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3 FOR 2 PENGUIN BLACK CLASSICS Throughout July, we have a special offer on the Black Classics range of fiction and nonfiction titles from Penguin Random House. Buy two books, and choose a third book in the range (of equal or lesser value) for free! The range includes titles from Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, T.S. Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Friedrich Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde, among others. We also Readings Monthly have beautiful Penguin Black Classics tote Free, independent monthly newspaper published by Readings Books, Music & Film bags to give away to customers along with your purchase. This offer is exclusively Subscribe available in all Readings shops (except You can subscribe to Readings Monthly and Readings Kids) until 31 July on stickered, our e-news by visiting our website: in-stock items only, while stocks last. This readings.com.au/sign-up offer is not available online.

Editor Jo Case READINGS’ ATHINA CLARKE [email protected] WINS THE 2017 ABA ELIZABETH be announced on Tuesday 11 July, with WINNER OF THE 2017 BAILEYS RILEY FELLOWSHIP public tickets on sale Friday 14 July. To Editorial Assistant WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION We’re so proud of Athina Clarke, our Judi Mitchell find out more, buy passes or become a Naomi Alderman has been named this [email protected] Malvern children’s and young adult book MIFF member, please visit miff.com.au. year’s winner of the Baileys Women’s buyer, who has been awarded the 2017 ABA Readings is a proud sponsor of MIFF. Prize for Fiction, for her feminist science- Kids/YA Curator Elizabeth Riley Fellowship for Children’s fiction novel, The Power. The Power is Alexa Dretzke Bookselling. Malvern shop manager the first science-fiction novel to win Bernard Vella says: ‘Athina’s passion MELBOURNE WRITERS the Baileys Prize. An early advocate for Music Curator for children’s books and bookselling is FESTIVAL 2017 Alderman’s novel, our digital marketing Dave Clarke infectious. She is a dedicated and valued The Melbourne Writers Festival connects manager Lian Hingee, says: ‘Full of member of the team here at Malvern, reads writers and stories to celebrate a world observations on gender politics, power, Classical Music Curator widely over all areas of children’s literature, of literature, explore universal ideas, and religion and violence, The Power is also Phil Richards and never fails in her recommendations to inspire a global community of readers. a rip-roaring, fast-paced thriller. It’s sly, our customers.’ The 2017 Melbourne Writers Festival smart, terrifying – the perfect antidote to a DVDs Curator The Elizabeth Riley Fellowship runs from Friday 25 August to Sunday 3 post-Trump world.’ Lou Fulco is worth $1500 and is awarded to a September. Details of the full program The shortlist includes five other children’s bookseller to assist them in will be released on Tuesday 18 July, authors: Ayobámi Adébáy (Stay With Me), Proofreaders furthering their knowledge or developing but one very special guest has just been Linda Grant (The Dark Circle), C.E. Morgan Judi Mitchell, Belinda Monypenny their skills in the area of children’s announced: internationally acclaimed (The Sport of Kings), Gwendoline Riley (First books and bookselling. Thanks to this activist Janet Mock will draw on her Love) and Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say We Advertising fellowship, Athina will be attending the experience as a journalist and prominent Have Nothing). The Baileys Women’s Prize Stella Charls next American Booksellers Association trans woman to speak about the power of for Fiction, formerly known as the Orange [email protected] Children’s Institute conference in the US. (03) 9341 7739 storytelling in media and popular culture, Prize, was launched in 1996 to celebrate Congratulations Athina! and the importance of visibility and voice. the best novel written by a woman in the Graphic Design Book your tickets now at mwf.com.au/ English language. It is widely recognised as Cat Matteson janet-mock. having had a huge impact on the promotion colourcode.com.au MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL Readings is proud to be the official of women’s writing worldwide, including FILM FESTIVAL 2017 bookseller of the Melbourne Writers being one of the key inspirations for Front Cover Now in its 65th year, the Melbourne Festival. Australia’s very own Stella Prize. The July Readings Monthly cover features International Film Festival has the cover image from Random Life by Judy released the first glance at their 2017 Horacek, courtesy of Horacek Press. The program. Celebrating Australian films, MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY THE READINGS PODCAST cover image is by Judy Horacek. See page international festival hits and eye-opening AWARD SHORTLIST 2017 The Readings Podcast is a celebration of 15 for more about the book. documentaries, MIFF’s artistic director The shortlist for the 2017 Miles Franklin books, music, film, TV and pop culture. Michelle Carey says: ‘the calibre of films Cartoon Literary Award has been announced. Episodes feature author interviews, on offer this year is very impressive, from Oslo Davis First awarded in 1957, the $60,000 prize publisher interviews and event recordings. oslodavis.com Australian stalwart Jane Campion’s Top of is awarded each year to a novel that is of We’ve recently uploaded some fascinating the Lake: China Girl to break-out hit Patti the highest literary merit and presents interviews with some of our favourite Prices and availability Cake$, MIFF brings you the story of the Australian life in any of its phases. The international authors, including Nadja Please note that all prices and release world, through curated and unforgettable shortlisted books are: An Isolated Incident, Spiegelman, Brit Bennett and George dates in Readings Monthly are correct screen experiences.’ Around 30 films have Emily Maguire (Picador), The Last Days Saunders. You can find all our episodes at time of publication, however prices already been announced as part of MIFF’s of Ava Langdon, Mark O’Flynn (UQP), on SoundCloud or iTunes. For more and release dates may change without First Glance, as well as a massive Sci-Fi Their Brilliant Careers, Ryan O’Neill (Black information, visit readings.com.au/the- notice. Special price offers apply only for Retrospective and a performative lecture the month in which they are featured in Inc.), Waiting, Philip Salom (Puncher & readings-podcast. by Michel Chion, arguably the world’s Readings Monthly. Wattmann), Extinctions, Josephine Wilson foremost thinker on sound in cinema. (UWA Publishing). Each of the shortlisted Readings donates 10% of its profits each The 2017 Melbourne International authors receive $5000, and the winning year to The Readings Foundation: Film Festival runs from 3–20 August. author will be announced on 7 September. readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation The full program of over 300 titles will 4 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

July Events JENNIFER ROSIE WATERLAND 13 SCOULLAR IN 25 IN CONVERSATION JAMILA RIZVI IN SHEILA CONVERSATION WITH JAMILA RIZVI 3 CONVERSATION 10 FITZPATRICK IN WITH ELLEN Anti-Cool Girl Rosie Waterland is back, CREGAN with Every Lie I’ve Told, another irresistibly WITH SUSAN CONVERSATION funny, sharply observed and deeply moving Set against a backdrop of wild Tasmania, CARLAND, WITH WITH JOY book of autobiographical essays about lies Australian gold and African diamonds, she’s told, truths she’s avoided and that CLARE BOWDITCH DAMOUSI Jennifer Scoullar’s Fortune’s Son is an epic funny grey area in-between. She blends ARIA award-winning musician Clare Join world-renowned historian Sheila story of betrayal, love and one man’s struggle laugh-out-loud funny with dark insight and Bowditch will open this special night with Fitzpatrick (a Russian specialist) to talk to triumph over adversity and find his way strength through adversity – and just might a performance, followed by a conversation about her new, unusually personal history: home. Jennifer will be in conversation with be Australia’s answer to David Sedaris. about women and success between Mischka’s War, about her late husband. Readings’ very own Ellen Cregan. renowned Muslim feminist Susan Carland Mischka Danos who escaped conscription Entry $30 per person, includes a signed copy of Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events and Jamila Rizvi, author of Not Just Lucky. into the Waffen-SS in 1943 by going on a Every Lie I’ve Told. Jamila’s book will give you the tools you student exchange to Germany (and later Thursday 13 July, 6.30pm Please book at readings.com.au/events Readings Doncaster need to ditch the doubt and fight for success, learned he was part Jewish). He then Tuesday 25 July, 6.30–7.30pm as a warm, witty, wise friend to the next narrowly escaped death in the Allied fire- Cinema Nova, 380 Lygon St, Carlton generation of women leaders. In the past bombing of Dresden, lived as a Displaced ANDREW five years, she has firmly established herself Person in occupied Germany, and later 19 as the prominent voice of young Australian resettled, with his mother, in the US, where BENNETTS ON THE Coming up women online. Jamila is the former he met Sheila. In Mischka’s War, Sheila pieces REFUGEE CRISIS editor-in-chief of the Mamamia Women’s together her late husband’s story through Andrew Bennetts is a management consultant THE STATE OF Network websites. Prior to entering the diaries, correspondence and recollections. with an interest in the global refugee situation. 1 BEING EQUAL: media, Jamila worked in politics for former The Mess We’re In: Managing the Refugee Crisis August Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events RUSTY YOUNG Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Minister is a review of the global refugee crisis aimed Monday 10 July, 6.30pm & JEFF SPARROW ON Kate Ellis. She has been listed as one of at arming the reader with a broad spectrum of Readings Hawthorn CHILD SOLDIERS Australia’s 100 Women of Influence. information so they can be an informed part Susan Carland has been listed as one of of the public debate. Join us for an evening of The State of Being Equal is a forum intended to the 500 Most Influential Muslims in the ORWELL NIGHT: fact-sharing – and acknowledgement of the make sure we trump Trump politics by exploring World. Clare Bowditch is an ARIA award- 11 terrible state we are in. how society can be more equitable and just, winning musician, actor, radio presenter and DENNIS GLOVER rather than divisive and bellicose. Each event entrepreneur. IN CONVERSATION Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events in the series will examine a new title that is WITH SEAN Wednesday 19 July, 6.30pm relevant to global and sexual politics. Entry $50 per person ($45 concession), Readings Carlton Colombiano is the debut novel from Rusty includes a signed first edition of Not Just Lucky. O’BEIRNE Young, the internationally bestselling author Please book at readings.com.au/events In 1947, George Orwell begins his last and of Marching Powder. For seven years Rusty lived Monday 3 July, 6.30–7.30pm greatest work: Nineteen Eighty-Four. In his and worked in Colombia, interviewing special Melbourne Athenaeum, 188 Collins St, Melbourne illuminating new novel, The Last Man in forces soldiers, snipers, undercover intelligence Europe, Dennis Glover explores the creation agents and members of terrorist organisations. of Orwell’s classic work, which defined the HELEN HAYWARD He was shocked and touched by the stories of twentieth century for millions of readers 6 child soldiers he encountered. Here, he tells the IN CONVERSATION worldwide. Simultaneously a captivating story of a 15-year-old boy who becomes a solider WITH DAMON drama, a unique literary excavation and an after the execution of his father. YOUNG unflinching portrait of a beloved British writer, The Last Man in Europe will change Alain de Botton describes Helen Hayward’s A Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events the way you understand Nineteen Eighty- Slow Childhood as ‘a triumph’. Part-memoir, Tuesday 1 August, 6.30pm Four. Dennis will be in conversation with part-existential musings, part-guidebook, Readings Carlton Readings’ very own Sean O’Beirne. A Slow Childhood is based on the former psychotherapist’s experience of transitioning Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events INTRODUCING THE from a life focused on career to one focused Tuesday 11 July, 6.30pm 8 91-STOREY on family. Join us as Damon Young talks to Readings Carlton August Helen about her journey and philosophy. A CELEBRATION TREEHOUSE 20 OF #LOVEOZYA Join Andy and Terry, along with special Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events MONICA guest Jill Griffiths, to welcome The 91-Storey Thursday 6 July, 6.30pm YA champions and writers, Danielle Binks, 13 MCINERNEY Treehouse, the seventh in Andy Griffith and Readings Hawthorn Will Kostakis, Lili Wilkinson and Michael Bestselling Australian author Monica Pryor, will discuss the importance of the #Love Terry Denton’s brilliantly wacky treehouse McInerney is back with her highly OzYA movement and Begin, End, Begin: A #Love adventures, into the world. DAVE GRANEY, anticipated new novel, The Trip of a Lifetime. OzYA Anthology. They’ll also share what it’s Entry $25 per person, includes a signed first 8 like to be a ‘forever young’ writer, and to keep CLARE MOORE & Set in the Clare Valley of South Australia and edition of The 91-Storey Treehouse and all the STU THOMAS the Irish countryside, The Trip of a Lifetime exploring coming-of-age in new and interesting madness of the show. $1.50 per ticket will be is a big, bold and beautiful novel of family, ways. This celebratory event is suitable for donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Join Dave Graney, Clare Moore and Stu love and secrets, which explores the true teen readers and their teachers, librarians and Please book at readings.com.au/events Thomas as they play songs from their new meaning of home. This book will resonate parents! Tuesday 8 August, 4.30–5.30pm CD, Let’s Get Tight. What better way to spend across the generations for anyone who has Melbourne Town Hall, your Saturday afternoon? Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events ever found their family exasperating. 90–130 Swanston St, Melbourne Thursday 20 July, 6.30pm Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Readings Hawthorn Saturday 8 July, 1pm Thursday 13 July, 6.30pm GAIL KELLY: Readings St Kilda Readings Hawthorn 9 LIFE & SOPHIE KOH IN August 21 LEADERSHIP CRINKLING CONVERSATION MARK DAPIN IN Former CEO of Westpac and mother of four 10 NEWS WORKSHOP WITH MICHAEL 13 CONVERSATION DWYER Gail Kelly will chat with Victorian Women’s Calling all journalists! Learn the rules WITH FELIX SHER Trust director Mary Crooks about balancing behind book reviewing and enter the We are completely thrilled to host musician roles, and Gail’s book Live Lead Learn: My competition to have your review published Mark Dapin’s sweeping landmark history, Sophie Koh with her producer J Walker, talking Stories of Life and Leadership. Both women in Crinkling News, the only national Jewish Anzacs: Jews in the Australian about Koh’s new album, Book of Songs. This is have managed parenting, leadership and newspaper for young Australians. Kids are Military, spans the First Fleet to the the album Sophie has always wanted to make; innovation with grace and determination. A the creators, readers and journalists. recent war in Afghanistan. Mark will be in a thrilling and unpredictable fusion of styles, rare opportunity to meet one of Australia’s conversation with Felix Sher, the father of with pop songs influenced by Chinese poetry most inspiring leaders. Entry $5 per person, includes a copy of Crinkling the last Jewish Australian soldier to be killed and Western classical music. Rock journalist News and an hour-long writing workshop. in action: in Afghanistan in 2009. Michael Dwyer will interview them both. Entry $35 per person, includes a signed first Suitable for children aged 7–12. edition of Live Lead Learn. Please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Please book at readings.com.au/events Monday 10 July, 11–12pm Thursday 13 July, 6.30pm Friday 21 July, 6.30pm Wednesday 9 August, 6.30pm Readings Kids Readings St Kilda Readings Carlton Readings Hawthorn READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 5

Lian Low will launch the annual Margaret River Press short-story collection. Joiner Bay Mark’s & Other Stories is edited by Ellen van Neerven. News and views from Readings’ Managing Director, Friday 14 July, 6pm Mark Rubbo Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Say

