FREE APRIL 2020

Mark Rubbo’s coronavirus diary… …and great isolation reading to get you page 4 through April

from page 6

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ROGER ENO AND BRIAN ENO JULIA BAIRD SAMI TAMIMI, page 22 COUNTRY page 12 TARA WIGLEY LAURA JEAN ANNE TYLER MUSIC page 16 MCKAY page 7 page 21 page 6

CARLTON 309 LYGON ST 9347 6633 KIDS 315 LYGON ST 9341 7730 DONCASTER WESTFIELD DONCASTER, 619 DONCASTER RD 9810 0891 HAWTHORN 701 GLENFERRIE RD 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 GLENFERRIE RD 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 ACLAND ST 9525 3852 STATE LIBRARY VICTORIA 285-321 RUSSELL ST 8664 7540 | SEE SHOP OPENING HOURS, BROWSE AND BUY ONLINE AT READINGS.COM.AU Autumn reading 26 YEARS OF INDEPENDENT from Text PUBLISHING

An unmissable Drawing on his extensive A remarkable A cleaning woman Norah is told that on 11 anthology by twenty- travels—from remote collection of personal dreams of having February she will kill a four Australian provinces in China and essays, poetry and the financial freedom man she doesn’t know. grandmothers. Featuring Cambodia to pre- and criticism that reflects to write. Her life is She’s just moved to contributions from Helen post-war Yiddish Poland, on what it means to transformed when Berlin to leave her old Garner, Gillian Triggs, and Indigenous and be a woman, a body, she marries into life behind, but could Maggie Beer, Ali Cobby present-day Australia— an artist. Blueberries money—but it comes she be running into an Eckermann and more, beloved storyteller Arnold signals the arrival at a cost. Indelicacy is even more dangerous these thoughtful and Zable shares stories of of a stunning new the story of a woman future? A page-turning provoking essays reflect dispossession, survival, voice in Australian navigating gender psychological thriller about on the many aspects of healing and joy with creative non-fiction. and class roles to the slippery nature of time being a grandmother his customary insight ‘Heartstopping.’ empower herself and and destiny by bestselling in the 21st century. and compassion. Maria Tumarkin fulfil her dreams. author Melanie Raabe.

MARVELLOUS MIDDLE GRADE

In the late 19th century four The charming autobiography pioneering writers, Ethel Turner, of Picnic at Hanging Rock In a wonderous, snow- A sensitive and heart-warming Barbara Baynton, Nettie Palmer author Joan Lindsay covered world, rich with novel about love, change and Henry Handel Richardson, is now a Text Classic, mysterious creatures and and forgiving ourselves. changed Australia’s literary introduced by Phillip Adams. forbidden magic, one girl sets When Bea’s parents divorced, landscape, dispelling the myth A reminiscence of her out on a dangerous quest to some things changed but of bush heroism and mateship. marriage to Sir Daryl Lindsay save her sister. But first she lots stayed the same. Now, one of Australia’s most and their life and travels, must unlock her own secret Now her dad is marrying his eminent historians offers readers an Time Without Clocks also magical ability. A perfect boyfriend Jesse and, as the inside look at the intricacies of their reveals Lindsay's fascination read for fans of Nevermoor. wedding approaches, Bea is intersecting and entwined lives. with the ambiguities of time. ‘Just brilliant.’ Karen Foxlee haunted by a terrible secret.

textpublishing.com.au NEWS April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 3

nationality. The winner will be announced on operas from Wagner and Mozart, ballets Wednesday 3 June. Opera and Ballet DVD Sale from Tchaikovsky and the Bolshoi Ballet April To celebrate the 2020 opera and ballet and a host more. This offer is available at season, Readings is offering up to 40% Readings Carlton, Hawthorn, Malvern, and The Stella Prize 2020 shortlist off a range of opera and ballet DVDs. online until April 30, while stocks last. News The Stella Prize shortlist for 2020 has been Prices start at $14.95 and titles include announced, celebrating Australian women’s contribution to literature. The six books on the 2020 Stella Prize shortlist are: There The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 Was Still Love by Favel Parrett, Here Until longlist August by Josephine Rowe, The Weekend The longlist for the Women’s Prize for by Charlotte Wood, See What You Made Fiction has been announced. The sixteen Me Do by Jess Hill, Diving into Glass by books on the longlist are: Djinn Patrol Caro Llewellyn, and The Yield by Tara June on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara; Winch. The prize awards $50,000, and both Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser- fiction and nonfiction books are eligible for Akner; Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams; entry. The 2020 Stella Prize will be awarded Dominicana by Angie Cruz; Actress by Anne on Tuesday 14 April. Enright; Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo; Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie; A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes; How 20% off 20 popular cookbooks We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee; The Most Throughout the month of April, we are Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo; offering 20% off a range of essential The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel; cookbooks. There’s something for every Girl by Edna O’ Brien; Hamnet by Maggie home cook, with titles from Yotam Ottolenghi, O’ Farrell; Weather by Jenny Offill;The Phillippa Grogan, Hetty McKinnon, and many Dutch House by Ann Patchett; and Red more. This offer is available until 30 April on at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson. The in-stock, full priced items only, online (use the Women’s Prize awards £30,000 to a work of code 20COOKBOOKS) and in all Readings fiction written in English by a woman of any shops except SLV and Kids.

READINGS MONTHLY EDITOR DVDS CURATOR PRICES AND AVAILABILITY Free, independent monthly newspaper Elke Power Lou Fulco Please note that all prices and release published by Readings Books, Music & Film [email protected] dates in Readings Monthly are correct EVENTS & PROGRAMMING at time of publication, however prices SUBSCRIBE EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Chris Gordon and release dates may change without You can subscribe to Readings Monthly Judi Mitchell, Ellen Cregan & Kara notice. Special price offers apply only for and our e-news by visiting our website: Nicholson ADVERTISING the month in which they are featured in readings.com.au/sign-up Ellen Cregan Readings Monthly. PROOFREADERS [email protected] DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Judi Mitchell, Ellen Cregan & Marie Readings donates 10% of its profits each MAIL-ORDER PURCHASES GRAPHIC DESIGN Matteson year to the Readings Foundation: $7 flat rate for anywhere in Australia Cat Matteson readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation KIDS/YA CURATORS DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Angela Crocombe & Dani Solomon FRONT COVER ONLINE PURCHASES The April Readings Monthly cover features $7 flat rate for anywhere in Australia for MUSIC CURATOR a photograph of Readings’ managing orders under $150. Free delivery on orders Dave Clarke director Mark Rubbo and his son, Readings $150 and over. Carlton manager Joe Rubbo at the CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR entrance of Readings Carlton. The photo Phil Richards was taken by Readings’ digital marketing manager Lian Hingee.

While all availability dates were correct at the time of going to press, due to the COVID-19 crisis the unexpected may happen along the supply chain. Please bear with us as we bring you books in these rapidly changing circumstances, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team on 03 9341 7729 or at [email protected] if you have any questions. Thank you.

Cookbooks readings.com.au/collection/popular-cookbooks Promo code: 20COOKBOOKS 4 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 COLUMNS

been recommended by so many authors that we can’t wait to read it. Mark’s Editor’s Our Nonfiction Book of the Month is the Receive a incredibly prescient Phosphorescence by Julia Say Note Baird. Somehow, we’ve been given the books handpicked we need this month. We have an extract (page 5) from a new collection of essays edited by Helen Elliott, Grandmothers, and book a Mark’s Coronavirus Diary, While we all adapt to the you can find out more about it on page 12. Thursday 27 March 2020. grim reality of this historic Shannon Molloy’s Fourteen has been called month I email our accountant time, there is, as ever – this generation’s Holding the Man, and two asking how long can perhaps more than ever – books relevant to this time of confinement we trade without comfort, distraction, and are the gorgeous Design Lives Here, which directly to any income? What are our liabilities? resonance to be found in books. April has inspired our reviewer, and Marie Kondo’s What can we do for our staff? We have revealed itself to be one of those thrilling Joy at Work: The Life-Changing Magic of your door. a number of casuals with no leave months in which our reviewers have been Organising Your Working Life. Celebrated provisions, how can we help? Who needs impressed and delighted by a swathe of new Australian film critic Adrian Martin’s major help? What about our publishers and books notable for their originality, dazzling essays are collected in Mysteries of Cinema, authors? How will we sell their books? writing and surprising plots. As you’ll see and there are also new books from Nick Cave, How will we let you know about them? throughout these pages, a number of books Brenda Niall, Liz Allen, Malcolm Turnbull How can we get them to you? have already been flagged as strong and many more. My dear son Joe says these times will contenders for book of the year. For anyone staring blankly into the test our relationship, that we have to be Among them is our Fiction Book of the pantry, thinking of the months ahead, kind to each other. As a baby boomer Month, which could not come with higher you can’t go past Falastin: A Cookbook I’ve had a fortunate life, luck seemed to praise than that offered by our head book by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley (with stay with me. That’s not true for these buyer, Alison Huber (and don’t worry, she’ll a foreword by the one and only Yotam times. The State Library tells us that be back with Dear Reader next month). The Ottolenghi). Both work with Ottolenghi they are closing and our shop there has Animals of That Country by Laura Jean and have co-authored several of his most- to close; seven of our team are affected. McKay is, as Alison says in her review, ‘a loved cookbooks. I don’t need to say more! It brings it home. We make the hard standout debut of 2020’. It is also a novel You’ll see notes throughout our April The Readings Book decision to cancel all our events; Chris, about a pandemic, so its timing is eerily edition letting you know that due to the our marvellous events and programming appropriate. Another title that speaks to our COVID-19 crisis, it’s possible that books Subscriptions will manager, has numerous stellar sessions collective uncertainty is the brilliant debut may be delayed unexpectedly after this take you on an scheduled. It’s hard for her; all that work poetry collection from Readings’ own Oliver edition of the Readings Monthly is out in gone in a flash. Driscoll, I Don’t Know How That Happened. the world. Please know we’ll do our best exciting excursion How will Readings survive a Elsewhere in Australian fiction we have to keep you informed and to connect you through our literary shutdown? How will other shops? Chris much-anticipated debut novels from Pip to the books you seek, and you can call Redfern, from the wonderful Avenue Williams, Leah Swann, Hilde Hinton or email us if you have any questions (see present, without Bookshops, rings me – we talk about how and Ronnie Scott, along with an equally News on page 3 for details). leaving the comfort long we can last. Leesa Lambert from anticipated second novel from Mirandi Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote about Neighbourhood Books and The Little Riwoe. In international fiction there was a hope from a book we can look forward to of your home. Bookroom sends me a text, sharing the clamour for reading copies of Anne Tyler’s seeing in May, Recollections of My Non- love. Deb Force from The Sun Bookshop in latest novel, Redhead by the Side of the Road, Existence by the inimitable Rebecca Solnit Yarraville announces that she’s going to and our managing director Mark Rubbo’s (Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to do free home deliveries; what a great idea. review makes the reason for this clear. Me): ‘My university lecturer had accused To find out more visit: There were similar levels of excitement me of offering palliatives for marketing We jump in too, not knowing how readings.com.au/ about new books from Jami Attenberg, reasons, but what I’d wanted to offer is it will work. It’s tricky; I enlist my son- Emily St. John Mandel (of Station Eleven encouragement, a word that though it book-subscriptions- in-law as my driver, using an app that fame), Maggie O’Farrell and N.K. Jemisin, carries the stigma of niceness, literally at-readings supposedly takes us on the most efficient along with rave reviews for books by C. Pam means to instil courage. Encouragement route – ‘Didn’t we just go past there a few Zhang and Naoise Dolan. Another to look not to make people feel good, but to make minutes ago?’ We drop off some books for a out for is Hawaiian author Kawai Strong them feel powerful.’ Be safe, think of customer who is also a friend; he calls out Washburn’s debut novel, which has already others, read, and have courage. to his wife, ‘Mark’s here with the books, come and say hello.’ As I leave another house, a loud, delighted cry of ‘Yaaay’ echoes across the street. At our other have stopped acknowledging the work shops, people pitch in to deliver books, of our wonderful community. Not even albums, DVDs, sticker books, puzzles and About for a single heartbeat have we closed our more on their way home. Pierre at St Kilda eyes. Not for a single second have we delights a customer’s elderly parents who considered being quiet. Rather, we have are confined to their house. Events decided that now is the time to yell from We send out an email to the 150 lovely our roof tops, now is the time to raise our people who work for us: we may have glasses to writers that can create worlds A note from Christine Gordon, our to close, all our jobs are affected, but where there was nothing before, to poets it’s important that we support you and programming and events manager, about the temporary pause on Readings’ events that can give voice to an emotion with also that Readings comes out the other programme due to COVID-19. which we were previously unfamiliar, end. I’m overwhelmed by the responses: and to journalists that take us to other reduce my salary, cut my hours, I’ll take Winter is coming, but it’s still sunny here. people’s reality. unpaid leave, I’ll work for nothing, I want This is what I do know about the literary Right now is the time to shout as us to survive. But there’s also the response community. It is a generous and resilient loud as possible with admiration. Now is from those who are really struggling, who being, even when faced with a complete the time to show all of these courageous really need the income. reckoning of sorts. Authors, publicists, creators that they are not alone. It’s a great big family, we’re all pitching publishers, book sellers and readers all fall We have various authors celebrating in to help. Online orders arrive with lovely into this extraordinary cohort of people their book releases online and we messages of support and encouragement. that will not be stopped. have booksellers singing, writing, We wait every day for an announcement Although opportunities to celebrate and discussing and sharing there too. We about whether we should close our physical discuss new works and ideas have changed have conversations we want you to hear, shops, and we think about all the ways we verges, rest assured, these people remain on the Readings podcast and elsewhere. can continue to serve our community in steadfast in pragmatic action. The sharing We have so many books we want you to these extraordinary circumstances. We are of books and ideas has not missed a beat. It read. We have so many starting points for all getting unsettled and have good days, is continuing and gathering strength. discussions that must be had. We may all bad days. I shouted at a colleague; how I know that the Readings events be coming to terms with a new landscape, could I do that? program will not be back in our shops but really the important things have So, the message? Support each other, for quite some time. It will be winter stayed the same. We at Readings are here. conserve to rebuild something better, and time before we can all meet under the We will be here. don’t shout at loved ones or colleagues. same roof, but that doesn’t mean we Stay safe. See you soon. EXTRACT April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 5

Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-century Grandmothers Helen Elliott (ed.) Text. PB. $34.99 Grandmothers’ Available 31 March Law Should Never Be Broken An edited extract from Ali Cobby Eckermann’s essay of the same title in Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-Century Grandmothers edited by Helen Elliott

