘Aussie’ campaigns took on lives accessible and affordable veg recipes. of their own, attaining cult status Sharing simple tips and tricks that will and starting conversations all over excite the taste buds, and help keep the country. Packed full of Drew’s people’s brains and mouths engaged, memorable images, Poster Boy is this book will also give people the The Mosquito an intelligent, funny and brutally confidence to up their veg intake and Timothy C. Winegard honest dive into individual, family widen their recipe repertoire. Text. PB. $32.99 and national identity. The mosquito has razed economies, The Camping Cookbook determined the fates of empires and Unrequited Love Viola Lex & Nico Stanitzok decided the outcome of pivotal wars. Dennis Altman DK. HB. $24.99 She – only females bite – has played Monash University Publishing. PB. Chef Nico Stanitzok and lifelong a greater role in shaping our history $29.95 camper Viola Lex have teamed up to than any other living creature. This memoir is as wide-ranging bring us an eclectic mix of recipes for Driven by surprising insights and and remarkable as Dennis Altman’s all kinds of outdoor cooks. Step-by- fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito career, moving between Australia, step instructions and mouth-watering will appeal to readers of Peter the United States, Europe and Asia, photography make these recipes easy Wohlleben and Elizabeth Kolbert. and influenced by encounters with to follow for those new to cooking public figures including James outdoors. The Camping Cookbook is Baldwin, Gough Whitlam, Dorothy the ultimate cookbook for open-air Porter and Susan Sontag. Unrequited cooks who love to explore. Love is a story of a half century of activism and intellectualism. Halliday Wine Companion 2020 The Basis of Everything Something to Believe In James Halliday Andrew Ramsey Andrew Stafford Hardie Grant. PB. Was $39.99 HarperCollins. HB. $39.99 UQP. PB. $32.95 $33.99 Before the horrors of nuclear warfare For Andrew Stafford, music was a way For over thirty years James Halliday came the great scientific quest to up and a way out. There was just one has been Australia’s most respected fathom the secrets of the atom. The little problem: he couldn’t play. So he wine critic, and his Halliday Wine Basis of Everything is the story of carved out a niche writing about it Companion is recognised as the the coming of the atomic bomb, instead. Written with enormous heart industry benchmark for Australian and how the unlikely union of two and a thumping rhythm, Something wine. In his inimitable style, Halliday scientists – New Zealander Ernest to Believe In is an uncompromising, shares his extensive knowledge and Rutherford and Australian Mark inspiring book for anyone whose life provides information about wineries Oliphant – would change the world. has been saved by rock’n’roll. and winemakers. This is the perfect book for any wine lover. Wayfinding The Kowloon Kid M.R. O’Connor Phil Brown All Day Cocktails Affirm Press. PB. $32.99 Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 Shaun Byrne & Nick Tesar Biologists have been trying to solve Phil Brown’s life began in small- Hardie Grant. HB. $34.99 the mystery of how organisms town Australia, but in 1963 his father Celebrating seasonal ingredients, migrate and orient with such Ted hankered to return to the Hong and with a focus on sustainability, precision – especially since our Kong of his childhood and to cash All Day Cocktails brings you ninety adventurous ancestors spread across in on a construction boom in the versatile cocktail recipes and fifty the world without the use of maps burgeoning colony. From the author prep recipes, including: bitters, or instruments. In this compelling of Travels with My Angst and Any cordials, coulis, syrups, tisanes and narrative, M.R. O’Connor seeks Guru Will Do, this is a vivid, nostalgic more. Enjoy cocktails at any time out scientists, anthropologists and and funny memoir of growing up in of day with this collection of fresh, master navigators to understand how Hong Kong in the 1960s. creative low- and no-alcohol recipes. navigation gave us our humanity. 14 READINGS MONTHLY FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE 2019

On the Chin Explore Australia 2020 Alex McClintock Explore Australia Text. PB. $32.99 Hardie Grant Travel. HB. $60 The sport of boxing provokes Explore Australia 2020 covers James Hardy Vaux’s 1819 love, loathing and sometimes lust more of the country than any Dictionary of Criminal with equal intensity. Here, Alex other Australian guidebook. Now Slang McClintock uses his own progress in its 37th edition, this guidebook through the amateur ranks as a includes details on regional towns, Simon Barnard springboard to explore the history, capital cities and major touring Text. HB. $29.99 culture and contradictions of regions. Whatever adventure you’re In 1812, convict clerk James Hardy boxing. Informative, insightful and looking for, this is the ultimate Vaux came up with a useful idea: a effortlessly entertaining, On the Chin travel guide to help you plan the dictionary of slang and other terms is your essential guide to the art of perfect trip. used by convicts. Vaux’s dictionary hitting and getting hit. is a fascinating account of convict language, and Simon Barnard’s illustrations and supporting The Father Hood accounts of individual convicts and Luke Benedictus, Jeremy their criminal antics complements Macvean & Andrew this lively picture of Australia’s McUtchen Mad as Hell and Back convict history. Murdoch. PB. $32.99 Shaun Micallef & Gary It’s official: Dads need a rebrand. The McCaffrie Father Hood celebrates the rapidly- Hardie Grant. PB. $34.99 growing tribe of hands-on dads who 2019 marks the tenth season of are discovering that fatherhood is Mad as Hell and Shaun Micallef’s the making of them. With a mix of twenty-fifth year in comedy. What Songs celebrity interviews – from Hugh better way to celebrate than with Jackman, David Beckham, Osher Don Walker a comprehensive collection of the Günsberg and many more, this is the Black Inc. HB. $32.99 funniest scripts and scenes from guide to helping modern dads thrive For over forty years, Don Walker’s Micallef’s long TV career? Here, and survive in the only job that songwriting has captured what it is to Micallef and his co-writer Gary really counts. be Australian. Including a foreword McCaffrie usher us behind the by Jimmy Barnes, this collection is scenes with hilarious footnotes to filled with autobiographical sketches their most loved sketches. and anecdotes. Songs is a must-have for fans of Walker’s brilliant, razor- sharp storytelling. These lyrics live on the page, with or without the memory of music. The Crow Eaters Ben Stubbs NewSouth. PB. $29.99 Outsiders think of South Australia as being different, without really knowing much about it. Combining his own travel across the state with an investigation of its history, Ben Epic Runs of the World Stubbs seeks to find out what SA Lonely Planet. HB. $44.99 is really like. Readers will find it Put on your running shoes – it’s hard to resist the book’s implicit time to hit the road, the trails invitation to take a look at places and the great outdoors. In this much closer to home. comprehensive companion, you’ll find some of the world’s greatest running routes. Each run is accompanied by a toolkit of practical details – where to start and finish, how to get there, where to stay and Special edition 50th year tees and totes more – to help you plan an epic trip. Tee $29.95 | Tote $26.95 World Heritage Sites of Back in the ’70s Mark Rubbo, Readings’ managing Australia director, ran a busy record store called Professor Church of the Open Sky Peter Valentine Longhair’s Music Shop (named for the legendary New Nat Young NLA. HB. $49.99 Orleans blues singer and pianist). A couple of years later Michael Joseph. PB. $34.99 Available 27 August he and his business partners took over Readings and For Nat Young, surfing has never Here, Peter Valentine presents combined the stores. The spirit of Professor Longhair’s been about winning. It’s a calling, Australia’s nineteen magnificent lives on in these special edition items. a philosophy, a religion. Most of World Heritage sites. Each is described all, surfing is a way of life that has and illustrated in detail, along with underpinned his other identities. an account of how it came to be on the Candid and wryly observed, Church World Heritage List. From temperate of the Open Sky explores what it rainforests to tropical wetlands, these means to be a surfer, with a collection sites are dazzling in their ecological of true stories from Nat’s surfing life. complexity and offer an amazing record of life on this planet. Dave O’Neil’s Parenthood Dave O’Neil Travel Goals NLA. PB. $19.99 Lonely Planet. HB. $34.99 Ah, parenting. After 300,000 years, Be inspired and empowered by this you’d reckon we’d have it nailed. collection of transformative travel But, as the decades roll on, it seems experiences, from sleeping under the 2020 Readings Diary we’re as clueless as ever. Hopscotch stars or learning a new craft, to more PB. $20 | Available 29 August may have given way to Xbox, but, ambitious challenges like helping Our 2020 diary is ideal for booklovers, with a week to a when it comes to parenting, some to rebuild a community or saving view layout, a monthly literary trivia question, first lines things never change. A laugh-out- an endangered species. From the from some of our favourite Australian books, photographs loud look at parenthood through easily attainable to the aspirational, from our seven shops, and sections to keep track of your the ages by comedian and father of the variety of goals makes it easy to reading (and who you’ve lent books out to). The Readings three Dave O’Neil. create a set that’s right for you. Diary is available from all Readings shops, and online. CRIME September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 15