The world moves in mysterious ways sometimes. Some time ago, we received a complaint Christine Townend founded Animal from the Anti Defamation Commission (ADC) about some wrapping paper on sale in our Liberation Australia in 1976 after reading St Kilda shop. Produced and designed in the UK, the paper featured a series of ‘quaint’ Peter Singer’s book of the same name. Now, illustrations of characters from history and contemporary popular culture. At a glance, it Singer will launch her new book, A Life for TIM ROGERS IN seemed just the ticket to wrap a gift in. But if you looked more closely, wedged between Animals, a record of her lifelong passion and Star Wars’ 3-CPO and Madonna, was Hitler. An elderly Holocaust survivor, browsing at 29 CONVERSATION work for animal welfare. August St Kilda, stumbled across it and was very upset – how could the evil of the Holocaust be Friday 14 July, 6.30pm WITH MICHAEL trivialised by portraying Hitler as a cute emoji? When the ADC called, we were equally Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. DWYER shocked; no one had looked closely enough to notice. The incident resulted in a long Detours, the new memoir from You Am I conversation with Dvir Abramovich, chair of the Anti Defamation Commission, about frontman Tim Rogers, has been likened Sam Cooney will launch Pip Smith’s debut their work combating racism in the community, and programs they run in schools to to Patti Smith, Dylan Thomas and Banjo novel Half Wild, inspired by the life of Eugenia combat anti-Semitism and racism. As a result, Readings has joined with the ADC to start Paterson. Rolling Stone’s Michael Dwyer will Falleni: born a woman, disguised as a man to a new program, Reading Against Hate, which encourages young people to read books that sit down with Tim (who may even sing a escape New Zealand as a cabin boy, and living will inspire them to respect inclusivity and tolerance, and take action to counter hate. song for us) to talk about it all. as a man in Australia – even marrying. Schools that take part in the program will be given Readings vouchers to purchase books Monday 17 July, 6.30pm recommended by us and the Commission. Last month, we joined Dvir to make our first Entry $45 per person ($40 concession), includes Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. presentation, to Gardenvale Primary School in Melbourne’s south. a signed first edition of Detours. JB Were’s John McLeod, a passionate advocate for effective, meaningful philanthropy, Tuesday 29 August, 7–8pm has become the Australian expert. Our Readings Foundation manager, Leanne Hall, and Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston St, Join Jane Caro and contributors for the I have had several conversations with John about the future direction of the Readings Carlton. Please book at readings.com.au/events launch of Unbreakable, a collection of Foundation. There’s been an increase in the number of Private Ancillary Funds (charitable powerful pieces by successful Australian funds set by private individuals and families). John suggested that, with our experience women who share the challenges they’ve in identifying needs in the literacy sphere, we should reach out to funds that might have July Launches overcome. Contributors include Kathy similar aims. By pooling resources, he argued, we could achieve greater outcomes. ‘Talk Lette and Tracey Spicer, with a foreword by about it in your magazine!’ he said. Until now, we haven’t – but we were recently excited to Mark Brandi’s literary crime debut novel, Tanya Plibersek. receive two substantial donations from such funds. So if any readers out there with a fund Wimmera, is the 2016 Winner of the Crime Monday 24 July, 6.30pm want to support literacy and the arts, we’d welcome a chat about working together. Writers’ Association Debut Dagger – and Readings Hawthorn | Free, please book at read- Bob Dylan finally gave his Nobel Lecture last month. When he found out about his this month’s New Australian Writing feature ings.com.au/events Nobel Prize for Literature, he pondered how his songs related to literature. Themes from title. Set in rural Victoria, it’s a story about books important to him have worked their way into many of his songs, whether knowingly childhood, trust and shadows from the past. or unintentionally. He wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard: these Wednesday 5 July, 6.30pm Associate Professor Geoffrey Quail’s themes were fundamental to that process. He talks about three books that influenced him: Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Lessons Learned: The Australian Military and Tropical Medicine will be launched by Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey. ‘Ultimately, if a song moves you, Professor Graham Brown. that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means,’ he says. ‘Songs are The Ones that Disappeared tells the story of three Tuesday 25 July, 6.30pm unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read.’ So does he think he should have won trafficked children searching for freedom. Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. the Nobel? Perhaps not. Join us to launch the latest from multi-award- You can listen to the lecture at: www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/ winning Zana Fraillon (The Bone Sparrow). laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html Melbourne-based satirist and journalist James Thursday 6 July, 6.30pm Colley’s Too Right is a treatise delivered by Aus- Readings Kids | Free, no booking required. tralia’s most controversial far-right columnist, unafraid of who is ‘offended’ by his ‘poorly researched’ opinions. This launch will include Dear Brodie Lancaster’s pop-culture-and-feminism Alison Huber, a performance by James as Peter Chudd, the memoir, No Way! Okay, Fine. comes with raves Head Book Buyer narrator of his satirical state of the union. from Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson and Courtney Reader Tuesday 25 July, 6.30pm Barnett. Shortlisted for The Richell Prize for Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Emerging Writers 2015, it will make you re- Identity and memory are themes that run through a number of books in this issue. Our evaluate the personal power of pop culture. Nonfiction Book of the Month is Roxane Gay’s Hunger. It lays bare, in the most generously Sunday 9 July, 4–7pm Join us for the launch of Rachel Leary’s open way, Gay’s life as lived in her own body, the histories that body contains, and the non- Gasometer Hotel, 484 Smith St, Collingwood | debut novel, Bridget Crack. Set in Van normative identities she inhabits. This book is a vital contribution to the discourse of body Free, please RSVP at [email protected] Diemen’s Land, 1826, it centres on a convict politics as it intersects with lived experience. woman who flees into the wild, only to meet Melanie Cheng skilfully addresses the vexed question of ‘Australian-ness’ in our Fiction another runaway. Book of the Month, Australia Day. This collection won 2016’s coveted Victorian Premier’s Melanie Cheng’s short-story collection Wednesday 26 July, 6.30pm Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript; Jason Steger has noted that this award Australia Day won the 2016 Victorian Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. ‘has a remarkable record of identifying writing talent’ (Maxine Beneba Clarke! Jane Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Harper! Readings’ own Miles Allinson!), so Cheng’s debut is simply a must-read. Manuscript – the prize that launched the Mark Brandi’s Wimmera received a commendation at the same awards and won the careers of Maxine Beneba Clarke, Graeme Justice Christopher Beale, QC of the UK’s Debut Dagger, also a prize for an unpublished manuscript: worthy praise indeed for Simsion and Peggy Frew. Discover this Victorian Supreme Court, will launch Ray this story that toys with 1980s nostalgia while creating genuine suspense. Is it time for a exciting new voice at tonight’s launch. Gibson’s Prosecuting, an essential manual grunge-lit revival? If Iain Ryan’s excellent campus novel The Student (touted as ‘hardboiled Monday 10 July, 6.30pm for anyone involved in the preparation and regional noir’) is the benchmark, the answer is a resounding YES – so vivid is its 1994 Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. conduct of a criminal trial. setting, Ryan had me wondering where I left my Discman, and what this thing called ‘the Thursday 27 July, 6pm internet’ is all about (though I’m still wondering about that TBH). Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. As always, we recommend more Australian releases than I can cover, including debuts Geoffrey Maslen has just published two vital from Michael Fitzgerald, Pip Smith, Dennis Glover; new work from Steven Lang and Peter books on Australia’s environmental future. Barry; and the reissue of the late Cory Taylor’s Me and Mr Booker as a Text Classic. International An Uncertain Future describes the significant Cally Black’s genre-smashing hostage drama fiction includes: Catherine Lacey’s The Answers, which Stella Charls calls ‘startling, exquisite environmental threats to Australian birds. In the Dark Spaces, the latest winner of the and compulsively strange’; Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy, a favourite of our editor, Jo Too Late: How We Lost the Battle with Climate Ampersand Prize, is set on a star freighter in Case; The Parcel by Indian–Canadian writer Anosh Irani; ‘Mexico’s greatest living novelist’ Yuri Change gives a sobering view of the state of our deep space, where a teenager kidnapped by the Herrera’s Kingdom Cons; Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Here Comes the Sun, which Ed Moreno raves about. planet. Sandy Grant will launch both books, alien Crowpeople is falling for her captors. Brodie Lancaster’s brilliantly titled debut, No Way! Okay, Fine. – shortlisted for the and lead an urgent, informed conversation. Friday 28 July, 6.30pm inaugural Richell Prize – is a confident exploration of collective memory and pop culture’s Wednesday 12 July, 6.30pm Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. role in the formation of the self. Readers interested in birds and brains are well covered Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. this month (An Uncertain Future: Australian Birdlife in Danger and The Secret Life of the Mind Miles Franklin longlisted author Tony respectively), as are Russian Revolution enthusiasts (October), sugar critics (Sugar: The Robert Power engages with human and Birch’s new book, Common People, vividly World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity), horsey folks (Farewell to the Horse), and climate animal connectedness, friendship, love and inhabits a cast of characters from all walks worriers/warriors (Climate Wars). Note, too, Andrew O’Hagan’s examination of identity and loss in his playful and heartbreaking memoir, of life. These remarkable, surprising stories selfhood, The Secret Life: Three True Stories; Mackenzie Wark’s General Intellects: 25 Thinkers Tell it to the Dog, spanning his London explore the lives of common people caught for the 21st Century; and Sarah Sentilles’ unique work in Draw Your Weapons, a smart piece of childhood to Europe, Asia and Australia. up in the everyday struggle to survive. theory-memoir that will appeal to the many fans of Maggie Nelson. Thursday 13 July, 6pm Monday 31 July, 6.30pm And finally, dear reader, we’re offering 3-for-2 Penguin Black Classics this month at all shops Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. (except Readings Kids). Time to check your shelves and update that pesky ‘yet to be read’ list. 6 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 NEW AUSTRALIAN WRITING

Criminally talented randi is a writer who pays close attention to the other adults – these things were imponderables. Half the Mark Brandi’s physical; to the shapes and smells and sensations time you were too headstrong to analyse them: the other debut novel of the human body, set in vivid contrast to the half they were being actively hidden from you. In some torpor of a dead-end town. Wimmera is the story families the hiding was benevolent – in others it wasn’t. is more than Bof two best friends, Ben and Fab, growing up in north-west Either way, what you were left with was consequences. If Victoria in the late eighties. Alongside the ordinary rituals you were lucky you dodged the worst of them. atmospheric: this is of two teenage boys in a country town (cricket, yabbying, There’s an extraordinary level of period detail in bullshitting each other), there are darker pressures that Wimmera: the movies (Witness, Amelie), the TV shows visceral Australian bind the two of them: their innocent adventures veer (Rocky & Bullwinkle) and the gear (Nike Air Maxes). within reach of sinister forces. Fab’s migrant dad is a study Everyone smokes. The schoolyard is nakedly depicted noir. Jock Serong in bottled fury. The suicide of a girl they knew, a girl they as a vicious zoo. Brandi fixes with brutal realism on the thought they knew, leaves them helplessly questioning Australian country towns of the time; modern in most introduces us to each other. The tragedy brings about a change of occupants senses, but isolated and introverted before the internet and the next big thing in the house next door to Ben, where the death occurred. job mobility. The incoming tenant is a single man who immediately The realism is just as stark when the story moves into in Australian ingratiates himself with Ben’s parents, but sets the young its second and third acts: the adult Fab, struggling with the boy ill at ease. loss of everything he holds dear. A generational shift has crime fiction. Brandi takes great care to reveal this malevolent occurred, and the schoolyard bullies he despised are now character in layers. Ronnie is charming, physically strong, his workmates and fellow drinkers. The bleak expanses of blokey. He drives a Statesman De Ville, a bloke’s car. He’s the Wimmera seem to have him ensnared: he could go to interested in Ben, too interested in Ben. The dread builds Ballarat to start again, he ponders at one point, ‘or up north, in increments, the desire to shout at the kid, ‘No!’ But Ben somewhere tropical’. But it all seems too hard. blunders forward, obliging, trying to be polite. Working away underneath all of this is a cross-current, an echo of his childhood and his friendship with Ben. Brandi fixes with brutal realism on Something unresolved, carrying with it the potential for both redemption and final damnation. I’m being careful the Australian country towns of the with it here, you can tell, because Brandi does such a great job of setting up a plausible dénouement for the defeated time; modern in most senses, but Fab. Suffice to say that the foundations of loyalty so richly isolated and introverted before the depicted in the childhood scenes will be severely tested. Wimmera has already gathered a pile of awards, both internet and job mobility. here and overseas, including the Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and the CWA Debut Brandi’s language in this unsettling novel is carefully Dagger in the UK. Brandi comes from the traditions of constructed to mimic the thinking, and even the speech short-story writers – and the book’s structure shows this patterns, of a boy in the sexually preoccupied throes of early in its use of short, tightly wound chapters. His interest puberty. But Wimmera’s evocation of that world is of a much in criminal justice is also evident throughout this richly stronger kind than mere voice: the author effectively builds nuanced work. Readers will find echoes of Craig Silvey’s a wall behind which we’re privy to the two boys’ decision- Jasper Jones, Jane Harper’s The Dry and maybe even Garry making, and correspondingly separated from the world Disher’s Bitter Wash Road in the depictions of forgotten of adults. In this respect I was reminded of Michael Sala’s towns on the plains. But Brandi has a voice all his own, and recent novel The Restorer, though Sala plays both sides of Wimmera signals the arrival of a welcome addition to the the wall more than Brandi does. The other touchpoint is Rob ranks of those Australian writers. Reiner’s 1986 film Stand by Me, which was based on an early WIMMERA Stephen King novella, The Body. The point is, only the deeds of the adults – callous, Mark Brandi Jock Serong’s first novel, Quota, won the Ned despairing and violent – are visible on the reader’s side Hachette. PB. Was $29.99 Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. His of the wall. But the motivations that propel the deeds: next, The Rules of Backyard Cricket, was $26.99 concern and thwarted dreams and even lust, are obscured. shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Available now Reaching back into the distant past to find that age again, Literary Award. His next novel, On the Java For more about the book, see it occurs to me that this is an authentic rendering. Parental Ridge, will be published next month. our review on page 8. motivations, the architecture of their relationships with READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 7

New Fiction around Wellington, demonstrates impressive Case called it ‘an excellent novel; a finely skill. Half Wild isn’t queer fiction, as the calibrated blend of a carefully paced thriller premise had led me to expect; this enjoyable and a literary exploration of masculinity’. Fiction Book of the Month historical novel, driven by characters and Hinterland is a gripping novel that mystery, will appeal to a broad audience. combines the personal and political, George Delaney is from Readings Carlton watching high tensions explode as a new AUSTRALIA DAY wave of urban tree-changers and wealthy Melanie Cheng THE LAST MAN IN developers clash with the old farming Text. PB. Was $29.99 EUROPE: A NOVEL district. Traditional loyalties and values are $26.99 pushed to the brink with the Dennis Glover Available 3 July announcement of a controversial dam Black Inc. PB. $29.99 Melanie Cheng’s short-story collection, Australia Day, won the project. Locals Eugenie and Guy are forced Available 3 July Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished to choose sides, while newcomer Nick Manuscript in 2016, and is a wonderful feat of storytelling. Cheng is The Last Man in discovers there are more sinister forces at adept at creating diverse characters – young, old, Asian, Muslim, Europe, the debut work. Perceptive and beautifully written, white, both blue- and white-collar workers – and putting them into situations where limits novel from political Hinterland is a just-right portrait of and relationships are tested, and there are no easy or politically correct answers. speechwriter and academic contemporary Australia, in all of its natural In the title story, Stanley, a young medical student from Hong Kong, travels with his Dennis Glover, follows the beauty and conflicting ambitions. friend and love interest, Jessica, to her family’s dairy farm for the Australia Day holiday. life of George Orwell, from Stanley is acutely aware of his background; his recent Australian citizenship has only made 1936 when he was finishing ME AND MR BOOKER: him more conscious of his physical and cultural difference. ‘He’s going to hate me, isn’t he?’ his underrated novel Keep TEXT CLASSICS the Aspidistra Flying, through his fighting in Stanley asks about Jessica’s father, and Jessica’s ominous answer, ‘Deep down, Dad’s just a Cory Taylor Spain, to his death in 1950. During this period, big, cuddly teddy bear’ sets the scene for Stanley’s hopes to be dashed over the ensuing trip. Text. PB. $12.95 Orwell would also write The Road to Wigan The notion of what it means to be ‘Australian’, or what it means to ‘belong’ is explored Available 3 July in every story. In ‘Toy Town’, Maha, a young mother from Beirut, feels acute loneliness and Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Coming Up for Air, Cory Taylor was exhaustion in Melbourne. She takes her daughter to an indoor play centre and bonds with Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The shortlisted for the another mother, hoping their children’s shared play will lead to a friendship. final two would make him famous, the Stella Prize for her Cheng’s background as a doctor also influences her writing. In several stories, medical torturous writing of the last being what Glover’s book is ultimately about. He charts beautiful, brilliant final or other health professionals treat patients with varying degrees of success. While the book, Dying: A Memoir. Orwell’s determination to finish the book, power imbalance between professionals and the clients they serve is demonstrated ably, Now, with its reissue as a both while it was still relevant (it’s never not Cheng intersperses other factors such as race, class and education to provide further Text Classic, is the perfect complexity and drama. relevant), and while he was still alive – a time to discover her The 14 stories in Australia Day are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking. This determination that arguably shortened his life. acclaimed debut, Me and collection is a great choice for book clubs, and students of the modern short-story form. What Glover is so good at doing is drawing Mr Booker – or to revisit it. Stella Prize 2017 Melanie Cheng is an exciting new writer. the lines from his personal life (hinted at but judge Benjamin Law reviewed it for Readings not quite seen in his nonfiction) to his novels, Monthly back in 2011. Here, we revisit his Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four. Which is rave review. fitting, as Orwell himself was superb at seeing In some senses, Me and Mr Booker is HALF WILD how circumstances or environments changed your conventional coming-of-age story. Australian Fiction people’s behaviour (whether it be waiters Sixteen-year-old girl is bored; sixteen-year- Pip Smith in bad Parisian restaurants transforming old girl falls in love; sixteen-year-old girl A&U. PB. $29.99 between one room and the next in Down and learns many important lessons about life. DEEPER THAN THE SEA Available 28 June Out in Paris and London, or natives of Barcelona But by the end of chapter one, you know Nelika McDonald In her first novel, Pip moving with the political tide). Glover this novel’s different. For starters, very Pan Mac. PB. $29.99 Smith imaginatively brilliantly captures Orwell’s suffering over few opening chapters end with hilariously Available now recreates the life of Eugenia the loss of his wife, the sudden shock of pain dry English banter, before the teenage Theo and her teenage Falleni, a female-to-male when shot in the neck by a sniper in Spain protagonist matter-of-factly takes a guy’s daughter Beth live a transgender person who (similarly well rendered by Orwell himself in balls into her mouth. And in most coming- quiet life in a small and captivated Sydney in 1920 Homage), and the treatment for his advanced of-age novels, that guy wouldn’t be twice isolated coastal Victorian when Eugenia, living as pulmonary tuberculosis that’s as terrifying the girl’s age and married. town. Theo works in the Harry Crawford, was as anything Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Winston One of the most unsettling things about local library, Beth at a arrested for the murder of Annie Birkett, his endured (Orwell was dead within a year of Me and Mr Booker is how wry and funny it bistro while she completes wife, who disappeared in 1917. It is the story publication). is, especially considering the plot is actually her studies. Theo enjoys of the tough life of someone desperate to hide Glover suggests that these coalesced to pretty grim when you boil it down. Martha pottery, Beth dreams of going to university to in plain sight, which sharply illustrates the make a far darker and more hallucinatory is 16 years old and lives in a dull Australian become a scientist. They worry about each effects that social convention and economic book than we would otherwise have had; town hours away from a big city. Viktor, her other: Theo about Beth attracting the realities have on the formation of identity. a book in which hope is flashed before us father, is insane – in the clinical sense of the attention of young men who just aren’t good Smith’s novel travels from an adventurous only to be crushed, showing us how utterly word. Martha’s mother can’t shake Viktor enough for her, and Beth about how Theo childhood in New Zealand to a string of alien it is to such a world. Orwell came to off, and her brother is largely absent. Bored will whittle the days away when she escapes and near misses, hidden pregnancies, call himself a socialist, though he was, in a and lonely, Martha becomes smitten with becomes an empty-nester. Beth has always forced marriage and plenty of discrimination, way, a terrible one, being utterly immune the charming and hilarious Mr and Mrs known that she was adopted, but doesn’t feel ending in prosecution and imprisonment, to personality cults and to jargon (his Booker, and Mr Booker becomes smitten out of place with Theo. As a family, they have release and a second, hidden life, cut short in essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ is with Martha in a way that can’t end well. their quirks, but they are just that – a family. a traffic accident in 1938. All of this plot is likewise as relevant as ever today, whether For obvious reasons, some critics have When Theo is arrested, accused of known before you begin reading; the it be regarding the language of politics, already drawn comparisons between Me kidnapping by Beth’s biological mother, their publisher’s blurb appears to disclose the customer service or academia). and Mr Booker and Nabokov’s Lolita. lives start to fall apart, and all previous story, but somehow Smith draws a gripping Which is no doubt why I had such But Taylor’s novel flips the dynamic, notions of family are cast into doubt. story from facts that are already well known. admiration for his works in my early examining teenage female sexuality When it first became clear what Theo The novel’s central concern is not gender twenties, and why I return to him as a kind from the girl’s perspective without ever had done, I felt like I’d made my mind up identity, but, in the vein of a howdunnit, it’s of moral grounding every few years. The dismissing her agency in the relationship. about her already. But as the story unfolded, more interested in how Falleni managed to Last Man in Europe provides excellent For that reason alone, some will find it my opinion slowly altered. Theo’s is a fool two wives and several neighbourhoods new insight into the works, the man, and an unnerving read. What helps is that it’s heartbreaking and often maddening tale. of Sydney in the low-tech and highly self- what it means to both fear and stare down blisteringly entertaining. I was sent the McDonald traces Theo’s life in such a way policed early twentieth century. In making popularism and the totalitarian impulse. final manuscript of the book, printed out this her focus, Smith has produced a novel half of it, greedily inhaled it on a plane, read that readers are given a 360-degree insight Oliver Driscoll is from Readings Doncaster into her situation, and why she has made the that will appeal to pretty much anyone with the rest on a laptop until the batteries ran choices she has. any curiosity. Half Wild has a huge cast of HINTERLAND out, then desperately resorted to reading characters who tell you the story of Harry the last few pages on my phone. I should McDonald chooses to open with a Steven Lang traumatic event: Theo witnessing a stranger’s Crawford in pieces, making it tense and note here that Taylor’s a friend of mine, UQP. PB. $29.95 suicide. This sense of bruising then permeates intriguing. Though sometimes these jumps but it’s really rare that I find any book Available 3 July the book. This, combined with McDonald’s create repetition, the novel is well-paced that compulsive. Deftly written, Me and gorgeous prose, makes for a compelling overall. Pip Smith’s characters are impressively Steven Lang’s last novel, 88 Mr Booker is a cracking read. And like the and quietly beautiful novel. This book is a refined and sympathetic, and give room for Lines About 44 Women, was best coming-of-age stories, it reminds us fascinating study in nature versus nurture. lots of historical detail and subplots. shortlisted for the NSW that while teenagers grow up fast, it’s only McDonald maps out the grey area around The best parts of the novel, in my opinion, and Queensland Premier’s because they’re surrounded by adults who what it means to be a parent – adoptive or are those told from Eugenia/Harry’s point Literary Awards – and was behave like children. of view — the magical realism and sharp eye glowingly reviewed. otherwise – with true grace and empathy. Benjamin Law is author of The Family Law. of the child Eugenia (Tally Ho), scrambling Readings Monthly editor Jo Ellen Cregan is from Readings Doncaster 8 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

