FREE MARCH 2016

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

OUR MAGIC HOUR Elke Power on Jennifer Down’s debut novel

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TALKING TO MY COUNTRY

Bronte Coates on Stan Grant’s call to action

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NEW IN MARCH DAVID JENNIFER STAN WAR AND BONNIE DYER DOWN GRANT PEACE RAITT $32.99 $29.99 $29.99 $29.95 $26.95 $27.99 page 7 $24.95 page 21 $21.95

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READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 3

News

READINGS’ 47TH BIRTHDAY It’s Readings’ 47th birthday on Saturday 5 March! To celebrate, we’re offering our customers the chance to win a $500 Readings gift voucher. Simply spend $47 or more in one transaction anytime on Friday 4 March, Saturday 5 March or Sunday 6 March, and you’ll go in the draw to win. In‑store customers will need to fill out an entry form at the counter of any of our five shops at the time of purchase, and attach their receipt. Online customers will automatically be entered into the draw. A winner will be drawn on Friday 11 March. Please note, only the winner will be notified.

20% OFF THE BLOOMSBURY REVELATIONS SERIES We’re offering 20% off the Bloomsbury Revelations series in March. The series features thinkers who have fundamentally shaped the way we see the modern THE 2016 STELLA PRIZE LONGLIST Stephen, Peter and Matt Hill – founded world, and includes books by Jacques The Stella Prize longlist for 2016 has been one of the world’s biggest skate, street Derrida, Henri Lefebvre, René Girard, Leo announced. Celebrating the contribution and surf companies, Globe International. Tolstoy, Winston Churchill, Homer, Susan of Australian women to literature, the To celebrate the release of Unemployable Strange, Slavoj Zizek, Theodor W. Adorno, $50,000 prize was awarded for the first we’re running a competition throughout Constantin Stanislavski, Gilles Deleuze time in 2013 to Carrie Tiffany for Mateship the month of March: buy a copy of and more. The full range is available at our with Birds, to Clare Wright in 2014 for Unemployable at Readings and go in the Carlton shop; selected titles are available The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, and last draw to win a prize pack. Each prize pack at our Hawthorn, Malvern and St Kilda year to Emily Bitto for The Strays. The contains a Globe skateboard deck, a Globe shops, as well as online. This offer is 2016 Stella Prize longlist is: The Women’s cap and a Globe T-shirt. Purchase online available for in‑stock titles only and only Pages, Debra Adelaide; The Other Side of at readings.com.au to automatically go while stocks last until 31 March, 2016. Readings Monthly the World, Stephanie Bishop; Panthers into the draw. In-store customers will Free independent monthly newspaper and the Museum of Fire, Jen Craig; Six need to complete and hand in the supplied published by Readings Books, Music & Film THE READINGS CHILDREN’S Bedrooms, Tegan Bennett Daylight; Hope competition entry form at the counter BOOK PRIZE SHORTLIST Farm, Peggy Frew; A Few Days in the with their receipt attached, or send the Editor ANNOUNCEMENT Country: And Other Stories, Elizabeth form and receipt together to: Readings Elke Power Marketing Department, PO Box 1238, The Readings Children’s Book Prize, Harrower; A Guide to Berlin, Gail Jones; [email protected] Carlton, Vic 3053. Competition closes on established in 2014, recognises and The World Without Us, Mireille Juchau; Thursday 31 March. Only the winner will be celebrates books that families love reading A Short History of Richard Kline, Amanda Editorial Assistant notified. Good luck! together, or that children read under the Lohrey; Anchor Point, Alice Robinson; The Alan Vaarwerk Natural Way of Things, Charlotte Wood; [email protected] covers with a torch late into the night because they can’t bear to put them down. and Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger, Fiona Wright. The 2016 Stella Advertising The Prize seeks to support an Australian Prize shortlist will be announced at noon Stella Charls author – one who has published no [email protected] more than four children’s books – in on Thursday 10 March, and the Prize itself (03) 9341 7739 establishing their position as a valued will be awarded in Sydney on the evening contributor to children’s literature. We’re of Tuesday 19 April. Graphic Design looking forward to announcing our 2016 Cat Matteson shortlist online on Tuesday 15 March. The OPERA AND BALLET DVD SALE [email protected] winner will be announced in July, and will To celebrate the opera and ballet season, be awarded a prize of $4,000. Please visit Front Cover Readings is offering up to 50% off a readings.com.au/the-readings-children-s- Readings Monthly cover design by Cat wide range of opera and ballet DVDs. book-prize for more details, including the Matteson using elements from the cover of Titles include operas from Wagner full eligibility criteria. David Dyer’s debut novel The Midnight Watch and Mozart, ballets from Tchaikovsky (March, see review on page 7). The Midnight and a host more. This offer is available Watch cover images courtesy of Hamish ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE FRENCH at Readings Carlton, Hawthorn and Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books – cover FILM FESTIVAL Malvern shops, and online until 31 design by Alex Ross and photographs courtesy Now in its 27th year, the Alliance March 2016. Only while stocks last. of Planet News Archive/Getty Images (man); Française French Film Festival is set to Adam Hirons Photography/Getty Images (deck resume its love affair with audiences UNEMPLOYABLE: 30 YEARS OF and railing); Chad Powell/Getty Images (stars); once again. Running from 2–24 March, HARDCORE, SKATE & STREET and Shutterstock (lifebuoy and ocean). the festival will screen an enchanting COMPETITION From the 1970s underground Melbourne Cartoon selection of the finest movies to emerge skate scene to a company with a Oslo Davis from France over the last 12 months. oslodavis.com Readings is proud to be a sponsor of the worldwide presence in over 100 countries, festival in Melbourne for 2016. For more Unemployable: 30 Years of Hardcore, Readings donates 10% of its profits each information and to book tickets, please Skate and Street by Jason Boulter is the year to The Readings Foundation: visit affrenchfilmfestival.org story of how three Australian brothers – readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation

20% off* any full-priced kids Children’sStory Time books for all who attend Carlton the story time session. Readings ReadingsSt Kilda ReadingsMalvern *Discount valid for 30 minutes after Fridaysat 10am Saturdaysat 10.30am Thursdaysat 10.30am completion of story time session 4 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