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die colleagues to deal with. But can the three of A.B. Jewell them pull themselves together and solve Dead Write the murder, or are there too many HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 with Fiona Hardy Available now distractions? Not least a conman, a wax In Silicon Valley, everything replica, and an infamous Brighton nightspot that Twitten suspects may have a This striking little oddity comes with a hefty dose of French seems possible and many connection to the death. This is a comic BOOK OF THE fame – it won the European Crime Fiction Prize, the Grand Prix things seem terrible. For caper to die semi-gruesomely for. MONTH de Littérature Policière, and has been made into a film starring William Fitzgerald (Fitch), a PI who does not particularly Crime one of the most perfectly French actresses around – Isabelle Huppert. Hannelore Cayre is a writer and a director, but most relate to the tech-soaked How the Dead Speak importantly, she is also a practicing criminal lawyer who knows world he works in, everything Val McDermid what it’s like on the law side of things – and, you’ll believe by the is going fine-ish until a woman strides, Little, Brown. PB. Was $32.99 end, the unlawful side as well. Raymond Chandler-like, into his office and $29.99 says she’s the daughter of Captain Don Patience Portefeux is an interpreter who spends most of her Available 27 August Donogue. The Captain Don, of the Valley. And time translating tapped phone calls between drug dealers, a job This is the eleventh book in he’s dead – possibly murdered – but it hasn’t that is banal and so poorly paid that she can’t see a way out of it Val McDermid’s Tony Hill and stopped him from tweeting, apparently. In to a better future. One in which she’s not paying for her mother’s Carol Jordan series, but it finds this world, the idea of online-life-after-death haphazard care in a retirement home, or feeling something them in wildly different isn’t quite as farfetched as it seems, so Fitch close to guilt about her two distant daughters, whose upbringing circumstances. Thanks to an needs to go deep into the underbelly of this wasn’t particularly perfect after their father’s death at a earth-shattering case that ridiculous world to find out what really devastatingly young age. Patience, however, doesn’t really have changed everything for them, happened to Captain Don. A hardboiled, time to dwell on the past or any mistakes – but she does have the Carol has left the police force and Tony is in hard-laughter tale from an anonymous Valley time to get involved in the lives of those whose calls she listens prison. While their team forms a new way of insider that transports 1930s detective noir to in on. When her affection towards one family sees her cross a working without them, a new case just may The Godmother twenty-first-century neon. line when a bust is imminent, she is suddenly and cunningly in inadvertently bring everybody back together Hannelore Cayre possession of a rather enormous quantity of illegal substances. again. The rebuilding of an orphanage sees & Stephanie Smee What she also has in her possession is a laundry list of people The Vanished Bride the unearthing of dozens of skeletons from (trans.) who are interested – and whose conversations in Arabic are only Bella Ellis decades ago – along with several recent ones. Black Inc. PB. $27.99 understood by one member of the police department: Patience H&S. PB. $32.99 One of them is a match for somebody Available 3 September herself. And so, ‘The Godmother’ is born, and France’s seedy Available 10 September apparently very much alive and with a underworld rises to the fore. Three sisters in mid- connection to Carol, who’s working with This book is exuberant and understated all at once; an almost stream-of-consciousness nineteenth-century Yorkshire people who have suffered miscarriages of calamity of French darkness and humour, it follows a woman with more practicality than are living their quietly justice. Meanwhile, Tony attempts to cope passion who sees the world in myriad fascinating ways. It’s thrilling to read a crime novel from creative lives until they hear with the dread and fear of prison life by the point of view of the Bad Guy (and without the usual prologues and asides of a predator’s of terrible news from a friend: helping others and working on a project of his grim thoughts). There are flashes of a glamorous childhood whose riches were squeezed from a young woman has vanished, own, before the orphanage case throws him blood; an abruptly downtrodden adulthood, and the clawing back of a real life, all with the leaving behind nothing but a back with Carol – who he can barely bear to backdrop of Patience’s admirable determination and her less admirable view of humanity. pool of blood and a devastated family. These see. Another brilliant McDermid thriller. Translated with spunk by Stephanie Smee, this is absolute champagne entertainment. sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – are clever enough to become lady detectives, and The Other End of the Line so the Brontë women, pre-publication, Andrea Camilleri endeavour to find out what happened to the Mantle. PB. $29.99 The Long Call encounters a long-lost friend of his Uncle poor bride. However, in a time when those of Available 10 September Ann Cleeves Teddy, who died in a car accident years a female persuasion are not expected to turn Oof, it’s a dramatic title for a Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 before. But this friend has news: Teddy their interests towards such unpleasant book when you consider that Available 27 August didn’t die in a car accident – he fled to things as criminal activities, it may be rather the author – the great Italian From the author of so many America. Shaun’s search for his missing tricky to investigate – but nothing will stop writer Andrea Camilleri – successful books that two of uncle sees him tap into a web-sleuthing them. Not even danger. sadly passed away in July, her series have already been board, where people connect missing aged 93. There are three more made into TV shows people to unidentified bodies. There’s a The Operators Inspector Montalbano books (Shetland and Vera, if you’re chance that Teddy was dead long before Barry Heard already published in Italian after this one, so asking), now here’s a new Shaun even knew he was gone, and those Scribe. PB. $32.99 with any luck this may not be the end of series by Ann Cleeves to get who investigated ‘The Boy in the Dress’ Available 3 September Montalbano for English readers either. In this into. Detective Matthew Venn lives by the case online are desperate to chase up on Wally Flannagan is heading twenty-fourth book, Montalbano and his water, and is recently back in the part of Shaun’s lead. But who are these people to Indonesia for the blooming team are working tirelessly to track the people England where he grew up before being cut online, and can they be trusted with of a flower – something you smugglers behind the influx of migrants off from his family after leaving their information, or even with people’s lives? can do when you’re retired arriving in his town by boat, along with religion. He and his husband are happy, This modern crime story is a departure from farming – and it’s going assisting the new arrivals in their journey – until Venn is called to the scene of a from Sarah Lotz’s horror tales, but features to be just wonderful. Of but the port isn’t the only place where there’s murder on the same day as his estranged the ratcheting tension and character depth course, nobody in crime trouble. At home, Montalbano has been told father’s funeral. The victim has a tattoo of for which she’s beloved. fiction ever gets to have a good holiday, and to sharpen up with a new suit for an an albatross on his neck: a symbol of his here Barry Heard – author of the bestselling upcoming wedding, and so he finds a guilt. So, what in the dead man’s past has Platform Seven Vietnam War memoir Well Done, Those seamstress – but later the dressmaker is led to him being stabbed on the beach? Louise Doughty Men – sees poor Wally kidnapped by a found, killed by her own scissors. And so And how can you detach from an Faber. PB. $29.99 criminal syndicate with technological Montalbano must try to fix everything in his investigation into a community that Available 17 September expertise, limited mercy and a lot of power. typically irresistible way, and to his you’ve been part of before – and are about audience’s delight. In the dead, cold hours of an But what this savvy syndicate doesn’t know to join again? Cleeves is a master, English morning, a man about Wally is that he’s got a past that they’ve seamlessly moving from one character to enters Peterborough Station missed – and that what he’s learned in years Also out this month the next, and this is a brilliant police without being seen, and later gone by may just save him from the future. A Book two of the Democracy Trilogy with an procedural for her fans old and new. throws himself in front of a ripper of a thriller. Australian prime ministerial re-election freight train. It’s not the first in Richard Evans’s Duplicity (Impact, PB, Missing Person death on platform seven: less The Man That Got Away $29.99); writing machine Alexander McCall Sarah Lotz than two years earlier, a woman had fallen to Lynne Truss Smith produces another likely bestseller H&S. PB. $29.99 her death – but that wasn’t the end of her. Raven. PB. $29.99 with To the Land of Long Lost Friends (Little, Available 10 September She was there with the man as he sat waiting Available 17 September Brown, PB, $29.99); the sixth book in Stieg Bookseller Shaun Ryan – for the train. She was there when the station If you require your British Larsson’s Millennium *cough* ‘trilogy’ trapped in Ireland by his guards were confronted with the aftermath. seaside crime to be quirky, with The Girl Who Lived Twice by David minimal resources, a secret She is always there: confined to the station, Lynne Truss is back with a Lagercrantz (MacLehose, PB, Was $32.99 SP relationship with a married watching the people who watch the boards, second Constable Twitten $29.99); Louise Penny’s A Better Man (Sphere, man, and by the dog he never able to talk to the café workers, seeing book for you. In Brighton in PB, Was $32.99 SP $29.99); Linwood Barclay’s half-loves and half-resents the same people, and all the while unable to 1957, everybody is having a Elevator Pitch (HQ Fiction, PB, $32.99); and that once belonged to his remember what happened to her. Until the delightful summer until a Anders Roslund’s Three Hours (riverrun, PB, mother – believes he knows everything death of this man sparks some memories young man with big dreams ends up dead in $32.99), the third in the Three Seconds trilogy, he’d want to know about his family. On a inside her. A simmering, tense read by the a deckchair – and that’s not going to be the but sadly without Roslund’s writing partner, visit to his mother’s grave, though, he bestselling Louise Doughty. only death for Constable Twitten and his Börge Hellström, who passed away in 2017. 16 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 NONFICTION