THE PACIFIC ROOM HELLO, GOODBYE reminded me so much of Miranda July’s returns to town, everything starts to unravel. Michael Fitzgerald Emily Brewin exquisite novel The First Bad Man. I could Elia's father is let go from his job and loses not recommend it more highly. himself in the darkest corners of his mind. A Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 A&U. PB. $29.99 young boy is murdered, shaking the small Available 1 July Available 28 June Stella Charls is Readings’ marketing & events coordinator community to its core. And a girl climbs into a This remarkable debut novel A profoundly moving story van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods. tells of the last days of of love, peace and war, BEFORE EVERYTHING Tusitala, ‘the teller of tales’, during a time of great Victoria Redel DO NOT BECOME as Robert Louis Stevenson social change, largely set Sceptre. PB. $29.99 became known in Samoa, in Readings’ home ALARMED Available 11 July where he chose to die. In territory of Carlton. 1968. Maile Meloy 1892 Girolamo Nerli travels Seventeen-year-old May’s Before Everything is a Penguin. PB. $22.99 from Sydney by steamer to devoutly religious mother poetic and visceral Available 17 July Apia, with the intention of capturing and her gentle but damaged father are exploration of friendship, Maile Meloy is one of something of Jekyll and Hyde in his portrait of fighting. Boyfriend Sam has left their rural life and death, and how we my favourite writers. the famous author. Nerli’s presence sets in train hometown for a Carlton sharehouse. When accept losing someone we Her short stories are a disturbing sequence of events. The Pacific May lies to her parents and joins him, she’s can’t imagine life without. regularly published in The Room is both a love letter to Samoa and a lush introduced to his housemates: Clancy, an At the age of 11, Anna, New Yorker (and were and tender exploration of artistic creation, of Indigenous university student, and Ruby, a Molly, Ming, Caroline and recently adapted for the film secret passions and merging dualities. wild bohemian. With their liberal thinking Helen decided to name themselves ‘the Old Certain Women, with Laura and opposition to the war in Vietnam, Friends’. Decades later, the Old Friends have Dern, Michelle Williams THE WALK they’re everything that May’s strict witnessed and supported one another and Kristen Stewart); fans include Richard Peter Barry Catholic upbringing should warn her through careers, marriage, children, divorce, Ford, Anne Patchett and Curtis Sittenfeld. fame, children and illness. That is, until New Internationalist. PB. $24.99 against. May knows too well the toll that This unusually nuanced psychological Anna has had enough. After being diagnosed Available 1 July war has taken on her father, and the peace thriller explores what happens when a trio of movement in the city has a profound effect. with cancer again, Anna tells her friends and families lose their children on a cruise-ship A provocative and For a while, her future burns bright ... until family: no more; she’s done with treatment. holiday, in what starts as an accident and unsettling novel about the it begins to unravel. Redel’s successful weaving of the spirals into an international incident. Do Not morality of charity, the past with the present deftly explores the Become Alarmed is thick with seemingly small media and public relations. continuing relationship between memory missteps or moments that (like the mythical It is 1987, two years after International Fiction and life as it’s lived. The novel’s strongest butterfly flapping its wings) line up to trigger Live Aid: PR expert Adrian connection is between Helen and Anna. serious consequences. Meloy’s characters Burles, working with Their relationship is presented as rocky commit the most ordinary of sins: selfishness, charity Africa Assist, has a THE ANSWERS in the present-day, with Helen the most sly gossip, envy, entitlement. And when they Big Idea to keep Ethiopian hunger in the Catherine Lacey obviously (and verbally) against Anna’s take a holiday where the adults drink, relax headlines. With Anne Chaffey, a nurse with Granta. PB. $27.99 choice. Moving back and forth in time, the and let their kids run around with a half-eye experience on the famine frontline, he locates Available 28 June friendship between the two women builds each on them, the unthinkable happens. a young, malnourished Afar man, Mujtabaa, With The Answers, authenticity for the reader through its layers, But this isn’t a morality tale – or at least, wandering the desert. Back in London, the Catherine Lacey and its focus on various incidences where not a straightforward one. It could initially world’s media are invited to witness a skeletal asserts herself as one of they overcame difficult challenges together. be misread as a warning against relaxing Mujtabaa making a week-long walk from contemporary fiction’s Reflecting on these memories, Redel is able our everyday vigilance for a week, a day, or Heathrow to a rally in Trafalgar Square. It’s a freshest young voices; her to explore both Helen’s anger at Anna for even a moment. But its actual message is far fundraising success – but can such a work captures the anxiety of wanting to stop treatment and her hope that more terrifying: that despite the layers of dehumanising exercise be claimed as a uncertainty and the they can overcome this challenge, as they routine and protection we erect against an victory? What does it say about us? challenges of living in a have others in their storied past. unpredictable world, the circumstances of female body with immense power and WIMMERA The shifting time-frames may initially our lives can be dictated as much by chance ingenuity. Her debut novel, Nobody is Ever cause the reader to confuse or forget (including the circumstances of our birth) Mark Brandi Missing, traced the story of a woman who characters. Yet as the novel progresses, Redel as by deliberate action. Meloy brilliantly Hachette. PB. Was $29.99 attempts to disappear from her own life. It was slowly fleshes out the characters, forming a satirises upper-middle-class American $26.99 one of the best books I read in 2015, unique and memorable voice for each of them. life and values; she poses uncomfortable Available now establishing Lacey as a skilful chronicler of The time span also allows the characters room questions about the gap between the Set in small-town female melancholy, and I’d been anticipating to grow and change over the years. expectations and assumptions her main Australia in the her follow-up ever since. The Answers not only Before Everything is a powerful exploration characters are socialised to hold, and those 1980s, Wimmera is the story met my ridiculously high expectations, but of friendship, choices, and death. Redel creates America’s near-neighbours can afford – and of two boyhood friends, surpassed them entirely. This novel is startling, immersively real relationships and characters, the corresponding empathy gap. Fab and Ben, presented in exquisite and compulsively strange – and I’m each shaded with their own positive and For parents, this book is the equivalent three parts. Part one is completely in love with it. negative traits. This novel intertwines dry of those horror movies where your deepest told in schoolboy Ben’s Mary Parsons is a peculiar young humour with wisdom and empathy. It artfully fears are realised. And like the classics of voice: long, hot days of woman drifting through a disconnected life explores memory and grief, while sustaining the genre, the adrenaline-pumping conceit camping, yabbying and playing cricket, in New York City. She’s 30, underemployed, a winning humour and humility throughout. of this novel is as much a container for dark schoolyard bullying, sexual awakenings, a and deeply in debt. Struggling to cure a The death of someone we love affects us all, social commentary as it is a page-turning new neighbour and a sense of the ominous series of inexplicable chronic ailments, eventually: this novel explores and celebrates race to discover what happens. Provocative, in the surrounding adult world. Part two is Mary elects to fund an unorthodox these emotional ties in a unique and provoking immersive and oddly cathartic. told in Fab’s adult voice: stuck in the same treatment by embarking on a reportedly way. Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly and town with dreams of better things, looking scientific Girlfriend Experiment, or GX, Rose Maurice is from Readings Doncaster a bookseller at Readings Doncaster back while trying not to. Part three unravels led by a famous actor she’s never heard of, the full story after a body is found in the the self-obsessed megastar Kurt Sky. Kurt CAN YOU HEAR ME? is on a quest to perfect the mechanisms CONVERSATIONS WITH creek. Wimmera is a languid, unsettling Elena Varvello of romantic love and hires Mary as his FRIENDS novel that perfectly captures life in Two Roads. PB. $29.99 Emotional Girlfriend (there’s also a Sally Rooney small-town Australia, from the 1980s Available 11 July television shows and celebrities to the heat, Maternal Girlfriend, Anger Girlfriend, Faber. PB. $27.99 Smart, dark, page-turning: bugs and dust. Mark Brandi is excellent at Intellectual Girlfriend, Mundanity Available 28 June like a mash-up of Stephen concealing, allowing the reader to join the Girlfriend and Intimacy Team). From the second King and Cormac McCarthy, dots, until the end when the slow reveal is The Answers offers a compelling Frances walks into or an episode of Twin perhaps even more shocking than interrogation of identity and the nature of Melissa’s and Nick’s house, Peaks directed by Hitchcock. imagined. Given the substantial list of love, echoing Lacey’s first novel. But unlike she notices signs of wealth, This stunning novel, a award wins and shortlistings that the that book, The Answers is tightly paced, with from a dark wooden bowl runaway bestseller in Italy, unpublished manuscript has already a plot that sweeps you up entirely and a filled with ripe fruit to a was widely acclaimed as one received, including the Crime Writers’ large cast of in-depth characters, drawn Modigliani print hanging of the best Italian novels of 2016 – and readers Association’s Debut Dagger Award, it’s with otherworldly precision and subtle over the staircase. ‘Rich in translation are loving it too. ‘A beautiful, clear that the reader is in the hands of a wit. Both satire and speculative fiction, people,’ she thinks, already identifying herself stark, poignant account of fear, love and loss,’ master storyteller. Comparisons are already The Answers speaks to our data-obsessed as an outsider and mentally preparing says Emma Flint (Little Deaths). Small-town being made to Jane Harper’s The Dry and culture, our preoccupation with self-care compliments to make herself charming. Northern Italy, 1978. Peaceful woods, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. This is literary and celebrity, and our addiction to the ever- Set in post-crash Dublin, the novel begins discarded rubbish, a closed-down factory. An crime fiction at its best. growing intersection between dating and with Frances and her former girlfriend Bobbi technology. unbearably hot summer. Sixteen-year-old Elia Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton; performing spoken-word poetry as a double At once fiercely intelligent and flooded lives a life so unremarkable that even its act. Melissa, an essayist and photographer, this review was first published in the current moderate unhappiness has been accepted as edition of Books & Publishing. with tangled human feeling, The Answers decides she wants to profile them for a normal. But when beautiful, damaged Anna READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 9 prestigious magazine and invites them to white. Ten-year-old Anton breaks a window Bay, where they live in desperation and her southside home, where they meet her to escape a locked, powerless apartment in poverty. Thandi, the youngest (and the only husband Nick, a disenchanted actor. The jobs the projects during a heatwave, cutting possibility for a better future), feels a need to of all these people are important – they are himself badly. His mother is found in a crack lighten her skin. Her sister Margot, whose life Latest quick to condemn the evils of capitalism, yet house less than three blocks away, barely is full of secrets, is employed at a resort hotel live off inherited wealth. A complex ménage à conscious and half naked – though it’s not as and relies on sex work to pay for Thandi’s Releases trois quickly develops between Frances, Nick simple as it seems. Anton is placed with schooling. Delores, their mother, charms F R O M T R A N S I T L O U N G E and Melissa, although it’s really more of a child services, then with the son of a US tourists out of their dollars at the local market. ménage à quatre, as Bobbi is also involved. In senator, desperate for a child again following Verdene, the woman Margot loves, is the fact, the great achievement of Conversations the death of his teenage son, and prepared to target of hatred and prejudice within the town. With Friends is to acknowledge how every use all his power and connections. Anton, These women feel real, human, authentic. relationship consists of more than two too, rises within the establishment. But This is brilliantly written fiction. Don’t miss it. people, or even three. Connections overlap; when he discovers the truth about his life, Ed Moreno is from Readings Carlton conversations subvert and interrogate each his birth mother, and his adopted parents, he other. Rooney has previously said that she is must come to terms with the moral A GOOD COUNTRY interested in capturing dynamics that don’t fit complexities of crimes committed by the Laleh Khadivi into any readily available categories, and this people he loves most. Bloomsbury. PB. $24.99 seems apt in a book where the characters are Available 1 July keen to label themselves as communist, anti- FAKE PLASTIC LOVE The path from stoner establishment or bisexual. Kimberley Tait surfer to radicalisation The bourgeois self-righteousness of Flatiron Books. PB. $24.99 seems hard to understand, these characters can be frustrating at times, Available now but A Good Country connects particularly in the case of Frances, whose A millennial twist on a those points in the journey of mental acuity prompts her to adopt an ironic, tradition as old as American Reza ‘Rez’ Courdee. Born to detached attitude to almost everything. But literature (well, almost): the Iranian immigrant parents in this is perhaps the point – and an indictment New York novel, an California, his childhood is In 1892 Girolamo Nerli travels of modern relationships, where it’s cool to not exploration of youth, one of high expectations and high from Sydney to Samoa to capture care, to act unfazed in situations that demand urgency, ambition, achievement. By late high school, his search something of the Jekyll and Hyde emotional engagement. Many of the titular friendship, and discerning for a place between his white American surfer in his portrait of Robert Louis conversations take place online, where it’s easy Stevenson. A haunting debut novel material success from friends and Persian heritage sees him to construct a droll and indifferent version of about art, writing, and the tropics. genuine satisfaction. Kimberley Tait’s debut sneaking out, trying weed and hooking up oneself – but the most interesting ones occur ------– currently the talk of the town – makes these with girls. Despite these rites of passage, Reza after relationships fracture; when friendships timeless themes fresh and exciting, paying comes to understand he will never be fully are forced to reinvent themselves. nodding tribute to Gatsby and other Gilded accepted as ‘American’ after he’s on the Hilary Simmons is from Readings State Library Age greats while setting her story around the receiving end of increasing hostility following of Victoria, and is a member of the events team. moment of this century’s Great Crash, and the Boston marathon bombing and a terrorist the questions it throws up. Narrator M is a attack at a local mall. His Muslim friends – THE DESTROYERS rare woman at her prestigious Wall Street confident, generous Arash and strong-minded Christopher Bollen bank. Her college best friend, Belle, creates Fatima – become more serious about their Scribner. PB. Was $32.99 one of the first wildly successful lifestyle faith, and though sceptical at first, Rez’s $27.99 blogs. Their future seems a glittering tableau curiosity and desire for brotherhood draw Available now of vintage cocktails, password-guarded him deeper into extremism and away from the The Destroyers is a parties and high-octane ambition. But as ‘good country’ his father wanted for him. fast-paced, thrilling they’re pulled deeper into their new lives, A Good Country is the final in a trilogy and engrossing holiday and into the charming orbit of their Gatsby- of books following several generations of an read. Sentences are thick esque new friend, Jeremy, style and substance Iranian family (though it also successfully with descriptors; the tight – and dreams and reality – increasingly blur. stands alone). The complexities of the lives prose is rich with apt of each generation are eloquently explained summations: ‘The HERE COMES THE SUN by Arash’s older brother, in reference to Power truly understands the endurance imagination is a wild dog, it Nicole Dennis-Benn the Tsarnaev brothers: ‘Those kids are just of memory. He is a craftsman using Oneworld. PB. $19.99 dominoes, knocked down by all the dominoes runs happily toward the meanest end.’ language as a fine tool, a writer at the Set on Patmos, a holy island in Greece, Available now before them, and today, they have knocked peak of his powers. ‘Exquisite prose we follow the rekindled friendship of Ian Heads up, reader: rave down the dominoes after them whether it is and riotous feeling.’ and Charlie, who are reunited after the review (and a surfeit another inspired bomber, another fanatical Catherine de Saint Phalle death of Ian’s father and his estrangement of superlatives) ahead. It’s anti-Islam party in Europe, some war or ------from his rich family. At first glimpse Charlie unavoidable. As a debut death, who knows? Only time will tell us.’ provides a lifeline for Ian, who desperately novel, Here Comes the Sun is Rez’s longing for acceptance and the needs a second chance. However, Charlie’s staggeringly spectacular, and novel’s sense of place were authentically life chartering yachts among the Greek marks the beginning of what believable. I was compelled by both the story islands is not as postcard-perfect as it first will surely be a remarkable and the poetic, decisive writing. This timely appears. The novel glides easily through literary career. I cannot recommend this novel will surely fascinate older teenagers as the waters of a financially ruined Greece, novel highly enough, and am already looking well as adult readers. As someone who reads although the characters are far from cash- forward to whatever Nicole Dennis-Benn a lot of YA, I enjoyed Khadivi’s exploration of strapped as they talk, eat and drink their way produces next. the common YA theme of belonging, as well into a sinister web of intrigue and secrets. On the surface, Here Comes the Sun is as the eerily resonant intersection of global Christopher Bollen maintains a strong an exploration of the devastating effects of events and personal lives. A Good Country vibrant pace, and is consistently engaging, if tourism, a disturbing remnant of colonialism, gives a useful, intriguing insight into the forces a little dramatic towards the end. on the local community. But the story goes driving the disturbing frequency of terrorist This novel’s pace and setting, and much deeper: told through the eyes of four attacks we see in the news. After reading it, it’s the constellation of money, boats and the women, the novel is a close, thoughtful easier (if not easy) to understand how other Mediterranean, make for a smooth and examination of class, race, sexuality and young people from Muslim countries, living in compelling read. (institutionalised, intergenerational) gender the West, might choose a similar path to Rez’s. Anaya Latter is from Readings Carlton violence. These characters take us deep into Pilgrim Lee is from Readings Carlton their world through their eyes and all their ‘A gritty and honest novel in its depiction senses, in a seamlessly woven narrative. SIRACUSA of sexual violence against young women. EVERYBODY’S SON This is an important work.’ Thrity Umrigar Reading Here Comes the Sun is a rich Delia Ephron experience, an extravaganza for the senses: the Tony Birch HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 Oneworld. PB. $24.99 ------sights and smells of Jamaica are sumptuously Available now Available 28 June evoked; skin and sex and touch are made real The critically acclaimed What a treat it is to on these pages – and all the responses sex author of The Space be in the hands of an and desire can ignite are part of the reading Between Us deftly explores accomplished storyteller; experience: languor, disdain, forgetting, issues of race, class, someone who has already remembering, repulsion, bliss. Here Comes the privilege and power in this provided me with hours of Sun is a sensual novel, in the most profound ambitious, emotionally joy in her previous works. way. These black women’s stories rise off the wrenching novel of two Ephron is, after all, the page. They each bear immeasurable pain, due families: one black, one famous author of books, to the conditions of their life near Montego 10 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