March Events AN EVENING FOR JENNIFER DOWN’S LAUNCH OF 16 TEACHERS & 1 OUR MAGIC HOUR 7 KATE RAMSAY’S LIBRARIANS TO BE LAUNCHED BY MEMOIR, GO WITH LOVE An evening for teachers and librarians, in two sessions. TONY BIRCH Join us for the launch of Kate Ramsay’s Go Primary years: 5pm–6pm Tony Birch will launch Jennifer Down’s With Love, a memoir about love, loss and Join authors Emily Gale and Leanne Hall debut novel, Our Magic Hour. Evocative learning that discusses what happens when, as they talk about their new books, why and and exquisitely written, Our Magic Hour just as you think that the life you’ve worked so how they talk about books, and what it’s like is a story of love, loss and discovery, and hard to create is perfect in every way, you find to create books. captures that moment when the sense of out that the love of your life is going to die. Emily Gale has worked in children’s book being being young and invincible gives way. publishing in a number of roles: editor, reader Free, no booking required for a literary agent, and book buyer. In 2014 Monday 7 March, 6.30pm Free, no booking required she was the prize manager for the inaugural Readings Hawthorn Tuesday 1 March, 6.30pm Readings Children’s Book Prize. Her writing Readings Carlton includes books for pre-schoolers, the Eliza SAVE OUR ABC Boom junior series, and two young adult novels (most recently Steal My Sunshine in 2013). Her LAUNCH OF 7 Australian democracy and new book for primary-school-age readers, The culture depend on the survival of a healthy, 2 AOIFE CLIFFORD’S Other Side of Summer, will be published in June. independent public broadcaster. Join ALL THESE PERFECT Leanne Hall is the author of novels for young Friends of the ABC for a meeting to discuss MEET YASSMIN STRANGERS adults including the Text Prize-winning This Is the future of our national broadcaster. 10 ABDEL-MAGIED Shyness and its sequel, Queen of the Night. Iris The Attorney-General of Victoria, the Hon. Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a young Muslim and the Tiger is her newly released first novel for Martin Pakula will launch Aoife Clifford’s Free, no booking required dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh younger readers. Leanne has worked in the arts, debut crime thriller, All These Perfect Monday 7 March, 6.30pm–7.30pm air – a mechanical engineer, social advocate, educational publishing and as a bookseller, but Strangers. Described as an Australian The Readings St Kilda writer, and petrol head. Born in Sudan, her enduring passion is for youth literature. Secret History, the story centres on a first-year Yassmin founded Youth Without Borders, university student whose past catches up Secondary years: 6.15–7pm an organisation focused on helping young with her when dead bodies start appearing Join authors Jay Kristoff and Lili Wilkinson people to work for positive change in their around campus. as they talk about their new books, why and communities. In 2007 she was named Young how they talk about books, and what it’s like Free, no booking required Australian Muslim of the Year and in 2010 to create books. Wednesday 2 March, 6.30pm Young Queenslander of the Year. Lili Wilkinson has a PhD in creative writing Readings Carlton Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events and has written nine books, the latest of which is Thursday 10 March, 6.30pm Green Valentine. She established insideadog.com. LAUNCH OF Readings Carlton au (a books website for teen readers), the Inky Awards and the Inky’s Creative Reading Prize. 3 RUTH CLARE’S Jay Kristoff is The New York Times and MEMOIR, ENEMY RHONDA HETZEL internationally bestselling author of The Ruth Clare’s father came back from the 10 ON THE SIMPLE Illuminae Files. He is a winner of the Aurealis Vietnam War a changed man: a violent, HOME Award, nominee for the David Gemmell controlling parent and a dominating, Morningstar and Legend Awards and he has Award-winning blogger and author Rhonda aggressive husband. Weaving a striking been published in over twenty countries. Hetzel shares the practical side of living personal narrative with a revelatory simply and well. The Simple Home, her latest Free, but please book at exploration of the effects of war, Enemy is a book, lays out a year of simple-living projects. readings.com.au/events bold, compelling and ultimately triumphant Join us for a night of inspiration from Wednesday 16 March memoir from a hugely impressive new Australia’s leading advocate for ‘decluttering.’ Readings Hawthorn Australian writer. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, no booking required Thursday 10 March, 6.30pm GEORGE Thursday 3 March, 6.30pm STAN GRANT ON Readings Hawthorn 17 MEGALOGENIS Readings Carlton 7 HIS NEW BOOK, IN CONVERSATION WITH TALKING TO MY COUNTRY SHAKIRA HUSSEIN LAURA TINGLE We are delighted to host award-winning 15 ON FROM VICTIMS Two leading political journalists discuss journalist Stan Grant talking about his TO SUSPECTS: MUSLIM George Megalogenis’ new Quarterly Essay, new book, Talking To My Country, an WOMEN SINCE 9/11 Balancing Act: Australia Between Recession extraordinarily powerful and personal and Renewal. Megalogenis wonders why for meditation on race, culture and national Shakira Hussein’s From Victims to Suspects: so long Australia stopped being able to think identity. He might not have all the answers Muslim Women Since 9/11 explores the about or prepare for a different future. Have 25 but he wants all Australians to keep on lives of women negotiating the hazards of years of growth and unprecedented prosperity asking the question: how can we be better? the post-9/11 terrain, from volatile Afghan come to this? How do we re-imagine a wealthy refugee camps and Pakistani weddings country notable for its equality; a cohesive Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events to suburban Australia and campaigns to country notable for its diversity? Monday 7 March, 6.30pm ‘ban the burqa’. Join us to hear her unique Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton and urgent perspective on feminism, Tickets are $25 and include a copy of either multiculturalism, race and religion. Balancing Act or Laura Tingle’s Political Amnesia RICHARD DENNISS Thursday 17 March, 6.30pm Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 9 IN CONVERSATION Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton Tuesday 15 March, 6.30pm WITH ADAM BANDT Readings Hawthorn TRIPOD WITH LAUNCH OF Within Econobabble: How to Decode Political 17 SINCE LACAN, 4 CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS Spin and Economic Nonsense, author Richard LAUNCH OF EDITED BY LINDA CLIFTON Scod, Yon and Gatesy formed Australian Denniss exposes the weak arguments, bizarre 15 JOHN SULLIVAN’S contradictions and complete lack of evidence musical comedy trio Tripod in 1997, and have THE DREAM OF THE RED David Pereira, director of the Freudian kept us laughing over the years with their upon which much of Australia’s collective School of Melbourne, will introduce Linda original songs and hilarious banter. Join us ‘common sense’ about the economy rests. He DRAGON Clifton, editor of Since Lacan: Papers of the as Christos Tsiolkas introduces the band and will be in conversation with Adam Bandt, the The journey of the Red Dragon continues Freudian School of Melbourne. Since Lacan Tripod: 101 Hits, reportedly ‘the stupidest Federal Member for Melbourne. at the launch of the second book in John is the latest volume of the Papers of the Freudian School of Melbourne, School of songbook ever to bluff its way into existence.’ Tickets are $20 and include a copy of either Sullivan’s series, The Dream of the Red Dragon. Lacanian Psychoanalysis, founded in 1977. Econobabble or Dog Days Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, no booking required Wednesday 9 March, 6.30pm Friday 4 March, 6pm Tuesday 15 March, 6.30pm Free, no booking required Cinema Nova, Lygon St., Carlton Readings Carlton Readings Hawthorn Thursday 17 March, 6.30pm Readings Carlton READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 5