key weapon in the Pentagon’s war on terror. The definition of memoir is also openly Drawing on declassified documents, Tom explored and queried as often what New Gilling’s explosive new book tells, for the Higgins recalls differs from what others first time, the uncensored story of remember. Parts of the book take on meta Nonfiction Australia’s most secret place. elements; the author includes some of her editorial comments and often discusses Fallen the writing of her book with others Lucie Morris-Marr (including their questions and criticisms). Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk is an extraordinary A&U. PB. $29.99 Higgins has made some brave decisions in writing this memoir, especially in relation BOOK OF THE reading experience. It’s both philosophical and practical, Available 17 September and underpinned by a compassionate yet realistic humanity. to the consequences for her parents, but MONTH Lucie Morris-Marr was the At the core of Sand Talk is a deep respect for Indigenous first to break the story that the beautiful final chapter and last line Australian Knowledge, to which long-term thinking is fundamental. As Cardinal George Pell was make me think she has written it for all the Studies Yunkaporta demonstrates, a central principle of Indigenous being investigated by the family; especially for the girls. Knowledge and learning paradigms is looking back and police, and attended every Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton recognising patterns from the past, then learning from them. day of his secret trial. Fallen That’s an extreme simplification due to the length of this charts how Pell’s shocking The Writing on the Wall review, but as Yunkaporta convincingly argues, it is this kind conviction struck the inner sanctum of the Juliet Rieden and calibre of thinking that is profoundly lacking in many Holy See. It is a gripping story that will Pan Mac. PB. $32.99 societies today, including in Australia, and the damage fascinate anyone interested in the Catholic Available 27 August wrought upon our world in its absence is abundantly evident. Church and its failure to address the Juliet Rieden grew up in Yunkaporta writes with a clear-eyed sense of his own canker in its heart. England in the 1960s and perspective, flaws and past failures. An academic, an artist, ’70s, and always sensed that and much more besides, language is important to him. Like Secret her family was different. She many of Australia’s First Peoples, he has a complex identity Brian Toohey longed to have relatives and and history, and he writes, ‘I often don’t get to decide what I MUP. PB. $39.99 knew precious little about call myself.’ Throughout Sand Talk, he carefully shares stories Available 3 September her Czech father’s childhood of life-changing ‘yarns’ – a term he defines precisely early on – Elected governments pose as a refugee. Meticulously researched and Sand Talk: How with people he has met on his extensive research travels. the greatest threat to beautifully told, this is the moving story of Indigenous Sand Talk is an engaging and singular introduction Australians’ security. her quest to piece together the hidden parts Thinking Can to the elements of Indigenous Knowledge, thinking, and Political leaders of her father’s life and the losses he was Save the World methods of communication that Yunkaporta is in a position increasingly promote determined to protect his children from. Tyson Yunkaporta to share. It’s an opportunity to recognise these concepts and secrecy, ignorance and fear Text. PB. Was $32.99 their history, and a generous invitation to incorporate these to introduce new laws that Mr Know-It-All $29.99 methods into non-Indigenous thinking for the benefit of all. undermine individual liberties. Secret: The John Waters Available 3 September It’s an unforgettable book, rich with ideas and inspiring in its Making of Australia’s Security State Corsair. HB. $45 conviction in the human capacity for personal change and presents fresh archival material and Available 10 September growth. Open it to any page, read and enjoy. You’ll never think revealing details of conversations between No one knows more about about your hands, Dante, Trump or emus the same way again. former CIA, US State Department and everything – especially Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly Australian officials, and will make you everything rude, clever, and reconsider the world around you. offensively compelling – than John Waters. The Biography man with the pencil-thin The Golden Country moustache, auteur of many Australian Tim Watts transgressive movie classics, is one of the Studies Text. PB. $32.99 The Girls world’s great sophisticates, and in Mr. Available 17 September Chloe Higgins Know-It-All he serves it up raw. This is In The Lucky Country, Picador. PB. Was $32.99 Waters’s most hypnotically readable, Donald Horne wanted to Australianama $29.99 upsetting, revelatory book – another capture ‘what the huge Samia Khatun Available 27 August instant Waters classic. UQP. PB. $34.95 continent was like … before I originally questioned it was peopled from all over Available 3 September the choice of title for About a Girl Asia’. Sixty years later, we Australian deserts remain this book as the words ‘girl/s’ Rebekah Robertson must ask what a century of dotted with the ruins of old are so commonly used in Viking. PB. $34.99 nation building in the image of White mosques. Beginning with a this context. I wondered if a Available 3 September Australia has meant for our country. Here, Bengali poetry collection different title could have In this profoundly moving Tim Watts asks: why is Australia’s imagined discovered in a nineteenth- been chosen. Now that I true story, Rebekah community so far behind its lived century mosque in Broken have read The Girls by Chloe Higgins, I Robertson writes about community, and what can we do about it? Hill, Samia Khatun weaves realise that it was the only possible choice. what she’s learned while together the stories of various peoples When she is seventeen, Higgins stays raising her transgender colonised by the British Empire to chart a Tough Customer home to study for her HSC exams while daughter, activist and history of South Asian diaspora. Allan Fels her two younger sisters, Carlie and Lisa, celebrated youth leader Australianama shows that stories in MUP. PB. $34.99 go on an annual ski trip with their father. Georgie Stone. Part memoir, part message colonised tongues can transform the very Available 3 September On their return, the three are involved in a of hope for those navigating a similar path, ground from which we view past, present Allan Fels has never been one horrific car accident. While the girls’ father About a Girl is a celebration of family and and future. to shy away from a fight, is pulled out from the driver’s seat, the two the values that unite us all. especially when the big end sisters are incinerated in the back. Quarterly Essay 75: of town is exploiting small The Girls recounts Higgins’s Sontag Men at Work – Australia’s businesses or consumers. experiences from this event to the Benjamin Moser Parenthood Trap For his whole career, he has present day. The way each member of the Allen Lane. HB. Was $65.00 Annabel Crabb championed the underdog. In surviving family handles their grief differs $59.99 Quarterly Essay. PB. $22.99 this fascinating account of his post-ACCC life, enormously. Higgins’s main reaction is Available 17 September Available 9 September Fels opens up about what he’s learned over shock; she feels the memory of her sisters Susan Sontag was a great In the last half-century, his fifty years of dedicated public service. fading and, after time in a psychiatric literary star. Her rigorous women have hospital, becomes involved in drugs and sex intellectualism and her revolutionised the way we Project Rainfall work. She does this partly to get a sense of groundbreaking inquiries work and live. But men’s Tom Gilling freedom from her parents; especially from into what was then seen as lives have changed A&U. PB. $32.99 her mother, for whom Higgins must now ‘low culture’ – celebrity, remarkably little. Is this Available 3 September represent three children. The great tragic photographs, camp – because men don’t want to Pine Gap is a top secret figure of this story, however, is the father. propelled her into her own unique, change? Or is it because, every day in American spy base on Consumed by guilt that he has killed two of inimitable category and made her famous various ways, we tell them they shouldn’t? Australian soil, but how his daughters, his diary entries following the world over. Sontag is a definitive Here Annabel Crabb argues that gender much do we really know the accident are heartbreaking. portrait of an endlessly complex, dazzling equity cannot be achieved until men are about it? No longer just a Themes include the effect of trauma on woman; one of the twentieth century’s as free to leave the paid workplace as listening station, Pine Gap mind and body, the burden of surviving, greatest thinkers, who lived one of its most women are to enter it. has metamorphosed into a mental health, and co-dependency. fascinating lives. NONFICTION September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 17