In the night someone strung a line of crow carcasses of the nuclear testing by the British on our traditional travelled extensively across Australia and overseas. across the fence outside her house. She discovers them lands at Maralinga. If the weather was too hot or too cold, Everywhere, my eyes are trained to watch for birds. Using as she leaves the house for work. Her breath catches in we camped on mattresses in her dimly lit lounge room, cultural knowledge, Nana taught me how to see, how to her chest and she cannot breathe. Jesus! she mutters, peering at faded black-and-white photographs of people watch. In Australia, wherever I travel, both tjintar-tjintar half in anger and half in a plea to the heavens. Who who had passed. She kept this stash of photographs and kaanka are always close by. Tjintar-tjintar is the would do such a thing? Unable to move, her entire hidden in a handbag in her bedroom and brought them message bird, the dancer who delivers both good and sad body is frozen with shock. She dares not look at the out to teach me our family tree. There was always laughter news. No longer fearful, I feel reassured by his presence. dull eyes on their avian faces, the heads hanging as if and the sharing of food. I loved every opportunity to care Kaanka has become my most defining bird. I believe she dangling on broken necks. Her hands rise, as if by free for her; it was a blessing prompted by cultural exchange. is my Nana, still guiding me. When I hear her call, I am will to cover her mouth, to stifle the scream she feels As Nana grew more frail, she moved into the local aged- immediately inclined to regard my actions and words growing inside her chest. It is inaudible. She vomits care facility where most of the Kupa Piti Kungkas Tjuta with kindness, as she instructed. Often, she greets me a mouthful of dark bile into her palms. The darkness spent their final years. Through the kinship system, I was in the early morning as I leave for exercise or work. Most acts like a mirror and she stares at the reflection she proud to regard most of these cultural law women as my evenings, when the sun is closest to the horizon, she sits holds in her cupped hands. It is her grandmother’s grandmothers. Those years with Nana before she died outside my house talking loudly, reminding me of the face transforming to crow. were among my happiest. importance of self-evaluation and responsibility. Kaanka In the backyard of the tenement house the young Many Aboriginal people know the willie wagtail bird as reminds me to remember Nana’s teachings, and to stay woman’s actions are frantic. Her hands are filthy now, the messenger bird. This small black-and-white-feathered humble as I journey on my path. covered with dirt from the large hole she has dug in fantail is often known to bring news when loved ones have It has been my privilege to learn snippets from cultures the ground. She gathers twigs from under the hedge died. I saw it once relentlessly flying against a window- outside my own. In 2018, I travelled to Colombia in South to add to a small fire she has lit next to the hole. She pane to gain attention, minutes before the phone call America, to attend and present at the 28th International paces between as if undecided. She kneels to scoop arrived, confirming a family member had died. I used to Poetry Festival of Medellín, which celebrates both more dirt into the grave, bends to gather more kindling chase them away. My grandmother and her cousin-sisters shamanism and poetry. During the opening ceremony, for the fire. Squatting on her haunches, she rolls her would sing to them, inviting them to join us, laughing the shamans welcomed us. This seven-day event was an head back to stare at the sky. It is cloudless, as empty at my nervousness. I learned that these birds also bring incredible experience for me. During my time in Medellín, as her shaking heart. Her head flops forward and she good news, and are guardians. In Yankunytjatjara culture, I met with three South American women poets: Negma sobs into her hands. Through her tears she senses the all bird names are their call. The willie wagtail is tjintar- Coy (Maya Nation) from Guatemala, Alba Eiraji Duarte arrival of her, and quickly wipes her tears in a muddy tjintar. The crow is kaanka. Both birds have become Portillo (Guarini) from Paraguay, and Rayen Kvych streak across her face. A willie wagtail hops across the essential to my holistic health. (Mapuche) from Chile. Through an interpreter, we spent dry lawn to her side. They crouch together, staring in It is common sense that if one stays in one location time talking about the Stolen Generations and the sadness silence into the fire. for a long amount of time, one will learn to know that I carry inside me. This ongoing chapter of Australian place in a more intimate way. My traditional family has history shocked and saddened these cultured women. lived on our traditional lands for over eighty thousand They explained to me that Grandmothers’ Law should years. Anthropological science has proved that Aboriginal never be broken; it is a cultural law that should remain Birds. The adventure of feeling an association with culture is the longest living continuous culture on this intact. My new friends reminded me of the importance birds was taught to me by my familial grandmother, planet. A job opportunity in my early forties provided me of my role as grandmother: to mentor a positive and whom I first met when I was thirty-four, in the red with the chance to be closer to my traditional Anangu encouraging presence; to affirm a loving companionship; desert of central Australia, at the small community family and live with them in the desert. Within their and to foster a long view of family connection, as all where she was living. Nana was a petite woman filled ‘university’ of ancient knowledge I was their ‘mature- children crave a sense of belonging. with warm laughter, with an engaging smile and a age student’, who had a voracious appetite to learn. These women reminded me that Grandmothers’ Law shock of white hair. I was the second of her Stolen- Guidance from a select group of senior women and men is an ancient law, bound through all indigenous cultures. Generation grandchildren to return home. Now in was grounded and sage; I listened to their every word. They were appalled that the sanctity of Grandmothers’ her senior years, she was respectfully retired from As they retired and moved into aged care, I returned to Law for Aboriginal Australians has, for generations, been work and always made time to sit and talk, telling the south. At forty-five, I bought the old General Store broken by ongoing government policies of child removal. story after story, as if making up for those lost years. in Koolunga, just south of Port Pirie in South Australia, I remember them saying in dismay, ‘Even war doesn’t In the late afternoon we sat outside her house in the establishing Australia’s first Aboriginal Writers Retreat. I do that!’ These three generous women told me about the shade of the water tank while she sang the birds, replayed – over and over in my heart and mind – the ethics Grandmother Ceremony they honour in each of their feeding them titbits as they arrived. I watched, and memories of those poignant years learning from Nana villages, and assured me that they would pray for the fascinated, as some flew onto her lap, chirping to and the other Elders. The vividness of recent memory grandmothers who have suffered the traumatic legacy her as if joining her laughter. A few years later, began to override unpleasant memories of the racism I had of the Stolen Generations. And, through the interpreter, Nana moved to Coober Pedy. She was a founding endured during my youth as an adopted child. With my we prayed together for the rich and sacred blessing of member of Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, a heroic group new knowledge, I could enjoy resting in bed, listening for grandmothers to continue in all our families. of senior Aboriginal women who in 1998 headlined the first bird call of the day. Often, I would gain energy and a challenge against the Australian government to momentum from the bird calls that were most familiar This an edited extract from the essay ‘Grandmothers’ Law Should Never Be Broken’ by Ali Cobby Eckermann from Grandmothers: Essays prevent a nuclear waste dump on their traditional to me. The knowledge of birds has become an ongoing land, and won their case in 2004. by 21st-Century Grandmothers edited by Helen Elliott and published ritual of focus for me. Familiar bird calls act as spiritual this month by Text Publishing. The Stuart Highway cuts through the centre of affirmations to my heart and reassurances that those I Ali Cobby Eckermann is an award-winning writer of poetry, memoir Australia from Darwin in the north, through Alice love are nearby: I am loved by nature, and I am not alone. and fiction. Her poetry collections include little bit long time, Kami and Springs, to Port Augusta in the south. It is one of her most recent, Inside My Mother. Her verse novel Ruby Moonlight Australia’s major highways and the opal-mining won the 2013 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry and Book of the town of Coober Pedy rests on its rim. On warm Year Award. Cobby Eckermann was awarded the inaugural Windham- Campbell Literature Prize from Yale University in 2017. sunny days I would sit on Nana’s verandah in the Since the death of Nana, and all the many other company of her dogs, listening to her childhood caring, wise, senior women who welcomed me back into See page 12 for more about Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-Century stories of growing up in the bush before the saga my family, including my mother and her sisters, I have Grandmothers. 6 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 FICTION

Esme comes of age when women are historical crime novels under a pen name. agitating for the vote, to be heard in their Her skill and experience writing historical New own right and have more control over fiction shines through in this latest their lives and yet the job she does (she is literary novel. Fiction working on the dictionary now) is mainly The story takes place in 1877 on the looking at words, hence she is looking at goldfields of the Palmer River region the world through a male perspective. in Far North Queensland. At the centre As she gains more freedom with age, her of the narrative are two young women, The Animals in That Country is a standout debut novel world broadens to encompass literary Ying and Meriem. Ying has come with Oxford. There she meets people who will BOOK OF THE of 2020. It is the second work of fiction from Laura Jean her brother to find fortune and repay McKay, following her acclaimed short-story collection, impact on her life in so many ways. a family debt incurred back home in MONTH Holiday in Cambodia (2013). Original, hugely entertaining Esme and her world really resonated China. She must pose as a man for her Australian and superbly crafted, this is one heck of a road-trip novel, with me. She is a terrific character: own physical safety. Meriem is a first- Fiction whose timing and insights into human behaviour in a crisis intelligent, empathetic and resilient. I was generation white Australian who has been could not be more prescient. exhilarated reading this novel and I really banished up north after an unwanted In an Australia in the grip of a pandemic, we meet Jean wanted her ‘Dictionary of Lost Words’ to pregnancy. She has found work as a maid Bennett, a unique character in recent reading memory. exist so I could own it – owning the iconic at the local brothel but must endure the Working as a guide at an animal sanctuary in the outback, complete Oxford Dictionaries no longer condescension of the towns folk who don’t Jean is rough and brassy, lives hard, and is full of love for seemed enough! approve of her employer. Their stories life and family. As the ‘zooflu’ from down south edges ever Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn intersect as they both struggle to survive closer to home, it becomes clear that its major symptom in the harsh climate of the physical is the ability for infected humans to understand animals. Sheerwater environment, but also the oppressive atmosphere of racism and misogyny Imagine that for a moment if you can: hearing your cat one- Leah Swann in colonial Australia. The writing here on-one might be okay, but what about the full cacophony of Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 is subtle and the subject matter is the animal kingdom all at once and all the time? Of course, Available now people start to lose their minds. In the midst of the growing beautifully researched. Historical fiction Leah Swann’s debut chaos, Jean’s granddaughter is taken away by her infected often struggles to gain broad appeal novel is literary father, who is on a mission to find the meaning of life, and but Riwoe adeptly weaves together a fiction with the tempo of a The Animals in so Jean has to get on the road to go after them, taking Sue compelling narrative while highlighting crime novel. Told over That Country – her best friend who also happens to be a dingo – with her. an aspect of colonial Australian history three dramatic days, even What follows is an incredibly tense and masterfully paced that is not often seen from the point of Laura Jean McKay astute readers will be Scribe. PB. $29.99 adventure, which is as poetic as it is surprising. view of the displaced. stunned by the Available 31 March The heart of McKay’s vision is to explore the potential conclusion. Kara Nicholson is from Readings online of human–nonhuman communication, but she does not Ava, the mother of two young boys, offer up a reality of simple or benign coexistence were we is driving towards Sheerwater, an idyllic to understand each other. Her animals are neither benevolent nor prophetic (as talking The Loudness of Unsaid town on the Great Ocean Road. Within animals sometimes appear in fiction); their languages do not make them human-like. In Things pages, Ava’s hypervigilance and mental this way, McKay asks uncomfortable and impossible questions about how we are to live Hilde Hinton checklists alert the reader that this is not together as animals in this country, especially when that country is under increasing Hachette. PB. $29.99 a casual trip or holiday. She has resigned environmental, ideological, and social pressure. This book is mind-bending in the best Available 31 March from her job, and will begin a new job possible ways, and by quirk of fate, will now also be read as a superb critique of our Reading The over one hundred kilometres away. She preparedness for existential emergencies, like those we have been facing in recent months. Loudness of Unsaid has forwarded her mail, but not her Things, I was reminded Alison Huber is the head book buyer for Readings husband’s. When nine-year-old Max asks of two other debut novels ‘When’s Daddy going to come?’, she gives that I have also reviewed: a vague answer. Eleanor Oliphant is For all her planning, the last thing Completely Fine and The Ava expects is for a light plane to crash Lost Flowers of Alice in a field next to the highway. She can While all availability dates were correct at the time of going Hart. With both those books, I knew I tell the occupants need rescuing, and to press, due to the COVID-19 crisis the unexpected may had read something special and I feel the her instincts kick in. However, when happen along the supply chain. same with Hilde Hinton’s debut. While she returns to her car, her boys are all three novels emotionally connected Please bear with us as we bring you books in these rapidly missing. The police are called and the with me, The Loudness of Unsaid Things changing circumstances, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with investigation begins. has a uniqueness, especially in relation our team on 03 9341 7729 or at [email protected] After this, the narrative splits into the to style and characterisation, that makes if you have any questions. voices of several characters. While Ava’s it all its own. voice provides the primary perspective, Thank you. There are two timeframes in the novel: we hear from her husband, Laurence, as one set in the early/mid-1980s, and one the police interview him. Laurence then somewhere fairly close to the present. comes to the Geelong area to begin his own Growing up in the ’80s is Susie, who lives search. The author also captures the voice with her father in Melbourne and has of young Max as he navigates changing Murray’s epic first edition of the OED. It scheduled visits with her mother, either circumstances and tries to reassure and Australian is as if The Surgeon of Crowthorne crossed at her flat or at the ‘mind hospital’ when care for his four-year-old brother. This paths with Esme and this is its progeny. her mother is feeling unwell. Closer to the Fiction rendition of Max is sensitive and believable Towards the end of the nineteenth present we are introduced to Miss Kaye and reminded me of the child’s voice in century Esme is a little motherless girl who works at ‘The Institute’, a mental Room by Emma Donaghue. The Dictionary of Lost Words who goes to work with her Da at the health clinic for women where we observe To say more about the plot would Pip Williams Scriptorium, a converted garden shed at her daily interactions with the inpatients. involve spoilers, but this is a well-paced Affirm Press. PB. $32.99 James Murray’s property. She also spends Engaging right from the start, I could read. Sheerwater focuses on a crucial Available 31 March time at the Murray house with their not have possibly guessed where this social issue, and readers would do well to To write this review, young maid, Lizzie, a relationship that novel would take me. It is so cleverly pair it with the Stella Prize-shortlisted See obviously, I had to endures into adulthood and becomes a structured and full of little golden What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill. have completed reading friendship that transcends cultural and nuggets of text that just take your breath the book and that is the class divides. Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn away. It manages to cover so many sadness for me because I One day one of the postcard-sized themes, including trauma, mental health, did not want it to end. papers that are used to record the Stone Sky Gold Mountain family relationships and grief, yet still This absorbing story that words falls near her, either discarded or Mirandi Riwoe give depth to each one. The novel is full incorporates accidently, but Esme decides to keep it UQP. PB. $29.99 of encounters and events that many lexicography, dictionaries and books with and entrusts Lizzie to store it in an old Available 31 March will relate to (first job, first time tasting the story of a young girl growing up in case in her room. So begins her collection Although Stone Sky alcohol, and first friendship falling apart) Edwardian England engrossed me. of words. She finds that quite often they Gold Mountain is along with the joy and/or sadness that You might think the study of are words that women use, particularly only Mirandi Riwoe’s come with each. Those (like me) who grew lexicography a dry topic for a novel but poorer women, and she becomes second work of literary up in the ’80s will also have great fun Pip Williams manages to bring alive the fascinated by women at the market who fiction (her first, Fish picking up all the cultural references from beginnings of the first Oxford Dictionary utter slang or female vernacular, and she Girl, was shortlisted for that time. through the eyes of Esme, whose father collects these words as well. She is an the Stella Prize), she has Now more than ever, it’s so important is one of the compilers working on James astute and intelligent observer. also written three to support debut Australian authors FICTION April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 7