STORY TIME! WITH WAYNE HUDSON Mark’s News and views from Readings’ Managing Director, 19 LUIS DIAZ & 23 ON AUSTRALIAN Mark Rubbo CHOCOLATE DREAMS RELIGIOUS THOUGHT Say Join local author Luis Diaz for a special Join us for the launch of Wayne Hudson’s The 18th of March is International Women’s Day and it’s appropriate that the longlist for the UK story time as he reads his book Chocolate Australian Religious Thought, the first major Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced in the same month, on the 8th of March. Dreams and a few of his favourite picture study of Australian religious thought. In The Bailey’s Prize was established in 1996 as The Orange Prize, and in 2001 Australian Kate books! Chocolate Dreams is a children's this work, Hudson argues that religious Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection won the prize, beating works by Ali Smith and Margaret Atwood. picture book about believing in the magic of thought can be found in many intellectuals in The Bailey’s Prize was one of the inspirations for the Stella Prize, the shortlist for which will be your dreams. Australia, both in the religiously inclined and announced on the 10th of March. in those who are not conventionally religious. The Stella Prize emerged in early 2011 out of a panel that was held at Readings Carlton on Free, no booking required International Women’s Day. The panel was partly a discussion about the underrepresentation of Saturday 19 March, 10.30am Free, no booking required women in prizes and on the literary pages of the major Australian newspapers. The Stella Prize Readings St Kilda Wednesday 23 March, 6.30pm celebrates the best book by an Australian woman, whether fiction or nonfiction, each year. It was Readings Hawthorn first awarded in 2013 to Carrie Tiffany for her second novel, Mateship With Birds, then in 2014 to Clare Wright for her work of nonfiction, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, and in 2015 to Emily Bitto STORYTELLING for her debut novel, The Strays. 19 AUSTRALIA THORNTON I’ve been amazed at how quickly the Stella Prize has established itself as one of Australia’s (VICTORIA) 31 MCCAMISH AND major literary prizes in terms of reader interest and acceptance. At Readings, for example, we ROBERT MANNE ON have sold over 3000 copies of The Strays, making The Stella Prize the most successful for us in CELEBRATES WORLD generating sales. It beats our own Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, the Miles Franklin STORYTELLING DAY ALAN MOOREHEAD Award, the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. That’s no mean feat and is testament to the Storytelling Australia (Victoria) is celebrating Join us as author and journalist Robert writers and the people behind the Stella Prize. The Stella Prize has also started a schools program to encourage the use of Australian women’s writing in schools. Worth $50,000, the Stella Prize is World Story Day with young listeners. Lovers Manne launches Thornton McCamish’s enough to provide a writer with some time to write and the funding largely comes from private of the oral tradition can enjoy folk tales remarkable new book, Our Man Elsewhere: In donations, from people who feel passionate about writing and supporting women’s literature. You and yarns with the theme, ‘Strong Women’. Search of Alan Moorehead. Alan Moorehead was a war correspondent of rare excellence can become a Stella Spark for just a $50 tax deductible donation (see www.thestellaprize.com.au) Whoop it up with the kids, and bask in the but as Aviva Tuffield, the executive director, commented to me recently, ‘Raising funds is always a who went on to became a world-famous glory of a good story. struggle. We need one big donor to give us long term security.’ So there’s a wonderful opportunity writer – but he is barely remembered for someone to put their stamp on this exceptional prize! Free, no booking required today. Our Man Elsewhere is a new kind of Those of you who’ve been to Carlton recently may have noticed that the Esprit shop next to Saturday 19 March, 10.30am Australian biography: one that reveals some our Carlton bookshop is for let. You’ve probably also noticed that our Carlton shop is becoming Readings Carlton of the real strangeness of being a biographer; pretty crowded as we try to fit everything in, especially in our children’s area. Children’s of being deeply attached to someone you’ve publishing is an area that’s growing; Australia is going through another baby boom and beautifully STORIES OF never met, and – in this case – someone the produced children’s books appeal to young readers (and their helpers!) in different ways to rest of the world seems to have forgotten. the iPad apps that are also often at their disposal. Two years ago we established The Readings 20 STRONG WOMEN: Children’s Book Prize to encourage Australian writing for children, and the shortlist for this STORYTIME FOR ADULTS Free, no booking required year’s prize will be announced on the 15th of March. We are committed to children’s literature Thursday 31 March, 6.30pm as an integral part of children’s development. So when the Esprit space came up for rent our Storytelling Australia (Victoria) continues Readings Carlton Carlton children’s buyer, Angela Crocombe, told me, in no uncertain terms, ‘That’s the place for its World Story Day celebration with stories our children’s bookshop!’ Luckily, the property owner agreed and I’m excited to announce that for grown-ups. Lovers of the oral tradition we’ll be opening our dedicated children’s shop in the next few months. We’ll keep you updated can enjoy folk tales and true stories of strong LAUNCH OF as things progress. If you have any good ideas for a name, let me know. We are also opening a new women. Hear moving stories of survival, and 31 NIKI SAVVA’S THE shop in Westfield Doncaster in late July – so two new shops for us this year! kick back with a glass of wine. ROAD TO RUIN Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events In The Road to Ruin, prominent political Sunday 20 March, 4.30pm–5.30pm commentator, author, and columnist for The Readings St Kilda Australian Niki Savva reveals the ruinous behaviour of former prime minister Tony ROSEMARY SAYER Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Based on her unrivalled access to their 20 ON MORE TO THE colleagues, and devastating first-person STORY: CONVERSATIONS accounts of what went on behind the scenes, WITH REFUGEES Savva paints an unforgettable picture of a unique duo who wielded power ruthlessly, Kate Lawrence will introduce writer and but not well. former journalist Rosemary Sayer as she shares the stories of her interviews with Free, no booking required refugees and asylum seekers. Collected Thursday 31 March, 6.30pm in More to the Story: Conversations with Readings Hawthorn Refugees, these stories give a powerful and moving account of humanity. Over a glass of wine, join us for this World Storytelling Day Get in early! event to hear about ordinary people who have triumphed against the odds. GLORIA STEINEM Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 16 IN MELBOURNE Sunday 20 March, 2pm May FOR ONE NIGHT Readings Hawthorn ONLY Readings is delighted and honoured to ARTISAN ITALIAN DISHES & HANDMADE PASTA DENNIS ALTMAN host an event with legendary feminist, 21 & JONATHAN journalist and commentator Gloria THE SEASON’S BEST LOCAL PRODUCE SYMONS WITH ANDREA Steinem. Steinem will be in Melbourne for AWARD WINNING WINE LIST GOLDSMITH one night only – don’t miss out! Join us for a discussion with Dennis Altman Tickets are $40 each and will and Jonathan Symons, authors of Queer include a signed hardback edition Wars, and Andrea Goldsmith on the growing of Gloria Steinem’s memoir, international polarisation over sexual rights, My Life on the Road. and the creative responses from social Please book at readings.com.au/events movements and activists, some of whom face Monday 16 May murder, imprisonment or rape because of their The Melbourne Town Hall perceived sexuality or gender expression. BOOKINGS 03 9347 5610 Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events LUNCH & DINNER 7 DAYS • 11am TILL LATE • OPEN EASTER SATURDAY, SUNDAY & MONDAY Monday 21 March, 6.30pm Readings Carlton  @MASANIDINING  MASANI_DINING  MASANI.DINING 6 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