Night Fishing feminism and an important validation for from the people who lived and worked there, and disruptive and why, in a West that has Vicki Hastrich women of colour who have suffered in their this book is a fitting celebration of the life of become increasingly doubtful of religion’s A&U. PB. $29.99 interactions with white women. Cranlana during its first 100 years. claims, so many of its instincts remain Available 3 September Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton irredeemably Christian. This is a revisionist, Night Fishing unfolds as a Health controversial account of Western history. series of expeditions or Fixed It essays in which Vicki Jane Gilmore Legacy Hastrich thoughtfully Viking. PB. $34.99 Pain and Prejudice Thomas Harding William Heinemann. PB. $35 reveals the ordinary and Available 3 September Gabrielle Jackson remarkable detail of her Available 3 September Finally, we are starting to A&U. PB. $29.99 life. From her childhood talk about Australia’s Available 3 September In the early 1800s, by the sea to her life as a camera operator Lehmann Gluckstein and epidemic of gendered This book is a vital for the ABC, as an historian and amateur his family escaped the violence, but too often the testament to how social marine biologist, and as a single woman pogroms of Eastern Europe media is doing so in a way taboos and medical exploring her small stretch of water, these and made their way to that is clumsy and harmful. ignorance keep women sick reflections are new, fresh and captivating. London’s East End. They Fixed It demonstrates the and in anguish. In a potent worked tirelessly to pull myths that we’re unconsciously sold about blend of personal memoir themselves out of poverty, creating a small Ian McKellen violence against women, and undercuts and polemic, Gabrielle business that grew to become one of the Garry O’Connor them in a clear and compelling way. This Jackson confronts the private concerns most influential dynasties in British W&N. PB. $34.99 book is a call to action for all of us to think and questions women face regarding their history: J. Lyons. Legacy is a story of Available 10 September harder and do better. health and medical treatment. Pain & sacrifice and selflessness, betrayal and Few actors achieve in their Prejudice, finally, explains how we got personal tragedy, and Empire and its cost. lifetime what Sir Ian How to Be an Antiracist here, and where we need to go next. McKellen has. McKellen has Ibram X. Kendi been feted and admired in Bodley Head. HB. $39.99 On a Wing and a Prayer every country across the Available now History Di Websdale-Morrissey globe, and has been In this rousing and deeply Text. PB. $32.99 knighted. He is an icon of, Available 3 September empathetic book, Ibram X. Say Nothing and ardent campaigner in, the cause for Kendi helps us recognise In 1934, Melbourne’s Lord Patrick Radden Keefe LGBTIQ+ rights. This is an unflinching, that everyone is, at times, Mayor announced a HarperCollins. PB. $24.99 intimate and affectionate portrait of one of complicit in racism whether London-to-Melbourne air Available now the most unusual geniuses of our times. they realise it or not, and race to celebrate his city’s Say Nothing, Patrick shows us how instead to be centenary. This heroic race, Radden Keefe’s a force for good. He demolishes the myth considered the greatest Cultural Studies examination of the Troubles of the post-racial society and builds up a single sporting event in the in Northern Ireland from the vital new understanding of racism – what history of aviation, is a tale of eccentric late 1960s to the Good Friday White Tears/Brown Scars it is, where it is hidden, how to identify it characters, daring deeds and sublime Agreement in 1998, won the Ruby Hamad and what to do about it. courage. Di Websdale-Morrissey’s page- 2019 Orwell Prize for Political MUP. PB. $34.99 turning account will have readers holding Writing. Keefe, an Irish American, tries to their breath, just as the world did eighty- Available 3 September This Is Not Propaganda understand how a small country could be so five years ago. In 2018, journalist Ruby Peter Pomerantsev riven by violence. He uses one killing – of Hamad wrote an article Faber. PB. $29.99 Jean McConville, a single mother in Belfast for The Guardian Australia Hitler: Only the World Was Available 3 September slain by the IRA as a suspected informant – titled ‘How white women use Enough We live in a world of dark ads, to trace the conflict through the lives and strategic tears to silence Brendan Simms psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft deaths of two very different women: one the women of colour’. It received Allen Lane. HB. $65 facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, victim and the other, Dolours Price, one of worldwide praise and Available 3 September Trump. We’ve lost not only the executioners. condemnation. An African American For generations we have our sense of peace and Price was about twenty years old when television journalist from Kansas City had her been hypnotised by the democracy – but our sense of she joined the IRA and she quickly became employment contract terminated for sharing catastrophic, implausible what those words even mean. a member valued by the leadership. She the article on her private Facebook page. The way that Hitler came to Part reportage, part intellectual adventure, robbed banks dressed as a nun and she overwhelming response that Hamad received seize power. Brendan This Is Not Propaganda is a Pynchon-like planted bombs. Price was imprisoned for her to the article, both positive and negative, Simms’s major new exploration of how we can reimagine our part in the London bombings. McConville, inspired her to write a book detailing the biography gives a very politics and ourselves in a time where truth by comparison, lived and died in obscurity. consequences for women of colour when different picture of Hitler, highlighting the has been turned topsy-turvy. A widow and a mother of ten, McConville white women respond to accusations of poisonous mix of ideals which was to have struggled in 1972 simply to keep her children racism or oppression by playing the victim. such a terrible impact on Europe, and We Need New Stories clothed and fed. One night, a group of armed Hamad argues that until white women demonstrating how ideas can be the true Nesrine Malik men and women came to her apartment fully acknowledge the effects of racial and source of murderous behaviour. W&N. PB. $32.99 and took her away over the protests of her colonial oppression, ‘mainstream Western Available 10 September children. She was never seen alive again. Her feminism cannot be anything more than The Anarchy It is becoming clear that the family still deny that she was an informant. another iteration of white supremacy’. She William Dalrymple old frames of reference are Keefe alleges that the abduction and questions gender as the main foundation Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 not working for the world we murder of McConville was ordered by Irish of oppression and argues that race is a Available 10 September now live in. Myths have politician Gerry Adams. For Price, the peace major factor that is often dismissed. While Given the dastardly taken hold, ones which are at that came, in part brokered by Adams, ‘intersectionality’ is a buzz word used by activities of some of odds with our lived delivered little return for what she gave to mainstream white feminists, it is often our massive corporations of experience and in urgent the IRA. The fate of these two women is a superficially invoked and when these same today, the antics contained need of revision. Nesrine Malik’s radical mirror of the tragedy of the Troubles. The feminists are accused of perpetuating within William Dalrymple’s and compelling analysis challenges us to prospect of Brexit and a ‘hard’ border raises oppression by excluding women of colour, latest offering shouldn’t find new narrators whose stories can fill the the spectre of their potential return. Keefe’s they often play the victim rather than really come as a huge shock void and unite us behind a shared vision. book reads like a thriller and I challenge any acknowledge their role in the maintenance to readers. I say they shouldn’t, but I reader not to be drawn into it. of white power structures. blanched several times reading this. Hot on Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings Hamad posits that this behaviour is Gardening the heels of Koh-I-Noor, which was jointly based on a long history of white womanhood written with Anita Anand, The Anarchy and ‘distress of the damsel’ that has been Dominion documents the rise of the British East India a tool of white supremacy utilised to Cranlana: The First 100 Years Tom Holland Company (EIC), over two centuries from detract from the behaviour of white men. Michael Shmith Little, Brown. PB. $34.99 1599 (Elizabethan-era) to 1799. Furthermore, Hamad writes that ‘white Hardie Grant. HB. $80 Available 10 September Basically, when the Brits weren’t going women have to free themselves from the Available now Ranging in time from the to get anywhere near the mercantile action lingering notion that white supremacy has ‘Cranlana’ was the Persian invasion of Greece in that the rival Dutch East India Company socialised them into – that they know what magnificent Toorak 480 BC to the ongoing (VOC) had cornered across South-East is best for non-white women and their job is residence of Melbourne migration crisis in Europe Asia, the EIC looked elsewhere: to the to save us from ourselves.’ businessman Sidney Myer. today, Dominion explores just Indian subcontinent and its myriad This book is an incredibly necessary Breathtakingly illustrated, what it was that made empires, notably the Mughal Empire, and and intelligent critique of mainstream and full of reminiscences Christianity so revolutionary then further afield again. If you’ve seen 18 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 NONFICTION the fabulous series Taboo, you’ll remember do together, and nothing outside it On Fire the wheelings and dealings of the EIC to matters. In illuminating this profound Naomi Klein maintain their monopoly and court favour truth, This Life announces itself as the first At home Allen Lane. PB. $29.99 with the monarchy to protect interests in great work of existentialist philosophy of Available 17 September with Chris Gordon North America. the twenty-first century. The fight for a green world This book is full of historical is the fight of our lives. With Finally, Spring is here! To celebrate, I megalomaniacs whose lust for money Science On Fire, Naomi Klein shows thought we would rejoice in plant-based and power proved catastrophic for India, us how the only way meals. I hope these wonderful new books, directly leading to the British annexation forward out of a polluted all by women, inspire you. of India and, much later, of Hong Kong. How To world is through policy The raison d’être of making money and reform. In wide-ranging Randall Munroe East then obtaining power was at the core of essays reporting from varying stages of John Murray. PB. $32.99 Meera Sodha EIC operations in the eighteenth century. ecological crisis, Klein wakes us up from Available 10 September Fig Tree. HB. $45 The EIC amassed an army of a size twice our environmental sleepwalk and sets us For any task you might Available 3 September that of the British Army, and regularly on a course of potent, necessary action. want to do, there’s a right engaged in conflict with rivals including Meera Sodha was born in way, a wrong way, and a the French East India Company. Pills, Powder, and Smoke England to Ugandan– way so bad that no one Indian parents and was Rich in characters and detail, The Antony Loewenstein would ever try it. How To raised on a delicious Anarchy can be read as a prequel to Koh- Scribe. PB. $35 is a guide to the third assortment of family I-Noor (which details the acquisition of Available now kind of approach. By recipes that had been the great Mughal diamond by the British The war on drugs is a exploring the most complicated ways to passed down through in the nineteenth century, now in the multi-billion-dollar do simple tasks, Munroe invites us to generations. Sodha has made a living from crown jewels), and a pendant to Tharoor’s industry that won’t go down explore the most absurd reaches of the writing about her family’s food, including in Inglorious Empire. If this book takes your without a fight. Antony possible, and better understand the her role as ‘The New Vegan’ columnist for the fancy, also keep an eye out for Dalrymple’s Loewenstein argues that its science and technology underlying the Guardian. Her latest collection of recipes, forthcoming volume on paintings by direct results have included things we do every day. East, is a vibrant, accessible plant-based Indian artists commissioned for the EIC. mass incarceration, cookbook inspired by a wide range of Asian Julia Jackson is from Readings Carlton extreme violence, the backing of Sex in the Brain cuisines, from India to Indonesia, China to dictatorships, and surging drug addiction Amee Baird Singapore, by way of Thailand and Vietnam. globally. Pills, Powder, and Smoke uncovers NewSouth. PB. $29.99 Mythology the secrets of the drug war, why it’s so hard Available 27 August to end, and who is really profiting from it. The Shared Table In Sex in the Brain, clinical Clare Scrine Great Goddesses neuropsychologist Dr Amee Smith Street Books. HB. $39.99 Nikita Gill Baird takes readers on an True Crime Available now Ebury. HB. $29.99 entertaining and I love this cookbook so Available 3 September informative tour of the much. Clare Scrine is a The Devil’s Grip From the venom of Medusa sexiest bits of the human Brisbane food writer who Neal Drinnan and sorcery of Circe to the brain. In the style of began cooking themed S&S. PB. $32.99 rising up of Athena over neurology guru Oliver Sacks, Baird captures dinner parties for her Available now Olympus, these are the the humanity and complexity of patients. mates and recording the It was said that Darcy stories of mothers, warriors, Drawing from true stories, this revealing recipes. Inspired by life in Wettenhall was the creators, survivors and and sometimes heartbreaking book unfolds share houses, and with sections such as world’s foremost expert on destroyers who shook the a better understanding of the links between ‘breakfast spread’, ‘hungover brunch’, and the subject of Corriedale world. Accompanied by beautiful hand- brain function and our sexual selves. ‘comfort food’, each of these vegan and sheep. Stanbury, the stud drawn illustrations, Nikita Gill’s poems and vegetarian recipes will feed a crowd that he owned and ran with stories weave old and forgotten tales of without breaking the bank or spending Politics his elderly cousin Janet and might, fury and love into something new – hours in the kitchen. a timely feminist inspiration. his son Guy, had earned a reputation for being one of the world’s most prestigious First, They Erased Our Name breeders. On the 25th of March 1992, the The Global Vegan Psychology Habiburahman with Sophie Ansel Wettenhall Corriedale dynasty came to an Ellie Bullen & Andrea Reece (trans.) end when all three remaining family Plum. PB. $34.99 Scribe. PB. $32.99 members were murdered as seven shots Available 27 August Keep Clear Available now reverberated through the Barrabool Hills, Ellie Bullen’s philosophy Tom Cutler Since 1982, millions of west of Geelong. is to eat more plants and Scribe. PB. $32.99 Rohingya have had to flee Behind the rise of Stanbury and the here she shows you Available 3 September their homes as a result of multiple murders is the fascinating, and, exactly how easy (and At the age of fifty-five, Tom extreme prejudice and let it be said, sad and troubled life of its magical) that can be. All Cutler gets the diagnosis persecution. Here, for the champion, Darcy. At nine years old Darcy the recipes are inspired that allows him to make first time, a Rohingya was in and out of care, where he was abused: by her travels around the sense of everything that’s speaks up to expose the ‘He needed to strategise with whom sex world to places such as Indonesia, India, come before. The final truth behind this global humanitarian would be less of a trauma, an adult guardian Korea and Japan. This cookbook is an realisation that he has crisis. First, They Erased Our Name is an or a gang of teenagers’. At fourteen he was explosion of colourful photos and recipes Asperger’s allows a light to urgent, moving memoir about what it working at horse stables in Melbourne and and is a perfect portrait of how to prepare dawn on the riddles of his life: his feels like to be repressed in one’s own due to his bad behaviour, Darcy’s father and celebrate vegan food. This picture- accidental rudeness, maladroitness, Pan country and a refugee in others. It gives requested that a cousin, Rupert Wettenhall perfect cookbook is for those just stepping Am smile, and other social impediments. In voice to the voiceless. and his wife, Janet, take on young Darcy as a out of home and wanting to make all the this exceptionally warm, bright, and farmhand at the Stanbury stud farm. During right moves. moving memoir, Tom explores his eccentric How Powerful We Are all this time Darcy was harbouring the secret behaviour from boyhood to manhood. Sally Rugg that he was gay, but as with a lot of young Vignette Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 gay men in the 1950s, the shame and fear of Jane Lopes Philosophy $29.99 being found out became pathological. Hardie Grant. HB. $40 Available 27 August The Devil’s Grip is unlike any other true- Available now How Powerful We Are is crime book I’ve read. Neal Drinnan has been Jane Lopes is the wine This Life Sally Rugg’s manifesto for able to fashion a book that is part retelling director of Melbourne’s Martin Hägglund championing what you of the murders and part autobiography. Attica restaurant and is Profile. PB. $32.99 believe is right. In these The story diverges from time to time into the very first female Available 3 September pages Rugg will teach you Drinnan’s own life as a gay man living in Master Sommelier in Join the Swedish some of the practical things rural Victoria with his partner, and into his Australia! Lopes selected philosopher Martin she learnt on the marriage friendship with Bob Perry, who is the story’s one hundred bottles – Hägglund on an original equality campaign. She’ll also show the conduit. As Darcy’s one-time employee, lover including wine, some spirits and beers – inquiry into the deepest harder lessons learnt: the consequences of and confidant, Perry’s unique viewpoint and and created Vignette, which is part-memoir questions of existence. campaign decisions; how to weather sharp memory of the Wettenhall family and and part-wine-wisdom treasury. It’s the Hägglund argues that harassment from every angle; and how, in the events that lead to their demise is at the perfect, inspiring read for those who want existence is a collective mass campaign movements, nothing is heart of this tragic story. to increase their knowledge of wines and project; everything is at stake in what we black and white. Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton wine–food pairings. BARGAINS September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 19