essays and such film scripts as You’ve Got Mail THE PARCEL KINGDOM CONS and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. That Anosh Irani Yuri Herrera said, Siracusa is not like her previous works, in Scribe. PB. $29.99 Text. PB. $19.99 that the characters, real as they seem, are Available 3 July Available 3 July simply not nice people. Madhu’s home is Hijra Yuri Herrera has been The story centres on two couples: New House, one of the last described as Mexico’s Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, bastions in the land war greatest living novelist. a journalist, and their friends from Maine, slowly consuming her part Reviewing The Finn, Taylor, and their (simmering) ten-year- of Bombay, as property Transmigration of Bodies old daughter, Snow. Chapter by chapter, as if developers vie for land. It and Signs Preceding the End we were perusing a classic murder mystery, is here that ‘hijras’ – of the World, The Saturday it becomes clear that these marriages are eunuchs, people of the Paper raved: ‘ Yuri Herrera teetering on the edge of failure. Each adult third sex, 'neither here nor there’ – ply their is a rare thing: a writer to get truly excited is given a chapter to tell their side of the trade. Forty years old, with her looks and about ... It is writing that is simultaneously story, admitting us entry to their private (and spirit waning, Madhu is confronted by concise and epic, dynamically plotted and pitiful) contemplations and anticipations. memories of her past, of how she was intelligent, aware of literary heritage and As the adults are enveloped by their rejected by her family ... and by how she stunningly original.’ Part surreal fable and backdrop of Italian art and ruins, the chart longs, secretly, to return to them. ‘Immersive part crime romance, Kingdom Cons of their demise becomes a charade of and devastating, The Parcel is a searing tale questions the price of keeping your integrity absurd situations. All of the characters share of personal transformation amid toxic in a world ruled by patronage and power. In a bewildering inability for insight, which patriarchy. Madhu is at once pathetic and the court of the King, everyone knows their manifests in highly comical ways. Ephron is honourable, despicable and mighty – and place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos a humorous writer and she well understands imbued with such complexity, Irani brings with his ballads, uncomfortable truths the power of scrutinising the minute detail dignity to all the transgender sex-workers of emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. as a means of quantifying and exploring India.’ – Rajith Savanadasa (Ruins) Believe the hype (and fans such as Francisco broader issues. It allows for very enjoyable Goldman and Valeria Fuiselli). reading. Siracusa is a polished gem of a novel that makes fine use of parody. This book is THE PEOPLE WE HATE excellent reading for fans of Anne Tyler, Kate AT THE WEDDING SYMPATHY Atkinson and Toni Jordan. Grant Ginder Olivia Sudjic Pushkin. PB. $29.99 Chris Gordon is events manager at Readings Flatiron Books. PB. $22.99 Available 11 July Available 28 June SPOONBENDERS Cynical, whip-smart and This brilliant, tormented and moving debut novel Daryl Gregory surprisingly tender, this dysfunctional-family references Lewis Carroll’s Quercus. PB. $32.99 novel is packed with Alice throughout – The Available now fabulously flawed Observer even called it Meet the Amazing characters – all destined ‘Through the Looking Glass for Telemachus Family, to come together around the Instagram generation’. famous for appearing across the grand set-piece of an It’s been heaped with praise the land in the mid- elaborate wedding that (almost) no one by everyone from Vanity Fair to Diana Athill to seventies. Their live TV wants to attend. Paul (handsome older Emily Gould. Twenty-three-year-old adoptee appearances featured boyfriend tiring of monogamy, awful job) Alice leaves England for New York, where charming, fast-talking and Alice (affair with married boss, she quickly becomes obsessed with Mizuo conman Teddy and his wife worrying fondness for prescription drugs) Himura, a Japanese writer living in New York Maureen, a genuine and immensely gifted are off to London for the wedding of their whose life has strange parallels with her own. psychic, along with their three children: perfect, pampered (resented, of course) Their ‘chance’ encounter and subsequent human lie-detector Irene, telepath Frankie half-sister Eloise. Donna, a suburban relationship expose a dark tangle of lies and and clairvoyant Buddy. Then, one night, their widow with a penchant for the occasional sexual encounters as three families across the magic disastrously fails them. The novel picks joint, and mother of all three, will join globe collide. ‘An uncomfortably up 30 years later, when their lives seem them. What could go wrong? ‘Not only does contemporary tale of unrequited love in the anything but amazing. They’re heartbroken it have the best title in the universe, The internet age.’ – The New York Times and abandoned, in debt to the local mafia, and People We Hate At The Wedding is wickedly digging holes in the garden. All is seemingly smart and shamelessly funny.’ – Kevin despondent until Irene’s 14-year-old son Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians) Poetry Matty discovers a little magic of his own. Now everyone from the mob to the CIA are LIVING THE DREAM knocking at the Telemachus’s doors and it’s THERE ARE MORE going to take every last drop of talent the Lauren Berry BEAUTIFUL THINGS family has left to ride this one out. Virago. PB. $29.99 THAN BEYONCE Available 11 July This novel reminded me of Australian Morgan Parker A smart, satirical look at author Steven Amsterdam’s wonderful Corsair. PB. $22.99 modern life in the big city, 2013 novel What the Family Needed, which Available now also featured a family with extraordinary from the perspective of ‘The only thing more powers. As with that story, Spoonbenders two twentysomething best beautiful than Beyoncé is uses its characters’ powers to magnify their friends with creative God, and God is a black desires and flaws in smart, interesting ways, dreams and dismally woman sipping rosé and emphasising the novel’s emotional depth. practical jobs. This drawing a lavender bath, Daryl Gregory has thoughtfully imagined charmingly authentic texting her mom, belly- how daily life might be impacted by having debut has been called ‘a Bridget Jones’ Diary laughing in the therapist’s such abilities, and the world he paints is for the millennial set’, with author Lauren office, feeling unloved, richly nuanced. Berry (founder of satirical feminist zine being on display, daring to survive.’ Morgan The Telemachuses are not the all- KnockBack) described as ‘London’s Lena Parker is a smash-hit new literary sensation: powerful psychics promoted by their former Dunham’. Obvious comparisons for a story this collection has been passionately TV legend. Their talents are unpredictable about twentysomethings, perhaps – but embraced by Eileen Myles (‘I can and have and unreliable, both a gift and curse that also very promising ones, particularly when read Morgan Parker’s poems over and over’), they must learn to navigate. Irene’s ability to the author is backed by renowned (literary) Jami Attenberg (‘Morgan Parker has a mind spot a lie leads her to feel isolated from those feminist publisher Virago. like wildfire and these pages are lit’) and around her, so she seeks solace in an internet Emma should be a writer (but works Roxane Gay (‘So much soul. So much chat room. Buddy’s visions of the future have in corporate advertising). Clem, just back intelligence in how Parker folds in cultural him anticipating the worst, unless he can find from New York, is on the path to becoming references and the experiences of black a creative way to retell the story of what he’s a successful screenwriter (but works in a womanhood. Every poem will get its hooks seen. Spoonbenders is a caper with a glowing bar and lives with her mum). Along with into you.’). Oh, and it was named one of heart. A reader who loves the mess and the big questions of aspirations versus Publisher’s Weekly’s Ten Best Poetry tangles of dysfunctional families (and who reality, taking a risk versus selling out, they Collections of Spring. A collection to savour doesn’t?) will find plenty on offer here. attempt to answer questions like how to and return to – and one bound to appeal to look happy at work, and what (not) to wear Bronte Coates is digital content coordinator the many young fans of Rupi Kaur. at a ‘wellness’ spa. and prize manager at Readings READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 11

New Crime Dead Write FINAL GIRLS FATAL MISTAKE Riley Sager Karen M. David with Fiona Hardy Ebury. PB. $32.99 S&S. PB. $29.99 Crime Book of the Month Available 17 July Available now A final girl, like in the Going undercover is never an THE SCANDAL movies: the last survivor of a easy task, but Detective Lexie Fredrik Backman brutal massacre, the pretty Rogers is no stranger to hard Michael Joseph. PB. Was $32.99 girl left standing when work – and she has the scars to prove it. Barely hours into $27.99 everyone around her has her first day infiltrating one of Available now been slaughtered. When Quincy Carpenter became a Sydney’s drug syndicates, a In a small, nearly-forgotten Swedish town in the forest, hockey is the final girl after a college holiday that turned bomb goes off during an open day at the reason the sun rises. After years of financial despair, of closed into a bloodbath, she found solace during notorious Assassins Outlaw Motorcycle businesses and schools, and kids who want nothing more than to leave, the following years in Lisa and Sam, Final Gang’s clubhouse, killing a handful of bikers there is a ray of hope that things will turn around, and that hope is pinned Girls who had come before, weathered the and a police officer. Knowing that she on one thing. The junior hockey team, close to winning the championship, closer still to media storm, and lived to tell the tale. Until would’ve typically been sent on surveillance securing a new hockey academy, promises to put Beartown back on the map and bring people Lisa – calm, rational Lisa – is found in her for that event – and that the new ‘friends’ back, instead of them solely leaving. And the team has pinned all its hopes on Kevin Erdahl: bathtub, her wrists slit. Which means two she’s making were invited to said event – hockey prodigy, 17-year-old invincible hero to an entire town. things: that Quincy is about to be the centre Lexie realises how close she’s already getting But Kevin got where he was thanks to Benji, the teammate and best friend who is both of a media storm, and that she’s about to to danger. When it comes to going undercover, terrible and the best person in town. And neither of them will win unless the team is rounded doubt her own ability to survive this horror, there is almost no one you can trust beyond out by someone fast, like Amat, from the kids’ team, who practises every morning while his even all these years later. Final Girls is an yourself ... but even the face in the mirror is mother Fatima cleans the rink. And Fatima needs to keep her job cleaning the offices of the uneasy psychological thriller, doubt hiding some secrets. A twisting, accelerating coaches. But the coaches, David and Sune, need to come to an agreement about Amat. And the clawing at the pages like surfacing thriller packed with real-life experience. general manager, former hockey professional Peter, needs to figure out what to do about Sune, memories, and when Quincy discovers an his longtime mentor. Meanwhile Peter and his wife, Kira, just want to hold onto their children: urgent email sent to her from Lisa just MY NAME IS NOBODY Leo and 15-year-old Maya, who is beginning to think she is in love with Kevin. But Amat is in before she died, she realises that nothing is Matthew Richardson love with Maya, and then there is the rest of the town, too, waiting to have their story told. as Final as her moniker implies. Michael Joseph. PB. $32.99 Fredrik ‘Man Called Ove’ Backman has endless skill when it comes to the layering of Available 17 July characters: of their motivations, of making you know for sure what you think of someone BROKEN RIVER ... until ten pages later, when you become absolutely convinced you were wrong. He gives I can only assume Penguin you a town, its people, its passion, and makes you believe in it, makes you feel the roar of J. Robert Lennon didn’t like the title ‘My Name BEARTOWN through the pages: the excitement, the desperation, and then, the downfall. Serpent’s Tail. PB. $27.99 is Also a Footballer’s’ for this The way a whole town sees a threat to the hockey team – their hockey team – and their moral Available 28 June entertaining spy thriller, so compass spins off-centre. The way a crime can be committed but it doesn’t matter, because it’s We watch, detached but went for this one instead. And not as important as hockey. Unless someone stands up for it. distressed, as a family of course, everyone in it has a This is an almost-comforting, slow-burn of a Scandinavian story, with Neil Smith’s scatters out of their small- delectable, hypermasculine translation transporting Backman’s voice so clearly, it seems unfathomable it was originally town home, terrified of spy-type name, from Solomon Vine, the written in anything but English. There are all the ingredients – ice and snow and blood and something, of someone. A up-and-coming agent shut out of the trade guns and tension – but what is really dangerous is the mentality of a small town that thinks that man, a woman, a young child. after a prisoner’s catch-and-release goes it has everything to lose, without realising what it is that you need to hold on to. Their escape is short-lived, wrong; to Cosmo Newton, the chair of the and they are found. Not all of them will Joint Intelligence Committee, who gets him survive the minutes that follow, but the one back in the game to hunt down a missing THE FORCE knows, but for three women, those few thing that stays, upright and waiting, man; and on to head of station Gabriel Wilde, the man abducted from his home, who needs Don Winslow words lead to something much bigger: throughout the handful of years that pass Angela, confronted again with the afterwards, is the house. No one would buy to be found before anyone untoward finds a HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 hollowing-out she feels every time a baby is it, of course. Until one family does. And it is way to get all that classified information out Available now mentioned in the paper; Emma, feeling the that family who we watch now: a couple of his head. Vine, already in trouble and with When it comes to Don world she has built around her start to trying to escape their own relationship no one keeping tabs on him, is the only one Winslow, you can hear the crumble; and Kate, a journalist, who sees in problems, and their endearingly who can find his old friend – and figure out story in your head, narrated this an answer that needs a question. insufferable 12-year-old daughter, morbidly what really happened that day when a by some tough-talking New Whose baby is it? How did it get there? And fascinated to find they’re living in a house prisoner was shot and he copped the blame. Yorker: a raspy voice, heavy what secrets will be uncovered when the with such a bloody history. They’re not A solid espionage tale, perfect for a night in and dark with the truth. The three women do everything they can to terrified of anything. At least, not yet. This front of the fire reading about people being story reels past in black-and- fight for themselves? By the author of the is an unsettling, horrifying book: a forest, tortured for information ... while the most white, the headiest of noir, pulling you bestselling The Widow, this is a gripping bodies never found, the girl who survived, torturous thing you need to decide is whether through. Denny Malone has been busted by heartache of a tale by an author who seems and the search for answers that would to pour a gin and tonic, or a whiskey sour. the feds – and everyone around him is destined (judging by her titles) to knock off never (thankfully for the reader) end well. scurrying, finding a place to hide, because a different family member for each book. GET POOR SLOW Denny was never supposed to go to jail. THE STUDENT David Free He’s a hero to the people, a police officer in THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS Iain Ryan Picador. PB. $29.99 control of the land: respected, ambitious, a Available now finger in every pie. He gets good things Michael Robotham Echo. PB. $24.99 done. Maybe sometimes he goes about it Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 Available now I am, of course, terrified at the bad way, but now, the way has gone too $29.99 Gatton, Queensland, 1994. It’s the idea of reviewing a book bad, and there’s no coming back from it. If Available 11 July hot, it’s messy, the university’s by a book reviewer – the man at the top goes down, will half of It’s a good month to stay away a pit of doom, and the weed is especially one who’s written Manhattan’s elite shake free? Denny’s stuck from crime books if you’re drying out. For Nate, who lives a book about a book reviewer tight; his loyalty’s in too many places. about to have a baby, because a complicated life involving accused of murder. Ray Saint Someone’s gotta get saved, and something’s things aren’t going well for study and family problems is dealing with chronic pain, gotta give. An electric burn of storytelling the little tykes. Meg’s and dealing pot, the last part is not enough prescription medication, and a mastery. You don’t have to take my word for pregnant with her third child, a problem about the length and width of the bit too much non-prescription medication. it though: Stephen King says, ‘Think The but it was a surprise, and her endless sky. Especially since usually he gets His caustic book reviews are met with Godfather, only with cops. It’s that good.’ faltering marriage isn’t coping well with the his weed from Jesse. And Jesse’s gone. People delight by many and ire by more than a few. And Lee Child goes further: ‘Probably the new changes and everyone’s frayed emotions. are looking for him, but not the nice kind of His not particularly well-funded life was best cop novel ever written.’ Agatha’s pregnant too, feeling the twists and people you like to have a chat with, but more rough even before Jade Howe’s dead body thumps inside her. And she’s watching Meg, the type of people who leave you looking a bit turned up. Ray was the last person to see her THE CHILD hoping to befriend her, hoping that Meg’s pranged by the end of the conversation. Oh, alive, and now the cops (and half of Australia) have their eye on him: he of the Fiona Barton seemingly perfect life will rub off on her a and the cops, too. Then there’s his friend Maya, whose body was found by a dog. But slight lapses of memory, owner of Bantam. PB. $32.99 little, give her the baby she’s wanted so that’s probably not where the problem of the fingerprints all over her room. Ray must Available 3 July desperately for so long, the whole experience of motherhood that Meg lives in. But Meg’s missing Jesse is headed. All Nate has to do is scrape himself from the ground again and One day in March, a small hiding a secret. And so is her husband. And find him, or find 35 grand. But when you’re sharpen some barbs to find out who really article appears in the Agatha’s hiding one bigger than all of them. Australia’s most unfocussed and unexpected killed the Jade he’d come to like – and prove Evening Standard. A baby’s This is a tense, nerve-shredding read, played detective, that’s not easy – though it is fun as to everyone, as well as himself, that just bones have been found at a out in mothers’ groups and domestic hell to read about. The Student is a scrappy because you’re a bit cutting when it comes to building site, under an urn disputes, by the Ned Kelly and CWA Gold delight of a second novel from the Ned-Kelly- shoddy literature, that doesn’t mean you’re in what was the garden. Dagger award-winning Robotham. shortlisted Ryan. cutting when it comes to a dead body. That is all the reporter 12 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