New Australian Writing

A story of friendship and the painful process of putting oneself back together after loss, Our Magic Hour is an exceptional Australian novel that explores life On after the unexpected. friendship and grief Readings Monthly editor Elke Power talks with Jennifer Down about her debut novel, Our Magic Hour.

hose of us at Readings who have been short- and long-term. Of her interest in the subject, Down fortunate enough to read Jennifer Down’s says: ‘The ways we respond to trauma are so varied and debut novel, Our Magic Hour, have struggled complex. Everyone has different thresholds and pressure with fears that anything we say or write about points. Writing is a way of making sense of my own. It lets Tthis outstanding book will be dismissed as hyperbole. you lay everything out and analyse it. There’s this beautiful Admittedly, we are not the first to recognise Down’s Louise Bourgeois quote that I think about all the time – talent. Down won the 2013 Overland Short Story Award in “My sculpture allows me to re-experience fear, to give it 2013, and is now a regular contributor to the publication. a physicality, so that I am able to hack away at it”. It’s like Her work has also been published in the Age, the Sydney that. The trauma in Our Magic Hour is violent. There are Morning Herald, the Saturday Paper and the Drum, also the cumulative effects of trauma. When you feel like and she is an alumna of The Wheeler Centre Hot Desk the bad stuff is implacable, hit after hit – that’s exhausting. Fellowships, which The Readings Foundation supports. It leaves you no room to come up for air.’ Down worked on her novel for about five years without Her characters may not know what to think or do any real intention of submitting it for publication. Then, with themselves following an unexpected loss early in the in 2014, she completed a residency with Maxine Beneba story, but Down certainly knows the myriad ways trauma Clarke, who encouraged her to enter the Victorian can manifest, and how to plunge her readers into a world Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript where grief has taken hold and the cultural frameworks that year. Beneba Clarke had won the award the year before for dealing with it have long since rusted. Grief, in Down’s for Foreign Soil, her short story collection. Our Magic Hour hands, is instantly, gut-wrenchingly recognisable and yet, was shortlisted in 2014, and Down is certain her novel somehow, original: would not have been published without this recognition. In Our Magic Hour, Down’s technical skill and flair is ‘Audrey was kneecapped at the coin laundry; in immediately apparent. Her rendering of a group of friends her fluorescent-lit cubicle at work; sitting on the navigating the tumult of early adulthood is memorable and affecting. Yet what is most striking is Down’s insight rooftop at the Labour in Vain, surrounded by into the spectrum of human emotional experience across friends. Minutes before, she had been laughing Jennifer Down multiple stages of life. While her central characters – so hard she thought she would vomit.’ Audrey, Katy, and Adam, who have been close friends since the story, I knew instantly that there was a very profound high school; Nick, Audrey’s partner; and their wider circle Down is under no illusions about the physical aspects of love between them and a great knowledge of one another, of friends – are in their twenties like the author, others in grief, from the external, ‘He crumpled to the floor,’ to the and so it made sense to write them as childhood friends. their shared and separate worlds, especially their families, internal, ‘It was too pretty a day for a belly full of dread.’ Long-standing friendships that survive childhood and are also beautifully drawn. She captures common disparities between the experience adolescence are really interesting. You bear witness to a A number of themes are intricately woven into the and expression of grief with shocking precision: lot of change in one another, but there’s still that kernel of novel, including grief; domestic violence; suicide; social sameness, or of shared history, that ties you together.’ and economic disadvantage; the vulnerability of children; ‘And how are Mr and Mrs Shields?’ Sylvie asked. Memory itself is an obsession for Down, particularly, and mental illness. When asked about the research and ‘its fallibility, its subjectivity, its weirdness. I didn’t set out inspiration for her book, Down explains: ‘It’s in no way Audrey froze. They’re devastated, she wanted to to examine it at all, but it would be very hard for me to drawn from real events or people, but it’s very much of my say. They will come to dust. avoid it, I think, particularly with a novel like this that deals world – I don’t think any of those themes are uncommon. ‘Helen called last night,’ she said instead. so much with the residue of childhood.’ Arguably, it would My mum’s a social worker, my dad’s a counsellor, my also have been difficult, if not unwise, to write about grief sister’s a nurse; a lot of my friends are similarly employed, Yet Our Magic Hour is not crushing or overwhelming. and nostalgia without a healthy fascination for memory. it’s all connected. I would have had to do far more research Down’s aim is true but judicious, and refreshingly honest – Our Magic Hour is undoubtedly a book that will to write convincingly about someone who worked as a there are no cheap tricks for tears here. There is, however, resonate with people in their twenties and thirties, but digital strategist or financial advisor.’ real joy and resilience to be found, even in the midst of the it is also an ageless reflection on friendship and loss that Ultimately, these themes hinge on some form of trauma. painful reconfiguring of identity that inevitably follows the deserves a wide readership. To perceive this book as a The novel explores societal and individual responses loss of someone close. straightforward bildungsroman would be to ignore the to trauma through the complexity of the characters’ Much of the warmth and humour in Our Magic Hour compelling trajectories of several key characters who have friendships and familial relationships, and their professions blooms from the deep bonds between friends, particularly already, or never will, come of age. – Audrey is a social worker who works with vulnerable between old friends. Down says that writing about long- Our Magic Hour is available now in all Readings shops and online at children, Katy is a nurse, and Nick is a paramedic. term friendships wasn’t a conscious decision, rather, ‘When readings.com.au. To find out more about the book, read our review on Critically, the book examines the effects of trauma in the I started writing about the three friends at the centre of page 7. READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 7