and Hilde Hinton has produced an cricket tournaments, horseracing, time; Micah can’t understand why. In the accomplished first novel that I’m sure bushrangers, sheep droving, frontier International evening, when Cass isn’t with him, Micah many will find rewarding to read. I have a wars and first encounters with women, Fiction likes to play solitaire on his phone before feeling that The Loudness of Unsaid Things Plorn enjoys wonderful adventures as he goes to bed. will be one of my most recommended he works to prove himself. This is Tom This looks to be pretty much the books of this year. Keneally in his most familiar terrain, Redhead by the Side of the gamut of Micah’s life until one morning Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton taking historical figures and events Road the eighteen-year-old son of a former and reimagining them with compassion Anne Tyler college girlfriend turns up at his door; he’s and humour. C&W. HB. Was $32.99 Brink Adams and looks like a well-off kid. The Adversary $29.99 (Hardback at paperback His mum is a lawyer, for legal aid, and Ronnie Scott price) his dad is a corporate lawyer; they don’t Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99 Gulliver’s Wife Available 9 April understand him and his dad is not his Available 15 April Lauren Chater Micah Mortimer ‘... biological father. When Brink was looking With his debut novel S&S. PB. $32.99 lives alone; he keeps through a box of photos with his mother, The Adversary, Available 1 April to himself; his routine is they come across a photo of Micah. ‘He Ronnie Scott has gifted London, 1702. When her etched in stone.’ Micah’s was the love of my life,’ she says. Brink readers the most relatable husband is lost at sea, an ordinary man. He is convinced that Micah is his father, coming-of-age narrative Mary Burton Gulliver, dropped out of college to although the problem is that Micah never I’ve encountered in some midwife and herbalist, is found a start-up with a slept with Brink’s mother. time. With a hot and forced to rebuild her life friend; that failed and Since reading The Accidental Tourist empty Melbourne without him. But three since then he’s kept himself going with in the early ’80s, I’ve loved Anne summer ahead our unnamed protagonist, years later when Lemuel odd jobs and tech support for elderly Tyler’s work. I find her portraits of a homebody in denial, finds himself slowly Gulliver is brought ladies, and fathers who want the porn ordinary people and families grappling coaxed into the world by his housemate home, fevered and communicating only wiped from their kid’s computers. He also with everyday life very comforting Dan. The two were uni friends on tandem in riddles, her ordered world is turned doubles as the supervisor for his and, especially in these times, that’s paths, sharing first tutorials and then a upside down. She must set out on her apartment block, putting out the rubbish, something I, and many people, need. This Brunswick terrace. But now undergrad is own journey to discover the truth of the recycling (1A never flatten their boxes book is just the ticket. over and the real world has created a fork Gulliver’s travels and the landscape of as they are supposed to do) and doing odd in the road. her own heart. Mark Rubbo is the managing director of jobs like fixing the light switch in Readings For Dan, adulthood is appealing, Yolanda’s apartment (she’s trying online complete with new job and new No Small Shame dating again). boyfriend. But our protagonist is All This Could Be Yours Christine Bell Micah prides himself on being a very reluctant to head as far from home as Jami Attenberg Impact Press. PB. $32.99 good driver and fantasises that the traffic the Fitzroy Baths. Scott has captured Serpent’s Tail. HB. $29.99 Available 1 April god looks down upon him, commenting on a pitch-perfect slice of the inner-north Available 14 April It’s 1914 and the world is his exceptionally responsible driving style. of Melbourne. It’s an overly real world Jami Attenberg can at war. Jobs are scarce He has a girlfriend, Cass, a primary school with repetitious geography that slowly do bleak humour. and immigrants teacher; they don’t live together, just get expands to foreshadow the gradual and She can skewer and unwelcome. For young together a few times week and sometimes near-invisible transition from young summarise characters Catholic Mary one of them stays over at the other’s house. adult to slightly less bumbling adult. with one scathing O’Donnell, this is not the Cass is comfortable, with a wide-open sentence. She is the lord of The Adversary is a coming-of-age new life she imagined. face and an easy nature, although she mockery, the lady of irony, novel set in the not-too-distant past; a When one foolish night does like to have music or noise on all the but, more than anything time when being in your twenties doesn’t of passion leads to an unexpected mean that you’re an adult, rather, it’s pregnancy and a loveless marriage, Mary a time when you’re just a kid fumbling flees to Melbourne determined to build a through, trying to find a way, and to work life for herself and her child. No Small out what works. Shame tells the moving story of love and Full of humour and resulting in the duty, loyalty and betrayal. some of the biggest laughs a book as given me in a long time, it’s early to make the call but it is certainly going to be The Deceptions hard to top The Adversary as book of the Suzanne Leal A&U. PB. $29.99 year for me. Available 31 March Ford Thomas is from Readings online Prague, 1943. Hana is imprisoned in a Jewish Almost a Mirror ghetto. She attracts the Kirsten Krauth attention of her guard Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 and reluctantly accepts Available 1 April his advances, Like fireflies to the light, desperately in need of Mona, Benny and Jimmy protection. Sydney, 2010. are drawn into the Manipulated into a liaison with her elegantly wasted orbit of married boss, Tessa knows she needs to the post-punk scene of end it. Moving from wartime Europe to ‘80s Melbourne, a world modern day Australia, this is a powerful that includes Nick Cave story of old transgressions and the and Dodge, a legacy of lives built on lies and deceit. photographer pushing his art to the edge. With precision and richness Kirsten The Octopus and I Krauth hauntingly evokes the power of Erin Hortle music to infuse our lives and reflects on A&U. PB. $29.99 the healing nature of creativity in the face Available 15 April of unexpected tragedy. Lucy and Jem live on the Tasman Peninsula, The Dickens Boy where Lucy is recovering Tom Keneally from surgery. As she Vintage. PB. $32.99 tries to navigate her new Available 31 March body through the world, The tenth child of she develops a deep Charles Dickens, fascination with the known as Plorn, had local octopuses. These octopuses come consistently proved to shape Lucy’s body and her sense of unable ‘to apply himself’ self. This stunning debut novel explores to school or life. So, aged the wild, beating heart at the sixteen, he is sent to intersection of human and animal, love Australia. Featuring and loss, fear and hope. 8 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 FICTION else, she is the queen when it comes to Eleven, which won the prestigious Arthur Lucy and Sam settle strangely into the Sharks in the Time of Saviours writing messy, fraught family portraits. C. Clarke award in 2015. The Glass Hotel landscape – they operate as both native Kawai Strong Washburn Attenberg opens her sixth novel, All is the author’s fifth novel and a gentle and foreign in an environment that is Hamish Hamilton. PB. $32.99 This Could Be Yours, by introducing us to study of the ordinariness of greed and both familiar and uncanny. Buffalo Available now the dreadful Victor Tuchman, a horrid, corruption, but also of the quiet tenacity bones, tiger paw prints, gold and coal Sharks in the Time of violent person who immediately has a heart and valour of those who pursue a love that litter their path as they journey towards a Saviours has arrived in attack. Set over one single, stifling August endures. Her prose is quiet and observant, place to finally call home. the world with an day in New Orleans, the novel centres on like the video-art reflections made by C. Pam Zhang is interested in a abundance of heavy- Victor’s family and the consequences of his the narrator of the story, the beautiful new vision of the American West that hitting accolades – abuse over many years. Vincent. Her style is reminiscent of the reveals as much truth as it changes. including from Marlon After Victor is taken to hospital, his meditative musings of an existentialist Neglected narratives about gender, race, James, Tommy Orange, son Gary resists visiting. He has his own novel, which slowly uncovers a complex immigration and homecoming are given Benjamin Percy, Claire troubles. Whereas Victor’s daughter, Alex, portrait of the tragedy of humankind. centrestage in this bold new work. If Vaye Watkins, and more. Beginning in a lawyer who lives near Chicago, flies Eva Sandoval is from Readings Carlton you’re looking for a book about a white 1995 in Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i, seven-year- to New Orleans immediately, where she guy riding a horse and shooting his way old Nainoa Flores is saved from drowning engages in a demonstrative clash with Hamnet through dusty mining towns, you’ll be by a shiver of sharks. His family, her mother, Barbra. Alex wants to know Maggie O’Farrell sorely disappointed. struggling to make ends meet amidst the the truth about her father and about her Tinder Press. PB. $32.99 I had a really hard time believing this collapse of the sugar cane industry, hails parents’ abusive relationship. Barbra Available 31 March was a debut novel. Zhang’s writing is his rescue as a sign of favour from ancient remains tight-lipped about her reasons nuanced, poetic, dreamy and visceral all In 1596, a young boy Hawaiian gods. But as time passes, this for staying with Victor, yet throughout at the same time. How many American named Hamnet hope gives way to economic realities, the day she analyses her life and wonders westerns deal with myth-making; died. About four years forcing Nainoa and his siblings to seek at her future with a wonderful headiness. gender, racial and sexual identity; later, his father wrote the salvation across the continental United Will he live or will he die? Could she be survival; family; adventure; class and the most famous play in States, leaving behind home and family. free now? dissolution of the American Dream? How English history: Hamlet. With stunning physical detail and a many westerns can do all that with such The book does not describe Victor’s This is the story of that profound command of language, Kawai heart-breaking beauty and intensity? violence (thankfully) but it does ask the boy and his mother. Strong Washburn’s powerful debut reader to consider one unadulterated I cannot recommend this book highly I took three separate courses on examines what it means to be both of a question: what is the long-term effect enough. Believe me when I say, you’ve Shakespeare at university. I’ve read place, and a stranger in it. of domestic violence on who you are? never read anything like it. countless biographies and analyses Despite this bleak premise, Attenberg’s by writers such as Stephen Greenblatt, Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton A Theatre for Dreamers book is perfectly considered, and allows Bill Bryson and Emma Smith. But I Polly Samson you to laugh out loud even while your still don’t seem to know much about ol’ Bloomsbury Circus. PB. $29.99 heart is breaking. Although she is Exciting Times Willy himself. Of course, nobody really Available 15 April unsentimental with language, Attenberg Naoise Dolan does. The facts of his life could fit in a It’s 1960, the world is illustrates well the fragility of families, W&N. PB. $32.99 pamphlet and yet more has been written dancing on the edge of and what binds them. In this case, it is Available 14 April about him and his works than any other revolution, and on the hope that leads the way. And a seamless Ava is an Irish expat writer in English. Greek island of Hydra a turn of phrase. If you enjoy Nicole Krauss living in Hong Kong, How strange is it that I feel like circle of artists live or Meg Wolitzer’s work, add this to your teaching English to I know Shakespeare so much better tangled lives, ruled by the list. For established fans of Attenberg, you privileged Hongkonger after reading Hamnet? Where facts writers Charmian Clift are in for a treat. All hail the queen. children. She is in her and George Johnston. fail us, fiction comes in and provides twenties, and is a Christine Gordon is the events and Within this circle is a triangle: the dazzling new answers. Drawing heavily rudderless kind of programming manager for Readings magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, on Germaine Greer’s writings on high-achiever: intelligent, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a Shakespeare, O’Farrell humanises the but unable (or unwilling) to focus her young Canadian poet named Leonard The Glass Hotel man behind the myth. Perhaps more ability. Miserable in her shared Airbnb Cohen. Teenaged Erica arrives, and Emily St. John Mandel importantly, she provides a voice to the rental, she moves into the high-rise people we often think of as Shakespeare’s watches, entranced and disquieted, as Picador. PB. $29.99 apartment of her friend-with-benefits, supporting characters: his children, his paradise unravels. Available 31 March Julian: a British banker with endless parents, and, of course, his wife, Anne Paul is a young disposable income. They both agree that (Agnes) Hathaway. recovering drug Ava is only staying until she finds a rental And Their Children after Them Agnes, as Anne Hathaway was known addict, struggling she likes, but Ava doesn’t look for places, Nicolas Mathieu & William as in her father’s will, is the protagonist through a degree in and Julian doesn’t prod her to do so. They Rodarmor (trans.) and emotional heart of the story. Her finance he couldn’t care exist in the kind of harmony reserved for Sceptre. PB. $32.99 experiences as a woman, wife and mother less about. Having lost two equally snarky people who think Available 31 March form the core of O’Farrell’s narrative. It is the trust of his widowed they’re smarter than everyone else Over four sultry summers her story that captivates, thrusting her in mother, his hopes of around them. When Julian returns to in the 1990s, Anthony and front of her famous husband to capture studying musical composition are London for work, giving no date for his his friends grow up in a our attention and imagination. crushed when he’s sent to college in return, Ava strikes up a friendship with France trapped between This is a book on love, loss, and the Toronto study a ‘practical’ career. But Edith, a lawyer. Trips to the theatre and nostalgia and decline. spaces in which we fall apart. O’Farrell long-lived habits are hard to break, and high tea gradually shift from being friend They are desperate to is a masterful writer who deals with her his natural attraction to badly made dates to actual dates, and Edith and Ava escape the scarred subjects deftly and with empathy. A choices soon plunges him into troubled become a fully-fledged couple. When countryside and grey stunning portrait of a marriage, a family waters. His only option? To run away from Julian suddenly returns to Hong Kong, a council estates in search of a better future. and a tragedy. Highly recommended. the well-structured life he never wanted, very strange love triangle, full of passive This eloquent novel perfectly depicts and seek shelter at his sister Vincent’s Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton aggression, ensues. teenage angst and has won praise for its apartment in New York. Naoise Dolan has a fantastic, deadpan portrayal of people living on the margins As the story moves between the busy How Much of These Hills Is sense of humour, and I don’t think I’ve and its ability to shine a light on the metropolis and the quietness of the remote Gold ever been as simultaneously annoyed by struggles of French society today. wilderness, the lives of ordinary strangers C. Pam Zhang and absorbed in a fictional character’s love touch each other through a series of Virago. PB. $32.99 life shenanigans as I was with Ava’s. There Come Again chance meetings, mundane coincidences Available 14 April are so many wonderful, terrible characters, Robert Webb and unconscious desires. Some destinies ‘Generations of too: Edith’s mother is a classic, what one Canongate. PB. $29.99 are changed forever as the certainty of authors have molded might call a ‘nasty piece of work’; Julian’s Available 15 April their expectations vanish into a world the mythology of the posh expat mates perfectly mirror the A time-travelling love they never thought could become their American West for their cookie-cutter cruelty of rich kids in any story from the bestselling reality. In this story, we meet those who own purposes … I take the country. This novel does slightly sag in the author of How Not To Be a are left staring into the void of uncertainty, lesson that what we call middle, but it’s worth pushing through the Boy and star of Peep Show. grappling to find their new place in a history is not granite but minor pacing issues that arise, because You can’t fall in love for society that has left them behind. We sandstone – soft, given it all does come good in the end. Exciting the first time twice, can also meet those who sleepwalk across a form by its carver.’ – C. Pam Zhang Times is a droll tale of modern romance, you? Kate’s husband Luke fine line of casual immorality and social In the closing years of the gold class, gender and sexuality from an dies suddenly. One day, conditioning, and are left to confront the rush, orphaned siblings Lucy and Sam exciting voice in a brand-new generation of she wakes up in the wrong room, in the ghosts of their guilt. traverse the American West in search of Irish novelists. wrong body. She is eighteen again and this Emily St. John Mandel’s previous a resting place for their father’s corpse. Ellen Cregan is the marketing and events was the day she first met Luke. If only they novel was the widely acclaimed Station As children of a Chinese gold prospector, coordinator for Readings can fall in love again. FICTION April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 9

Conjure Women a decade later Trina’s life is again at risk Afia Atakora as communities are given the opportunity Fourth Estate. PB. $29.99 to move to Germany. A sweeping Available 7 April historical novel about the struggle of one The pale-skinned baby is a woman and one village against war, bad omen. The slaves on racism and ecological devastation. the old plantation are sure of this. Miss Rue – Please See Us midwife, healer, crafter of Caitlin Mullen curses – will know what to Gallery Books. PB. $29.99 do. But Rue doesn’t know. Available 1 April Times have changed, It’s summer in Atlantic freedom has come. This new world brings City but the boardwalk is new dangers and Rue’s old magic may be empty and two Jane Does no match for them. This is a story of the are laid out in the lengths we’ll go to save the ones we love. marshland behind the Sunset Motel. When Clara, Enter the Aardvark a young boardwalk Jessica Anthony psychic who is Doubleday. PB. $24.99 experiencing disturbing visions meets Lily, Available 31 March an ex-Soho art gallery girl who is working at Republican congressman a desolate casino, she thinks she can help. Alexander Paine Wilson is This is a fast-paced psychological thriller determined that nothing that explores the intersection of will stop him in his womanhood, power, and violence. campaign for re-election, that is until he receives a The Frightened Ones large stuffed aardvark in Dima Wannous the post. Brilliant and Harvill Secker. PB. $29.99 funny, a biting satire about politics, love, Available 15 April and taxidermy for fans of Jennifer Egan, Suleima and Nassim first Jonathan Franzen and Joshua Ferris. meet in Damascus. In the Refreshingly different, highly inventive, city’s atmosphere of witty and moving, Enter the Aardvark is an surveillance and anxiety, absolute original. they begin a tenuous relationship. Some years Followers later, after civil war Megan Angelo breaks out, Nassim leaves HQ Fiction. PB. $29.99 Syria for Germany and sends her a book Available now he has written. As Suleima reads, her Orla is a budding novelist past overwhelms her and her sense of stuck writing clickbait identity unravels. This novel intimately about movie stars. Floss is explores living with fear and gives voice a wannabe A-lister who to the contemporary female experience comes up with a plan for in Damascus. launching them both into celebrity. Thirty-five Waiting for Bojangles years later, in a closed Olivier Bourdeaut & Regan Kramer California village, government-appointed (trans.) celebrities live every moment on camera S&S. PB. $26.99 and a woman named Marlow discovers a Available late April shattering secret. An electrifying story of A young boy lives with ambition, dark choices and a moment that his madcap parents, changes the world forever. Louise and George, and an exotic bird in a The Lost Lights of St Kilda Parisian apartment Elisabeth Gifford where the unopened mail Corvus. PB. $29.99 rises in a tower and his Available 15 April parents dance each night A sweeping novel set on to Nina Simone’s mellifluous classic the Scottish island of St ‘Mister Bojangles’. A dark, funny, and Kilda before it was wholly charming novel about a boy and evacuated in 1930. When his eccentric family, who grapple with the Fred Lawson takes a realities of mental illness in unique and summer job on the island whimsical ways. and falls in love with Chrissie, little does he The Weight of Love realise that he has joined the last Hilary Fannin community to ever live in this isolated Doubleday Ireland. PB. $32.99 place. This is a moving and vivid portrait Available now of two lovers, a beautiful island, and the Maggie O’Farrell with extraordinary power of home. bite: a powerful love story set between London and I’m Staying Here Dublin, from the much Marco Balzano & Jill Foulston lauded Irish Times (trans.) columnist who counts Head of Zeus. PB. $32.99 Roddy Doyle among her Available 6 April fans. London 1996. Robin Northern Italy, 1920. and Ruth meet in an East London school. Trina longs for a different Robin instantly falls in love. Ruth, life. She is dedicated to recently bereaved, is tentative. Dublin becoming a teacher and 2017. Robin and Ruth are married with a despite Mussolini’s son, but their relationship is haunted. An oppressive regime she intimate and moving account of the works for a clandestine intricacies of marriage and the myriad network of schools. Over ways in which we can love and be loved. 10 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 FICTION