New Nonfiction punk scene kid, New York City career veteran close to Katharine Hepburn) and woman – that she grew up watching in her antique furniture. movies and on TV. Frank idolised his childless aunt and Nonfiction Book of the Month The strongest essays cut to the heart uncle, who liked to think of him as their of her own personal history. While the own, and meticulously tutored him in HUNGER: A MEMOIR OF MY BODY arguments in more critical pieces – like taste and thought. As he grew up and ‘The Codes to Self-Esteem’, which analyses developed his own personality, his aunt Roxane Gay the cult of Kanye West, or ‘Real Quality’, grew tart – intermittently distant and Corsair. PB. Was $32.99 about what constitutes good taste in music clingy – and he began to see her distinctly. $27.99 – didn’t always convince me, Lancaster’s In this extraordinary, emotionally articulate Available now reflective essays flow easily and more account, Frank demonstrates how his Roxane Gay is the smart, funny, outspoken author of the self-assuredly. The chapters that examine aunt’s love fermented into emotional abuse bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist and several body image and dating, feeling lonely and and gaslighting. ‘It was like being caught acclaimed works of fiction. Her new book, Hunger, is a deeply trapped living in New York, and falling in in a kind of hall of mirrors, to have my personal memoir that examines how trauma can shape a love on the internet are compelling and experience recast and my language distorted person’s life and their body. Early in her book, Gay writes speak honestly to the experience of being a like this.’ He also shows how her literary ‘There is the before and the after. Before I gained weight. After young, millennial woman. encouragement, her intricate stories, and I gained weight. Before I was raped. After I was raped.’ No Way! Okay, Fine. adds to the growing the ‘decoding through investigation, through Gay’s ‘after’ has been almost 30 years of dealing with the consequences of a savage canon of memoirs by young Australian forensics’ that her contradictions prompted, violence done to her one afternoon in the woods when she was 12 years old. In Hunger, writers, and will appeal to fans of Lena shaped him as a writer. This is a loving, Gay tells of how she turned to food as a solace and an armour, and documents her Dunham, Lindy West and Melissa Broder. complex, if also critical, portrait. It will complicated relationship with her body, her family and her desires. As well as telling her Kelsey Oldham is from Readings Hawthorn appeal to readers of dysfunctional family own story, Gay examines how fat bodies are treated by society and the media, and details memoirs (like Running with Scissors) and what it is like to exist in a world that doesn’t accommodate you, a world where ‘the open BEING HERE: family memoirs of perception and truth (like hatred of fat people is vigorously tolerated and encouraged’. THE LIFE OF PAULA Nadja Spiegelman’s I’m Supposed to Protect MODERSOHN-BECKER You From All This). ‘An extraordinarily brave and powerfully honest Jo Case is editor of Readings Monthly, and Marie Darrieussecq a bookseller at Readings Doncaster book ... every page is unflinching and Text. PB. $24.99 Available 3 July RISING STAR: THE MAKING thought-provoking.’ Paula Modersohn-Becker was the first female artist to OF BARACK OBAMA Hunger is an extraordinarily brave and powerfully honest book. Written in short chapters, paint herself not only David J. Garrow it has the intimate, confessional tone of a diary, and every page is unflinching and thought- naked, but pregnant. HarperCollins. PB. Was $44.99 provoking. Gay writes that ‘people project assumed narratives onto your body and are not Acclaimed French writer $39.99 at all interested in the truth of your body, whatever that truth might be.’ This memoir is Marie Darrieussecq Available now the truth of Roxane Gay’s body, and her story matters. Gay’s story is one of a queer woman, thrillingly describes Paula’s This new biography, by a a black woman, a fat woman, a woman who has been the victim of terrible violence, a discovery of her style and choice of Pulitzer prize-winning successful woman, a shy woman, a hungry woman, a warm woman, an ambitious woman. subjects: women, babies, domestic life. As biographer, is the definitive A woman whose work should be read, shared and celebrated. her art evolves, Paula is torn between Paris account of Barack Obama’s Nina Kenwood is marketing manager at Readings (where she focuses on her work and mixes life before he became the with artists like Rodin and Monet, or poet 44th president of the Rainer Maria Rilke) and Germany (her United States: from his Australia. He was also famous, as editor of home, with painter husband Otto). She childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia to his Australian Studies The Bulletin, for removing the words tells the story of her fraught marriage, her formative years as a community organiser ‘Australia for the white man’ from its ambivalence about combining her passion in Chicago, to Harvard and the US senate. CHARLATAN masthead. This definitive selection of for her career as an artist with Drawing on more than 1000 interviews Horne’s writing, made by his son, Nick, tells motherhood. And she recounts her tragic and encyclopaedic documentary research, Catherine Jinks the story of his life and intellectual death at 31, days after giving birth. ‘Marie Garrow reveals as never before the Vintage. PB. $32.99 development – from radical conservative to Darrieussecq reads the testament of ambition, the dreams, and the all-too- Available 3 July progressive proponent of tolerance and Modersohn-Becker – the letters, the human struggles of an iconic president. Thomas Guthrie Carr is pioneer of Australian cultural studies. diaries, and above all the paintings – with charged by Eliza Gray with a burning intelligence and a fierce hold on FALL DOWN SEVEN mesmerising her and what it meant and means to be a woman raping her while she was TIMES, GET UP EIGHT Biography and an artist.’ – J.M. Coetzee under his influence. But if Naoki Higashida Sceptre. HB. $26.99 mesmerism and Mr Carr THE MIGHTY FRANKS are shams, was Eliza NO WAY! OKAY, FINE. Available 11 July raped? In the tradition of Brodie Lancaster Michael Frank Naoki Higashida’s The Fourth Estate. PB. $27.99 The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Charlatan is the Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 Reason I Jump, written Available now story of a notorious nineteenth-century $29.99 when he was just 13, was I gobbled up this court case. With a driving narrative and Available now an international bestseller, deliciously dark, novelistic pacing, this scrupulously Brodie Lancaster’s standing out from other profoundly poignant researched account of the life of Thomas first book is a autism memoirs with its memoir in two half-days. Guthrie Carr, stage mesmerist – who lied, memoir that fuses first-hand perspective of The Mighty Franks is fought and sleazed his way around Australia Lancaster’s love of pop an autistic, non-verbal Hollywood gothic, and New Zealand between 1865 and 1886 – culture and feminism to young adult. This follow-up offers equally complete with distorted is more than just a fascinating slice of social explore her quest for illuminating and practical insights into families, claustrophobic history. It’s also a mystery, a piece of true authentic identity and autism: this time, from a young man. With passions, silver-screen glamour (sometimes crime, and a delicately humorous portrait of self-acceptance –even if an introduction by David Mitchell (who borrowed, sometimes earned), submerged a man whose eye for the main chance and the taboo of being an ‘adult One Direction- co-translated and championed the hurt erupting from poison tongues, and ferocious pursuit of publicity made him an fan’ hasn’t exactly been broken. Yet. publication of the first book), this part- confected narratives. At the centre of it all oddly contemporary figure. Lancaster uses film and TV, music and memoir, part-critique of a world that sees is Aunt Hankie (Harriet), a gorgeous the internet to examine her own life: every disabilities before disabled people, is grotesque to rival Joan Crawford: ruthless DONALD HORNE: essay is chock-full of cultural references invaluable for anyone wanting to truly in her avoidance of self-knowledge and her SELECTED WRITINGS that illustrate the degree to which we understand autism, from the inside. imperious need to control the world that interpret our lives through stories we see Donald Horne orbits her. (Something in its tone reminded on-screen. Discussing body image and DARING TO DRIVE Black Inc. PB. $32.99 me of Ryan Murphy’s bitingly camp cable self-esteem, Lancaster draws on comedian Manal al-Sharif Available 3 July series, Feud: Bette & Joan.) Aidy Bryant’s work on Saturday Night Live; S&S. PB. $32.99 Donald Horne was one of Michael Frank grew up in Laurel in an essay about growing up in a small Available now Australia’s leading Canyon, between his parents and the aunt town, moving away and returning home, Manal al-Sharif was born thinkers for close to 50 and uncle who lived down the road, wildly she compares herself to Reese Witherspoon in Mecca the year years, and probably the successful screenwriter pair Harriet (his in Sweet Home Alabama. These references fundamentalism took hold best Australian nonfiction father’s sister) and Irving (his mother’s range from obvious to obscure, and serve to in Saudi Arabia. Her writer of his generation. brother). Nearby, lived his grandmothers underline Lancaster’s realisation that she personal rebellion began His seminal book The (his father’s and his mother’s mothers), has spent her life trying on and discarding the day she got behind the Lucky Country made the together in one small flat, ruled over by the identities – church-going teen, pop- wheel of a car: an act that case for a more open, modern, intelligent the imperious Harriet senior (a Hollywood READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 13 ultimately led to her arrest and reaching out to other women who may not imprisonment. Manal’s Women2Drive be in as privileged a position. campaign had her named one of Time Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Daring to Drive is an account of her fight for equality in an unequal society. Cultural Studies It also celebrates resilience, the power of education and the strength of female solidarity in the face of hardship. DRAW YOUR WEAPONS Sarah Sentilles Text. PB. $32.99 Business Available 3 July In Draw Your WOMEN LEADING Weapons, Sarah Sentilles weaves together Christine Nixon & Amanda Sinclair politics, memoir and MUP. PB. $32.99 history to create a Available 3 July meditation on the Women Leading smashes relationship between tired prescriptions that war, art and critical women should lead like theory. The fractured narrative recalls men, highlighting a long the bricolage style of filmmaker Adam history of innovative Curtis, where individual narratives are female leadership. given as much weight as grand, dominant Through stories, examples ones. We bear witness to a century of and research (including American war primarily through the their own), Christine Nixon and Amanda stories of an ageing conscientious Sinclair show how to be a positive leader objector and a former Abu Ghraib prison while maintaining your health and humour. guard. Both men are defined and haunted by their roles in America’s wars. And both NOT JUST LUCKY men use art to reconcile themselves to Jamila Rizvi the past. Sentilles deftly draws Viking. PB. Was $35 connections between the experiences of $29.99 these two men and the theoretical work Available 3 July of Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag and Jamila Rizvi is by no many others. means ‘just lucky’. In between the two main narratives, She has forged a stellar the absurdity of war is detailed through career in federal politics oblique glances at peripheral and often and the media by using forgotten stories. Sentilles takes the her formidable reader on a tour of the repressed history intelligence and working of the American war machine – from ridiculously hard. Of the Japanese internment camps on US course, luck has played an important role, soil, to the surgical precision of the CIA’s and she’s the first to acknowledge the torture playbook, to the incarceration of impact of being born into the privilege of conscientious objectors. Through this a comfortable middle-class upbringing. process of remembering, of bringing the However, Rizvi argues that too often, war back home, Sentilles confronts her women attribute their career success to own complicity and gives up the luxury luck, when really they’ve won their of disavowal. In doing so, she realises that achievements by being talented and her life-long identification as a pacifist “Geoffrey Maslen’s ability to working hard. Rizvi’s ambition for her has worked to let her ‘off the hook make science accessible to a ‘feminist career manifesto’ is to change the somehow, as if being against the wars my wider audience, especially on way women who are just starting out in country fights means they have nothing their careers approach their professional to do with me’. such critical issues, is a rare lives. Informal and highly readable in style, Draw Your Weapons works as a highly and urgently needed skill.” Not Just Lucky outlines with brutal clarity original corrective to this impulse towards – Professor Michael Clarke, the disadvantages women continue to face inaction (though at times, I felt there were Head of School of Life Sciences, in the workplace. Rizvi then provides too many disparate analogies). Sentilles’ La Trobe University practical tips on building confidence and approach is a refreshing and instructive overcoming the fear of failure. She is take on this era of perennial warfare. absolutely clear that this does not mean Michael Skinner is from Readings St Kilda acting more like a man. Rather, she wants her readers to be aware of the ways they THE SECRET LIFE: might be subtly undermining themselves in THREE TRUE STORIES order to meet traditional masculine Andrew O’Hagan expectations. This is not a book about changing the Faber. PB. $29.99 system, but rather a toolkit for survival Available 28 June within it. While Rizvi doesn’t specifically Acclaimed author Andrew critique capitalism, she points out that O’Hagan delivers a fascinating, brilliantly traditional workplaces are built for “Maslen’s book is a clarion men and that large, male-dominated drawn exploration of the corporations control the majority of wealth. border between call for Australia’s brilliant Refreshingly, she also writes about the cyberspace and ‘the real but disappearing birds” importance of unionisation and solidarity: world’, examining three concepts that often get lost in a type of lives in the process. The – Bob Brown, former leader modern, hollow feminism that focuses on first is Julian Assange: O’Hagan was of the Australian Greens the individual over the collective. infamously hired as his ghostwriter, and in This book is for young professionals, the process went from being a Wikileaks rather than working women in other supporter to a man deeply disillusioned by types of paid or unpaid work – but Rizvi his subject’s destructive, often does not pretend otherwise. Crucially, her hypocritical, narcissism. (‘The best and chapter on the importance of mentoring most finely nuanced journalistic profile is not simply about how to find someone that this reviewer has read this century,’ to help you climb the career ladder, but The Guardian writes of this section.) The emphasises the importance of being third is a profile of maddeningly elusive hardiegrantbooks.com a mentor at any stage in your career, maybe-Bitcoin-inventor Craig Wright. 14 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

And the middle subject is Ronald Pinn, an who are transforming the landscape of ideas Miéville has written this book for you. researchers and biologists studying birdlife online character O’Hagan created. A in the 21st century, covering topics such as October is an exhilarating retelling of the in Australia and dozens of scientific reports compelling account of identity, secrecy, politics, culture, psychoanalysis, the events of 1917. Throughout the book, the from around the world, Maslen reveals a and the relationship between the anthropocene, and the ‘nonhuman’. complex and often conflicting aims of dire picture of what plummeting bird individual, the state, and technology. the revolutionaries and their adversaries populations mean for humanity. ‘A clarion UNCLE DYSFUNCTIONAL are deftly explained. Political debates call for Australia’s brilliant but SAYS WHO?: A.A. Gill and machinations are punctuated by disappearing birds.’ – Bob Brown THE STRUGGLE FOR Canongate. PB. $24.99 stories from the streets of Petrograd: AUTHORITY IN A Available 28 June desperate peasants, dissenting soldiers, MOZART’S STARLING MARKET BASED SOCIETY From 2011 up until his death fiery activists, and pompous militants all Lyanda Lynn Haupt find their way into these pages without Corsair. HB $35 Paul Verhaeghe at the end of 2016, the inimitable A.A. Gill reigned becoming clichés. This is the people’s Available 11 July Scribe. PB. $29.99 acerbicly supreme as Uncle history of the Revolution. In 1784, Wolfgang Available 3 July Dysfunctional, Esquire’s This account is neither dispassionate Amadeus Mozart met a Paul Verhaeghe, author of resident advice columnist. nor particularly objective – Miéville has flirtatious little starling What About Me?, investigates In this hilarious, scathing always worn his Marxist politics on his who sang (an improved how authority functions and yet often surprisingly humane collection, sleeve, and is refreshingly upfront about version of ) the theme why we need it in order to Gill applies his unmatched wit to the largest having ‘picked a side’ in this story. Lenin from his Piano Concerto develop healthy psyches and and smallest issues of our time. Whether emerges as the inspired and frustrated Number 17 in G to him. strong societies. Going you’re having a crisis over your baldness, or protagonist, alongside Trotsky and other Knowing a kindred spirit when he met against the laissez-faire don’t like your daughter’s boyfriend, A.A. less well-known figures. Nevertheless, the one, Mozart took the bird home to be his ethics of a free-market age, he argues that Gill has the advice you need. Brace yourself! author is critical of his own heroes when pet. In 2013, naturalist Lyanda Lynn rather than seeing authority as a source of their actions warrant it, and he provides Haupt rescued her own starling, who has oppression, we should invest in developing deep insight into the decisions made by become a part of her family. Here, she it in the places that matter. Only by Environmental Studies those he admires less: the portrayal of explores the unlikely bond between one strengthening the power of horizontal Alexander Kerensky’s hubristic attempt to of history’s most controversial characters groups within existing social structures, reconcile opposing factions is compelling and one of history’s most notoriously such as in education, the economy and the CLIMATE WARS and tragic. The book builds to a blazing disliked birds. political system, can we restore authority to Mark Butler conclusion, and the epilogue dazzles as its rightful place. MUP. PB. $27.99 Miéville seamlessly draws the threads of FAREWELL TO Available 3 July literature and history together. THE HORSE SELFIE As the consequences of You don’t need to have any familiarity Ulrich Raulff Will Storr climate change take us with Miéville’s broad body of work to Allen Lane. HB. Was $55 Picador. PB. $32.99 perilously close to the point enjoy this book, but October will prove Available now of no-return, time-wasting especially intriguing to fans of his fictional $49.99 This compelling new work wars over ‘what to do’ works. His emphasis on the revolutionary Available 17 July about the mysterious power distract us from taking real role of trains begs comparison with the Farewell to the Horse is an of the self and the danger of action. Mark Butler, the drama of Iron Council, and I find myself engaging, brilliantly written our modern obsession with it opposition minister for climate change eager to revisit his other books to spot and moving discussion of was kickstarted by the and energy, makes a forceful case for using more inspirations and parallels. But before what horses once meant to author’s self-loathing. But less and cleaner energy as part of global that, perhaps I’ll seek out some more us. Cities, farmland, entire Selfie is much more than that action to save the planet – and to make Russian history! industries were once shaped as much by the – it’s a work of reportage and reflection that Australia attractive to global investors, and Eleanor Jenkins is from Readings Carlton spans centuries and continents. Where does create new jobs in clean energy. needs of horses as humans. The this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? SUGAR: THE WORLD intervention of horses was fundamental in countless historical events. From the Is there any way to break its spell? ‘Self- CORRUPTED FROM obsession, Storr suspects, is a reflex of History Roman Empire to the Napoleonic Empire, self-dissatisfaction or self-dislike, a symptom SLAVERY TO OBESITY every world-conqueror needed to be of “social perfectionism” that pushes some of KOH-I-NOOR: James Walvin shown on a horse. Tolstoy once reckoned its victims towards suicide. His imposing Robinson. PB. $32.99 that he had cumulatively spent some nine survey traverses centuries of what we THE HISTORY OF THE Available 11 July years of his life on horseback. This book, a thought was progress to show how we WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS Two centuries ago, cane bestseller in Germany, is a superb reached this psychic dead end.’ – The Guardian DIAMOND sugar was vital to the monument to the endlessly various William Dalrymple & Anita Anand burgeoning European creature who has so often shared and UNBREAKABLE: WOMEN Bloomsbury. HB. $24.99 domestic and colonial shaped our fate. SHARE STORIES OF Available 1 July economies. For all its recent RESILIENCE AND HOPE The first comprehensive origins, today’s ‘obesity epidemic’ did not emerge Politics Jane Caro (ed.) and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor, arguably overnight, but evolved from a complexity of UQP. PB. $29.95 the most celebrated and historical forces which stretch back Available 17 July THE RETREAT OF mythologised jewel in the centuries. This is the story of how the In this revealingly honest WESTERN LIBERALISM world. On 29 March 1849, consumption of sugar – its addition to food collection, successful Edward Luce the ten-year-old Maharajah and drink – became a fundamental and Australian women talk Little, Brown. PB. $32.99 of the Punjab handed Queen Victoria not increasingly troublesome feature of modern about the challenges they Available now only swathes of the richest land in India, life. James Walvin is the author of many have overcome, from sexual In the acclaimed Time to but also arguably the single most valuable books on slavery and social history: he’s assault and domestic Start Thinking, Financial object in the subcontinent: the celebrated writing from this lesser-heard perspective. violence to racism, Times columnist Edward Koh-i-Noor diamond. William Dalrymple miscarriage, depression and loss, and how Luce charted the course of and Anita Anand tell the story behind it: they let the past go to move forward with American economic and one of greed, murder, torture, colonialism Natural History their lives. Contributors include Kathy geopolitical decline. Here, and appropriation, through an impressive Lette, Tracey Spicer, Rebecca Lim, Kerryn he makes a larger slice of south and central Asian history. It Goldsworthy and Jacinda Woodhead. AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE: statement about the weakening of ends with the jewel in its current AUSTRALIAN BIRDLIFE western hegemony and the crisis of controversial setting: in the crown of GENERAL INTELLECTS: IN DANGER democratic liberalism – of which Donald Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. 21 THINKERS FOR THE Geoffrey Maslen Trump and his European counterparts 21ST CENTURY OCTOBER Hardie Grant. PB. $37.99 are not the cause, but a symptom. Luce McKenzie Wark Available 1 July argues that we are on a menacing China Mieville trajectory brought about by ignorance of Verso. PB. $34.99 Geoffrey Maslen takes us Verso. PB. $29.99 what it took to build the West, arrogance Available now into the fascinating lives of Available now towards society’s losers, and complacency What has happened to the Australian birds, showing us What’s the difference about our system’s durability – attitudes public intellectuals who used their intelligence, the between a Bolshevik that have been emerging since the fall of to challenge and inform us? significant threats they face and a Menshevik? And the Berlin Wall. Combining on-the- Who is the Sartre, de due to disappearing habitats why, 100 years on from the ground reporting with intelligent Beauvoir or Stuart Hall of the and climate change, and Russian Revolution, should synthesis of the vast literature already present age? McKenzie Wark how essential they are to our own survival. any of us care? If you’re available, Luce offers a detailed introduces us to 21 thinkers Drawing on numerous interviews with wondering, then China projection of the consequences of the READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 15