New Fiction Dear Alison Huber, Head Book Buyer Hour holds a mirror up to real life; plot, in a Reader Australian Fiction traditional sense, takes a back seat, allowing Down to explore the complexity of these THE MIDNIGHT WATCH relationships with empathy and nuance, Dear Reader, never shying away from her characters’ David Dyer As the February Readings Monthly went to print, I was en route to Denver, Colorado, ugliness or shortcomings. Hamish Hamilton. PB. Was $32.99 USA, the beautiful mile-high city that played host to this year’s American Booksellers The power of Our Magic Hour largely Association Winter Institute. The WI is an annual gathering of independent booksellers $27.99 stems from Down’s skill in exploring the from around the US, and each year it welcomes a number of international guests into It’s been said myriad ways that grief, trauma and mental the fold. It was a packed schedule over four days, including a bus tour to book stores before that the illness manifest themselves in spaces and in the greater Denver area, breakfast keynote speakers (front and centre at 7.30am three most written gestures between people. No person or folks!), and three days of parallel sessions covering a vast array of topics pertinent to the about subjects in the incident in the novel reads as particularly mechanics (and pleasures) of bookselling. Among the many memorable presentations English language are out of the ordinary; the events that occur, that have given me lots to think about, I saw a session reporting on research detailing God, war and the both the devastating and the everyday, will the devastating scale of Amazon’s cultural and economic impact and (more hopefully) Titanic. When I met strike a familiar chord with many readers, another on the activism that aims to draw the attention of the US Department of Justice the author of The and the characters jump straight off the page to this escalating situation. I heard a fascinating explanation of how to read a publisher’s Midnight Watch, David and onto the 86 tram down Ruckers Hill, profit and loss statement in a session on the ‘economics of publishing’, saw a panel Dyer, I asked him why or the bus to Coogee from Central station. predicting upcoming trends in the book industry, and attended a tutorial on how to deal we continue to be intrigued by the story of Place is integral to plot here. Melbourne and with ‘Free Speech emergencies’ in retail. There were also book launches, a sort of speed the Titanic. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘This is because it Sydney read almost as characters in their dating set up with publishers’ reps over lunch (reps, you have five minutes to pitch – took time for the boat to sink. There were own right, strengthening the recognisable, go!), author talks, book signings, and FOUR WHOLE ROOMS of advance book proofs witnesses and there were opportunities for Australian voice of the novel. (I am still waiting patiently for that box I sent back to arrive…). It was pretty much a moral compasses to swing. Sometimes the I loved this book. Down is an exceptional bibliophile’s happy place. If you ever find yourself in Denver (and it is a great city in smallest of human failings can lead to the writer who displays real control over stunning surrounds) you simply must visit the Tattered Cover, the Denver institution greatest of disasters.’ language while still daring to experiment that hosted the WI opening reception. There are several outlets but the stores I visited The Midnight Watch, Dyer’s first novel, throughout with dialogue, tense and form. on Colfax and Downtown are proper ‘wow’ shops where you could get lost browsing captures this fickleness of fate. The novel I’m sure that this novel will launch her career for hours. Incidentally, next door to the Colfax branch is a totally fabulous and gigantic centres on the inexplicable true story of as a major new literary talent. Our Magic record shop, Twist and Shout, and it is definitely in my top ten record shops of all time: the mysterious inaction of Captain Lord, Hour is beautiful, gut-wrenching fiction and what a shopping precinct! and, to a lesser extent, First Officer Stone, I cannot recommend it highly enough. But back to the task at hand – and that’s my monthly new release run-down. You who were both awake at midnight, aboard Stella Charls is the marketing and events may have heard about The Midnight Watch already, an impressive Australian debut novel the Californian, the ship whose proximity coordinator for Readings by David Dyer set around the sinking of the Titanic. We know the gist of this story so to the Titanic could have saved over 1,500 well by now, embedded as it is in western mythology, so there must be something pretty people. Told mostly through the eyes of THE LIGHT ON THE WATER special going on with the writing of this book when you are reading it thinking, ‘Maybe John Steadman, a fictitious reporter for Olga Lorenzo the boat won’t sink! Maybe a rescue party will get there in time!’. Prepare to become a The Boston American, the particulars Titanorak (that is a thing: look it up...!). It shares the spotlight with Jennifer Down’s Our of this enthralling and tragic story are A&U. PB. $29.99 Magic Hour, a book that has staff who have been lucky enough to snaffle an advance copy investigated, the fury of political leaders is The Light on the singing its praises (NB: I’m next for the reading copy, dear colleagues). But the list of conveyed, and the distress of families and Water will be Australian talent doesn’t stop there: Robyn Mundy’s Wildlight, Olga Lorenzo’s Light on friends is recalled. perfect for book groups – the Water, Kristen Tranter’s Hold, Sarah Kanke’s Sing Fox to Me, and Jennifer Rowe’s A Steadman spares no effort in his pursuit it explores many current loving, faithful animal are all out this month. There are some great international releases of the truth, and we cannot help but follow issues and yet it is a too: I am keen to read Stork Mountain by Bulgarian writer Miroslav Penkov, and am him through this affecting tale that brings page-turner. The novel hearing excellent things about My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, who won to life a world reeling from tragedy in the opens with Anne Forster the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge. I know quite a lot of people who are well and truly midst of fresh class disruption and the spending her first night ready for the next installment of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘My Struggle’ cycle (Some Rain beginnings of the feminist movement. This in gaol after being Must Fall). If that’s not enough for you, there are also books from Graham Swift, Muriel excellent historical novel pushed me into arrested for the murder of her six-year-old Barbery, Jesse Ball and Tracy Chevalier. And you’ll see from my review that I loved Work new territory. I found myself researching autistic daughter. Aida went missing on a Like Any Other: debut author Virginia Reeves is the real deal, and I won’t forget this book for more stories of the accident, reaching bushwalk with Anne two years prior to the any time soon. for more facts from the night, re-watching novel’s opening. The case is prominent and I hope a lot of people read our Book of the Month: Stan Grant’s exploration of race, A Night to Remember and berating myself polarises the Australian public, which in turn identity and the nation, Talking to My Country. This work expands on his powerful for my seemingly macabre interest. Dyer, leads to Anne being hounded by media and writing for the Guardian newspaper last year following the booing directed at Adam though, would say the fascination isn’t harassed by strangers. Goodes at an AFL match; our reviewer calls it ‘one of those rare books that has the about the deaths, but rather about the Anne recounts how she, a woman ‘born potential to change the way people think’. You can’t ask more of a book than that. In hubris of humanity. His work is evidence to be a mother’, came to be in this situation, other non-fiction releases this month, journalist Niki Savva offers her analysis of the of a longstanding fascination shared by and the novel moves seamlessly between Abbott/Credlin situation in Road to Ruin, and George Megalogenis writes the next many, and the result of this interest, in past and present. Anne’s ex-husband and Quarterly Essay, Balancing Act: Australia Between Recession and Renewal. Meanwhile, Dyer’s case, is a novel that is disarming, her grown daughter, Hannah, believe in David Kilcullen revisits and expands his QE of last year in Blood Year: Islamic State and compelling and, most importantly, her innocence. But with no body, little the Unravelling of the War on Terror. Jhumpa Lahiri gives us a beautiful account of living compassionate. evidence, and no witnesses to say they saw Aida alive on the track at Wilson’s in/with language and in/with translation, In Other Words. When Breath Becomes Air is Chris Gordon is the events manager for the posthumously published moving memoir of life and death by neurosurgeon, Paul Readings Promontory, Anne’s case is faltering. Kalanithi. A new edition of Anne Summers’s essential feminist classic, Damned Whores I was captivated by this novel and read and Gods Police, is published in time for its fortieth anniversary. Melbourne muso Hugo OUR MAGIC HOUR it in one sitting. Olga Lorenzo captures human nature at its best and worst – at Race writes a travel-music-memoir, Road Series, for Transit Lounge, another of our local Jennifer Down independent companies with a really interesting publishing program. I’m also a big fan best, small kindnesses shown to Anne by Text. PB. $29.99 of UK publisher Verso’s work: this month they bring us a reissue of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s a prison guard, and Anne’s own capacity earlier biographical work, Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir, and the writings of the late Jennifer Down’s to care for others, including her assistance computer genius, Aaron Swartz, The Boy Who Could Change the World. Our Magic Hour is of a young asylum-seeker. The nature of And finally, dear reader, one of the big announcements of the last few weeks has been a brilliant Australian guilt is explored too – Anne’s guilt over the the revelation of an imminent new chapter in the Harry Potter saga, Harry Potter and the debut. Intimate, raw and marriage split, and her possibly unwise Cursed Child, due to be published on 31 July (that’s Harry Potter’s birthday, for all you occasionally heartbreaking, decision to take Aida for that fateful Muggles out there). The book is in script form, published to coincide with a play being this is a book that demands bushwalk. staged in London’s West End. I must confess that yours truly has remained relatively to be devoured quickly, but Another highlight of the book is the untouched by Harry Potter mania over the years, but I have taken great delight over the stayed with me long after I beautiful imagery – both of Anne’s local last few weeks in witnessing the sheer excitement of my colleagues who just cannot wait finished the final page. beach area, and the description of the to read this instalment of the story, set nineteen years after Harry Potter and the Deathly The story develops out of a triangular walking and camping areas at Wilson’s Hallows. All this enthusiasm is proof again that when you love a book and its characters, relationship between three childhood Prom. Family life is detailed convincingly, that love never ends, and thank goodness for that. Plans are afoot for celebrating its friends now in their mid-twenties – Audrey, as are the highs and lows of having a release in store, and our staff is abuzz with predictions for what the story might hold. We Katy and Adam – and grows in scope to ‘special needs’ child. are taking pre-orders now, both