My Dark Vanessa orphaned May is caught stealing food, she shower upstairs – each time signifying vibrant and diverse city like New York Kate Elizabeth Russell is sentenced to become a Sin Eater. As the some shift in their own life, whether small are real-world problems such as racism, Fourth Estate. PB. $29.99 Queen’s courtiers suddenly grow ill, May or major. Other poems take the form of gentrification, corporate overreach, Available now hears their confessions and begins to lists cataloguing items or ideas: household police violence, bland homogeneity – all Vanessa Wye was fifteen- investigate a terrible rumour. objects, lines for poems, lines for films. embodied by the unsettling Woman In years-old when she first Beneath the banal façade of suburban White and her reality-bending assault on had sex with her English The Great Homecoming life, there is the suggestion of violence, the boroughs of New York. Jemisin takes teacher. At thirty-two Anna Kim & Jamie Lee Searle which sometimes rises to the surface. the Lovecraft mythos so ubiquitous in her Vanessa is horrified to (trans.) There’s the sense, too, that living alongside chosen genre and confi-dently stands it learn the teacher has just Granta. PB. $29.99 each other fosters a vulturous way of on its head: here, diversity is strength and been accused of sexual Available mid-April looking at our neighbours. When an elderly monoculture is toxic. Starbucks shop- abuse by another former 1959, Seoul. Divided from neighbour leaves behind a home full of fronts become literal ravening beasts; student. She was certain that their his family by the tumult of valuable mid-century furniture, the narrator white-supremacist YouTube agitators mass relationship wasn’t abuse. It was love. the Korean civil war, wonders how he might claim some pieces in violent frenzies. Against such enemies, Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and Yunho arrives in South for himself, observing that the old man intense localness becomes the strongest powerful, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to Korea’s capital searching ‘wouldn’t have known how good it was’. If form of resistance: the resourceful spirit the heart of some of the most complex for his oldest friend. But chairs, tables and lamps can be reclaimed of Manhattan rides a yellow taxicab into issues of our age. nothing in Seoul is what it and repurposed, does the same go for the battle like a warhorse; Brooklyn fights seems. The city is crowded words and histories of others? What happens off encroaching cosmic horrors with Mum & Dad with double agents and soldiers, wracked when we ‘claim other people’s suffering’? weaponised freestyle rap. Joanna Trollope by protests and poverty. Across the border, Beyond opportunism, there’s the This story is an energetic ride: part Pan Mac. PB. $32.99 Pyongyang grows more prosperous by the possibility of finding beauty in the gleeful love-letter to New York, part reprimand against big-city fear and Available 31 March day. The Great Homecoming is an epic everyday and value in someone else’s discards: in lights brought back from Japan, intolerance. I heartily recommend this big It’s been twenty-five novel of love, espionage and betrayal. or an abandoned chair. It’s the poet’s task to defiant shout of a book. years since Gus and collect these details from life, to polish what Monica left England to A Thousand Moons Eleanor Jenkins is from Readings Carlton has been neglected, to rearrange words till start a new life in Spain, Sebastian Barry they mean something new. This is how this building a vineyard from Faber. PB. $32.99 Chosen Ones quietly moving collection can help us know the ground up. When Gus Available now Veronica Roth what we had, and what we may have lost. suffers a stroke and their Winona is a young Lakota H&S. PB. $29.99 idyllic Mediterranean life orphan adopted by Freya Howarth is from Readings St Kilda Available 7 April is threatened, their three grown children former soldiers Thomas The mega-selling author in London must intervene. As the McNulty and John Cole. Navigable Ink of the Divergent franchise children descend on the vineyard, each Living on a farm in 1870s Jennifer Mackenzie delivers her masterful first has their own idea of how best to handle Tennessee, she is Transit Lounge. PB. $24 novel for adults. Fifteen their parents and the family business. educated and loved, Available 1 April years ago, five ordinary forging a life beyond the Indonesian writer and teenagers were singled out Rest and Be Thankful violence and dispossession of her past. activist Pramoedya by a prophecy to take Emma Glass Told in Sebastian Barry’s gorgeous, lyrical Ananta Toer spent most of down a powerful entity Bloomsbury Circus. HB. $24.99 prose, this is a moving study of one his adult life in jail, wreaking havoc across North America. He Available 6 April woman’s journey, her determination to imprisoned first by was known as the Dark One and they were Laura is a paediatric nurse. write her own future, and of the enduring colonial powers and later known as The Chosen Ones. After the Dark Caring for sick babies, human capacity for love. by Indonesian One fell, the world went back to normal but handling their fragile governments. In 1993 they soon discover the Dark One’s ultimate bodies and carefully Wilberforce Jennifer Mackenzie received a copy of goal was much bigger than they thought – calibrating the mysterious H.S. Cross Toer’s manuscript and the author’s bigger than the world itself. machines that keep them Picador US. PB. $29.99 blessing to translate it into English. Her alive is all taking its toll. At Available 14 April own Navigable Ink is a rare poetic Providence home, she finds herself At St. Stephen’s Academy, exploration of Toer’s tragic, visionary and Max Barry lying next to a man who doesn’t love her the students are on the ultimately triumphant life. Hachette. PB. $32.99 anymore. And there is a strange figure verge of revolt. While the Available 31 March dancing in the corner of her vision, just younger boys plot an Providence Five is an beyond her reach. This is an unforgettable insurrection, the older Science Fiction enormous and deadly novel from a visionary new voice. ones are preoccupied with & Fantasy warship, built to protect sneaking out or tearing humanity from its Run Me to Earth each other’s clothes off. greatest ever threat. On Paul Yoon Stylishly inventive, Wilberforce is an The City We Became board is a crew of just four Scribner. HB. $29.99 indelible portrait of a young man caught N.K. Jemisin who have been tasked Available late April between lust and cruelty, grief and God, Orbit. PB. $32.99 with monitoring the ship Three orphans united by frustrated love and abject longing. Available 31 March and reporting on progress to a mesmerised loss must survive the The idea that places global audience by way of social media. An perilous landscape of Poetry or cities might have inventive, speculative adventure and the 1960s Laos. When they their own unique intimate tale of four people facing their shelter in a bombed-out personalities or ‘souls’ is a most desperate hour – alone, together, at hospital, they meet Vang, I Don’t Know How That theme with a long history, the edge of the universe. a doctor dedicated to Happened stretching as far back as helping the wounded at all Oliver Driscoll the Ancient Roman notion The Book of Koli costs. Spanning decades and magically Recent Work Press. PB. $19.95 of ‘genius loci’. Many M.R.Carey weaving together storylines laced with Available now urban fantasy writers have created Orbit. PB. $22.99 beauty and cruelty, Paul Yoon crafts a The pared-back marvellous personifications of the cities Available 14 April gorgeous story that is a breathtaking prose poems in this they love – for in-stance, the alternative Koli has lived in the historical feat and a fierce study of the collection examine the visions of London offered up by Ben village his entire life. powers of hope, perseverance, and grace. seemingly small details Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, or Beyond its walls lies an of domestic life. They tell Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. unrecognisable The Sin Eater the stories of encounters N.K. Jemisin takes this well-established landscape. A place where Megan Campisi – moments of contact and theme and runs energetically away with it, overgrown forests are Mantle. PB. $29.99 subtle conflict – that casting New York and its boroughs as the filled with choker trees Available 31 March happen between people when they live main characters in a multidimensional and deadly seeds will kill A Sin Eater’s duty is to close to each other. In one poem, the drama. In this story, cities are ‘born’ into a you where you stand. And if they don’t get hear the final confessions narrator takes advantage of an auction in kind of sentience once they reach a critical you, the Shunned Men will. Koli believes of the dying and eat their the building where he lives to visit the mass of history and culture, then take that to survive he must never venture sins as a funeral rite. other apartment and observe the on human avatars. The birth of a city is beyond the walls. He’s wrong. From the Stained by the sins they behaviour of bidders, owners and tenant; a dangerous time, when that city and its author of the bestselling The Girl With All consume; they are neighbours, friends and family pop in and inhabitants are vulnerable to attack by the Gifts comes the start of a breathtaking doomed to live in exile at out of each other’s lives – with a text extradimensional predators. new trilogy set in a mesmerising and the edge of town. When message or a phone call, or the drip of a The true existential threats to a deadly future world. CRIME April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 11

Strangers catered to in this month’s reads) and, years C.L. Taylor earlier, wrote a column on eight perfect Dead Write fictional murders. Now, somebody is Avon. PB. $29.99 with Fiona Hardy Available now re-enacting these murders – but with real If you love to hear about bodies – and FBI agent Gwen Mulvey comes into his shop during a snowstorm to Okay, full disclosure: there are some Very Famous what’s creating a lot of figure out why. Somebody’s got their eye BOOK OF THE Authors I’ve never read, and Kathy Reichs is one of buzz among readers, this on Malcolm, and knows even more than them. I haven’t even watched a full episode of Bones, the TV is the one for you: there’s MONTH the reader does – but who? This is an show based on her Temperance Brennan series. Turns out, hype galore for Strangers. Crime absolutely gripping literary mystery for there’s a reason she’s got a string of bestsellers and a Three people, apparently lovers of crime fiction. television show: she’s a great writer and her books are snappy unconnected – a shop as hell. Who knew? (Her millions of readers probably have an manager, a courier who’s answer for that.) also a sometime thief, The Shifting Landscape and a security guard – all stand over a body. Katherine Kovacic Hauling the reader back a week earlier, Echo. PB. $29.99 Reichs is popular for a reason. If you Taylor tracks the lives of the three in the Available 31 March haven’t learned that yet, now’s the time for leadup to this explosion of violence. How Paintings and dogs: the ride. Alice, Ursula, and Gareth end up there – what’s not to love? When together – is the kind of intensely puzzling art dealer Alex Clayton Temperance is cast adrift: her old boss is dead, his and heartrate-destroying thriller that will gets a call to value some replacement Margot Heavner is her enemy, everyone’s see you staying up until dawn and beyond to paintings on a rural fussing over her recent diagnosis. When she sees a suspicious figure out. Strangers is a clever, quietly property, she’s not sure if man in a trench coat wandering her neighbourhood, she emotional and loudly exciting read. the paintings are for real tries to track him down – but she’s not as certain of her or if she’s there to deliver A Conspiracy of own thought processes any more. Then somebody sends Hitler’s Peace bad news, but it seems Bones her pictures of a gruesome corpse, one that Heavner’s Philip Kerr like an adventure for her and her pooch Kathy Reichs working on. Tempe knows Heavner’s making mistakes and Quercus. PB. $32.99 Hogarth all the same. What she finds there is S&S. PB. $32.99 publicising them, but she’s not in any position to do anything Available 14 April not just a vitally important painting, but a Available 1 April about it. Unless, of course, she finds somebody who is still on Philosopher turned OSS household on the edge. There’s tension the inside to get on-side. And then ignores his help anyway to (later named the FBI) everywhere she looks both inside and go out and get into constant trouble on her own. agent Willard Mayer is outside the house, where family is bickering Reichs knows her stuff, but takes care to explain everything she needs, stepping summoned to President and the pre-colonial heritage of the land is temporarily out of the moment to deliver definitions. Sounds strange, but it doesn’t take Roosevelt’s office, not to rising up. When death pays a visit to the you out of the moment, instead giving you more insight into Brennan’s logical workings. talk philosophy, but house, it’s too much – but when both a child The story, threading through mind-blowing forensic science, conspiracy theories and because Roosevelt needs and her beloved Hogarth vanish, Alex needs alt-right radio jerks and cold case child kidnappings and so much more, is a speeding car somebody to help out in to figure out what secrets the land is hiding. and racing brain of information, investigation, and entertainment. Reichs is popular for a a tense arena: peace A playful yet gripping mystery. reason. If you haven’t learned that yet, now’s the time for the ride. talks between Stalin, Churchill and Hitler. With internal problems causing trouble and Gathering Dark external problems that have unfathomable Candice Fox risks, this historical, tense thriller is Bantam. PB. $32.99 another Kerr to cause nail-biting joy in his Available 31 March Magpie Lane having her flash back to my *cough* her readers. First released fifteen years ago but Lucy Atkins own later school years, something both Australian Fox has set hard to come by, it’s a showcase of Kerr’s Quercus. PB. $32.99 great and disorienting all at once. Layla is her most recent solo ability to make history come to life under Available 31 March a mother, a wife, happy, and whole – until effort in L.A.’s gritty characters that aren’t necessarily all good, streets, and her In this unsettling she gets a message that says I know what but are damn readable all the same. powerhouse writing nails English university-set you did. She is immediately catapulted the terrain and all its mystery, eight-year-old back to her teenage years, feeling out of flaws. A girl goes Felicity has gone place and unattractive in a horny high The Familiar Dark missing, and the last missing and her nanny, school world. When her older, married Amy Engel person who sees her is Dee, is the one battling boss hits on her, it’s hard not to feel H&S. PB. $32.99 Blair Harbour, once a celebrated surgeon, all the questions. dazzled. Then everything spirals out of Available 31 March now a woman fresh out of jail and working a Felicity’s father is an her control, and her world is forever Barren Springs, in the gas station to try and get herself together Oxford House Master, changed: relationships cracked, life heart of Missouri’s and regain custody of her son. But Dayly, the her stepmother is a wallpaper restorer, and upended. Her husband doesn’t need to Ozarks, is as bereft as its missing girl turns out to be the daughter of both of them are terrible – it’s only Dee know about that time. But is the secret name, but some residents Sneak Lawlor, Blair’s ex-cellmate and whose care and efforts help the selectively she’s keeping what she thought it was? are trying. Eve Taggert is someone her parole officer doesn’t want her mute Felicity, still in mourning for her Timely, painful and playful all at once, one of them, born to a seeing. It’s impossible, though, to turn down dead mother. Linklater, the historian Freeborn’s book may be a challenging chaotic home and now someone suffering every parent’s worst fear researching the Master’s manor house, wake-up call to readers, and not just those trying to shield her own – and it’s not long before the two are joined also has some questions, while the house who share Layla’s profile. daughter Junie from the by terrifying underworld figure Ada itself – a creepy location if there ever was worst of life. So what, then, when Junie and Maverick, then the detective who arrested one – is withholding any answers. Keeper her best friend are brutally murdered in the Blair for murder, Jessica Sanchez. Sanchez Claustrophobic and captivating, this is a Jessica Moor town playground? All that work at being a has her own problems, with an inheritance psychological thriller to make you jump Viking. PB. $32.99 good human is stripped away when Eve can’t causing her more trouble than it’s worth – and second-guess any of your own home’s Available 31 March see law enforcement finding the killer. Instead, she will forge a brutal path to figure but can this group of women, all dancing on probably completely normal creaks. When domestic violence it out herself. An intense, disturbing look at the line of good and bad, save Dayly’s life? worker Katie Straw’s body Fox will grip you between her teeth and The Girl She Was community, heartbreak and so much more. is pulled from a river, won’t let you go – and you’ll love her for it. Rebecca Freeborn police assume what they Pantera. PB. $29.99 always do at this location: Rules for Perfect Murders Available 31 March that it’s a suicide. But the Peter Swanson Also out this month: If you’re a wizened women at Katie’s shelter Faber. PB. $29.99 The excellent Luke Jennings has another detective with a are not having it, and as Available 31 March Killing Eve book in Die for Me (John drinking problem, the layers of their lives You know, every time I Murray, PB, $29.99); Don Winslow’s Broken you’ve been reading and Katie’s are peeled back, it becomes get a Peter Swanson (HarperCollins, PB, $32.99); Elizabeth Kay’s about yourself in crime clear that far too many people have let them book I think, ‘He gets Seven Lies (Sphere, PB, $32.99); Andrea books for years. For the down – from their abusers themselves to too much space in my Camilleri’s The Safety Net (translated by rest of us, we find the structural problems and budget cuts column, so I won’t write Stephen Sartarelli, Mantle, PB, $29.99); ourselves where we can that make dealing with everything so much this time,’ but some Scandi crime with Camilla Lackberg’s – sometimes only as seemingly impossible. As the police every time, every time, The Gilded Cage (HarperCollins, PB, $29.99); victims – and hang onto that. In The Girl investigators, cynical and not entirely he is so clever and Melanie Raabe’s The Shadow (translated She Was (and don’t worry, the Girl is an helpful, weave through Katie’s history to entertaining that I am by Imogen Taylor, Text, PB, $32.99), and actual young girl), Freeborn has taken her tragic end, it becomes apparent that helpless in the face of it. Career bookseller the delightful and relentless book machine everything much further by having a things need to change. This is an authentic, Malcolm Kershaw runs a specialist crime Alexander McCall Smith returns with The character the same age as me and then unblinking and original read. bookshop (I am feeling very personally Talented Mr Varg (Little, Brown, PB, $29.99). 12 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 NONFICTION

spaces used exclusively for retreat and Printed on Stone: The rejuvenation. This volume goes further Lithographs of Charles Troedel New than any other in search of the world’s Amanda Scardamaglia most desirable havens, featuring Melbourne Books. HB. $69.95 Nonfiction fabulous, architect-designed homes from Available 31 March across the globe, each illustrated inside Charles Troedel and out with carefully curated (1835–1906) was a photography emphasising each home’s master printer and We already know and love Julia Baird. She has written stunning location. lithographer, and the BOOK OF THE many articles and (two) books addressing gender and face behind the politics. She is a journalist with something to say. She is the Postmodern Architecture: production of most of MONTH host of ABC TV’s The Drum and we love to hear her opinion Less is a Bore Australia’s early Personal because we know that it will be considered, compassionate Owen Hopkins advertising posters, Development and smart. We know that she has kids, and that she has had Phaidon. HB. $59.95 product labels, and other print ephemera, cancer. She’s a busy woman but she still found time to write Available now as well as the iconic The Melbourne her new and wonderful handbook for living a life well, One of the twentieth Album. His catalogue of lithographs Phosphorescence. Using her own – at times completely century’s most traces the production and evolution of heartbreaking – memories, she takes you by the hand and controversial styles, nineteenth century commerce and leads you down her long, winding path to contentment. Postmodernism culture. This book is the first to document began in the 1970s, the visual history of print advertising in Baird uses this analogous process reached a fever pitch Australia and provides a valuable to examine friendships, family, world of eclectic non- illustrated social history of Australia. conformity in the atrocities, climate change and more. 1980s and 1990s, and after nearly forty The Future of Us: Demography Above all, she uses it to ask, how do we years is now enjoying a newfound Gets a Makeover make sense of life? How do we explain popularity. Postmodern Architecture is a Liz Allen Phosphorescence: our world to our children? Where do we curated collection of Postmodern NewSouth. PB. $29.99 On Awe, Wonder find a place for contentment when the architecture in all its glorious array of Available 1 April & Things That whole world seems so fragile? vivid nonconformity and showcases We know what the Sustain You When examples of the movement in a rainbow population of Australia of hues and forms from around the globe. the World Goes Why should you care? Isn’t she just another white, is. We know where these Dark middle-class, educated woman writing about her search for people live and where Julia Baird self? Well, actually, no. Phosphorescence is not a self-help Australian they were born. We Fourth Estate. HB. $32.99 book, nor is it a memoir. It is a search for light. The clue is know how many babies Available now in the title; in simple terms, phosphorescence is a process Studies they are likely to have. in which energy is absorbed by something (an earth worm, We know what their life a night light, a glow stick) and then released slowly in the form of a light. Baird uses this expectancy is. We know analogous process to examine friendships, family, world atrocities, climate change and Gariwerd: An Environmental how educated they are and whether more. Above all, she uses it to ask, how do we make sense of life? How do we explain our world History of the Grampians they’re working. With energy and passion, to our children? Where do we find a place for contentment when the whole world seems Benjamin Wilkie demographer Liz Allen helps us to so fragile? Reading Baird’s book is like wrapping a warm blanket around your shoulders. CSIRO Publishing. PB. $49.99 understand the way we live now and how It makes sense to cherish what we have. It makes sense to look for optimism. It also makes Available 1 April we can use this information to create a complete sense to shut the door and cuddle up with this unpretentious, kind read. People have been better future for Australia. visiting and living in Christine Gordon is the programming manager for Readings the Victorian Grampians, also Biography known as Gariwerd, for thousands of generations. They Fourteen While all availability dates were correct at the time of going have both witnessed Shannon Molloy to press, due to the COVID-19 crisis the unexpected may and caused vast S&S. PB. $29.99 happen along the supply chain. environmental transformations in and Available 1 April Please bear with us as we bring you books in these rapidly around the ranges. Gariwerd explores Shannon Molloy’s changing circumstances, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with the geological and ecological fourteenth year of life our team on 03 9341 7729 or at [email protected] significance of the mountains and was one of torment, if you have any questions. combines research from across bullying and betrayal – not just at the hands of Thank you. disciplines to tell the story of how humans and the environment have peers, but by adults who interacted, and how the ways people were meant to protect have thought about the environments of him. But despite this, he the ranges have changed through time. survived. Fourteen is this generation’s Holding the Man – a The Ghost and the Bounty moving, coming-of-age memoir about a Anthologies contributors include Stephanie Hunter: William Buckley, John young man’s search for identity and Alexander, Maggie Beer, Judith Brett, Batman and the Theft of Kulin acceptance in the most unforgiving and Helen Garner, Elizabeth Chong, Joan Country hostile of places: high school. Grandmothers: London, Ramona Koval and more. Adam Courtenay Essays by 21st-century ABC Books. PB. $29.99 A Bigger Picture Grandmothers Architecture Available now Malcolm Turnbull Helen Elliott (ed.) Just after Christmas Hardie Grant. HB. Was $55 Text. PB. $34.99 1803 William Buckley $44.99 Available 31 March Living on Vacation: fled a settlement in the Available 20 April In thoughtful, Contemporary Houses for land of the Kulin Candid and compelling, provoking, Tranquil Living nation to take his A Bigger Picture is the uncompromising Phaidon Editors chances in the definitive narrative of writing, twenty-four Phaidon. HB. $59.95 wilderness. A few Malcolm Turnbull’s Australian women Available 14 April months later, the local prime ministership and reflect on their diverse Escape and unwind Aboriginal people found him near death. explores the strengths experiences of being a with this For thirty-two years Buckley lived as a and vulnerabilities of grandmother in the breathtaking Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted one of Australia’s twenty-first century. collection of tribe’s language, skills and methods to best-known and most This period of a woman’s life, a contemporary survive. John Batman, a bounty hunter dynamic business and political leaders. continuation and culmination, is as homes. Packed with from Van Diemen’s Land, finally caught With revelatory insights on the workings of defining as any other and the words the spirit of up with him and what occurred next saw Canberra and the contentious events of ‘grand’ and ‘mother’ rearrange and sanctuary, Living on the Wadawurrung betrayed and Buckley Turnbull’s life this is a genuine page- realign themselves into bright focus. The Vacation is an inspiring showcase of eventually broken. turner that’s not just for political junkies. NONFICTION April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 13