Trump administration and a forward- A GOOD LIFE TO THE END thinking analysis of what those who Ken Hillman believe in enlightenment values must do A&U. PB. $29.99 to defend them from the multiple Available 28 June onslaughts they face in the coming years. A professor of intensive care asks why so many elderly Science people linger in pain and confusion in ICU, when all they want is to die at home CAESAR’S LAST BREATH: in peace and with their THE EPIC STORY OF THE loved ones. Professor Ken AIR AROUND US Hillman has worked in intensive care since its inception. But he is appalled by the way Sam Kean the ICU has become a place where the frail, Doubleday. PB. $35 soon-to-die and dying are given Available 17 July unnecessary operations and life-prolonging A fascinating journey treatments without their wishes being through the periodic table, taken into account. A Good Life to the End around the globe, and will embolden and equip us to ask about across time to tell the story the options that doctors in hospital should of the air we breathe: offer us – but mostly don’t. which, it turns out, is also A landmark history of Australian the story of Earth and our Jews in the military, from the existence on it. Tracing the origins and Humour First Fleet to the recent war in ingredients of our atmosphere, Kean Afghanistan. reveals how the alchemy of air reshaped our continents, steered human progress, RANDOM LIFE ver 7000 Jews have fought in powered revolutions, and continues to Judy Horacek OAustralia’s military conflicts, influence everything we do. Along the way, Black Inc. PB. $24.95 including more than 330 who gave we’ll swim with radioactive pigs, witness Available 3 July their lives. While Sir John Monash the most important chemical reactions Judy Horacek is one of is the best known, in Jewish Anzacs humans have discovered, and join the Melbourne’s most loved acclaimed writer and historian Mark crowd at the Moulin Rouge for some of the cartoonists – her wise, Dapin reveals the personal, often crudest performance art of all time. witty, often whimsical extraordinary, stories of many other cartoons cover subjects as Jewish servicemen and women: THE SECRET LIFE diverse as climate change, from air aces to POWs, from nurses OF THE MIND feminism, social media, to generals, from generation to fairy tales, Mondays and zebras. Her ninth Mariano Sigman generation. HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 collection will delight fans ... and tickle the Available now fancy of readers everywhere. In the last 20 years, Mariano www.newsouthpublishing.com Sigman has journeyed to the core of the brain: an organ Music formed by a near-infinity of neurons that manufacture ROOTS, RADICALS how we perceive, reason, AND ROCKERS: feel, dream and HOW SKIFFLE CHANGED communicate. After more than two decades of research, he has zoomed out to THE WORLD see the brain from afar, where thoughts Billy Bragg begin to take shape. How do we forge Faber. HB. $39.99 ideas in our first days of life? How do we Available 28 June shape the decisions that define us? And Against a backdrop of how do years and years of formal and Cold War politics, rock informal education change our brains? and roll riots and a newly assertive generation of working-class youth, the Personal Development songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg charts the history, impact and WELLMANIA legacy of skiffle – Britain’s first indigenous Brigid Delaney pop movement. This meticulously Black Inc. PB. $32.99 researched and joyous account that Available 3 July explains how skiffle sparked a revolution Cold-pressed juices, that shaped pop music as we’ve come to quitting sugar, Paleo, hot know it. yoga, mindfulness … if you July’s Must Reads embrace these things you PINK FLOYD: THEIR will be happy, you will be MORTAL REMAINS Australian Desperadoes Not Just Lucky Charlatan well – just ask Instagram. Victoria Broackes & Anna Landreth Terry Smyth Jamila Rizvi Catherine Jinks Wellness has become a Strong In the roaring days of the 1850s Not Just Lucky exposes The story of a nineteenth century global mega-industry. But does any of this California gold rush, San Francisco the structural and cultural court case involving Thomas V&A Publications. HB. $74.99 stuff actually work? Feeling exhausted, was the most dangerous town in disadvantages that rob women of Guthrie Carr, a notorious, larger- Available 1 July anxious and out of shape, journalist Brigid America, made so by a notorious their confidence – often without than-life character who made his The first book ever criminal gang known as the Sydney them even realising it. It will help living as a mesmerist and some say Delaney decides to find out – using herself produced with full access Coves. you realise that you’re not just charlatan. as the guinea pig. Travelling the world, she lucky. You’re brilliant. to the Pink Floyd archive, tries colonics, meditation, silent retreats, Wreck Fleur Ferris A Trip of a Lifetime it celebrates 50 years of group psychotherapy and oodles of yoga, Finished with high school, Tamara is A Life Under Water Monica McInerney one of the greatest bands ready to say goodbye to her sleepy working out what is helpful and what is Charlie Veron A big, bold, beautiful book about of all time. Five essays little town and part-time job. Things A Life Underwater is the the light and dark times of life, just expensive hype. Is it possible to tackle different aspects of take an unexpected turn, however, extraordinary memoir of marine and all the wonders in between. integrate good habits into your daily life? when she arrives home to find her biologist Charlie Veron, a maverick The long-awaited new novel from their far-reaching legacy in music and the And what does our obsession with house ransacked and her life in Australian who transformed our one of Australia’s most beloved visual arts. Authors including Jon Savage, wellness say about us? ‘Brigid Delaney is danger. understanding of coral reefs. bestselling authors. Howard Goodall and Rob Young examine the queen of calamity and a fearless, sane what makes the band truly special, from the guide into the bizarre heart of our modern mythology underpinning their output, obsessions. This will make you groan in through to their experimentation with horror as much as it’ll make you laugh out technology to create new sounds. loud.’ – Benjamin Law 16 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

Food & Gardening Art & Design

with Chris Gordon with Margaret Snowdon CHEFS EAT TOASTIES TOO RAVENS Darren Purchese Masahisa Fukase Hardie Grant. HB. $29.99 Mack. HB. $149 Available 1 July Available now This book should Originally named encourage us all. Solitude of Ravens and Celebrity chefs who have consistently appeared on television, proclaimed as one of cooks who have the most important Muslims down under, bestselling cookbooks, photobooks in the ‘Mesmerizing. chefs who can create history of the medium, Think The Godfather, only from halal to hijabs and food that looks like art pieces ... are actually Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s everything in between human! How do I know? It’s all because of Ravens was first published in 1986. This with cops. It's that good.' this gift of a book: Chefs Eat Toasties Too. bilingual facsimile of the first edition STEPHEN KING Here is a salutation of that most enduring contains new text by Tomo Kosuga. Fukase’s of comfort foods, the toasted sandwich – haunting series of work was made between but taken to new heights by internationally 1975 and 1986 in the aftermath of a divorce, renowned chef Darren Purchese. There are and was apparently triggered by a mournful brilliant creations: from the perfect Maple train journey to his hometown. The coastal Bacon, Pear & Camembert on Sourdough, landscapes of Hokkaido serve as the to his Pulled Pork, Fennel Slaw & Chilli backdrop for his dark, impressionistic Mayo Sliders on Brioche Buns. All of the photographs of ominous flocks of crows. formations are perfect for late-night, post-gig munchies, or indeed a family meal DIOR CATWALK on a Sunday night as you watch The Voice Alexander Fury & Adelia Sabatini finales. Trust me: these recipes are the T&H. HB. $100 bees’ knees of delicious comfort food. To be Available early July shared ... or not! Dior is the second volume (following Chanel Catwalk) in TUCK IN: GOOD HEARTY a series of high-end, FOOD ANY TIME cloth-bound books that offer A provocative, A psychologically Ross Dobson a complete and unrivalled acute memoir about an Murdoch. PB. $39.99 overview of the collections of enthralling journey the world’s top fashion unusual and eccentric Available 28 June into the depths of Dobson is famous for his houses through original catwalk photography. the human mind Hollywood family wonderful cookbooks For the first time, every Dior haute couture about the virtues of the collection, after the arrival of John Galliano humble barbecue. Here, (when ready-to-wear presentations took on a in this easy-to-read, new importance) is gathered together, and easy-to-follow collection the first two collections designed by creative of recipes, he includes director Maria Grazia Chiuri, appointed in GET POOR SLOW methods made delicious by the humble fire, 2017. This definitive publication opens with a concise history of the house of Dior before David Free but also brings a new range of treats to his collection. Taking inspiration from all over exploring the collections themselves, which ‘My favourite Australian literary critic, David Free instantly becomes are organised chronologically. my favourite Australian author of psychological thrillers.’ the world, here is the guide to making friends and family happy over and over Clive James again. Tuck In provides a dish for every MATISSE IN THE STUDIO Ray Saint is in trouble. A young woman is dead and he was the last person to see her alive. No one is impressed by his excuses: Ray is the occasion, from Tuesday-night meals to Ellen McBreen et al. most hated book reviewer in Australia. As Ray investigates, he is obliged extravagant Sunday brunches. This MFA Boston. HB. $80 to face the truth: he can’t be entirely sure that he isn’t the killer. cookbook is the essential all-rounder and Available early July would be perfect for those wanting a This book is the first in one-stop shop! English to explore the DEEPER THAN THE SEA essential role that Henri Nelika McDonald THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN Matisse’s personal ‘With sharp, evocative prose and utterly absorbing storytelling, BAKING BOOK collection of objects McDonald takes the reader on a journey that makes us question what played in his studio it means to be a mother.’ Helen Greenwood with Tim Harper practice. Featured Sally Hepworth, bestselling author of The Secrets of Midwives & Ruth Hobday frequently in the modern master’s bold In a deeply affecting story that challenges our notions of maternal love, Echo. HB. $49.99 paintings, drawings, and cut-outs, and also Nelika McDonald examines the myriad ways that love is forged and Available 1 July tempered over years and how fiercely it is defended. Winter seems the perfect influencing the development of his work in time for baking! It’s cold sculpture, Matisse’s objects formed a secret outside, but here in your history hiding in plain sight. Works that CHARLIE AND THE KARAOKE COCKROACHES kitchen, the fragrances of span the artist’s entire career are presented here alongside the objects that inspired Alan Brough romantic childhoods can drift throughout your them, from Asian vases and African masks I didn’t want the exterminator to be flattened by a flying sink. to intricate textiles from the Islamic world. I just wanted a home for the cockroaches. home. Along with Another hilarious adventure starring Charlie and Hils from comedian, traditional recipe favourites, there are more actor, singer and dancer (it's true!), Alan Brough. than 90 brand-new recipes from cooks, THE ART OF DECADENCE chefs, patissiers and bakers from all around Hiroshi Unno Australia. What a dreadful job the creators Pie. PB. $67.50 Available early July SELFIE of this cookbook had: go forth and collect the very best dishes for baked goods. Oh, This sumptuously Will Storr how my heart bleeds for them! Think dough designed book explores ‘In this riveting account of how our culture has defined who we feel and pastry basics, biscuits and slices, cakes the theme of decadence. we should be, from Aristotle to Ayn Rand, Storr charts the rise of our Included are artists such age of perfectionism, and our resulting addictions to selfies and social and loaves, muffins, cupcakes, scones and media. It's profoundly eye-opening, and not a little chastening.’ pastries; The Great Australian Baking Book has as Odilon Redon, Gustave Bookseller something for every taste. This truly is an Moreau, Aubrey Beardsley A compelling new work about the mysterious power of the self and the inspired collection of pies and tarts, savoury and Gustav Klimt. Each danger of our modern obsession with it. snacks and desserts. It would be the perfect chapter groups the artists by style or gift for anyone wanting to bequeath some movement: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Aussie love on international guests, or for Symbolism in France, Germany and www.panmacmillan.com.au those simply wanting to create their own Belgium; Wiener Secession; Art Nouveau slice of goodness for their very own hearth. and Art Deco; Surrealists; the gothic. READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 17

New Young Adult Fiction because he was looking for something more than the ordinary happiness of his home See books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 18–19 and school. But then he discovered that being able to love another person was the Young Adult Book of the Month most important thing of all. For Tom, loving Frankie made him part of the world. Even when Frankie was gone ... THE ONES THAT DISAPPEARED Zana Fraillon OCTOBER IS THE Lothian. PB. $19.99. Available now COLDEST MONTH 2017 Shortlist Esra is 11 years old and she is kept in a basement with Miran, Christoffer Carlsson also 11 and Isa, who is only 7. All three children bear the tattoo Scribe. PB. $19.99. Available 3 July of their owner, Orlando of the Snakeskin Gang, a hideously cruel man Vega Gillberg is 16 when the who does not hesitate to beat one of them bloody to punish another. police come knocking on the All three children work for their own release, knowing the longer door looking for her older they stay, the more food they eat (not that they are given much), the brother, Jakob. Vega hasn’t bigger their debt to Orlando – and the slimmer their chance of ever heard from him in days, but buying themselves back from him gets. she has to find him before On their second year of slavery, and day 92 in the basement, a fire allows the children the the police do. Jakob was chance to escape. Miran is caught by the police and is kept in protective custody in hospital involved in a terrible crime. What no one while he recovers, but Esra and Isa escape. Once safe from Orlando and the police Esra is knows is that Vega was there, too. In the determined to find Miran and live their promised future of freedom. It’s not long until they rural Swedish community where the are discovered by Skeet, an incorrigibly cheerful and chatty boy who insists on helping them Gillbergs live, life is tough, the people are find their friend. even tougher, and old feuds never die. As AN ISOLATED INCIDENT Emily Maguire Vega sets out to find her brother, she must ‘Like all those great, classic children’s adventure survive a series of threatening encounters in a deadly landscape. As if that wasn’t enough, stories. You know, the ones you read growing up.’ she’s dealing with her longing for a boy she has sworn to forget, and the mixed-up The Ones That Disappeared is like all those great, classic children’s adventure stories. You feelings she has for her brother’s best friend. know, the ones you read growing up, about children escaping from Nazis during World War II, or children surviving plane crashes and battling the wilderness on their own. As a SONG OF THE CURRENT child, you read these stories with bated breath, you are on this journey with the children in Sarah Tolcser the story, but you feel safe in your bedroom knowing the bad stuff existed only in the past Bloomsbury. PB. $17.99. Available 1 July and in different lands. The difference with The Ones That Disappeared is that the bad stuff Caroline Oresteia is destined is happening now, in houses not dissimilar to your own. But because of this, The Ones That for the river. Her father is a Disappeared offers something those other books couldn’t. It offers hope. It tells readers that wherryman, as was her THE LAST DAYS OF AVA LANGDON you can do something, even if that something is shouting and shouting, until people listen grandmother. All Caro needs Mark O’Flynn to you just to make you shut up. If Esra can do it, so can we. Recommended for ages 12+. is for the river god to Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids whisper her name, and her fate is sealed. But at 17, Caro may be too late. So when pirates burn ships PIGLETTES turn into anyone else’s political statement and her father is arrested, Caro volunteers to Clementine Beauvais – determined to do things their own transport mysterious cargo in exchange for way, for their own reasons. On top of all Pushkin Press. PB. $16.99 his release. Secretly, Caro hopes that by this, Piglettes is just plain funny! Mireille Available 28 June piloting her own wherry, the river god will is hilariously dramatic in everything she Fifteen-year-old finally speak her name. But when the cargo does. Clémentine Beauvais is like a less Mireille has had the becomes more than Caro expected, she finds boy-obsessed, slightly quirkier and French honour of coming first two herself caught in a web of politics and lies. Louise Rennison, for today’s generation. years running in her I loved this book! For ages 12+. DS school’s annual ‘Pig WINK POPPY MIDNIGHT THEIR BRILLIANT CAREERS Pageant’, a horrible April Genevieve Tucholke Ryan O’Neill Facebook competition to JUNIPER LEMON’S Speak. PB. $19.99. Available 17 July find the ugliest girls in the school, started HAPPINESS INDEX Every story needs a hero. by her ex-best-friend Malo. But this year Julie Israel Every story needs a villain. she comes third: first place goes to Astrid, a Puffin. PB. $17.99. Available 3 July Every story needs a secret. new Year 11 student and second place goes It’s been 65 days since the Wink is the odd, mysterious to Hakima, a Year 8 girl. The girls meet up accident that ripped neighbour girl, wild red and Mireille decides that since they all Juniper’s world apart. Life hair and freckles. Poppy is (each for their own reason) want to be without her kind, beautiful, the blond bully and the in Élysée Palace in Paris for the Bastille Day vibrant big sister Camilla is beautiful, manipulative high school queen Celebrations, why not all cycle there and a colder, darker place. Until bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy sell sausages on the way? Calling she discovers the letter caught between them. Three voices burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching themselves ‘The Three Little Piglettes’ and Camie wrote, but never got to send. It’s WAITING accompanied by Hamika’s older brother mysteriously addressed to ‘You’ and dated chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably Philip Salom Kader (a double amputee and ex-soldier), July 4 – the day of the accident. Juniper toward something terrible or tremendous the girls do just that. starts to investigate. But then she loses or possibly both. What really happened? Unfortunately, journalists are following something herself. A card from her daily Someone knows. Someone is lying. the progress of the Three Little Piglettes and ritual, The Happiness Index: little for every good comment under the articles notecards on which she rates the day. The SCARLETT EPSTEIN published there is an awful, sickening one. Index has been holding Juniper together HATES IT HERE Mireille claims to be so used to people calling since Camie’s death – but without this card, Anna Breslaw her ugly, it’s all water off a duck’s back – and there’s a hole. And this particular card Razorbill. PB. $16.99. Available 17 July for the most part, this is true. But when it contains Juniper’s own secret: a memory Meet Scarlett Epstein, BNF does hurt, Mireille pushes the pain to the side she can't let anyone else find out. (Big Name Fan) in her and refuses to let people see how it affects online community of her. This is an absolute gift to us readers, MY LOVELY FRANKIE fanfiction writers, world- because we get to see how that affects those Judith Clarke class nobody at Melville EXTINCTIONS trying to hurt her. When that scene finally A&U. PB. $19.99. Available 28 June High. Her best (read: only) Josephine Wilson came, it felt shamefully good to read. In the 1950s, ‘entering’ the IRL friends are Avery, a shy, You can’t have a book about teenage seminary was forever, and annoyingly attractive bookworm, and girls’ bodies without getting political. young boys were gathered Ruth, her pot-smoking, possibly insane While it does come up (Mireille thinks into the priesthood before 73-year-old neighbor. ‘Rainbow Rowell’s calling yourself a Piglette is ok but calling they were old enough to Fangirl meets Harriet the Spy in this Available now in all Readings yourself a feminist is just asking for know what they would lose. coming-of-age tale filled with emotional shops and online. trouble), the girls refuse to let their quest Tom went to St Finbar’s resonance.’ —Teen Vogue 18 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