in stores and online, so be sure to secure your copy. See include Audrey’s relationships with her While the novel’s cover is beautiful, it you in April! boyfriend, Nick, and her family. Tragedy hints at the novel being labelled as ‘popular’ strikes within the first handful of pages; fiction. However, the quality of the writing the novel traces the ripple effect of grief and superb editing mean this novel sits after such a climactic opening. Our Magic well within the literary fiction realm. It’s 8 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 a book I will be recommending frequently and perspectives – Jack wracked with also intertextual allusions (her first book and the disappearance of dissidents, the this year. frustration, guilt and lingering trauma, his re-worked The Portrait of a Lady into unpredictable effects of climate change – Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn wife Evelyn hardened against his violence something new and thrilling). Those relating these issues to the personal and bitter about the life she might have allusions have been central to her writing, experience of death and dementia, abuse WILDLIGHT had. Ru’s older sister, Lani, clashes with but they haven’t overshadowed it. Tranter’s and disability and childlessness. The poems Robyn Mundy her mother and rails against the confines of writing is very contemporary, but it also project intense psychological states, making Picador. PB. Was $32.99 small town life, teenage nihilism masking feels shaped by an appreciation for the use of surreal conjunctions and metaphor to $27.99 her guilt and estrangement. Meanwhile, classic novels of the English literary dramatise the sense of unease. Smith is a those left behind – the eager-to-please Ru tradition. It holds a dagger, or a musket, or new media artist and musician, and her Robyn Mundy’s and her quiet, inscrutable uncle Les – find whatever people once held threateningly, poems employ a variety of techniques drawn novel Wildlight their allegiances torn as they try to keep and asks those old stories to please, please, from these fields. had me wishing to visit their own heads above water. be alive again. Maatsuyker Island Until now, Rowe has specialised in LEMONS IN THE (Maat) off the southern Dave Little is from Readings St Kilda microfictions, and her mastery of that coast of Tasmania, CHICKEN WIRE form has carried over into her longer despite its cold, wild, SING FOX TO ME Alison Whittaker work – every sentence is considered and wet and windy nature. Sarah Kanake Magabala. PB. $22.95 deliberate, every detail feels important. Sixteen-year-old Affirm Press. PB. $24.99 Alison Whittaker won The book is a slow, contemplative read, Stephenie West is the 2015 black&write! one that suits immersion, rather than Sing Fox to Me is about to relocate there with her parents, as Indigenous Writing reading in short bursts. There’s a hint one of those they become caretakers of the island. It’s a Fellowship, introducing of the Australian Gothic in the book’s novels where there is a break from Sydney where everything is a a remarkable new voice portrayal of small town despair, and Rowe’s symbiotic connection reminder of Steph’s twin brother whose to Australian literature. portrayal of her characters is tender but between the lives of the death they are still grieving. At times sensual, always uncompromising – each is deeply flawed characters and the Steph, however, is none too pleased potent, Lemons in the but heart-rendingly sympathetic. A loving, natural environment with being pulled from Sydney to remote Chicken Wire reflects faithful animal is quietly, catastrophically they inhabit. This is a and isolated Maat. Aside from missing rural identity through a rich medley of beautiful, a powerful new work by one of powerfully her friends and having only her parents techniques and forms. It is an audacious Australia’s most gifted writers. atmospheric work that for company, she is completing her final evokes the cold, wet earthiness of the and lyrical debut that seeks to challenge Alan Vaarwerk is the editorial assistant for semester of high school. Luckily, the island remote Tasmanian wilderness in which it is our imagination beyond the ordinary. Readings Monthly is home to a beautiful old lighthouse, with set. A place where Dreamtime mythology Whittaker demonstrates that borders, glass and prisms and textures that create HOLD gives meaning to the lives of those who live whether physical or imagined, are no the perfect place of solitude that Steph there – mostly quiet and brooding types match for our capacity for love. needs as a base for her artwork and study. Kirsten Tranter more attuned to the forces of nature than to It’s from the lighthouse that she first Fourth Estate. PB. $27.99 one another. spots the boat that will bring her nineteen- Sitting on my It is in this setting that we meet David International Fiction year-old Tom Forrest. Tom is a lifeline for desk, Kirsten and his twin sons, Jonah and Samson. Steph – someone to talk to aside from her Tranter’s latest book, They have just made the long journey MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON parents, and he knows the island and the Hold, looks a lot like my from Queensland to Tasmania, where Elizabeth Strout ocean that surrounds it. Tom is a reluctant copy of her first book, the boys meet their grandfather, Clancy, deckhand on his brother’s boat. Much of The Legacy. It’s heavily for the first time. David’s wife, the boys’ Viking. HB. $35 the crayfishing they do is illegal, but his post-it noted, dog- mother, has recently moved out of their Last year, I read brother doesn’t mind which leaves Tom eared, and contains home, and they are drifters seeking refuge Elizabeth Strout’s torn between guilt and duty, and needing to lengthy criticism in its at Clancy’s house. As they arrive, the Olive Kitteridge, and I conceal things from Steph. margins. It sits here, asking me to think sense of unwelcome is a discomforting was blown away. It was Mundy’s crisp prose so vividly places about things that I would prefer to avoid experience and there is an emotional one of the best books I you on the island that I was regularly thinking about. Which is why I loved it so disconnect between Clancy and his long- read in 2015. Now I’ve reaching for a blanket while reading much. absent son. Relations between the young read Strout’s new novel, Wildlight. I felt the storms racing in, and Hold follows the fall-out of Shelley´s brothers are also frayed; one of the twins My Name is Lucy Barton, could smell the ocean, the fresh tea tree and loss of her lover Conrad, who dies in a is resentful of the special attention given and I can confidently say the oily mutton-birds descend. I absolutely surfing accident early in the book. Shelley to his sibling who has Down syndrome. I think it will be one of the best books I loved this book. When I wasn’t reading I has since bought a house in Glebe with As each family member struggles with read this year. wanted to be, but I wasn’t inclined to race her historian partner David and lives there their own personal anguish they establish My Name is Lucy Barton is a short gut- through either as the experience of being with him and his daughter, Janie, often independent routines that minimise their punch of a novel. It’s also deceiving; on the there with Steph was so strong that the uncomfortably wondering to what extent shared connection. surface, it’s a very quiet book, a character time I spent with her didn’t need to be she’s supposed to be a parental figure in The themes of loss, abandonment and study without a clear plot. Protagonist rushed but gently experienced. Janie’s life. Mostly unknown to David and betrayal sit heavily, casting a dark shadow Lucy Barton is reflecting on her life; Suzanne Steinbruckner is from Readings St Janie, Shelley discovers a secret Narnia- over the characters in this story. But specifically, on a period in the 1980s when Kilda like room at the back of her closet, a room another influence is also at work here, and she was in hospital for nine weeks and in which she eventually plays out her it relates to the disappearance of Clancy's her mother came to visit, bringing with A LOVING, FAITHFUL fantasies of infidelity, loss, and loneliness. daughter, David’s sister, River, many her stories and memories from Lucy’s ANIMAL Hold is an architectural piece of literary years earlier. This mystery is connected troubled childhood: ‘We were oddities, our family, even in that tiny rural town of Josephine Rowe fiction. Its narrative isn’t based so much on to another – why does Clancy keeps a events in the narrator’s timeline, or even Tasmanian tiger pelt rolled up and locked Amgash, Illinois … we did not have any UQP. PB. $23.95 really through its exploration of themes – away from view? It is only when another neighbors nearby. And we did not have a One of the many although it does both, weaving them child goes missing that the connection television and we did not have newspapers threads that run together very well. But the real pleasure between these details becomes clear. or magazines or books in the house.’ This quietly through the of reading this book lies in how Tranter Something wild on the mountain has been description of the plot might sound to some background of describes the ways that spaces we occupy disturbed and its instincts are primal. readers terribly dull or slow-moving, but Josephine Rowe’s first the novel is neither. Instead, it captures the take on different feelings depending on Natalie Platten is from Readings Malvern novel is the idea of the events that happened within them. A essence of a character, and the story of her holidays – Easter, New room in which you’ve had a sexual affair, life is laid out within the book’s pages. Year, times of year that for instance, can be charged with guilt Australian Poetry Strout’s writing sneaks up on you. She are meant to bring and eroticism, homeliness and despair, all weaves bleakness into the novel carefully, families together, the concurrently occurring as a kind of vague steering you gently into the saddest of individual rituals of each household a map to your life. That new real estate WORD MIGRANTS places. She also knows how to build source of comfort. But for the family at the acquisition can evoke your new place in Hazel Smith tension. There are several moments in My centre of A loving, faithful animal, there is the aspirational class, sure, but it also Giramondo. PB. $24 Name is Lucy Barton where something is nothing warm or comforting about the might figure the inauthenticity at being Hazel Smith’s new mentioned early on, left to hover in your mechanics of family life. there at all. Hold sees Shelley negotiate poetry collection mind, and then circled back to later in a Broken by the Vietnam War, Ru’s the loss of someone close, the building engages in a direct devastating way. father Jack has become an unpredictable, of a new relationship in a new home, way with This is not a book for everyone, but I hulking presence, violent and moody, prone and an affair that reconfigures previous contemporary political loved it, a lot, and have picked it up several to leaving for long spells without notice. assumptions, all through these spaces with and social issues – civil times since finishing it to reread certain After an incident on New Year’s Eve 1990, a deft and clear voice. war and the flight of passages. I highly recommend it for fans of Jack leaves again, this time seemingly for Tranter has been quietly working on populations, Alice Munro or Marilynne Robinson. good. This event acts as the fulcrum of all of this for years. Not just grief, which oppressive regimes Nina Kenwood is the marketing manager for the novel, echoing outwards across years has played a big part in her writing, but Readings READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 9