18 Tiny Deaths women – Ethel Turner, Barbara Baynton, Bruce Goldfarb Nettie Palmer, essayist and critic, and Endeavour. PB. $32.99 Henry Handel Richardson – to life. Available 31 March Frances Glessner Lee, The Lost Boy: born a socialite to a Tales of a Child Soldier wealthy and influential Ayik Chut Deng with Craig Chicago family, was Henderson never meant to have a Vintage. PB. $34.99 career, let alone one Available 31 March steeped in death and After a violent life as a depravity. Yet she boy soldier in South became the mother of Sudan Ayik Chut Deng, modern forensics, was instrumental in with his family, elevating homicide investigation to a escaped and resettled scientific discipline and created a in Toowoomba as remarkable teaching tool still celebrated refugees. Suffering ‘A TRIUMPH’ today. Goldfarb weaves Lee’s remarkable from PTSD he was CERIDWEN DOVEY story with the advances in forensics made misdiagnosed with in her lifetime to tell the tale of the birth of schizophrenia which subsequently led to modern forensics. years of erratic behaviour putting his ‘HEARTBREAKINGLY TIMELY’ family at risk. Ayik is now a father, works R.W.R. MCDONALD Inferno: A Memoir as an actor and volunteers at his local Catherine Cho youth centre. This is an honest, revealing ‘ENGROSSING’ Bloomsbury Circus. PB. $29.99 account of the complexities of trauma, J.P. POMARE Available 31 March and one man’s story of how he got to When Catherine Cho left where he is today. ‘POETIC AND PROFOUND’ London for the U.S. with ABI ANDREWS her husband, to Jacinda Ardern: introduce her family to A New Kind of Leader ‘UTTERLY ORIGINAL’ their newborn son, she Madeleine Chapman could not have envisaged Nero. PB. $34.99 MEG MUNDELL how that trip would end. Available 30 March She would find herself in One of the world’s ‘BLACKLY HILARIOUS’ an involuntary psych youngest female heads JAMES BRADLEY ward, separated from her family, unable to of government, and understand who she was, and how she had only the second elected ‘WILD’ got there. Inferno is a powerful exploration world leader to give MIREILLE JUCHAU of psychosis and motherhood, at once birth while in office, intensely personal, yet holding within it a Jacinda Ardern universal experience. describes herself as a progressive and a social Come: A Memoir democrat. She is a leader for a new Rita Therese generation, one tired of inertia in the face A&U. PB. $29.99 of pressing issues such as climate change, Available 31 March immigration and the rise of far-right Melbourne sex worker terrorism. In this revealing biography, From the award-winning author journalist Madeleine Chapman discovers Rita Therese is an of escort, one of the best the woman behind the headlines. Station Eleven in Australia. It all began on a whim at Beneath the Fig Leaves: A EMILY ST. JOHN eighteen, after she rang Memoir of Food, Family and the number on a sign Greece MANDEL looking for nude Olympia Panagiotopoulos ‘Deeply imagined, philosophically models. As she became Affirm Press. PB. $32.99 immersed in the sex industry she learnt Available 31 March profound…The Glass Hotel that death and trauma do not always In 1955, in a village in is ultimately as immersive a bring grand transformative experiences Greece that was marred reading experience as and that sometimes, in order to go by war and poverty, its predecessor’ forward, we have to write our own stories Giannoula and Fotios and choose to keep living. Bold, brave and Panagiotopoulos Ruth Franklin darkly funny, Come announces Rita as a dreamed of providing a fearless new writing talent. better life for their children. Australia, it Friends and Rivals: was rumoured, was a Four Great Australian Writers land of opportunity where hard work – Barbara Baynton, Ethel brought reward. Leaving behind family From Australian comedian Turner, Nettie Palmer, Henry and friends, they set off to make a new and author Handel Richardson home on the other side of the world. Brenda Niall Beneath the Fig Leaves weaves an Text. PB. $34.99 irresistible tapestry of family, food and JEAN KITTSON Available 31 March history to stir the heart and senses. ‘A uniquely practical and Friends and Rivals is an surprisingly funny (given the engaging account of the Thinking Again intersecting lives of four Jan Morris subject matter) guide aimed at Australian women Faber. HB. $32.99 helping our elders live the writing in the late Available 31 March best life possible’ nineteenth and early Jan Morris continues to Australian Women’s Weekly twentieth centuries – a cast her eye over modern time when stories of life in all its stupidity bush heroism and and glory in this second mateship abounded, a time when a writing volume of her diaries, career might be an elusive thing for a Thinking Again. From Love talking about books? woman. Brenda Niall illuminates a her daily thousand paces Find us online at Pan Macmillan Australia fascinating time in Australia’s literary to the ongoing troubles history and brings these remarkable of Brexit, from her 14 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 NONFICTION enduring love for America to the wonders satisfying. Shower in a moss garden, The Force of Nonviolence: An revolution, possible solutions to the of the natural world, and from the vagaries anybody? Oh, okay, if you insist ... and, Ethico-Political Bind challenges we face today and how we can and ailments of old age to the beauty of please, also Ruth Allen’s recycled glass Judith Butler shape a better twenty-first century. youth, she once again displays her Black Sambuca Chandelier. Verso. HB. $29.99 determined belief in embracing life and The book covers new builds, Available now Health creativity – all kindness and marmalade. renovations and adaptive reuse of existing Judith Butler’s new buildings. The projects range from terraces book shows how an Hollywood’s Eve: and apartments to the grand, the star ethic of nonviolence Eat Like the Animals: What Eve Babitz and the Secret being Indigo Slam in Chippendale. This must be connected to a Nature Teaches Us about the History of L.A. magnificent home is so finely crafted it broader political Science of Healthy Eating Lili Anolik is a pleasure to contemplate its existence struggle for social David Raubenheimer & Stephen J. Scribner. PB. $29.99 and although in my dreams I have always equality. Further, it Simpson wanted to cook in an old kitchen with Available 1 April argues that HarperCollins. PB. $35 giant Agas in a grand English home, the In 1963, at age twenty, nonviolence is often Available now sleek, pristine, extremely contemporary Eve Babitz posed misunderstood as a passive practice that Our appetites have galley kitchen pictured has turned me to playing chess with the emanates from a calm region of the soul, been hijacked in the the other side. French artist Marcel or as an individualist ethical relation to modern food To be honest, each of the twenty-one Duchamp. She was existing forms of power. Drawing upon environment, causing projects in this book has star quality, naked; he was not. The Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin obesity and the serious not the least of which is the amount of photograph made her she considers how the interdiction diseases that may patronage of local talent, design and an instant icon of art against violence fails to include lives come with it. Eat Like resources used, and the generosity and sex and Babitz regarded as ungrievable. the Animals takes us on and trust towards the creativity of the spent the rest of the decade rocking and a journey from jungle designers and architects. rolling on the Sunset Strip and honing her Three Women to laboratory and back to our own Sustainability and environmental notoriety. Then, at nearly thirty, Babitz Lisa Taddeo kitchens to understand how and why we considerations are high priorities and was discovered as a writer by Joan Didion. Bloomsbury. PB. $22.99 eat, how appetites are fed and regulated, Design Lives Here shows just how capable Now in her mid-seventies, after several Available 31 March and how, in the end, it all comes down to and talented Australians are in this area, publications, she’s on the cusp of literary All Lina wanted was to protein. Raubenheimer and Simpson and how natural, right and now this stardom as an essential L.A. writer. be desired. All Maggie explain simple steps we can take towards collaborative, informed approach feels wanted was to be eating a more natural diet for optimal and looks. Orwell: A Man of Our Time understood. All Sloane health and a longer life. Richard Bradford Margaret Snowdon is from Readings Carlton wanted was to be Bloomsbury Caravel. HB. $39.99 admired. Three Women Available 15 April Soviet Space Graphics: is a record of unmet Philosophy For an author whose Cosmic Visions from the USSR needs, unspoken work has been regarded Alexandra Sankova & the Moscow thoughts, How to Be Good: Or How to as the most important Design Museum disappointments, hopes and unrelenting Be Moral and Virtuous in a in terms of the Phaidon. HB. $49.95 obsessions. Consequences are handed Wicked World turbulent years of the out to some but not to others. A profound Available 31 March Gary Cox mid-twentieth century and riveting book Three Women is a This collection of Bloomsbury Academic. PB. $34.99 and who eroded the record of unmet needs, unspoken Soviet space-race Available 16 April boundaries between thoughts, disappointments, hopes and graphics takes What is goodness? Is literature, journalism unrelenting obsessions that tests the readers on a cosmic goodness achievable, and political commentary, there have boundaries of nonfiction. adventure through and if so, how? In this been relatively few attempts to present a Cold War-era Russia. instructive, vibrant portrait of George Orwell. Here, Created against a Sex and Lies entertaining and often in the year of the seventieth Anniversary backdrop of Leïla Slimani & Sophie Lewis (trans.) humorous book, of his death, is a comprehensive look at geopolitical Faber. PB. $27.99 best-selling author Gary not just Orwell’s life and importance as a uncertainty, the extraordinary images Available 31 March Cox investigates the political theorist and novelist but also of featured were a vital tool for the In this collection of phenomenon of his relevance today. promotion of state ideology. Presenting essays Leïla Slimani goodness and what, if anything, it is to be more than 250 illustrations which depict gives voice to young a good person and a paragon of virtue. Part Design daring discoveries, scientific innovations, Moroccan women who easygoing exploration of the age-old futuristic visions, and extraterrestrial are grappling with a subject of moral philosophy, part personal encounters, Soviet Space Graphics conservative Arab development and improvement manual, Design Lives Here: Australian unlocks the door to the creative inner culture that at once How to be Good carefully leads the reader Interiors, Furniture and workings of the USSR. condemns and on a fascinating journey through the often Lighting commodifies sex. In a strange and surprising world of ethics. Penny Craswell country where the law punishes and T&H. HB. $59.99 Cultural outlaws all forms of sex outside marriage, women have only two options for their Personal Available 1 April Studies sexual identities: virgin or wife. Sex and The beauty of Lies is an essential confrontation with Development this book is Morocco’s intimate demons and a vibrant that it does many Funny Weather: Art in an appeal for the universal freedom to be, to things in a Emergency Joy at Work: The Life- love and to desire. (seemingly) Olivia Laing Changing Magic of Organising effortless, elegant Picador. HB. $44.99 Your Working Life fashion. For every Available 14 April Tomorrows Versus Yesterdays: Marie Kondo & Scott Sonenshein house or apartment In this collection of Conversations in Defense of Bluebird. HB. $34.99 featured, the sum of essays, acclaimed the Future Available 14 April its parts creates the whole: architecture, writer and critic Olivia Andrew Keen In Joy at Work, interior design, furniture and lighting. Laing makes a Atlantic. PB. $29.99 KonMari method All projects are well documented compelling case for why Available 31 March pioneer Marie Kondo regarding specifications, design features art matters, especially The current crisis of and organisational and products. So much so it is an in the turbulent democracy, the psychologist Scott inspirational resource in its promotion political climate of the growing economic Sonenshein will help of local talent, ingenuity and materials twenty-first century. inequality between you to refocus your and, if your budget is small, so many Examining art and culture’s role in our rich and poor, our mind on what’s achievable details can be adapted or political and emotional lives Laing narcissistic social important at work. cherry-picked. I love a sawtooth roof and profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and media culture and the With advice on how to improve the way Project Zero (Brisbane) uses one with Georgia O’Keefe, interviews Hilary looming menace of AI you work, the book features advice on north-facing ridges for solar panels and Mantel and Ali Smith and others, and all threaten us as never problem areas including fundamentals south-facing verticals for soft and diffuse explores loneliness and technology, before. In a collection of insightful like how to organise your desk, finally light. Equally, the kitchen floor in women and alcohol, sex and the body. interviews with some of the most get through your emails and find what another project with geometric floor tiles We’re often told art can’t change influential thinkers of our time, Andrew sparks joy in an open plan office. The that gives a 3D cube effect is fabulously anything. Laing argues that it can. Keen discusses the impact of the digital results can be truly life-changing! NONFICTION April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 15

celebration of Nick Cave’s life, work and History inspiration and explores his many real and imagined universes. Selected by Cave Shakespeare in a Divided from the ‘Stranger Than Kindness: The America Nick Cave Exhibition’ Stranger Than Based on an incredible Kindness asks what shapes our lives and James Shapiro makes us who we are, and celebrates the true story comes a thrilling Faber. HB. $39.99 curiosity and power of the creative spirit. treasure hunt across centuries Available 15 April Shakespeare’s position by the bestselling author of as England’s national Parenting The Jade Lily. poet is established and unquestionable. But as James Shapiro Every Conceivable Way illuminates in this Despina Meris revelatory new history, Hardie Grant. PB. $34.99 Shakespeare has long Available 1 April held an essential place After relocating to in American culture. Why, though, would Australia from New a proudly independent republic embrace York, Despina Meris A hilarious and useful guide England’s greatest writer? Investigating a and her husband, Bill, to 100 words and phrases selection of defining moments in settle down to baby- smart people use — even if American history Shapiro leads us to making. What they they only kinda sorta (secretly fascinating answers and uncovers rich never expect is a string don’t) know what they mean. and startling stories. of heartbreaking unexplained The Fall of the House of Byron: miscarriages, even with the help of IVF. { } Scandal and Seduction in They turn to surrogacy – first in India, Georgian England then in the Ukraine and finally in Emily Brand Thailand, where their baby is conceived. John Murray. PB. $32.99 Every Conceivable Way asks how far you Available 14 April would go before you call it quits, when it The Fall of the House of seems like all the odds are stacked Byron follows the fates against you. Bold, brave and darkly funny, of Lord Byron’s Come is the extraordinary story of ancestors over three Melbourne sex worker Rita Therese generations in a drama Cinema that begins in rural and the love, sex and death she has Nottinghamshire and experienced in her life so far. Mysteries of Cinema: plays out in the Reflections on Film Theory, gentlemen’s clubs of History and Culture Georgian London, amid tempests on Adrian Martin far-flung seas, and in the glamour of UWA Publishing. PB. $29.99 pre-revolutionary France. A compelling Available 1 April story of prominent and controversial The major essays of the characters, it is a sumptuous family brilliant and prolific portrait and an electrifying work of Australian-born film social history. critic Adrian Martin have long been difficult Music to access, so this anthology, which collects highlights of One Two Three Four: his work in one volume, The Beatles in Time will be welcomed throughout film studies. Craig Brown In these vibrant and highly personal Fourth Estate. PB. $32.99 essays, written between 1982 and 2016, Available 2 April Martin pursues a particular vision of what cinema has been, what it is, and what it One Two Three Four still could be. traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Politics Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It The Dragons and the Snakes: also tells the tales of the How the Rest Learned to Fight disparate and colourful the West people within their orbit. A fascinating David Kilcullen mixture of history, etymology, diaries, Scribe. PB. $35 autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel Available 31 March lives, party lists, charts, interviews, In 1993, a newly announcements and stories awarding- appointed CIA director winning author Craig Brown joyfully warned that Western echoes the frenetic hurly-burly of an era. powers might have ‘slain a large dragon’ Stranger Than Kindness with the fall of the Nick Cave USSR, but now faced a A&U. HB. $59.99 ‘bewildering variety of Available 31 March poisonous snakes.’ Featuring full-colour David Kilcullen reveals what the West’s reproductions of opponents have learned from twenty- original artwork, first-century conflict, and explains how handwritten lyrics, their cutting-edge tactics and photographs and adaptability pose a serious threat to For the curious collected personal America and its allies. This book is a dk.com.au artefacts this highly compelling, counterintuitive look at the collectible book is a new, vastly complex global arena. 16 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 NONFICTION