Vividly recreating this era of unparalleled ponders profound questions about culture, shows how we can make our cities more ambition, artistry and innovation, Blom language, and how difficult it is to be a failed inclusive, ensuring prosperity for all. September captures the seismic shifts that defined writer. Batuman’s heroine shows us with the interwar period and continue to shape perfect hilarity and soulful inquisitiveness Salmagundi: Salads from the Bargains our world today. just how messy it can be to forge a self. Middle East and Beyond Sally Butcher The Great Fire In Other Words HB. Was $45 Now $13.95 Shirley Hazzard Jhumpa Lahiri This comprehensive new All My Treasures: A Book of Joy PB. Was $24.99 Now $13.95 HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 book from acclaimed Jo Witek & Christine Roussey (illus.) In war-torn Asia and Jhumpa Lahiri was first author Sally Butcher HB. Was $21.99 Now $13.99 stricken Europe, young captivated by the Italian looks at salad bowls When a girl receives a veterans of harsh language during a trip to across the world in 150 beautiful porcelain box experience must learn to Florence after college. She recipes. The recipes from her grandmother, dream again. At the centre studied Italian for many feature a number of she immediately wants of the story, a brilliant years, and eventually decided archaic, traditional and staple dishes – and something special to soldier finds that survival is to move to Rome with her a whole lot of funky new stuff as well. put inside it. But life’s not enough. His counterpart, a young girl family to seek full immersion. Presented in a Seasoned with Sally’s trademark mixture most precious living in occupied Japan, falls in love and dual-language format, this autobiography of folklore and anecdotes, this is an treasures cannot be contained in a box. With discovers herself. The Great Fire is a investigates the process of learning to essential update for the foodie bookshelf. a gentle message about the immateriality of sweeping story of men and women express oneself in another language. happiness, this story reminds us to take struggling to reclaim their lives in the Simply Nigella: Feel Good pleasure in everyday moments. aftermath of world conflict. Messages from a Lost World: Food Europe on the Brink Nigella Lawson Bob Dylan: All the Songs The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Stefan Zweig & Will Stone (trans.) HB. Was $59.99 Now $19.95 Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel Albums HB. Was $34.99 Now $12.95 Whatever the occasion, Guesdon Will Friedwald As Europe faced its darkest food – in the making and HB. Was $69.99 Now $29.99 HB. Was $59.99 Now $15.95 days, Stefan Zweig was a the eating – should always Bob Dylan: All the Songs The author of the passionate voice for be pleasurable. From quick focuses on Dylan’s magisterial A Biographical tolerance, peace and a world and calm workday dinners creative process and his Guide to the Great Jazz and without borders. In these to stress-free ideas when organic, unencumbered Pop Singers now moving, ardent essays, feeding a crowd, here is style of recording. It is the approaches the great speeches and articles, food guaranteed to make everyone feel good. only book to tell the stories singers and their greatest composed before and during the Second Simply Nigella is the perfect antidote to our behind all the 525 songs he work in an innovative and World War, one of the twentieth century’s busy lives: a calm and glad celebration of has released. Organised chronologically by revelatory way: through considering their greatest writers mounts a defence of food to soothe and uplift. album, Margotin and Guesdon give an finest albums. A monumental European unity against terror and brutality. in-depth look at what went on in the achievement, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal The Sultan and the Queen: recording studio behind-the-scenes. Albums is an essential book for lovers of Mozart’s Starling The Untold Story of Elizabeth American jazz and popular music. Lyanda Lynn Haupt and Islam City of Angels, or, The PB. Was $22.99 Now $10.99 Jerry Brotton Overcoat of Dr. Freud Here I Am In 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus HB. Was $39.99 Now $12.95 Christa Wolf & Damion Searls Jonathan Safran Foer Mozart met a little starling When Elizabeth Tudor was (trans.) HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 who sang (an improved crowned Queen, England HB. Was $39.99 Now $14.95 Over the course of three version of) the theme from was just a tiny and Three years after the fall of weeks in present-day his Piano Concerto Number rebellious Protestant island the Berlin Wall, the writer Washington DC, three sons 17 in G to him. Knowing a confronting the papacy. Christa Wolf was granted watch their parents’ kindred spirit when he met Broke and under siege, the access to her newly marriage falter and their one, Mozart took the bird home to be his young queen sought to declassified Stasi files. She family home fall apart. pet. Part natural history, part story, build new alliances with the great powers was surprised to learn that Meanwhile, a massive Mozart’s Starling will delight readers as of the Muslim world. The Sultan and the in the early 1960s, she had earthquake devastates the Middle East, they learn about language, music, and the Queen tells the riveting and largely been an informant for the Communist sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel. secret world of starlings. unknown story of Elizabeth’s fruitful government, but had absolutely no With global upheaval in the background alignment with the Islamic world. recollection of this. City of Angels is a and domestic collapse in the foreground, My Salute to Five Bells profoundly humane and disarmingly Jonathan Safran Foer asks us – what is the John Olsen Unearthed: The Landscapes of honest autobiographical novel. true meaning of home? HB. Was $29.99 Now $10 Hargreaves Associates In 1971, Member of the Karen M’Closkey Fifty Foods that Changed the The Husband Hunters: Social Order of Australia and HB. Was $99.99 Now $14.95 Course of History Climbing in London and New Archibald-prize-winner The work of landscape Bill Price York John Olsen was architecture firm Hargreaves HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 Anne de Courcy commissioned to produce Associates is globally This book organises fifty PB. Was $32.99 Now $13.95 a mural for the Sydney renowned. Founded by foods into short illustrated Towards the end of the Opera House. This richly George Hargreaves in 1983, chapters, outlining each nineteenth century and for illustrated scrapbook of diary entries, this team of designers has food’s introduction to and the first few years of the drawings, and magazine and book clippings transformed numerous abandoned sites into impact on civilisation. twentieth, a strange documents Olsen’s Sydney Opera House functionally diverse landscapes. The first These stories span human invasion took place in experience from his initial speechlessness scholarly examination of the firm’s history, from our hunter- Britain. Dozens of young at being asked to do the mural to his very philosophy and body of work, Unearthed uses gatherer ancestors to the powdered milk American heiresses married palpable relief towards the end. Hargreaves Associates’ portfolio to illustrate scandal in China. Fifty Foods that Changed into the British peerage, bringing with the key challenges and opportunities of the Course of History shows how what we eat them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and The New Urban Crisis: designing today’s public spaces. has made us who we are. sophistication of the Gilded Age. Based on Gentrification, Housing extensive research, this is a richly Bubbles, Growing Inequality, Who Rules the World? Fracture: Life and Culture in entertaining group biography. and What We Can Do About It Noam Chomsky the West, 1918–1938 Richard Florida HB. Was $39.99 Now $15.95 Philipp Blom The Idiot HB. Was $34.99 Now $15.95 Noam Chomsky has spent his HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.95 Elif Batuman Our cities drive innovation career calling the powers that In Fracture, critically HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 and growth, but they also be to account. Here he acclaimed historian Selin, a highly strung give rise to ever-greater presents a definitive analysis Philipp Blom argues that in Turkish-American from New inequality as the super-rich of those powers, how they the aftermath of the First Jersey turns up at Harvard displace the well-off, and work, and why we should be World War, citizens of the and finds herself the workers who run our questioning them. From the West directed their dangerously overwhelmed essential services are dark history of the US and Cuba, to China’s energies inwards, by the challenges and pushed out to the suburbs. In this global rise, this book investigates the defining launching into hedonistic, aesthetic and possibilities of adulthood. bracingly original work of research and issues of our times and exposes the hypocrisy intellectual adventures of self-discovery. She studies linguistics and literature, and analysis, leading urbanist Richard Florida at the heart of America’s policies and actions. 20 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 YOUNG ADULT Young Adult

Nate is stuck in a loop: go to school; go to the youth BOOK OF THE centre with his loudmouth best mate, Merrick; go home MONTH to his aggressive dad Dec, Dec’s new wife Nance and their three-year-old twin boys; lather, rinse, repeat. Nate is a Young Adult worrier, concerned with the big things (climate change, inheriting Dec’s genes) and the small (the latest assignment from his Dead Poets Society-inspired English teacher). But when Nate’s haven, the youth centre, risks shutting down, a sense of rebellion starts to take form.