SOME RAIN MUST FALL she stabbed a popular boy in the neck; Karl Ove Knausgaard while she lives in poverty in a garage with her aunt; and when her father is dead and Vintage. PB. Was $32.99 her mother is now in a mental institution, $27.99 where she spends most of her time staring silently at a fish pond. I’m a big fan of the Written as a straight narrative it would first two volumes almost be too much to take, but the book is in the ‘My Struggle’ sectioned by asides, tests – Lucia is trying series; they presented a to get into an Arson Club – diagrams and brilliantly observed life predictions for the day which are followed with a brutal honesty by ‘What Happened’. As the elements that I felt was unique. I stack up, the sadness at the heart of the was, however, fairly book is slowly revealed indifferent about For a young writer, Jesse Ball’s output volumes three and four and starting to has been incredibly prolific. We’re getting question what there was to like about the to the point where it’s almost impossible minutiae of the life of a not particularly for him to release a bad book. His works, likeable narcissist. In fact, on finishing though wildly different, are always number four I was tempted to throw it mysterious, puzzling and incredibly across the room and there was no way I interesting. How to Set a Fire and Why is was going waste any more time on numbers no exception. five and six. But then a whole year went by Chris Somerville is from Readings Carlton and when the opportunity came to read the fifth book I couldn’t keep my vow – I WORK LIKE ANY OTHER sympathise with Zadie Smith when said she needed the next volume ‘like crack’. Virgina Reeves We left Karl Ove in volume four at S&S. PB. Was $32.99 nineteen years of age, after finishing a year $27.99 of teaching secondary school students in Virginia Reeves northern Norway. In this volume, he begins has written an a writing course in Bergen and the book extremely affecting largely covers his student years and the debut novel set during false starts of his writing career. In true the age of Knausgaard style, he begins by saying that electrification in 1920s he remembers nothing of this time and then Alabama. It’s the kind goes on to write over 600 pages detailing of story that will stay almost every moment of it. The questions with you long after this raises about literature and memoir and you start reading the also his infectious enthusiasm for writers next book in your stack, and the next, and such as Joyce, Dante, Proust, Borges and the next. countless Scandinavian authors I have never Roscoe T. Martin is fascinated by heard of but who I will now seek out, make electricity, and is so convinced of its this a much more interesting book than the potential to transform the farm that previous two volumes. he works with his wife, Marie, that he It is perhaps the relentless chronology decides to run some wires off the main of volumes three, four and now five that supply to electrify their property. This hold them back from the greatness of move is illegal, of course, so when an books one and two, which move around electricity company inspector discovers in time providing more intrigue and his work and is electrocuted, Roscoe is An extraordinarily powerful narrative tension. But this volume, while arrested and sent to prison along with the still relentless at times, raises a lot more farm worker who helped him erect the and personal meditation on philosophical questions about literature, poles, Wilson. art, truth and fiction which bring it back Marie is so horrified by these events race, culture and national to the greatness of the first two volumes. If that she retreats from their marriage, you’ve come this far in the series you can’t preferring to absent herself from a identity. stop now (and won’t be able to anyway) relationship with the convicted killer and if you haven’t started yet, the first two than find forgiveness. In this way, Reeves books are absolutely worth all the hype. gently focuses the reader on the complex Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton moral questions surrounding possession, ownership, theft, intention and guilt, and HOW TO SET A FIRE the ways in which race, gender, class and AND WHY power impact on the lived experience of these matters. A haunting, hypnotic and Jesse Ball The story unfolds in chapters that Text. PB. $29.99 alternate between life on the farm and life enticing novel of grief and Midway through in the prison. The writing is beautifully Jesse Ball’s novel crisp, and heartrendingly mournful at desire, by one of Australia’s How to Set a Fire and times. The small vignettes that pepper finest, most assured novelists. Why, the narrator, a the narrative continue to occupy my fifteen-year-old girl imagination: a day in the kitchen where called Lucia Stanton, women can peaches in the oppressive takes a series of tests to summer humidity; a guard dog giving see if she can be birth to a litter in a hole she’s dug under accepted into a a shed to protect the pups; the reality of prestigious school. After responding to an manual labour on the farm, so ordinary, essay question, ‘Why Hitler?’ she’s put in so tough; the mustiness of the prison front of a camera and asked to tell a joke. library, its categorisation and order an Tracy Chevalier is at her She hesitates for a moment, over-thinking antidote to the prison yard. Work Like Any things, before telling a story about an eagle Other is a powerful book full of longing, imaginative best, bringing to that was killing local dogs while misunderstanding, and stubborn and life the urge to wrestle with accidentally wearing a beanie it had lifted unrealised potential. It’s a first class debut from one of its victims. from a writer whose future work I cannot our roots, however deep and Lucia tells the story as a joke, but really wait to read. tangled they may be. it’s horrific, and it’s almost emblematic Alison Huber is the head book buyer for of the whole novel, in which we follow Readings Lucia retaining a sense of humour while she’s moved to a new high-school after 10 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