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of misogynist violence, there’s another that compressed land, recipes that were once the World Economy tells of solidarity and empowerment. And closely guarded family secrets were shared Philip Coggan it’s time we reclaimed them. By turns witty and passed between different groups in an Profile Business. PB. $34.99 and inspiring, Antigone Rising offers a effort to ensure that they were not lost Available 31 March much-needed, fascinating new lens on the forever. Sami Tamimi retraces the lineage More is a history of trade, stories we take for granted. and evolution of his country’s cuisine, from industry and economic refugee-camp cooks to the home kitchens FROM STELLA PRIZE thought, from prehistoric of Gaza and the mill of a master tahini SHORTLISTED AUTHOR times to the present. Natural History maker. Recipes are quite extraordinary and MIRANDI RIWOE Taking history in great include such dishes as fish kofta or pulled strides, it illustrates lamb schwarma sandwiches. If you have broad changes by Under the Stars: A Journey enjoyed the food of Ottolenghi, then this is examining details from into Light the perfect next step. By the by, Sami was the design of the Matt Gaw born and raised in Jerusalem. He became standard medieval cottage through to the Elliot & Thompson. HB. $26.99 head chef of Lilith, one of the top stranglehold that Paris’s three belt-buckle- Available 1 April restaurants in Tel Aviv and the company making guilds exercised over innovation in Light pollution is includes restaurants, Nopi and Rovi, in the field of holding up trousers. Coggan everywhere. Not only is it London. Alongside Ottolenghi, Sami ‘Beautiful and true. reveals how at every step of our long journey, damaging to humans and Tamimi is co-author of: Ottolenghi: The Broke open an it was connections between people that to wildlife, disrupting our Cookbook and Jerusalem: A Cookbook. always created the conditions of prosperity. natural rhythms, but it all-too-forgotten history obliterates the subtler Eating For Pleasure, People & lights that have guided us Planet of Australia. Then it Science for millennia. In this Tom Hunt broke my heart.’ beautifully written Kyle Books. HB. $45 exploration, Matt Gaw ventures forth into Available 31 March TRENT DALTON Losing Eden: Why Our Minds darkness to find out exactly what we’re Feeling guilty about how Need the Wild losing. It is a timely and urgent reminder to you are eating? Meet Lucy Jones reconnect with the natural world, showing Tom Hunt, he won’t Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 how we only need to step outside to find that, make you feel better but Available 31 March in darkness, the world lights up. he will give you excellent Today many of us live ideas to relieve some indoor lives, guilt. Tom is based in disconnected from the London and works as a natural world as never At home food and sustainability writer with a weekly before. And yet nature food waste column in The Guardian. Eating with Chris Gordon remains deeply for Pleasure, People & Planet is a manifesto to ingrained in our help anyone achieve sustainability through language, culture and An Australian Garden their diet with inspirational recipes for consciousness. So what everyday cooking that consider how we Philip Cox happens, asks acclaimed journalist Lucy farm, trade, eat, and dispose of food. Tom’s T&H. HB. $70 Jones, as we lose our bond with the natural mission is to teach a way of eating that Available 31 March world – might we also be losing part of prioritises the environment without We should all ourselves? Losing Eden is an urgent, sacrificing pleasure, taste and nutrition. He understand the comprehensive inquiry into how nature demonstrates how we can all become part of importance of enriches the human psyche – and of the the solution, supporting a delicious, maintaining indigenous startling risks we face in leaving it behind. biodiverse and regenerative food system, Australian landscapes giving us the skills and knowledge to shop, and gardens. Renowned eat and cook sustainably, whilst eating The Magicians: Great Minds and architect Philip Cox healthier, better-tasting food for no extra the Central Miracle of Science always considered this cost. Grab this book for ideas and leave it Marcus Chown vital and so some forty years ago purchased lying around your home for friends and Faber. PB. $29.99 eighty hectares on the south coast of NSW family to pick up. There truly is no excuse. Available 31 March as a private retreat and a conservation How does it feel to know exercise. Applying his own aesthetic The Art of Cake something about the principles of vista, light, texture, colour and Alice Oehr universe that no one has mass, Philip worked with nature to reveal T&H. HB. $24.99 ever known before? And and enhance the bushland in an enticing Available 31 March why is mathematics so way. An Australian Garden captures this This is for all people magically good at unique vision of a wild landscape, tamed who bake cakes for revealing nature’s here and there with art or shelters. This is a ‘Every Australian, whatever reason: secrets? This is the story beautiful book, filled with glorious images whether it is to fill their indeed everyone, of the magicians: the of our country’s bush. There are no nods to house with wonderful scientists who predicted the existence of English pastures, but rather images filled aromas, to sell at the should read this unknown planets, black holes, invisible with wonderful intensity and spirit of our local school fete, to force fields, ripples in the fabric of space- own land. This would be a glorious (and groundbreaking book.’ impress friends and time, unsuspected subatomic particles, and aspirational) gift for any gardener that family with desert or simply to eat for the even antimatter. A breathtaking and understands the importance of our own MELANIE CHENG pure joy of it all. Melbourne based Alice Oehr mind-altering tour of the major plants and is (soon) looking for their own is a celebrated graphic designer and breakthroughs of modern physics. piece of paradise. illustrator who works in a signature palette filled with bold vibrant colours. She has Falastin: A Cookbook Mythology always favoured drawing cakes and this Sami Tamimi & Tara Wigley, with a wonderful kaleidoscope of colour is a foreword by Yotam Ottolenghi brilliant exploration of the history & cultural Antigone Rising Ebury. HB. Was $49.99 significance of fifty cakes from around the Helen Morales $39.99 world. These cakes have been chosen not Wildfire. PB. $29.99 Available 31 March just for their delicious flavours and graphic Available 14 April Named after the appeal. After all the humble cake is about so The idealised picture of Palestinian newspaper much more than just flavour; it incorporates classical antiquity most that brought together a history, culture and therapy. This sweet of us learned in school diverse people, Falastin perfect gift book includes origin stories, conveniently glosses is a commemoration of a explanations and interesting facts for over the most brutal cuisine and a way of life. everyone who has a taste for cake. Alice Oehr parts of the history – and The story of Palestine’s celebrates the finery of cake: the colours, omits surprising stories food is really the story of patterns, toppings, packaging and forms of www.uqp.com.au of feminist resistance. its people. When the events of 1948 forced display, teaching us to fully appreciate our For each story of residents of Palestine together into one favourite desserts. YOUNG ADULT April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 17

who happens to be the boy next door, Lottie decides on an evil plan to outwit her enemy Young Adult – to be even more virtuous than Evelyn. But can it be done by this self-confessed rebel? And why is the cutest boy in school, who she’s had a crush on forever, suddenly Sarah Epstein, the highly commended author of Small paying attention to her? Is it her bad-girl BOOK OF THE Spaces, has done it again with her new novel Deep Water. persona or her sudden good-girl vibe that is MONTH Once more we are set the challenge of untwisting a mystery. drawing him in? Henry Weaver has been missing for three months. After a Lottie is a wonderfully memorable Young Adult heavy storm his muddy bicycle was found at the train station, character with a very distinctive voice and but it’s the only trace of him. Or is it? Chloe Baxter thinks a whole lot of attitude. Her witty repartee Readings there is more to the story and resolves to uncover the truth, in her regular meetings with the school even if that means questioning everyone in town, friends principal are particularly delightful. This Kids’ Book included. Mason Weaver is in free fall, but what’s the cause? story has understated diversity in family His mum’s drinking and attitude are hard to take, but that’s groupings, ethnicity and sexuality that is and nothing new for Mason, and of course his brother is missing, just part of their everyday lives, as it should but there’s something more. And then there’s Henry’s be. Poppy Nwosu captures the uncertainties strangely anonymous online Facebook friend. Was this a and jealousies of high school perfectly, with Board Book beneficial relationship or something sinister? her story mining similar territory to her All set in a small rural Australian town that is struggling Readings YA Prize shortlisted debut, Making Subscriptions to survive, The Shallows is so easy to picture, it’s one of those Friends with Alice Dyson, to excellent effect. places you drove through on a long trip, stopped for petrol This is an utterly delightful read that you and some lunch maybe or stayed overnight unexpectedly, but will devour like a cheeky bar of chocolate. didn’t really engage with fully, not knowing that under the Suitable for readers aged 12+. Deep Water surface something’s brewing, wrong turns have been taken, Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Sarah Epstein bad decisions made. A&U. PB. $19.99 Kids With the clever writing and believable voices this book Available 31 March is constantly raising questions, giving morsels of answers The Dark Lady and then adding more queries to the pot. It keeps you on Akala the edge of your seat, it’s insightful and engaging. You will find yourself engrossed and Hodder. PB. $19.99 determined to solve the mystery. For ages 13+. Available 14 April Claire Atherfold is the manager of Readings State Library Victoria Henry is an orphan, an outsider, a thief. He is also a fifteen-year-old invested How to Grow a Family Tree The Book of Chance with magical powers ... Eliza Henry Jones Sue Whiting This brilliant, at times HarperCollins. PB. $22.99 Walker. PB. $17.99 brutal, first novel from the Available now Available 1 April amazing imagination that Share the As with P is for Pearl, There is not much is Akala, will glue you to Eliza Henry-Jones’s that twelve-year-old your seat as you are hurled into a time lifelong joy of latest young adult novel Chance Callahan is when London stank and boys like Henry How to Grow a Family Tree uncertain about. She were forced to find their own route through reading with tells the story of a draws a hard line between the tangled streets and out the other side. seventeen-year-old girl true and false, and values Akala is a natural storyteller and his teen and the emotional honesty over everything debut will enthuse and entertain showing those closest struggles brought on by a else. Chance’s mother has that reading is a true super-power. family in crisis. In her trademark style, kept detailed diaries of their lives from the to you, even Henry-Jones draws on her background in moment she was born, and she knows the Unpregnant psychology in creating an authentic notable parts like the back of her hand. Jenni Hendriks & Ted Caplan from afar. experience for Stella, the protagonist of this So, when a reality TV show arrives at her Chicken House. PB. $16.99 work. This is an emotionally complex story home and reveals the holes in these stories, Available now with a myriad of pressure points at play. Chance’s world is shaken. At the same time, Veronica never thought Stella’s family are struggling to come Chance’s Year 7 class is at the centre of a she’d want to fail a test – to terms with their changed financial social media bungle that helps her see there that is, until she finds circumstances brought on by the father’s is a difference between what is true and herself staring at a piece gambling addiction. Being forced to move what has been manufactured. of plastic with two solid out of the family home to the local caravan Sue Whiting’s protagonist is a pink lines. With a park is a point of shame and much social sensitive and whip-smart pre-teen who college-bound future angst for Stella and her sister Taylor. For can teach us a lot about the truth and the disappearing before her too long, the sisters have had to reconcile importance of family. With a gripping eyes, Veronica decides to have an abortion. themselves to the family’s diminishing mystery at its core, readers might find it But the closest place to get one is over nine assets as their father sold off anything of difficult to put this one down. hundred miles away, and the only person value to finance his gambling addiction. The Book of Chance is a story with a big there to help is her ex-best friend Bailey. A The family home was the last thing to heart and an even bigger twist. For readers sharply observed, bittersweet road-trip go. But this isn’t Stella’s only concern. aged 11+. story for our times. A surprise letter from her biological Kealy Siryj is from Readings Kids mother seeking connection is in itself Open Fire destabilising and, even though Stella knew Taking Down Evelyn Tait Amber Lough her own adoption story, this couldn’t have Poppy Nwosu Carolrhoda Lab – Lerner Publishing Group. come at a more confusing time. Wakefield. PB. $24.95 HB. $24.99 The complexity of one’s relationship to Available now Available now home and family are of central concern in This novel is an In 1917, Russia is losing this emotionally challenging work. But Stella engaging comedy of the war with Germany. proves a stoic and resilient teenager, if not Purchase online at manners set around a Seventeen-year-old Katya an endearing one given her predilection for blended family and a is politically conflicted, readings.com.au/ self-help books and the pop-psychological high-school friendship but she wants Russia to support they offer her. As when, justifying book-subscriptions- group. Lottie is a black- win the war. When the her point that she’s not as angry as her sister, clothed heavy metal fan government begins at-readings she makes amusing use of a newly learnt and school troublemaker recruiting an all-female psychological concept, remarking: ‘I suppose whose best friend falls in love with her army battalion, she signs up. But on the I’m a lot more actualised than Taylor’. This is worst enemy, the school good girl, Evelyn battlefront, Katya is confronted by the a sensitive story about the things that break Tait. Unfortunately, Lottie also has to share horrifying realities of war. Faced with people and the strength and resources they a room with her nemesis, because they have heartbreak and disillusionment, she must draw upon to start over. been stepsisters for the past year. re-evaluate her commitment and decide Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster With the help of her other best friend, where she stands. 18 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 KIDS

Paolo, Emperor of Rome that celebrates non-traditional families and captures Kids’ Mac Barnett & Claire Keane (illus.) what lies at the heart of family life – love. Abrams. HB. $24.99 Available 31 March Junior Grade Books Paolo, a dachshund, lives in a hairdressing salon but he is desperate to escape and experience PESTS Rome in all its historic glory. One day Emer Stamp he manages to slip out and the city he Hodder. PB. $14.99 long imagined comes alive for him. Available 31 March Along the way he fends off vicious Stix is a mouse the size of an egg cup, cats, which empowers him to declare when he meets a can jump the width of a dog’s pack of dogs that he will lead them. An act of bravery bottom, and loves cheese. He sees him presented to the Pope and ensconced in luxury probably lives behind your washing in the papal apartments, but grandeur is not for him machine, but you wouldn’t know it, and he returns to the outdoor life – good on you, Paolo! because his grandma taught him to The line work in the illustrations is strong and sure always stay out of trouble and never so that there is a wonderful representation of movement let the humans know he’s there. But now Stix has and drama. I wonder if one day Paolo’s path will cross stumbled across PESTS and he’s about to rip up with Mr Chicken’s! Top storytelling for ages 2+. Grandma’s rule book and make a real pest of himself. Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn Scary Mary and the Stripe Spell Your Birthday Was the Best! (Monty’s Island, Book 1) Maggie Hutchings & Felicita Sala (illus.) Emily Rodda & Lucinda Gifford (illus.) Affirm Press. PB. $24.99 A&U. PB. $14.99 Board Books Available 31 March Available 31 March This is a delightful and energetic Monty lives on a perfect island in the picture book about a happy-go- middle of a magical sea. Sometimes the Beautiful Eggs lucky cockroach crashing a birthday sea throws up something interesting … Alice Lindstrom (illus.) party. The cake looks absolutely and he goes on an amazing adventure! Scribe. BB. $16.99 delicious and that’s not at all a surprise However Monty and friends receive Available now because this book is illustrated by some startling news: Scary Mary and Decorated eggs are found all over the Felicita Sala who gave us last year’s her pirate crew are on their way, looking world in many different countries and wonderful cook/story book Lunch at 10 for a new island to call home. It’s going to take one of are a wonderful celebration of family, Pomegranate Street. Who can blame a cockroach for Monty’s best ideas to save them! A delightful new culture and tradition. Discover and showing up un-invited? When Dad pulls out the vacuum series from Emily Rodda. celebrate the art of egg-decorating – cleaner it looks like the party might be over for our little its amazing patterns and colours – in friend, but we mustn’t forget cockroaches are known for Timmy the Ticked-Off Pony and the this large-format book. Complete with resilience! It’s an uplifting story with an insect Poo of Excitement (Timmy the Ticked- a stencil incorporated into the design it will encourage protagonist that always looks on the bright side of life. Off Pony, Book 1) children to create their own beautiful eggs. Yes, this book is gross enough to thrill a young audience, Magda Szubanski & Dean Rankine (illus.) but these are top quality laughs and it’s genuinely Scholastic. PB. $16.99 Cats Say Nau. hilarious fun for readers of all ages. Please read it! Available 1 April Philip Bunting Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Timmy is rude. He’s lazy. He’s Little Hare. BB. $16.99 always cranky. And he’s also one of Available 1 April There’s No Such Thing the most famous ponies in the entire world! Until one day when ... poo Dogs Say Bau. Heidi McKinnon Albert Street Books. HB. $19.99 happens. Surely one little poo of Philip Bunting Available 31 March excitement can’t ruin Timmy’s life. Little Hare. BB. $16.99 Bear can’t sleep. Did you hear that? Can it? Yes, it can. Find out how in Available 1 April Did you feel that? What was it? It the funny new series by award-winning comedian When an animal makes its call, we wasn’t a hungry giant or a blood- and author Magda Szubanski. all hear exactly the same noise. But sucking spider or a fire-breathing depending on the language you speak, dragon because there is NO SUCH the way you translate that noise can be very different! THING … Is there? A funny, warm Middle Grade Where in the world do cats say ‘nau’? Or dogs say ‘bau’? and reassuring story from the internationally acclaimed Or cows say ‘boe’? Or pigs say ‘boo boo’? Take a hilarious creator of I Just Ate My Friend and Baz & Benz. trip around the world with these books to find out how we The List of Things that Will Not Change translate animal noises in different languages. Rebecca Stead Backyard Birds Text. PB. $16.99 Helen Milroy Available 15 April Picture Books Fremantle Press. HB. $19.99 Twelve-year-old Bea reflects on Available 31 March life since her parent’s divorce and This boldly illustrated work from the many challenges periodically I’ll Always Be Older than You Indigenous creator Helen Milroy conspiring to overwhelm her: family Jane Godwin & Sara Acton (illus.) celebrates the birds in our adjustments, school frustrations, Little Hare. HB. $24.99 backyards. From laughing struggles with spelling and (her Available 1 April kookaburras to prancing ultimate nemesis) itchy eczema; enough Being an older sibling can be mudlarks, this is a fun and lively to push anyone over the edge. With so much upheaval challenging; patience is read for the very young. in her life, Bea maintains a list of things that will not required, as the little girl in the change to keep her centred and reassured. book learns. Who’s Your Real Mum? It’s easy to be beguiled by Bea; her voice is A little planning doesn’t go Bernadette Green & Anna Zobel (illus.) completely authentic and thoroughly engaging, her astray and so she hops into her Scribe. HB. $24.99 anecdotes intimate and her dilemmas tangible. Her little brother’s cot and outlines Available 31 March direct, conversational style completely draws the all the things she will teach him and the activities When Nicholas wants to know reader into her world. She’s genuine and funny and they will share. Told in verse and accompanied by which of Elvi’s two mums is her real makes you laugh in a way that only the truth can. Bea sweet, simple pictures, this delightful picture book mum, she gives him lots of clues. gains important insights on the road to self-discovery; offers a positive, practical and loving look at what early Her real mum is a circus performer realising she doesn’t always know why she does childhood can be like and the huge responsibility of and she even teaches spiders the art things, what she feels or why, she learns to keep what being a big sister. And, of course her little brother will of web. But Nicholas still can’t work matters and relinquish what doesn’t. There are many never be older than her, huzzah! For ages 2+. it out! Luckily, Elvi knows how to perceptive moments in this treasure; my favourite is Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn explain it to her friend. A beautifully illustrated story when Bea refuses to define herself by the worst thing KIDS April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 19