FUNNY KID FOR PRESIDENT Picture Books Middle Fiction Matt Stanton UNDER THE SAME SKY THE TALE OF ANGELINO BROWN HarperCollins. PB. $9.99. Available 1 July Britta Teckentrup David Almond & Alex T. Smith (illus.) Max’s schoolteacher has it in for Little Tiger Press. HB. $24.99. Walker. HB. $19.99. him. Someone has done a poop in Available 1 July Available 1 July Mr Armstrong’s storeroom. For reasons Under the Same Sky celebrates the Betty and Burt are a perfectly unknown (but probably related to the things that unite the natural ordinary couple, leading a quiet fact that Max is no good at sports … and world, with gorgeous artwork and a life, until a tiny angel magically appears forgets his schoolbag ... and homework ... gentle, life-affirming text. It seems so in Burt’s pocket. The angel’s existence and pants) Mr Armstrong is certain it was simple, yet it is often so complex to brings unimaginable joy. And when Betty Max. To get back at him for making him recognise and applaud all that we takes him to school, children are clean it up, Max and his best friend Hugo share and experience, rather than delighted. This angel transforms the decide to play a prank on him. Unfortunately Max’s arch- concentrating on the differences. It is lives of those he encounters, whether nemesis Abby catches them discussing the finer details of truly lovely to show children that the basic emotions are they be child, adult, bully or dastardly the plans and dobs them in. Mr Armstrong does not take this common and intrinsic to us all in a beautifully, villain! It’s as if he’s some super catalyst for good … well and nearly smashes a door to try and get to the boys. contemplative way. For ages 2–5. This is a loveable, lively and entertaining story with Luckily they are rescued by Mrs Sniggles, the new school some outrageous characters, an unpredictable plot and a Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn principal who insists that the students of Mr Armstrong wonderful silliness that children will love. But at its core, elect a class president to report to her weekly on Mr it’s a warm-hearted tale communicating an important TWO RAINBOWS Armstrong’s behaviour. message of friendship and hope, for a better future for Sophie Masson & Michael McMahon After some consideration, Max decides he’s going to children everywhere. Little Hare. HB. $24.99. run. Sadly Max’s campaign team consists of himself and Only a master storyteller like David Almond could Available 1 July Hugo. And Hugo isn’t always great at getting things right. successfully pull off this charming and whimsical story for Two Rainbows is an exploration of Deciding at first to run under the slogan, ‘It’s morning again young readers. And Alex T. Smith’s quirky line-illustrations colour that works by juxtaposing in Middle School’, Max does his best to run a straight and throughout are an absolute treat! Suspend disbelief: read it how it appears in the city and then the honest campaign. This proves difficult to do when it turns aloud and entertain the whole family. Highly recommended country. A little girl finds highlights of out someone is trying to sabotage his good name. Embracing for independent readers aged 8 and up. colour in an often-grey city, whereas the sabotage and running as the ‘funny kid’ doesn’t work her farm and the wide expanses of Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern either – and it’s not until Max and Hugo get their hands on countryside explode with luscious some illegally obtained irrefutable evidence that they come hues. This is a really lovely BIGFOOT, TOBIN & ME up with their one final plan (it involves a crazy duck). introduction to colour and also the differences of cities to Melissa Savage Funny Kid for President is a great read for fans of Wimpy Kid, rural environs. It invites children to explore both worlds Chicken House. PB. $16.99. Tom Gates and Big Nate. Highly recommended for ages 8+. DS with uncluttered and enticing pictures and text. Highly Available 1 July recommended for ages 2–5. AD Lemonade Liberty Witt is a ELEPHANT sweet-toothed, sassy, ten-and- Peter Carnavas three-quarters year-old who has been UQP. PB. $14.95. Junior Fiction sent from the city to live with her Available 3 July grandfather in the small, Bigfoot- An exquisite first novel from acclaimed D-BOT SQUAD: DINO HUNTER obsessed town of Willow Creek picture book author and illustrator Peter Mac Park following the death of her mother. Carnavas about Olive, Dad and his A&U. PB. $9.99. Lemonade is angry and sad about elephant. Olive’s father has a sadness so Available 28 June how her life has changed and she’s big that she imagines it as a large grey It’s Book Week at Hunter’s school unable to imagine a future in her new surroundings. elephant following him around. With – and while everyone else is Then she meets her grandfather’s neighbour Tobin: the help of her cheery grandfather and dressed as a superhero, Hunter is an infuriating kid who is founder and head of Bigfoot her best friend, Arthur, Olive sets out to dressed as his favourite thing in the Detectives Inc. She reluctantly joins him as they respond to chase away her father’s elephant. world, a Dinosaur Hunter. reports of Bigfoot evidence and sightings around the town. Two of his classmates think that’s Together they make a series of very interesting discoveries, SOME KIND OF HAPPINESS dumb. And no one believes him when not all of which are Bigfoot-related. Claire Legrand he sees a real Pterodactyl flying around! Lemonade and Tobin are uniquely charming characters, S&S. PB. $14.99. He is sent to the library to calm down and this is a warm, funny and thoughtful book about Available now and Ms Stegg the librarian believes him enough to let him friendship and family that gently and compassionately Reality and fantasy collide in this play a special game, where Hunter gets to build his own tackles some pretty tough themes. heartfelt and mysterious novel for fans of D-Bot and catch a virtual Pterodactyl. If he wins the game, Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Bridge to Terabithia, about a girl who must Hunter will get to catch dinosaurs for real! save a magical make-believe world in D-Bot Squad: Dino Hunter is a fun little chapter book for EVIE’S GHOST order to save herself. Finley’s only retreat beginner readers, and for fans of dinosaurs big and small. Helen Peters is the Everwood, a forest kingdom that Recommended for ages 5+. Nosy Crow. PB. $14.99. exists in the pages of her notebook. Until Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids Available 28 June she discovers the endless woods behind Like any self respecting 13-year- her grandparents’ house and realises the THE ALIEN ZOO ... AND YOU old with an ardent sense of Everwood is real – and holds more mysteries than she’d ever Adrian Beck & Heath Mckenzie entitlement, Evie Tregarron feels imagined, including a family of pirates that she isn’t allowed Affirm. PB. $15.99. swindled when sent away so her mother to talk to, trees covered in ash, and a strange old wizard Available now can go on honeymoon with her new living in a house made of bones. She sets out on a mission to A dead grandpa. A secret alien zoo. And husband. Evie is further shocked when save the dying Everwood and uncover its secrets. only two kids to save all its creatures her so-called guardian leaves her to fend from a terrible fate. What could for herself in a rambling old house with HECTIC ELECTRIC: HOW TO possibly go wrong? Funny, mysterious no TV, no internet and no food in the HYPNOTISE A DROID and a little bit rude; hold on to your kitchen! But these concerns fade into insignificance when a Joshie Lefers hippos and look inside The Alien Zoo! call for help – to free a girl imprisoned in one of the rooms Hardie Grant Egmont. PB. $12.99. – throws Evie back in time 200 years, to the year 1814. Available 1 July An angry man bellowing at her to get down to This madcap comedy-adventure series is BLOSSOM the scullery is Evie’s rude awakening to her time-slip completely hectic – and also heart- Tamsin Janu experience ... and she must acclimatise fast to these warming, ridiculously funny and wildly Omnibus. PB. $16.99. Available 1 July unfamiliar surrounds (not-the-least to the prickly stockings addictive! One day, Joshie is eating Lottie is excited when a lost little girl, and suffocating corset) if she is to play her part in this breakfast when a fancy robot thingy arrives Blossom, arrives on her doorstep. She’s strange drama. Evie is put to work as a maid: scouring pots in a box. The cool thing? It’s actually an always wanted a sister. But Blossom isn’t with vinegar and sand, sweeping dust from carpets with old incredibly sophisticated droid. The like other kids. She doesn’t speak and tea leaves and emptying slops from chamber pots. not-so-cool thing? It’s programmed to babysit Joshie while his refuses to go anywhere without her Suffice to say, Evie finds the conditions of her mum is at work (which is ALL THE TIME). Joshie has scared flower. But everything changes when employment grave and exploitative and learns the meaning off a LOT of babysitters. And he has big plans to get rid of this Blossom gets sick, and is taken away. of hardship first-hand. This is a captivating read that builds one too. But he’s not counting on Droid Dude being kinda fun Lottie, with the help of her friends, must in anticipation to a breathtaking conclusion. – or all the whole new level of sticky, icky messes you can get do whatever it takes to rescue her. Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster into when your babysitter has an off switch! READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 19

Book of the Month MARSH AND ME Martine Murray Text. PB. $14.99 Available 3 July

Joey M. Green is a boy with ‘sensitivities’, who rarely has the right words at the right time. He’s a deep thinker, part of a loving family; he wonders about his place in the world. He plays his guitar secretly in his bedroom, dwells on the achievements of great men, and tries to avoid the well-meaning questions of his family. Other kids seem to fit seamlessly into friendship groups, while he only has self-assured and nature- obsessed Digby. Everything changes when Joey finds a treehouse-dwelling interloper in his special place – an otherwise unremarkable hill.

Marsh is an unnerving and fierce girl with a rich imagination. Her treehouse is home to dozens of carefully selected objects that are arranged with love and care, and which are the players in Marsh’s timeless and odd fairytales. Joey is utterly enchanted (and sometimes infuriated) with Marsh’s non sequiturs, her Serbian songs and her anachronistic outfits, but there is also much to worry about. Why isn’t she in school? Does she have enough to eat? And why do her stories thrum with sadness and loss?

Marsh and Me is a stirring coming-of age-story with a wonderful main character. Joey is a believable delight; and his tentative, sometimes rocky, friendship with secretive Marsh rings true. Murray is a master of telling gentle stories, exploring the small worries and victories of daily life, revealing magic in the mundane. Joey undertakes a heroic journey in Marsh and Me, while never straying far from school, home and hill. He takes great leaps to pursue and preserve his connection with Marsh, and slowly, in the face of constant doubts, finds his voice and the bravery to express himself. For ages 9+.

Leanne Hall is from Readings Kids

Non-Fiction Freud, and discover the fundamentals of physics with Albert Einstein. Classic of the Month ANIMALS OF A BYGONE ERA Maja Safstrom Graphic Novel THE CHANGEOVER Ten Speed. HB. $24.99. Margaret Mahy Available 17 July THE ADVENTURES Hachette. PB. 16.99. In the past, amazing and strange OF JOHN BLAKE Available now animals roamed the earth, including Philip Pullman & Fred Fordham Laura Chant feels a warning giant sea scorpions, tiny horses, David Fickling. HB. $29.99. before her little brother Jacko enormous sloths, and fierce ‘terror Available 1 July begins to weaken at the hands of a birds’. Swedish artist Maja Säfström Celebrated author Phillip terrible demon. She knows she’ll need has illustrated them all – and Pullman’s first graphic novel the help of that strange boy Sorenson provided a series of fascinating and is a pacy, action-packed adventure. Carlisle and his family if she wants to funny facts about them – in this Fred Fordham’s accompanying save her brother’s life. The Changeover beautiful volume. artwork has a classic feel and their is a powerful story of transformation, collaboration is cinematic. and of magic that feels instinctive and MARX, FREUD & EINSTEIN: The Mary Alice is a time- natural, while Laura shifts toward HEROES OF THE MIND travelling ghost ship that has been adulthood. It’s a supernatural romance and coming-of-age Corinne Maier & Anne Simon appearing, surrounded by dense novel that was published long before sparkling vampires Walker. PB. $29.99. fog, in various places around the world. There have been hit the shelves. Available 1 July many reported sightings and present-day interest in the There’s a moment in the book where a sinister being Brought together for the first time, ship includes an unethical business mogul planning to use stamps a permanent imprint on Laura’s little brother. this collection of witty graphic the secrets of the Mary Alice for corporate greed. Scenes and characters from the book have been similarly biographies delves into the minds of Serena is sailing with her family when she is flung etched in my brain since I first read it as a tween a few three of the most controversial, overboard and rescued by John Blake, a sailor on the ship. decades ago. Mahy’s writing is smart and beautiful, dotted outspoken, and important thinkers In returning Serena to her family, the ship will be exposed with philosophy and wit. From the details of Laura’s from the nineteenth and twentieth to huge danger, unless they can defeat those who wish family life, to the surreal changeover process, the book is centuries. Join the fight against them harm. Readers aged 9 and up will race through this never frilly, yet it is entirely and extraordinarily vivid. capitalism with Karl Marx, meet the quality thriller. It felt like it could be the first in a series, Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda father of psychoanalysis Sigmund so here’s hoping! KG 20 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

THE REPUBLIC ART AS RIVER Seamus Murphy THERAPY COTTAGE HB. Was $55 Alain de Botton & LIGHT & Now $15.95 John Armstrong EASY Award-winning HB. Was $45 Hugh Fearnley- photojournalist (and P.J. Now $29.95 Whittingstall Harvey collaborator) Two authorities on HB. Was $49.99 Seamus Murphy returns popular culture reveal the ways in which Now $19.99 Bargain to his home country, to capture in images art can enhance mood and enrich. This These quick, easy and healthy recipes the spirit of Irish life in the centenary of passionate, thought-provoking, often funny are all dairy-free and gluten-free, and Easter 1916. Exile and escapee, Murphy and always-accessible book proposes a new irresistibly delicious. Hugh Fearnley- digs deep to discover the forces and Table way of looking at art, suggesting that it can Whittingstall delivers up wholesome mysteries that drive – and have often be useful, relevant and therapeutic. Through delights (with zero compromise on taste) beguiled – the country since its birth. practical examples, the world-renowned for all occasions: from brilliant breakfasts authors argue that certain great works of art UNFAITHFUL to goodness on the go; from crunchy salads THE COURSE have clues as to how to manage the tensions to simple roasts and hotpots. OF LOVE MUSIC & and confusions of modern life. Chapters on love, nature, money, and politics show how Alain de Botton DISAPPEARING IN A art can help with many common difficulties, PB. Was $32.99 INK DIFFERENT from forging good relationships to coming to Now $15.95 Elvis Costello terms with mortality. KEY Society is obsessed with PB. Was $29.99 John Donovan & stories of romance, but Now $10 BY THE BOOK Caren Zucker what comes after happily Elvis Costello’s career Pamela Paul (ed.) PB. Was $39.99 ever after? From dating to marriage, from has endured for almost four decades: Now $15.95 HB. 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Here are 65 of the most intriguing through biography, recounting the stories of images from his personal archive, offers of individuals with autism and their HERE I AM his unique view of his unlikely, sometimes and fascinating (fully uncut) ‘By the Book’ interviews from The New York Times, families, physicians and psychologists Jonathan Safran comical rise to international success. It featuring personalities as varied as David – focusing on those who challenged Foer includes diversions through the previously Sedaris, Hilary Mantel, Michael Chabon, traditional concepts of cognitive and PB. Was $32.99 undocumented emotional foundations of Khaled Hosseini, Anne Lamott, and James behavioral debility and led the way to Now $15.95 some of his best known songs. Patterson. The questions and answers broader acceptance of autism.’ – The New ‘A divorce novel and a admit us into the private worlds of these York Times state-of-the-Jewish-soul UNIVERSAL: A GUIDE TO THE authors, as they reflect on their work novel and running below habits, reading preferences, inspirations, AUGUSTUS it, like a headline news ticker, is a plausible COSMOS pet peeves, and recommendations. Jochen Bleicken dystopian nightmare. An earthquake has Brian Cox & Jeff PB. Was $29.99 flattened Israel, and the Arab world seizes Forshaw REVOLUTIONARY Now $10 this moment to unite and attempt to crush HB. Was $49.99 RUSSIA, 1891— Augustus, the first it. This is a big spread, in other words, an Now $19.99 1991: A HISTORY Roman Emperor, ambitious platter of intellect and emotion. Universal takes us on an epic journey of transformed the Orlando Figes Its observations are crisp; its intimations of scientific exploration and, in doing so, Republic into the HB. Was $49.95 doom resonate; its jokes are funny. Here I reveals how we can all understand some of greatest empire the world had seen. This Now $16.95 Am consistently lit up my pleasure centers.’ the most fundamental questions about our is his definitive biography. ‘Should become – The New York Times Earth, Sun and solar system and the star- As the Soviet Union becomes ever more standard reading for everyone interested in filled galaxies beyond. distant in our memory, Revolutionary Russia the foundations of the Roman empire.’ — THE KINGDOM is an invaluable reminder of why this one, Peter Jones, BBC History Magazine OF SPEECH CHÂTEAUX hideously violent and callous state was for Tom Wolfe OF THE LOIRE so long the focus of the hopes and fears BURIAL RITES of much of humankind. What caused the HB. Was $32.99 Hannah Kent VALLEY Russian Revolution? Did it succeed or fail? Now $12.95 HB. Was $29.99 Jean-Marie Pérouse Do we still live with its consequences? 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Colonel Dan Hampton draws Now $13.95 great anticolonial fighters and defenders commonalities and differences between on his singular first-hand knowledge, as A hit earlier this year! of human rights and indigenous cultures us all, and the ability to connect with and well as groundbreaking research in aviation Back in stock: hurry of his time, and a sacrificed combatant for understand others, as never before. archives and rare personal interviews with while it lasts. Winner the emancipation of Ireland”.’ – The New A perfect gift book for any occasion. little-known heroes. of the Prix Goncourt. York Times READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 21

New Film & TV to Leo Vincent (Iain Glen), a successful life interracial couple whose marriage in entrepreneur, chef and hotel owner in 1958 placed them in the crosshairs of the with Lou Fulco Cornwall. Leo owes much of his success vindictive Virginia anti-miscegenation laws DVD of the Month to Gina’s cooking, but since leaving her for ... a wonderful, delicate work, which fills glamorous Sam (Emilia Fox), his business out not just each character but the space has continued to thrive. between them.’ – The Guardian WITNESSES SEASON 2 RÉSISTANCE JASPER JONES $34.95 $29.95 $29.95 Available 5 July Available 5 July Available 5 July Let’s call this latest offering from the French what it really is: another This French miniseries is Charlie Bucktin, a bookish superior piece of crime television. Interpret it as the next chapter of based on true events during boy of 14, lives in a small Nordic Noir if you must, but don’t forget that France has been releasing the Nazi occupation of isolated town in Western quality television for years in the form of Braquo, Spiral, Le Passager and France, and through the interconnecting Australia. When local mixed-race outcast the recent Disappearance. The first season of Witnesses highlighted the destinies of its teenage heroes. ‘Like the best Jasper Jones shows him something in the gorgeous scenery in and around the town of Le Treport in northern France and the coast of of period dramas, Résistance both evokes its dead of night, it sets them on a dangerous Normandy; this series also showcases various scenes at the monastery of Mont Saint Michel. historical moment beautifully but also asks journey to solve a mystery that will The premise is as fascinating as was the first season. Fifteen frozen bodies of well- questions of its audience that remain very consume the entire community. dressed men are found in a bus on a desolate stretch of road in the French countryside. How relevant today.’ – The Hippo Collective did they get there? Who are they? Marie Dompnier returns as Inspector Sandra Winckler SAINT AMOUR to lead the case and solve these mysteries. A few years have passed since the last season APPLE TREE YARD $29.95 and circumstances have changed. Sandra is no longer married and has custody of her two 2 DVDs. $29.95 Available 5 July daughters (one of whom has a mouth on her!). She’s no longer working with old instructor Available 5 July ‘Depardieu is the co-star of Paul Maisonneaure, and she is finding love, let alone relationships, hard to come by. ‘An adaptation of Louise this gamey and outrageous As the case progresses, it’s discovered that all 15 men on the bus had been in a Doughty’s bestselling novel, road-trip comedy, with as relationship with one woman. The lady in question, Catherine Keemer, is played brilliantly starring Emily Watson strong a taste as the wine that the characters by Audrey Fleurot, who some will know as the cut-throat lawyer in Spiral. The catch here is and Ben Chaplin as two unknowns who are habitually knocking back ... Saint Amour is that she has been missing for years, and awakes with amnesia. enter into a wild and impulsive affair that broad yet deadpan, with a strange elegance Without giving too much away, both Sandra and Catherine go rogue in an effort to find ultimately rips their lives apart. A gripping amid the detonations of farce.’ – The Guardian the killer. You don’t have to wait till the final episode to find out who the perpetrator is — psychological thriller [which] celebrates but this slow-burn of a series has enough secrets, moody French people and wonderful female sexuality in middle age.’ –Radio Times windswept vistas to keep you thoroughly absorbed! I wrote two years ago that the first Documentary season was my show of the year … well, guess what? Here we go again! GRANTCHESTER Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn SEASON 3 TOMORROW $39.95 $24.95 Available now Available 5 July TV SS-GB The vicar and the detective are A study has forecast the MINISERIES back: fighting crime and a world of expectation. possible extinction of $29.95 Can Vicar Sidney Chambers control his feelings mankind by 2100. Cyril Dion MEDICI: Available now for Amanda and put duty above his own needs? and Mélanie Laurent travel through ten Will Inspector Keating’s connection with a MASTERS OF History is turned on its countries to understand this catastrophic feisty police secretary threaten his seemingly FLORENCE head in this gripping series, prediction and, most of all, how to prevent happy marriage? James Norton (War and Peace) adapted from Len Deighton’s bestselling it becoming a reality. SEASON 1 and Robson Green (Being Human) star. $46.95 thriller. World War II’s Battle of Britain has Available now ended in victory for Hitler’s Germany ... THE EAGLE This political family and 1940s Britain struggles to adjust to life Film HUNTRESS drama, set in early fifteenth-century under Nazi occupation. $34.95 Florence, premiered in Italy to record Available 5 July audiences. And no wonder: Dustin DELICIOUS LOVING Set against the breathtaking Hoffman and Richard Madden (Game of SEASON 1 $24.95 expanse of the Mongolian steppe, The Thrones) star. Cosimo de’ Medici finds $29.95 Available now Eagle Huntress follows a 13-year-old girl, himself at the helm of his supremely Available 5 July ‘Ruth Negga and Joel as she trains to become the first female wealthy, banking dynasty family, when his Passionate cook Gina (Dawn Edgerton play Mildred and in 12 generations of her Kazakh family to father, Giovanni dies suddenly. French) was once married Richard Loving, the real- become an eagle hunter.