With its emotional realism, This Is How We Change the Ending feels like an Australian Friday Night Lights

With This Is How We Change the Ending, Vikki Wakefield crafts an examination of violence, stunted masculinity and class disparity that’s as complex as any literary novel but made more immediate through its intensely personal first- This Is How We person narration. Your heart breaks for Nate as he stubbornly Change the refuses to hope, for fear of disappointment, even as you root Ending for him to break the cycle. In much of YA literature, that Vikki Wakefield in-between stage of late adolescence is about the widening Text. PB. $19.99 of potential, but here, the all-too-real fear of opportunities Available 3 September closing to you as financial reality hits is ever present. Leavened by Nate’s wry wit and soulful insights, however, this never comes across as hopeless or grim – just honest. With its emotional realism, This Is How We Change the Ending feels like an Australian Friday Night Lights: the hazy washed-out glare of a small town, the slightly aimless wandering nights, and the ultimately uplifting message. I’m not sure what we did right to deserve a writer as fine as Wakefield, who captures the bruised vulnerability and tremulous potential of youth with so much honesty and power. Those who had their hearts wrenched by her previous books, Friday Brown and Inbetween Days, should prepare themselves for another spin through the emotional wringer. For ages 15+. Jackie Tang is the digital marketing manager for Readings

Monuments of their humanity and fight for a better Will Kostakis world. A drama well-seasoned with a CHLOE HIGGINS Lothian Children’s. PB. $19.99 flourish of romantic love, a side of comic ‘Higgins spares nothing in her telling of the Available 27 August relief and a good serving of moral fibre. slow violence of grief, in the puzzlement of Monuments is a new Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster transformation and the skewing of sound mind action-adventure from one instant of catastrophe.’ series about gods, guardians Kate Holden Frankly in Love and the struggle for world David Yoon order. ‘Monument’ is the title Penguin. PB. $17.99 given to each of the many Available 17 September gods credited with creating Frank’s Korean immigrant life as we know it. The gods maintain the parents have one big rule for status quo, and guardians protect the gods him: he must only date JULIET RIEDEN from the hounds that hunt them. Since time Korean girls. His friend Joy is ‘Memoirs such as this will ensure we do not immemorial, the guardians orchestrated in the same boat. So when lose the struggle against “forgetting” movements, relocating the gods to new they both fall for non- – that sly accomplice of tyranny.’ hiding places whenever threats arise from Koreans, they pretend to date Magda Szubanski the hounds. The last known movement saw each other. This is a quirky, heartbreaking the gods relocated to secret chambers romantic comedy and a refreshing take on hidden beneath select schools across race, friendship and family. Sydney. There, the gods remained in a state of rest until a major security breach sent everything into chaos. Graphic Novel When Connor Giannopoulos – that’s LUCY TRELOAR two Ns in both names, as he likes to ‘This lovely, atmospheric book sings . . . so evocative make clear in case you need to find him Pumpkinheads it will stay with the reader as an important literary online – first uncovers a secret chamber in Rainbow Rowell & fable of our period of history.’ which one of the gods is hiding, he finds Faith Erin Hicks (illus.) Tom Keneally himself an unwitting pawn on a protection Pan Mac. PB. $19.99 detail with a god and a reckless girl who Available 10 September claims to be a guardian, in the midst of Deja and Josiah are an impromptu movement. As the hounds seasonal best friends. Every encroach and the threat to the god’s safety autumn, all through high grows, Connor must assess the risks and school, they’ve worked KATE BERRY challenge assumptions about who the together at a pumpkin Life-affirming, warm and incredibly real, this enemy is. But nothing is as it seems. patch. But this Halloween is inspiring, hand-on-heart look at modern The first book in this new series is as different – their last season, families charts the ebbs and flows of family notable and ambitious as its title implies. and their last goodbye. Pumpkinheads is a life through the four school terms. It is a fast-moving drama, with a cast of tender and hilarious story about two teens capable, yet unintentional hero(ine)s discovering what it means to leave behind a www.panmacmillan.com.au compelled to step beyond the limitations place – and a person – with no regrets. KIDS September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 21

These include land exploitation by big business, and how Junior Fiction this affects the local people and creates, for them, some Kids’ very difficult decisions about survival. Atticus Van Tasticus Daykin uses a dual narrative to tell this story through Books Andrew Daddo & Stephen Michael King (illus.) the voices of a feisty Scottish girl, Maya, and a local Puffin. PB. $14.99 Peruvian, Raul. Maya is on an expedition with her scientist Available 3 September dad as he explores light and searches for answers to a In 1750, when times were tough and teeth personal mystery. Raul is returning home and feels the were rotten, ten-year-old Atticus Van need to atone for a past personal disaster. Picture Books Tasticus narrowly escapes a life down the Fire Girl, Forest Boy has a fast-paced story with coal mines – or worse, going to school – twists and links between each character’s journey and when he gets to choose the gift of a pirate touches of magic that take inspiration from ancient Kindness Grows ship from his Grandnan’s treasure pile. Peruvian legends and explore the spirit of self-growth. Britta Teckentrup This is a fabulously funny new illustrated It is a great example of magical realism in action, and Little Tiger. HB. $24.99 series from the brilliant and whacky creative minds of perfect for ages 9+. Available 1 September Andrew Daddo and Stephen Michael King. Claire Atherfold is from Readings State Library Victoria It all starts with a crack that we can hardly see, it happens when we shout or if we disagree. But with every kindness Middle Fiction Nonfiction that we care to show, something good and magical then begins to grow. Angry The Curious Curse of Cora Bell Welcome to Country Youth Edition: An words and thoughtlessness cause a (Jinxed!, Book 1) Introduction to our First Peoples for crack to open up, but find out what happens when Rebecca McRitchie & Sharon O’Connor (illus.) Young Australians kindness begins to blossom, in this thought-provoking HarperCollins. PB. $17.99 Marcia Langton book by award-winning illustrator Britta Teckentrup. Available now Explore Australia. PB. $29.99 Cora is a foundling. She has no Available 1 September memory prior to her life with Dot This youth edition of Welcome to Country is BOOK OF THE MONTH and Scratch the cat in the city of Urt. Their essential reading for every young Middle Fiction survival is dependent on scavenging and Australian. The chapters cover prehistory, trading amidst fierce competition. Life post-colonial history, language, art, takes a terrifying turn for Cora when her storytelling, making a rightful place for Hayley Whelan home is destroyed, her family goes missing First Australians and looking to the future loves everything and she’s pursued by the menacing and powerful Jinx. for Indigenous Australia. You will quickly appreciate how about movies; she has Teaming up with two bumbling yet helpful fairies lucky we are to be the home of the world’s oldest spent her whole life seems Cora’s only option for survival. What follows is an continuing civilisation – which is both diverse and dreaming of writing and absolute whirlwind of an adventure that’s jam-packed thriving in Australia today. directing her own. When with powerful magic, witches, warlocks and hobgoblins her Grandma, with whom in far off cities. But in her quest for the truth about her The Ultimate Book of Planet Earth she’d been writing her background, Cora discovers the power of friendship, Anne-Sophie Baumann & Didier Balicevic horror movie, Rosebud, finds courage, and channels incredible strength against Chronicle. HB. $39.99 passes away, Hayley the overwhelming forces seeking to destroy her. Available 1 September inherits the money for an This first book in a new series is penned by the author The Ultimate series offers readers an actual, real, grown-up of the wonderful Whimsy & Woe. It’s a mix of enchanting intriguing, close-up view of each book’s video camera. Suddenly, suspense with a sprinkling of humour to lighten the more subject, with many opportunities for How to Make a she has three weeks to sinister moments. Recommended for for those aged 9+ hands-on interaction using flaps, tabs, Movie in 12 Days film and edit an entire who love a fantastical adventure. pop-ups and more. The Ultimate Book of Fiona Hardy movie with her friends, Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Planet Earth leaves no stone unturned as Affirm Press. PB. $16.99 but before she can even it explores the geography of Earth, as well as its Available 27 August lock in a location, strange atmosphere, weather, and ways to protect our world. things start happening The Magic Place and sabotage is afoot. Chris Wormell I really love this book. It captures perfectly how I David Fickling. HB. $24.99 Classic of the Month remember childhood summer holidays. The feeling you Available 1 September got when your friends all came together to work on a Chris Wormell’s The Magic Place Very Serious project, how important you felt when the is a perfectly imagined tale of Artemis Fowl adults in your life played along, and how sometimes woe to wonder. It’s a story about the Eoin Colfer you let the project get in the way of your friendships triumph of the human spirit. Puffin. PB. $16.99 (Hayley learns a lot about