The January Stars Where the Wilderness Lives BOOK OF THE Kate Constable Jess Butterworth MONTH A&U. PB. $16.99 Orion. PB. $15.99 Available 31 March Available 31 March Graphic Novel Clancy and Tash have kidnapped One day, as Cara and her siblings are their grandfather from an aged- trying to clean up the canal where they care home. He’s a stroke survivor in a live, they pull out a mysterious locked Landing with wheelchair whose main form of safe. Though none of them can open it, Wings communication is just a few words: ‘yes’, they’re sure it’s something special. That ‘nah’ and ‘sp-sp-sp-’. They don’t really night, a thief comes after the safe. An Trace Balla have any plans at first beyond taking epic race for survival that follows four A&U. HB. $27.99 him back to his now-empty house in Rosella, a place children and their dog through treacherous waterways, Available 31 March outside the city the girls now live in. When it is dense forests and the deep, dark wilderness of Wales. revealed on their trip that Pa hates the home, the girls set off to find him somewhere else to stay, successfully It’s been four long years since Trace Balla’s last avoiding police and nosy waitresses, and meeting and Graphic Novel graphic novel, Rockhopping, but it’s been utterly making old and new friends along the way. worth the wait. Landing with Wings is the story of a The January Stars is wonderfully written. The young girl, Mira, and her mum, who move to the When Stars are Scattered characters are all beautifully brought to life. Clancy is goldfields to make an entirely new life. Mira communes Victoria Jamieson (author and illus.), Omar quiet and anxious but when she needs to she steps up, with nature, befriending a tree and helping a frog in the Mohamed & Iman Geddy (illus.) and Tash is bossy and sometimes mean but you never garden, and meets her next-door neighbour, Wings. Dial. PB. $21.99 stop loving her, and Pa, who as mentioned spends most Slowly mother and daughter make friends, put down Available 15 April of this book being pushed around in a wheelchair and roots and find their place in the community. There are Omar and his younger brother have spent can barely communicate, could easily have been a mere themes of starting again, finding yourself, and of most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee device, but he’s not, he’s so well-drawn that by the end reaching outwards to others. Every page is filled to the camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never of the book I felt like I knew him well enough to work out brim with tiny, fascinating details of nature, such as the enough food, achingly dull, and without what he was saying without the girls translating. This life cycles of frogs, the growth of plants and the access to the medical care Omar knows is a beautiful story about family, elders, and disability – particular eccentricities of birds. his nonverbal brother needs. So when great for kids aged 9+. This story is set on Dja Dja Wurrung country to the Omar has the opportunity to go to school, west of Melbourne and Balla has worked closely with Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids he knows it might be a chance to change their future. traditional elders of the area and named many places, Heartbreak and hope exist together in this remarkable flora and fauna in traditional language throughout the Wink graphic novel about growing up in a refugee camp. book. From the beginning endpapers to the author’s Rob Harrell notes at the back, this is a culturally rich and absolutely HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 delightful visual story of the joys of engaging with Available now Nonfiction nature and community. Suitable for kids aged 7–12 High school, Year 7, everything is years, it’s an absolute triumph and excellent example of meant to be normal, right? But not the benefits of telling a story graphically! for Ross Maloy. With a sudden and Grow: The Secrets of Our DNA Nicola Davies & Emily Sutton (illus.) Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids horrifying diagnosis Ross becomes the ‘cancer kid’. A rare, aggressive eye cancer Walker. HB. $24.99 turns his world upside down and nobody Available 1 April seems to know what to say or how to All living things grow – every plant she’s ever done. She must learn from her mistakes, behave around him anymore. In all the weirdness and and every animal, including human forgive herself and move on; advice young readers will heartache, Ross discovers the power of true friendship, beings. Some things grow fast and find reassuring and comforting. laughter and, most importantly, music as medicine. others grow slowly; some things Celebrated award-winning author (and masterful This is a personal and poignant story of survival grow by tiny degrees, while others storyteller) Rebecca Stead has written a thoroughly based on Rob Harrell’s real-life experience and filled grow to be enormous. Yet there’s uplifting and positive story children will love. Highly with his cartoons and illustrations. Full of heart and something about the way we grow recommended for ages 10+. humour, it’s perfect for fans of R.J. Palacio’s Wonder that links us all together. With words from Nicola Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern and Samantha Wheeler’s Everything I’ve Never Said. Davies and exquisite artwork by Emily Sutton, this groundbreaking book is certain to enchant and inspire. Bianca Looney is from Readings Kids The Line Tender Kate Allen Beyond Belief Classic of the Month Puffin. PB. $15.99 Dee White Available 21 April Omnibus. PB. $17.99 Lucy and Fred are very best friends Available 1 April Stormbreaker (Alex Rider, Book 1) and collaborating on a summer In 1942, in the Grand Mosque in Paris, Anthony Horowitz project. Already a passionate biologist at eleven-year-old Ruben is hiding from Walker. PB. $16.99 13, Fred asks Lucy (a talented artist in the the Nazis. Ruben must learn how to pass Available now throes of self-discovery) to illustrate a field himself off as a Muslim, while he waits When Alex Rider is woken up in guide of animals that live close to their for the infamous Fox to help him get to the middle of the night and told seaside home. So, when a shark is snared Spain to be reunited with his family. But that his uncle, who is also his sole in a fishing net, Fred’s excitement is palpable! when the mosque is raided and the Fox guardian, has been killed in a car crash, I was so immersed in their story I was shocked doesn’t come, Ruben is forced to flee. Beyond Belief is his life rearranges itself around him. to my core when tragedy struck. But life goes on in inspired by the true story of Muslims who saved the Enter MI6, a supercomputer, a couple of this bittersweet yet life affirming story. This is a rich, lives of Jewish children in WWII. cool gadgets and (of course) for good nuanced tale of insightful observations, gentle humour measure, more life-threatening situations than you and relatable personalities; even minor characters leave The Boy Who Fooled the World can count with two hands. an indelible mark on the story. Lisa Thompson In our post-Cherub moment, the teenage spy In her grief, Lucy finds reassurance and support Scholastic. PB. $15.99 narrative seems almost canonical. But before Robert from her family and community. She also discovers Available 1 April Muchamore there was Anthony Horowitz! I read the importance of connection and the wonderful Cole’s family is struggling to make ends Stormbreaker when I was twelve, and was completely interplay of art and science. Each chapter begins with meet and he doesn’t fit in with the rich enthralled by (and jealous of) Alex Rider’s adventures. her drawings of the captured shark and as the story kids at his school. Until the day a What struck me on re-reading is how resonant it is still unfolds Lucy’s illustrations reveal her inner struggle: painting Cole made in Art class is in 2020 – super computers? A potentially unstoppable her sketches at first seem flat and empty but come to unexpectedly spotted and sold in a posh virus? Sure, the gadgets are a little dated (I don’t really life as the field guide becomes both an homage and London gallery for thousands of pounds. know what a Game Boy Colour is), but in Stormbreaker lifeline to those she’s loved and lost. But Cole has been keeping a secret … he Horowitz showcases a prescience for our times nearly Highly recommended for readers in upper primary is not the creator of the painting. There’s only one way twenty years before the fact – this is what makes it a and lower secondary school who enjoy a realistic and out from being exposed: Cole must crack the riddle of a classic. And what about the huge vat of fatal jellyfish? engaging story. mysterious painting that promises the clues hidden That’s just quality storytelling. For ages 11+. Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern within it will lead the solver to great riches. Jeremy George is from Readings Malvern 20 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 BARGAINS

artists alike. But how much do we know seminal art and design movement that sojourn that’s both classic and about our closest neighbour? Discover the changed the way we see, think and live. contemporary, like the city itself. April history of humanity’s relationship with the Moon and how it affects our everyday lives The Quest for Queen Mary New York Precincts Bargains and the world around us. James Pope-Hennessy & Hugo Pip Cummings Vickers (ed.) HB. Was $39.99 Now $14.95 The Neuroscience of PB. Was $32.99 Now $13.95 New York Precincts is Mindfulness When James Pope- your guide to the coolest The Ultimate Book of Cities Stan Rodski Hennessy began his work places to shop, eat and Anne-Sophie Baumann & Didier PB. Was $34.99 Now $12.95 on Queen Mary’s official drink in twenty of the Balicevic (illus.) Studies in neuroscience have biography, it opened the city’s hottest precincts. HB. 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What do Turkey’s borders for Australia’s best nature- After his mother is killed by you see on the farm? contemporary traces of the based holidays. There’s a hunter, Babar avoids What is Miffy pulling Ottoman Empire. Their something for every capture by escaping to the with her arm? What 800-year rule ended a kind of nature-lover in this inspiring and city, where he is befriended animals are at the zoo? century ago – and yet, informative book, from rustic cabins to by the kindly Old Lady. 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Journeys to the Other Side of Primate Change: How the Hayley McKee the World: Further Adventures World is Remaking Us PB. Was $29.99 Now $14.95 Possum Magic (30th of a Young Naturalist Vybarr Cregan-Reid Sticky Fingers, Green Anniversary Edition) David Attenborough PB. Was $29.99 Now $12.95 Thumb invites your Mem Fox & Julie Vivas (illus.) PB. Was $35 Now $13.95 Primate Change is a imagination to travel out HB. Was $29.99 Now $14.95 From Madagascar and New wide-ranging, polemical of the kitchen and into For 30 years Guinea to the Pacific Islands look at how and why the the garden. Almost sixty Possum Magic and the Northern Territory of human body has changed recipes celebrate has captivated Australia a young David since humankind first got vegetables, herbs and and enchanted Attenborough’s further up on two feet. Spanning edible flowers in cakes and other sweet children and travels lead him to the entirety of human snacks. Say goodbye to mushroom risotto adults alike. encounters with more history – from primate to transhumant and zucchini fritters and hello to porcini Mem Fox’s lovable characters, little Hush and remarkable cultures and animals in some of – Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s book investigates caramel and chestnut cake, and apple Grandma Poss, together with Julie Vivas’s the most unique environments on the planet. where we came from, who we are today cider and zucchini muffins. This is earthy, exquisite illustrations, weave a story of pure Told with his characteristic charm, humour and how modern technology will change seasonal baking at its best. magic. Continuously in print since it was first and warmth, it is an inimitable adventure us beyond recognition. published in 1983, Possum Magic has been among people, places and wildlife. A Fine Balance embraced as a timeless Australian tale. Greeks Bearing Gifts (Bernie Rohinton Mistry Theatre of the World: The Gunther Book 13) PB. 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Was $22.99 Now $13.95 The Story of the Bauhaus Cristian Bonetto Using the theories of Alfred The Moon Frances Ambler HB. Was $39.99 Now $14.95 Adler, one of the three giants Hannah Pang & Thomas HB. Was $39.99 Now $15.95 Rome Precincts is your of nineteenth century Hengbrook (illus.) Now 100 years old, the guide to the coolest places psychology alongside Freud HB. Was $29.99 Now $9.95 Bauhaus still looks just as to shop, eat and drink in and Jung, the bestselling For centuries, humankind fresh today as it did when the city’s eighteen hottest The Courage to Be Disliked has gazed up at the Moon it began. It was a place to precincts. From authentic follows an illuminating in awe and wonder. It has experiment and embrace trattorias and gelaterias conversation between a philosopher and his been a source of both a new creative freedom. to hip wine bars and local young pupil. 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Tell It to the Bees Film & TV $29.95 Available now In 1950s Britain Dr. Jean Markham returns to the small town she left to Ken Burns brings us his new documentary on country take over her late father's DVD OF THE music, to go along with his other brilliant histories of medical practice. When a the Civil War, baseball, the Vietnam War, and the West, MONTH school-yard scuffle lands among others. Using footage and photos rarely seen, Burns Documentary Charlie in her surgery, introduces us to artists who, through their unique styles, OPERA she invites him to visit performing talents and willingness to sacrifice, promote and the hives in her garden and tell his secrets travel, paved the way for future performers to make a living. to the bees, as she once did. This new AND friendship brings his mother Lydia into Burns gives us a history dating back to Jean's world and the two women find the turn of the century when gospel music themselves drawn to one another. BALLET and mountain music influences merged to create a unique American art form. Sorry We Missed You $24.95 DVD Despite all the usual challenges to documentary histories Available 8 April of artistic endeavours (copyright, the impossibility of Legendary director Ken including everything, etc.), Burns gives us a history dating Loach tells the story of SALE back to the turn of the century, when gospel music and Ricky and his family, who Country Music: mountain music influences merged to create a unique have been fighting an A Film by Ken American art form. He also covers the broader background uphill struggle against Burns of country music’s rise, including the importance of shrewd debt since the 2008 8-DVD set. Was $89.95 promoters, radio stations and big companies who brought financial crash. An $74.95 many of the artists to the public eye, some of whom would opportunity to wrestle TAKE UP TO Available 1 April never have had a voice otherwise. back some independence appears with the Being a music fan, I am always fascinated to hear about the chance for Ricky to run a franchise as a deep understanding of their roots that artists of today have, and today’s country artists live self-employed delivery driver, but the and breathe their history. pressures of working in the insecure gig economy bring the family to breaking point. % Country Music is a wonderful documentary showcasing the art form’s glorious beginnings and its sometimes rocky journey through American history. Working Woman Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn $29.95 40

Available now A mother of three Documentary prison under the tutorship of artist Ben children returns to the OFF Quilty. Approaching this moment workforce when her through the aesthetic of his art practice, husband's new restaurant The Biggest Little Farm director Matthew Sleeth brings an is failing. She secures a A $29.95 intensely personal perspective, and this job as an assistant to a Available 1 April film is born of his quiet fury at the events real estate developer leading to the execution. The Biggest Little Farm whose interest in her isn't SELECT chronicles the eight-year entirely professional, and his behaviour quest of John and Molly Great Australian Railway becomes aggressive and threatening. This Chester as they trade Journeys: Series 1 drama presents the insidious nature of RANGE city living for 200 acres $29.95 sexual harassment in the workplace with all of barren farmland and a Available 1 April the complexity and urgency it deserves. dream to harvest in Armed with his OF harmony with nature. Bradshaw’s Handbook Portrait of a Lady on Fire Featuring breathtaking cinematography, Michael Portillo $29.95 captivating animals, and an urgent embarks on six railway Available 1 April message to heed Mother Nature's call, it journeys across the France, 1760. Marianne OPERA provides us all a vital blueprint for better length and breadth of is commissioned to living and a healthier planet. Australia and explores paint the wedding its landscape, cities and portrait of Héloïse, a AND Martha: A Picture Story culture. Including the Ghan and Indian young woman who has $29.95 Pacific Railways Portillo reveals amazing just left the convent. Available 25 March feats of railway engineering and his Marianne arrives under BALLET travels take him from Canberra to In the 1970's, as the the guise of Melbourne, Sydney to Broken Hill, Port boroughs of New York companionship, observing Héloïse by day August to Darwin and more. City burned, Martha and secretly painting her by firelight at DVDS Cooper worked as a night. As the two women orbit one another, photographer for the New Film intimacy and attraction grow as they share York Post, seeking images Héloïse's first moments of freedom. of creativity and play This offer is where others saw crime Jojo Rabbit TV available at and poverty. As a result, she captured some $36.95 Carlton, Hawthorn, of the first images of New York graffiti. Now Available now Malvern, and at seventy-five, Martha finds herself ‘No one makes a The New Pope navigating a culture vastly changed and comedy about a $39.95 online, on a select struggles to find her place in this new world. 10-year-old Nazi and Available 1 April range of in-stock, his imaginary best Pius XIII is in a coma. And full-priced items. Guilty after an unpredictable and friend, Adolf Hitler, and While stocks last. $29.95 lives under the delusion mysterious turn of events, Available 1 April that they’re in for an the Secretary of State Available until Guilty is set during the easy ride … Yet Taika Voiello succeeds in the final sevety-two hours Waititi’s film is tender, daring, and enterprise of having Sir 30 April 2020. in the life of Myuran sharp – precisely pitched so that it keeps John Brannox, a moderate Sukumaran, the Bali its path steady and its ambitions in English aristocrat, Nine convicted criminal check. It makes buffoons out of the charming and sophisticated, placed on the readings.com.au who became an fascists while lamenting how easily their papal throne adopting the name John Paul accomplished artist beliefs can corrupt a nation.’ – The III. The new pope seems perfect, but he while in Kerobokan Independent (UK) conceals secrets and a certain fragility. 22 READINGS MONTHLY April 2020 MUSIC