THE BEGUILED July 13 (CTC) A GHOST STORY July 27 (M) A MONSTER CALLS July 27 (PG) Based on the novel by Thomas P. Cullinan, THE BEGUILED is an Acclaimed director David Lowery(Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), returns A visually spectacular drama from director J.A. Bayona(The atmospheric thriller from acclaimed writer and director Sofia Coppola. with this singular exploration of legacy, love, loss, and the enormity of Orphanage), A MONSTER CALLS adapts Patrick Ness’ beloved Coppola became the second woman to win Cannes’ top directing prize existence when a recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost returns to award-winning novel about a young boy learning to deal with the with this vengeful melodrama of an all-female boarding school in the his suburban home to try and reconnect with his bereft wife. An hardest truth in life. A moving tale of courage, loss and love, centred American South during the Civil War that suddenly explodes with unforgettable meditation on love and grief, A GHOST STORY emerges by a fantastic voice performance by Liam Neeson as the growly, sexual tension when a man appears in the inhabitants’ midst. ecstatic and surreal—a wholly-unique experience that lingers long force-of-nature Monster. A MONSTER CALLS is a fantastical adventure with an all too real beating heart. “An exquisitely crafted drama of seduction, survival and sexual after the credits roll. awakening.” Time Out HHHH “Outstanding cinematography” The Guardian “A sensitive and beautifully made lesson in the limits and power of storytelling.” The Hollywood Reporter HHHH The Guardian

Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema 22 READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017

New Music Heads, Prince and Beck and the post-rock Tom Morello, Nathaniel Rateliff, and experimentalism of Radiohead and Hot Chuck’s grandson Charles Berry III. ‘It’s a Chip, then tossed [in]… some fridge magnet graceful last testament from a man Album of the Month poetry you might go some way towards seemingly at peace with himself. Hail, hail approximating Relaxer’s post-rock art-folk- and farewell, Chuck Berry.’ – Paste Magazine THE NASHVILLE SOUND hybrid. It is deeply gorgeous and utterly baffling.’ YOU DON’T KNOW Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit LONELY $21.95 | Also on vinyl PUNCHBUZZ Available now Tex, Don & Charlie Husky Call him Americana, call him rock and pop, call him $21.95 | Also on vinyl $21.95 whatever you want. Jason Isbell is one of today’s Available 30 June Available now premier songwriters, regardless of genre. In the 400 Unit, Legends of the Punchbuzz is the third he has one of the best bands making music today. And no, Australian music album from Melbourne this isn’t overblown praise. His track record shows that scene, Tex Perkins, indie-folk duo Husky. since his days as a songwriter—guitarist for the Drive-By Don Walker and ‘The pace and overall Truckers, he’s been delivering gem after gem: Decoration Day, Cigarettes and Wine, Charlie Owen, have feel is different to our Alabama Pines and Codeine (to name just a few). In 2013, his multi-award-winning album returned to their previous work,’ Husky Southeastern turned him into a ‘new’ star. Two years later, Something More Than Free alt-country Gawenda told Relix. confirmed his well-earned status as a singer and writer of exceptional talent. supergroup Tex, Don & Charlie to release ‘We experimented with new sounds, new With The Nashville Sound, it’s no longer all about Jason: his band, the 400 Unit, takes their first album in 12 years. You Don’t Know rhythms … We found a new kind of freedom. pride of place on the cover. The band (and this album) seamlessly winds a road between Lonely is a sublime collection of evocative And with that came new territory and a new folk, laid-back acoustic-driven pop, and straightforward rock. Listen closely and hear all of stories in song bookended by duets from adventure for the band.’ the instruments working for the good of the song: subtle, powerful, righteous. Reviewers Perkins and Walker. often ask songwriters what their songs mean – and that’s just fine – but the nature of TRUTH IS A BEAUTIFUL listening to albums is that you form your own opinions or stories, from the fabric of the songs. Themes of love and family, politics and culture, and one’s place in the world, will THING JAZZ / BLUES strike their own unique chords with listeners. Underlying every song, though, is the way London Grammar fatherhood has changed Isbell’s perspective. He writes about the world as one his daughter $21.95 | Also on vinyl THE GREAT AMERICAN will someday inherit. To quote the last two lines from one song, ‘Hope on the High Road’: Available now SONGBOOK ‘I hope the high road leads you home again, to a world you want to live in.’ ‘Truth is a Beautiful James Morrison These last three albums are a hat-trick from an artist and band at one with their craft. Thing mirrors the $21.95 I defy any other artist to make a better album this year. blueprint of the band’s Available now Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn 2013 debut If You Wait, Jazz great James marrying understated Morrison brings his electronics and synths trademark virtuosity years. Included are classics such as ‘I’m to transcendent and flair to classics by POP/ROCK Trying to Break Your Heart’, ‘Via Chicago’ melodies and vocals. Singer Hannah Reid’s Cole Porter, George and ‘Hummingbird’. voice remains the centrepiece, flowing like Gershwin, Duke OK COMPUTER OKNOTOK liquid gold through the intricate soundscapes Ellington, Jerome MELODRAMA … this is a beautiful album that’s as absorbing Radiohead Kern and more, performed on a range of Lorde as it is emotionally affecting.’ – clashmusic.com $24.95 2CD | Also on vinyl instruments. The timeless ‘standards’ $21.95 Available now presented on The Great American Songbook Available now OTHER The year is 1997. are close to Morrison’s heart and include Four years ago, Lorde Alison Moyet I’ve just turned specially commissioned arrangements. 29. I am obsessed by announced herself to $21.95 something called the music world with Available now ‘Saturn returns’ and an her debut album Pure Pop legend Alison COUNTRY album by English Heroine. It went Moyet’s latest album alternative rock group triple-platinum, won Other finds her at the Radiohead. The album is OK Computer. It two Grammy Awards top of her game SO YOU WANNABE AN became my constant companion while I made and the single ‘Royals’ reached a record- - making exactly the OUTLAW major life decisions. It was the album of the breaking seven-times platinum. Melodrama is adventurous Steve Earle & The Dukes 90s, for people of my generation. From their her highly anticipated follow-up after a break electronic pop music $19.95 | $21.95 (deluxe with DVD) from the spotlight. intelligent visual imagery to Thom Yorke’s she wants to at this moment in time, with Also on vinyl mysterious lyrics, I was hooked. Now, the her voice and songwriting both intense, Available now MURDER OF poetic and thought provoking. album is about to turn 20 and I am closer to 50. So You Wannabe an Older than I care to think about. In 1997, I was THE UNIVERSE Outlaw is an homage freaking out about entering my thirtieth year. I King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard CITY MUSIC to outlaw music, feel much more sanguine about ageing now. It $21.95 | Also on vinyl Kevin Morby dedicated to Waylon happens; you can’t do much about it. I am not Available now $22.95 | Also on vinyl Jennings. ‘I was out to about to buy a red sports car, or change jobs or A face-melting Available now unapologetically partner. Nor any of those other clichéd things musical assault Bursting with listless ‘channel’ Waylon as people (men) do in their middle age. I am, concerned with the wanderlust, City best as I could,’ says Earle. ‘This record was however, going to buy the new version of this downfall of man, the Music is inspired by all about me playing on the back pick-up of album, dubbed OKNOTOK 1997—2017, and death of the planet ... and devoted to the a ‘66 Fender Telecaster on an entire record once again immerse myself in its timelessness the murder of the metropolitan for the first time in my life.’ and power. It comes in a 2CD or 3LP format, whole goddamn experience across with extra tracks: all remastered from the universe. Lit by thunderclaps and lightning, America and beyond, original analogue tapes. Murder Of The Universe inhabits a sonic from a songwriter cast in his own distinct FOLK/WORLD Dave Clarke is Music Division manager of landscape of death, decay, ossification, mould. Kevin Morby calls it ‘a mix-tape, a Readings fossilisation, rebirth. This is the concept fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those RÉSISTANCE album to end all concepts. cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities Songhoy Blues TOGETHER AT LAST that are all inside of me.’ Jeff Tweedy RELAXER $19.95 Available now $21.95 | Also on vinyl alt-J CHUCK Following the massive Available now $21.95 | Also on vinyl Chuck Berry success of their Together at Last brings Available now $21.95 breakthrough debut, together solo acoustic Available now ‘alt-J’s third adventure Music in Exile, Malian versions of songs Recorded and in sound [is] another ‘desert-punk/blues’ Tweedy has produced by Berry in kaleidoscopic quartet Songhoy Blues performed with Wilco, various studios cross-genre box of have wowed audiences and with side-projects around hometown St. surprises,’ says The worldwide. Résistance is a bold, inspiring, Loose Fur and Golden Louis, Chuck includes Telegraph. ‘If you took outward-looking record and features guest Smog. It marks the first in a proposed series guest performances Jethro Tull, Genesis vocals from Iggy Pop and grime MC Elf Kid. of retrospectives spanning a phenomenal 30 from Gary Clark Jr., and King Crimson, added a dash of… Talking ‘A joyous eclectic album.’ – The Guardian READINGS MONTHLY JULY 2017 23

New Classical Music J.S. BACH: SOLO WORKS breathtaking … strong performances of a FOR MARIMBA programme that bears repeated listening.’ — BBC Music Magazine Kuniko Classical Album of the Month Linn. CKD585 MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 3 2 CDs. $34.95 Ivan Fischer & Budapest Festival SUITE CUBED: BACH AND BEYOND The Japanese Orchestra Umberto Clerici percussionist turns to Channel Classics. CCSSA38817 ABC Classics. 4815408 the cello suites and 2 CDs. $34.95 $21.95 violin sonatas of J.S. ‘Here for once is a Cellist Umberto Clerici wondered how eighteenth- Bach for her fourth Mahler symphony century audiences listened to J.S. Bach’s cello suites, studio recording with release that feels and what they heard and recognised in the music. Although Linn. Arranged for solo different from the Bach’s solo cello suites are variations of dance forms, he did marimba, Kuniko gives a unique perspective outset ... I doubt not write them for dancing. Audiences perhaps experienced of these hugely famous and intellectually whether there has an emotional connection to the ‘stylisations’ of each dance, and (perhaps) therefore a challenging works. She is renowned for her ever been a more physical connection. Contemporary audiences hear, experience and feel that music in a flawless technique, which blends seamlessly precisely focused, more sheerly beautiful different way – our familiarity with common dance forms and dance traditions has been with her profound musical intelligence. recording of any Mahler work ... Reluctant lost. Clerici has reframed Bach’s solo cello suites for a contemporary audience, taking the to parade its roughest edges and disinclined keys of C and D and structuring two new ‘suites cubed’. Bach’s music is at the centre of BOCCHERINI: STRING to hurry, Fischer instead elicits a range of each suite, with additions from composers past and present. Antonio’s Ricercata XI TRIOS OP.6 NOS. 4, 2, 5 & 6 pristine, jewel-like colour that leaves its predates Bach’s cello suites, and Giovanni Sollima’s Alone is not yet 20 years old. While Lubotsky Trio fabric refreshed ... This Third is a must- Clerici has preserved the traditional ‘bipartite’ fast/slow and major/minor structures, he Brilliant Classics. 95493 have.’ — Gramophone takes us on a colourful and imaginative journey through the solo cello repertoire, $14.95 demonstrating his instrument’s full array of dissonances and textures. The string trios Op. 6 HAYDN: STRING QUARTET are for two violins OP. 20 NO. 3 & SCHUBERT: ‘Suite Cubed is a bold, exciting, and inspired and cello: highly STRING QUARTET NO. 15 expressive music, full exploration of solo cello repertoire’ of rich classical Tetzlaff Quartet melodies, elegance Ondine. ODE12932 Clerici is a magnificent cellist and musician. If a musician’s worth can be judged on how and instrumental $26.95 well he performs Bach, then Clerici has already excelled. The opening Prelude from Bach’s brilliance. Excellent performances by the ‘I’ve not heard such a Cello Suite No. 6 has all the passion, energy and grit one might hope to hear – he certainly Lubotsky Trio, with the eminent Russian compelling version of does not approach this music with caution! However, it’s Clerici’s performances of the violinist Mark Lubotsky, a pupil of David this prophetic contemporary compositions that I really enjoy. There is something almost violent about the Oistrakh, as primarius. masterpiece way he attacks the opening of Ligeti’s fiendishly difficult Capriccio, which is in complete [Schubert] since the contrast to the following Langsam from Hindemith’s Sonata for Cello. Here, Clerici’s THE COMPLETE SOLO Juilliards’ Epic LP long, drawn-out lines are luscious and romantic, and he revels in Hindemith’s unsettling RECORDINGS ON DG from the 1960s – and harmonies. Suite Cubed is a bold, exciting, and inspired exploration of solo cello repertoire. the Haydn G major Quartet is granted a Narciso Yepes similarly perceptive reading, the wonderful Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton DG. 4797316 Poco adagio third movement especially. 20 CDs. $99.95 Excellent sound clinches a deal that simply Narciso Yepes is cannot be missed.’ — Classical Ear J.S. BACH: MOZART IN HAVANA: acknowledged as one CANTATAS FOR PIANO CONCERTOS of the finest virtuoso THE SOUND OF SOPRANO 21 & 23 classical guitarists of PIAZZOLLA the twentieth century. Carolyn Sampson Simone Dinnerstein & José His playing — for Various Harmonia Mundi HMM902252 Antonio Méndez Padrón which he adopted a Warner Classics. 9029583189 $29.95 Sony. 88985382442 ten- rather than six-string guitar — was $21.95 $19.95 J.S. Bach characterised by incisiveness, rhythmic Some of the greatest composed On the first energy and fullness of sound. names on today’s for the voice listen classical music scene like he did for a through this BEL CANTO PAGANINI: pay homage to Astor string album, I was 24 CAPRICES AND OTHER Piazzolla. Presented instrument: presented with WORKS FOR SOLO VIOLIN in two distinct highly Mozart in his most programmes, the first chromatic, with recognisable form. Rachel Barton Pine part highlights the most varied of influences: irregular intervallic leaps, not necessarily There was bounce Avie. AV2374 this is not just about the tango; there are taking the human limitations of singing into to the phrasing, with delicacy and depth to $29.95 influences from jazz and the classical account. Bach asked a lot of his singers, the timbre, without heaviness. The blending ‘Pine’s tone is lustrous. traditions of Bach and Vivaldi, all brought composing long phrases (requiring good of the orchestra and the piano was effortless The dramatic timing of together here. The second part combines breath control), often in uncomfortably (as it should be) while Mozart’s delightful each gesture, the firm, original classical compositions – the ‘tango high tessituras (requiring impeccable vocal melodic lines were freed to enchant, as they burnished middle operita’ María de Buenos Aires, the Tango technique). Therefore, his cantatas are not always do in these popular concertos. The register, the gleaming, Ballet and Concierto del Angel. for all voices. Rather, it takes an exceptional often cheerful and cheeky interplay between liquid evanescence of singer to successfully navigate Bach’s the two opposing parts of orchestra and Paganini’s stratospheric extraordinarily challenging — but heavenly piano gives you a lift in your step as you go flights: it’s all there … [but] Pine is principally CLASSICAL SPECIAL — vocal music. Enter English soprano about your day. interested in the musical qualities of these Carolyn Sampson, for whom the music of It wasn’t until the second time through, extraordinary, endlessly inventive miniatures, Bach is bread and butter. Her latest as I started doing research on the musicians, and there’s hardly a moment here where you RACHMANINOV & recording for Harmonia Mundi — three that I understood how amazing a thing it get any sense of technique taking precedence CHOPIN: CELLO SONATAS cantatas from Bach’s Weimar period — is: this seemingly simple recording. This is over expression.’— Gramophone Magazine Alisa Weilerstein & Inon Barnatan affirms her place as a top Bach interpreter. the first partnership between an American Decca. 4788416. Was $26.95. Sampson’s radiant voice never betrays musician (Simone Dinnerstein) and a Cuban RAVEL: PIANO CONCERTOS $12.95 (while stocks last) a hint of such challenges, and in fact she orchestra, in this case the Havana Lyceum & FALLA: NIGHTS IN THE ‘It’s hard to imagine sings this repertoire as though it was Orchestra (Cuba’s National Youth Orchestra) GARDEN OF SPAIN many cellist–pianist composed with her voice in mind. Mein since the beginning of more open political Steven Osborne, Ludovic Morlot & duos more mutually Herze Schwimmt im Blut is a case in point. relations between the two countries. Not only BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra fond of risk-taking. Not only does Sampson sing with technical that, but similar to the Venezuelan Young Hyperion. CDA68148 They certainly don’t brilliance, but she imbues the music with Orchestra’s world-changing debut in the face $29.95 hold back in feeling and meaning. I challenge you not of such hardships, the fact that these young Rachmaninov’s Cello ‘Full of colour, both to be moved by Sampson’s heart-rending musicians (with all their physical hurdles of Sonata, often pushing it to the brink … Osborne’s poetry and interpretation of the dark ‘Stumme maintaining their instruments and keeping up what emerges is an interpretation in his exceptional touch seufzer, stille Klagen’, or her jubilant and with practice in an uncertain environment) which no single colour outstays its are to the fore, the tastefully ornamented ‘Wie freudig ist makes this delightful interpretation of Mozart welcome. The same goes for Chopin’s sparkling cascades in mein Herz’. A fantastic recording from an so much more poignant. Cello Sonata, whose sense of restlessness the final movement accomplished soprano. AM Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings suits this duo well.’ — Gramophone being especially