herself while making Rosebud We meet Clementine, a little orphan Available now – such as that directors are supposed to be bossy, but girl living with her wicked Aunt and Artemis Fowl, a child prodigy not mean!). In the spirit of a true summer holiday Uncle Grimble in a narrow house in the whose intelligence is matched only adventure, Hayley and her friends are given a lot of middle of a ‘great black city of smoke and soot and grime’. by his gift for nefarious schemes, begins freedom by the adults in their lives, but Hayley’s family The Grimbles treat Clementine cruelly. But fortunes turn his escapades through the techno-fantasy are never far away when she needs advice or help (or one ordinary day when an inquisitive boy and a small world of the fairies with the simple goal of when she needs to be grounded!). dog with a nose for smelling out mischief set a pack of stealing a butt-load of gold. Through a I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It even dogs and a madding crowd on a chase to hunt down a series of adventures with a killer cast of comes with a ‘Summer Holiday Program Study Guide’ at pair of fraudsters (none other than the wicked Grimbles!). bad guys ranging from a maniacal tech-company CEO to the end for all budding film makers and, given that it’s This is a gorgeous story full of whimsical charm that will an egomaniac demon from another dimension, Artemis almost impossible to read this book and NOT want to go enchant new readers aged 8+. transforms both emotionally and physically and by the out and immediately make your own summer movie, this Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster end of the series the teenage criminal mastermind will be very handy! Excellent for all kids 9+. ultimately learns who he really is. Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids Fire Girl, Forest Boy The anti-hero is joined by a flatulent dwarf who can’t stop stealing, a sassy captain of the fairy police with a Come to the launch of How to Make a Movie in 12 Days! Chloe Daykin Faber Child. PB. $14.99 collection of gadgets to make Batman green with envy, Saturday 24 August, 2pm at Readings Kids and his lifelong bodyguard who has the skill set of a ninja 315 Lygon Street, Carlton Available 3 September Chloe Daykin, the critically and the disposition of a golden retriever. The series has it acclaimed author of The Boy Who Hit all: action, sci-fi, magic, and a dash of romance. Play and Fish Boy, is at it again with her Full disclosure, I have read this series several times. I latest wonder, Fire Girl, Forest Boy. A book go back to them when I’ve read something disappointing that brings magic and science together in because if I want to remember how much fun reading the setting of modern Peru, it explores all can be, I pick up an Artemis Fowl book. A classic middle the wonder of the Amazon rainforest, but fiction series that delivers in full, for ages 9+. also engages with environmental and economic issues. Nicholas Wilson is from Readings Carlton 22 READINGS MONTHLY September 2019 DVDS | MUSIC

But as her actions grow bolder and her legend grows, an unexpected letter Film & TV changes everything. Woman at War is a quirky tale of an unlikely David taking on the Goliath of industry, one electricity pylon at a time. Documentary Rocketman $29.95 | Available 28 August 2040 Rocketman follows the $29.95 | Available now fantastical journey of Award-winning director transformation of shy Damon Gameau embarks on piano prodigy Reginald a journey to explore what Dwight into international the future would look like by superstar Elton John. This the year 2040 if we simply inspirational story – set to embraced the best solutions Elton John’s most beloved songs and already available to us to performed by star Taron Egerton – tells the improve our planet, and shifted them into universally relatable story of how a the mainstream. Gameau blends traditional small-town boy became one of the most documentary footage with dramatised iconic figures in pop culture. sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision board for our planet. Department Q Box Set $69.95 | Available 4 September The Final Quarter Collect all four movies from $29.95 | Available 4 September the Nordic Noir In the final three years of ‘Department Q’ series, his playing career, AFL based on the best-selling footballer and Indigenous novels by Jussi Adler- leader Adam Goodes Olsen. The films follow became a lightning rod for chief detective Carl Mørck a heated public debate as he heads up the newly established about racism that divided Department Q – a place where cold cases go the nation. Using only archival footage to die. This box set includes: The Keeper of aired at the time, The Final Quarter holds a Lost Causes, The Absent One, A Conspiracy mirror to Australia and is an opportunity of Faith and The Purity of Vengeance. to reconsider what happened on and off the football field. TV Popular Killing Eve: Season 2 Music $34.95 | Available 28 August Eve is a very bored, very smart, MI5 security officer who is very desk-bound. Villanelle is a very talented Blues killer who clings to the luxuries of her job. Eve and Villanelle go head to head Box of Breath in a fierce game of cat and mouse, each Hazmat Modine woman equally obsessed with the other as $24.95 | Also on vinyl Eve is tasked with hunting down the Available now psychopathic assassin. ‘Hazmat Modine’s music might have True Detective: Season 3 fermented in the $39.95 | Season 1-3 Box Set $69.95 cultural melting pot of Available 4 September New York City, but it In this third season of the comes caked in anthology crime drama gutbucket Mississippi blues mud, suffused created by Nic Pizzolatto, with Memphis soul and varnished with Detective Wayne Hays and brassy jazz-infused New Orleans gumbo. Detective Roland West With this haunting humdinger of a fifth investigate the album, the band has hit an apotheosis that disappearance of two consolidates claims to it being one of the young siblings in small-town Arkansas in most dynamic and distinctive US roots 1980. Over the years the case causes a rift collectives.’ – The Australian between the two detectives, and Hays’ memory begins to succumb to dementia as his wife Amelia writes a bestselling book Pop/Rock/Alt about the unsolved case. i,i Film Bon Iver $19.95 | Also on vinyl Available 30 August Woman at War The thirteen new songs $29.95 | Available 4 September on i,i complete a cycle: Halla is a fifty-year-old from the winter of For independent Icelandic Emma, Forever Ago woman who lives a came the frenetic spring mysterious double life. She of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, and is secretly waging a the unhinged summer of 22, A Million. one-woman-war on the Now, fall arrives early with i,i. Here, front local aluminium industry. man Justin Vernon sings about the MUSIC September 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 23

balance between the individual and the community, inspiration and creation.

Salt Readings Angie McMahon $19.95 | Also on vinyl Fabulous Available now While Salt is primarily Annual driven by deft guitar work and a tight rhythm section, it’s McMahon’s Classical stunning vocal performance that unequivocally captures the spotlight. Sale From the lethargic drawl of ‘Pasta’ to the soul-crushing lament of ‘Soon’, it’s remarkably easy to find yourself in McMahon’s strikingly relatable lyrics. It’s akin to peering into a still pool of water; a look into your own life as much as hers.

Country Up to hat controls our sex lives? Our Wbrains. Yet there is surprisingly little research into the ways our brains influence Gypsy % our sex drive. Extraordinary insights into Eilen Jewell how the brain works can be gained when $19.95 | Also on vinyl 60 something goes wrong through brain injury Available now off or disease. In Sex in the Brain, clinical One of Americana’s neuropsychologist Dr Amee Baird takes most intriguing and readers on an entertaining and informative creative voices, Eilen tour of the sexiest bits of the human brain. Jewell returns with Drawing from true stories, this revealing eleven new songs in and sometimes heartbreaking book unfolds Gypsy. This album is Including: a better understanding of the links between filled with new sounds, old sounds, electric brain function and our sexual selves. guitar-driven rockers, classic country, and JS Bach tender ballads. Gypsy continues to solidify Jewell’s reputation as one of the most distinctive and potent voices in the Elena Kats- Americana world today. Chernin www.newsouthpublishing.com Folk Kathleen Battle Rooted Martin Simpson Yo-Yo Ma 2CD $31.95 | Also on vinyl Available now Slava Summing up the themes of his new Grigoryan A powerful look at how album, Martin Simpson says: ‘The music and our culture treats the pain songs embrace nature Karl Böhm and suffering of women. and travel, mental health, real life stories, loss, politics and Leonard history ... and the threads that bind all ‘This book could not be more this together can be followed back a long Bernstein timely or important.’ way, to 1965 when I got my first guitar and started to soak up material and ideas at a Puccini Katharine Viner, very rapid rate.’ Australian Editor, the Guardian Jazz Special of the Opera DVDs Month and so much Orvieto more Chick Corea & Stefano Bollani Was $26.95 $11.95 A remarkable memoir Available now of a singular life in Orvieto is the first album release of the art and nature. exciting duo of Chick Corea and Stefano Now available in all ‘Breathtakingly original. Bollani, a live set drawn from New Year Readings stores (except Night Fishing is a masterpiece.’ Readings State Library performances at the Umbria Jazz Winter Charlotte Wood, Festival where the two pianists played Victoria and Readings several nights of concerts together. Kids) and online until author of The Natural Way of Things Throughout these performances Corea and Monday 30 September, Bollani complete and extend each other’s phrases almost as if a single mind was while stocks last. controlling all four hands.