A Long Way Back: The Songs synthesizer soundscapes. Collaborating of Glimmer with his stepfather (a record label co-owner) Popular Music Kim Richey it is a fully realised musical piece which $19.95 generates a meditative universe all its own. Available 27 March A Long Way Back: The High Risk Behaviour Despite working on and off with each other since 1983, Songs of Glimmer The Chats ALBUM OF this is the Eno brothers’ first collaborative album to be celebrates the twentieth $19.95 widely released. Developed across a rather astonishing THE MONTH anniversary of Kim Available 27 March fifteen-year timeframe, this fraternal collaboration has Richey’s classic album Pop/Rock/Alt yielded an inspired collection of delicate Ambient pieces. High Risk Behaviour is Glimmer. Whereas the debut studio album Brian Eno has spoken of wanting to make slow music Glimmer had a pop sheen to its sound, this from Australian punk that is more like a painting, and the gorgeous passages that version, featuring new interpretations of rockers The Chats. The the two conjure on this record are delineated by the naming each song, strips everything down to a album delivers convention of literally Mixing Colours: see ‘Spring Frost’, more raw essence and allows Richey to everything you’ve come ‘Wintergreen’, and ‘Verdigris’. give them a fresh yet timeless sound. to love from them – fourteen songs that are These works don’t have as much in common with Brian over in twenty-eight blistering, funny, Eno’s crucial albums On Land or Music For Airports, but on sweaty, unforgettable minutes. this recording one can hear similarities to his work with Pop/Rock/Alt pianist–composer Harold Budd on The Pearl, not to mention the second instalment in his Ambient series, The Plateaux of It Is What It Is Mixing Colours Thundercat Roger & Brian Eno Mirrors. And to be fair, the long shadow his music casts over Waves of Anzac/The Journey the entirety of the Ambient genre means that anything from $21.95 $21.95 Mick Harvey this world of music can’t help but be swept up in comparison $21.95 Available 3 April Available now to what he set in motion in the ’70s – even his own new Available 17 April Thundercat aka Stephen music, let alone his brother’s. Mick Harvey’s first Lee Bruner’s game- But it’s not as if this is a simple re-tread. Even though Roger Eno’s approach to melody soundtrack release in changing third album and harmony bears similarities to Budd’s ‘Soft Pedal’ style, perhaps it would be more over ten years features Drunk (2017) completed appropriate to locate his sensibilities somewhere near the younger batch of composers two compositions to his transition from working at the intersection of Classical and Ambient music: Ólafur Arnalds, Max Richter, accompany powerful virtuoso bassist to etc. subject matters. The bonafide star and cemented his reputation The influence Brian Eno has had over this new generation is readily apparent; who first, Waves of Anzac looks at Sam Neill’s as a unique voice that transcends genre. knows whether that influence was, in turn, partially Roger Eno’s own. This record holds personal family history interwoven with With guests including Childish Gambino up against the new guard. Both expansive and precise, this beautiful record is a must for the history of the First World War and the and Kamasi Washington, Bruner says that completists of Enos’ work – Brian and Roger Eno, that is. Anzacs through to the modern era while It Is What It Is ‘is about love, loss, life and the ups and downs that come with that.’ Nico Callaghan is from Readings Carlton the second, The Journey, is a four-part composition released in support of kids

and adults seeking asylum who have found Golden Repair themselves in Australia’s offshore #1 Dads Jazz/Blues South African jazz. Consisting of detention program. $21.95 | Also on vinyl unfinished sessions of all original Available now compositions by the pair and completed by Gigaton Under the #1 Dads That’s What I Heard Allen in 2019 Rejoice says Allen, is ‘a kind Pearl Jam moniker it’s humble of South African-Nigerian swing-jazz Robert Cray Band $39.95 melody and sincere stew’, with its roots firmly in Afrobeat. $19.95 Available 27 March storytelling that Tom Available now ‘As the band’s first LP Iansek gives centre stage Over the past four Soul/Funk since 2013, there’s an to. More than ever on decades, Robert Cray attention to sonic and Golden Repair, Iansek has allowed the simple has created a sound that emotional detail, a focus essence of the songs to remain unadorned, rises from American Nick of Time on musical light and while still keeping the trademark warmth, roots, blues, soul and The James Hunter Six shade, which reflects the ease and approachability that the project is well loved for. R&B, with five Grammy $26.95 album’s lengthy gestation. The record is wins and many acclaimed albums. ‘Funky, Available now sequenced with the rockers upfront and cool and bad,’ is how Cray describes his The James Hunter Six slower, more meditative songs at the back … The New Abnormal latest album, That’s What I Heard, which are back with another Gigaton is a testament to how Pearl Jam’s The Strokes celebrates the music of Curtis Mayfield, sublime offering of no own deeply held dissatisfaction still burns $21.95 Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, The Sensational nonsense rhythm and brighter than ever.’ – Rolling Stone Available 10 April Nightingales and more, alongside four blues. Nick of Time is a The New Abnormal is the newly written songs. shining example of how Dixie Blur first new album from a master songsmith can continually draw Jonathan Wilson The Strokes in seven Secrets are the Best Stories fresh water from a bottomless well. In $22.95 | Also on vinyl years, and it’s worth the Kurt Elling addition to the uptempo, swinging R&B Available now long wait. It is the New $24.95 that has put JH6 on the map, the album Following a tour with York band’s sixth studio Available 3 April explores so much more and makes it Roger Waters as album, and will appeal to fans old and new. Secrets are the Best Stories James’ most exciting release yet. musical director Filled with the irresistibly catchy guitar is the new album from Jonathan Wilson lines The Strokes are well-known for, this is acclaimed vocalist and headed to Nashville a future classic in the making. Grammy-winning artist Country and worked with a Kurt Elling featuring revered group of musicians to create his Folk/World renowned pianist Danilo When Carolina Comes Home most personal and fully realised work to Pérez. This vibrant and adventurous new Again date. On Dixie Blur he reaches back to the album not only marks a vital new Jim Lauderdale musical foundation of his upbringing Tamotaït collaboration between two of the greats in $19.95 whilst infusing the music with modern Tamikrest the music but is an album that confirms Kurt Available 27 March textures and aesthetic soundscapes. $27.95 Elling as the male vocalist of his generation. Grammy-winning icon Available 27 March Jim Lauderdale has Aporia Tamikrest return with a Rejoice always covered a wide Sufjan Stevens & Lowell Brams vivid, irrepressible rock Tony Allen & Hugh Masakela range across the $22.95 and roll statement. $22.95 Americana spectrum, Available 27 March Their most powerful Available now from rocked-up country In the spirit of the New album since 2013’s Rejoice is a very special to high lonesome bluegrass. In a very Age composers who wildly acclaimed collaboration between literal sense, he’s returning to his sanded off the edges of Chatma, Tamotaït finds the band not only Tony Allen, the geographic as well as musical roots on their synths’ sawtooth turning up the volume, but also legendary drummer When Carolina Comes Home Again. The waves, Aporia sharpening their ruminations on the state and co-founder of thirteen tracks are straight-up bluegrass, approximates a rich of the Sahara and the world beyond. It Afrobeat, and Hugh going back to the earliest music he soundtrack from an imagined sci-fi epic features acclaimed Moroccan singer Hindi Masekela, the master trumpet player of learned to play. brimming with moody, hooky, gauzy Zahra and Japanese traditional musicians. MUSIC April 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 23

Debussy & Rameau: Works for petition the Tsar over their working and Solo Piano living conditions. This majestic score, Classical Víkingur Ólafsson almost filmic in its conception, remains DG. 4837701. $ a milestone in Shostakovich’s output. Music Icelandic pianist The BBC Philharmonic under John Víkingur Ólafsson’s third Storgårds captures the tremendous Deutsche Grammophon intensity of the work. recording pairs works by To coincide with International Women’s Day 2020, two revolutionary French Classical ALBUM OF ABC Classic has released Volume 2 in the Women of composers separated by THE MONTH Note series, featuring another impressive program of a century and a half: Jean-Philippe Rameau Specials fabulous music by composers both famous and lesser- and Claude Debussy. The album Debussy & Classical known. Volume 1, which contained well-known favourites Rameau alternates music by the two such as Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s Etruscan Concerto, was a composers, creating an enthralling dialogue Beethoven: Complete Piano tremendously enjoyable musical feast. ABC Classic saved between them. Works are drawn from across Sonatas some goodies for Volume 2, such as the Eliza Aria from both composers’ careers. Wilhelm Kempff Elena Kats-Chernin’s Wild Swans concert suite, with which DG. 4837429. 8 CDs+1 Bluray Audio. Was many will be familiar. This definitive recording features the Korngold: Violin Concerto & $79.95 angelic voice of none other than Jane Sheldon, whose pitch String Sextet $34.95 (Limited stock at this price) and rhythmic accuracy is a lesson in beautiful singing. Andrew Haveron, City of London ‘… Kempff’s approach to Miriam Hyde’s Village Fair is a bit of a romp, bringing to Chamber Ensemble, RTÉ Concert Beethoven fuses mind another Australian classic – Danish Folk-Music Suite Orchestra & John Wilson substance and integrity Women of Note: by Percy Grainger. Any collection of Australian music would Chandos. CHAN20135. Was $29.95 with inimitable individuality, and A Century be incomplete without something by Margaret Sutherland, $22.95 and presented here is her symphonic poem Haunted Hills, reveals something new of Australian Korngold began work on which is as epic and creepy as the name suggests. with each rehearing. It grows on you – and Composers, his Violin Concerto in within you, in the long run. If you care Volume 2 A highlight is Deborah Cheetham’s moving ‘Eumerella: 1937, following his about Beethoven’s sonatas, give Kempff a Various Artists A War Requiem for Peace’, and should be compulsory father’s suggestion that chance.’ – ClassicsToday.com ABC Classics. 4819111. listening for all Australians. Sung entirely in ancient the main theme from his 2CDs. $24.95 Gunditjmara dialects, the requiem pays tribute to those score for the Errol Flynn lost in the bloody and brutal Eumeralla Resistance War. epic Another Dawn would make a good basis Beethoven: Complete Piano Cheetham surely is a national living treasure, and hers is a for a concerto. Premiered by Jascha Heifetz Sonatas vital voice in the Australian classical music landscape. in 1947, the Concerto is widely performed Maurizio Pollini Nardi Simpson’s Wilga’s Last Dance for symphonic wind rounds out the collection – and recorded, and is certainly Korngold’s DG. 4794120. 8CDs. Was $64.95 in this short but affecting piece, Simpson has attempted to recreate the only surviving best-known concert work. Korngold $34.95 (Limited stock at this price) traditional Yuwaalaraay melody, and in so doing demonstrates the remarkable diversity composed the String Sextet in 1914 and it ‘Pollini is a pianistic of work presented on Women of Note. shows his fully developed style and assured titan, one of the genuine Unfortunately male conductors are still overrepresented here – classical music idiomatic writing for the ensemble. aristocrats, which seems to be very slowly catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to gender makes it all the more equality across the board. Perhaps next year – if we’re lucky – Volume 3 might redress Tartini: Violin Concertos remarkable that it has the balance. Chouchane Siranossian, Venice taken him nearly 40 Alexandra Mathew is from Readings State Library Victoria Baroque Orchestra & Andrea years to produce a complete cycle of the 32 Marcon Beethoven piano sonatas ... This set Alpha. ALPHA596. $29.95 displays his utter mastery, his command of ‘Best known for his touch, of line, of shape, his delicacy and Beethoven: The Piano Vasks: Works for Piano Trio Devil’s Trill sonata, strength, his nobility ... Despite the long Concertos Trio Palladio Giuseppe Tartini time-span and developing understanding, it has a powerful unity of vision and Jayson Gillham, Adelaide Ondine. ODE13432. $26.95 (1692-1770) wrote up to purpose.’ – Sydney Morning Herald Symphony Orchestra & Nicholas We listen to, we 160 violin concertos, Carter look for, and we most of them neglected. ABC Classics. 4818533. 3 CDs. $31.95 learn about classical The French violinist’s project with the VBO Antonio Vivaldi Happy 250th music all the time. And aims to rectify that. Siranossian starts with Cecilia Bartoli, Ensemble Matheus Birthday yet, somehow, five unpublished works, including a recent & Jean-Christophe Spinosi Beethoven! The sometimes we miss a discovery by Margherita Canale, playing Decca. 4834475. Was $29.95 classical music world gem. This is what discovering Peteris Vasks with diabolical virtuosity and a rich, $16.95 (Limited stock at this price) is going mad for all has been for me. Considered one of the most expressive palette in the aria-like slow ‘Bartoli’s medium- new Beethoven influential Latvian composers today, his life movements. Superb.’ – The Sunday Times sized, but molten recordings and the Adelaide Symphony and works are fascinating. Confronted with instrument still Orchestra is jumping on that repressive Soviet policies, his inspiration in Ola Gjeilo: Night navigates coloratura bandwagon. Teaming up with fellow aleatoric composition earned him no friends Ola Gjeilo flourishes with a Australian pianist Jayson Gillham, the but in the 1990s, thanks to that champion of Decca. 4850196. $24.95 precision and secure ASO have released recordings of their contemporary music Gideon Kramer, Vasks Norwegian composer pitch that many other mature singers Piano Concerto Cycle from 2019. began to be heard outside his native land. and pianist Ola Gjeilo would envy. An early tendency to breathe Recorded over a short ten days in June, Trio Palladio, Latvian themselves, presents a stunning notes into being has been tamed, and her this is the first time in twenty years that are inspired and named for the famous collection of brand-new dramatic gifts are as strong as ever.’ – The there has been a completely Australian architect of the 1500s. The trio embody original works for solo Times (UK) recording of the Beethoven Piano Palladio’s spirt of precision in their piano, composed and Concertos. Australian favourite Nicholas meticulous rendering of Vasks’ Piano performed by Gjeilo himself. Night is an Britten: War Requiem, Op. 66 Carter is at the helm as conductor and it Trios. Vasks is a deeply religious composer intimate and meditative collection of Galina Vishnevskaya, Peter Pears, is apparent from the very first notes that and Trio Palladio manage to bring out the peaceful piano music, inspired by the London Symphony Orchestra & it is an assured and exacting recording. moments of unearthly beauty contrasted twilight hours in the place he now calls Benjamin Britten Precise in their interpretation of the by intense worldly difficulties. The home – New York City. Decca. 4757511. 2 CDs. Was $29.95 pieces, there is nonetheless the fluidity Plainscapes, which was arranged by Vasks $14.95 (Limited stock at this price) found in a live performance. This was for this album, is a particular treat, with Shostakovich: Symphony No. ‘Britten was writing recorded towards the end of Carter’s shades of Arvo Pärt in the held string notes. 11 ‘The Year 1905’ personally for three reign as the ASO’s chief conductor and The influence of both Lutoslawski and BBC Philharmonic & John muses who had all the four years the performers have had Penderecki is also apparent throughout. Storgårds shared the wartime together have clearly produced a synergy This album is an absolute must for Chandos. CHSA5278. Was $32.95 experience ... His to their performances. Each solo, from anyone interested in what Western art $26.95 incandescent woodwind to strings to piano, is music composers are producing in this Shostakovich based commitment to pacifism and horror at the beautifully expressed and the only extraordinary beginning to the twenty- this work on the events failure of humanism blazes forth ... As downside to this recording is that there first century. You can feel the layers of of one episode of that you can hear in the revealing out-takes isn’t a DVD to go with it. I’d love to see history interwoven in Vasks’ musical year, when thousands from the rehearsals on this recording, the interplay between these language, with hints towards a bigger and, of workers and their Britten wanted real terror, real hysteria extraordinary Australian musicians. hopefully, better future. families converged on from the singers, and he got it.’ – BBC Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings the Winter Palace in St Petersburg to Music Magazine ‘There will not this year be a more original novel published. I just know it.’ TOM KENEALLY #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SCHINDLER’S LIST

In 1901 the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape our experience of the world.