SEE YOU AT BREAKFAST? who arrived in the sleepy village of A GOD IN RUINS career she pursued only for the sake of her Guillermo Fadanelli Lomark like a blazing comet and who’s Kate Atkinson father. Another realises she much prefers been stirring things up ever since – sees a the company of her pit bull to the neurotic Giramondo. PB. $19.95 Doubleday. PB. Was $32.99 use for Frankie’s good right arm beyond foreign fling who won’t decamp from her $12.95 Guillermo writing: as a champion arm-wrestler, apartment. And Barbara, a young woman Fadanelli’s Frankie will be strong enough to impress A God in Ruins relates with an autistic brother, a Princeton short novel, See You his friends, and maybe even win the the life of Teddy Todd acceptance letter, and a love of sex, At Breakfast? was favour of the girl who has them all in a – would-be poet, navigates her high school’s toxic, slut- originally published spin. heroic World War II shaming culture with open eyes. in Spanish, in 1999, bomber pilot, and has now been LITTLE CAESAR husband, father, and MY OWN DEAR BROTHER released locally by grandfather – as he Tommy Wieringa Holly Muller Sydney publishing house Giramondo. Set in navigates the perils Scribe. PB. $22.99 Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Mexico City, it follows Cristina, a prostitute and progress of the who lives in a hotel; Ulises, an office Ludwig Unger’s life twentieth century. For Set in a rural Austrian worker who falls in love with her; Ulises’ held such promise. all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest village on the border of friend, Adolfo, a half-trained veterinarian; His parents were challenge will be to face living in a future a concentration camp, in and Olivia, the woman in Adolfo’s housing artists and, from an he never expected to have. This gripping, the latter stages of the complex who he has been obsessed by, and early age, his own funny yet devastating book looks at war Second World War, this watching, for years. musical genius had and the effect it has, not only on those who is a story of thirteen- The chapters alternate between these marked him out for a live through it, but on the lives of the year-old Ursula: four characters, with occasional focus stellar career in the subsequent generations. vulnerable, courageous, given to a few other bit-players, and it’s in world’s concert halls. partial to thieving, these subtle shifts between the characters’ In his mother’s AT THE EDGE OF THE disturbed by her father’s perspectives that the book’s edges emerge. imagination, Ludwig is already on the ORCHARD death, her mother’s affair with a married way to surpassing her most ambitious man, and the increasingly cruel behaviour of Events that were once noble and self- Tracy Chevalier serving – like Ulises moving Cristina dreams for him. But in reality, and for her adored older brother Anton who joins HarperCollins. PB. Was $39.99 into his apartment –become much more now, he’s playing in local cocktail bars Hitler Youth and applies the movement’s $29.99 desperate and sad once we’re given her and the two of them are living alone in a ideology to his family and neighbours. As insight into the matter. storm-lashed clifftop cottage in East James and Sadie Anton becomes more and more sullen and As the novel continues the real ingenuity Anglia. As the forceful winter seas bash Goodenough have violent, Ursula befriends the dim-witted boy of its limited scope becomes apparent. The away at the coastline, and Ludwig plunks settled in the Black next door, Schosi. Soon Ursula must decide main characters’ lives are riddled with away at the piano, he begins to tell a Swamp in Ohio in 1838, where her allegiances lie. coincidence, which would normally come woman his story: of a child’s faith and planting apple trees to off as inauthentic but here it causes the parental betrayal, and of the importance, claim the land as their THE SUMMER BEFORE unfolding of the plot seem both natural in the end, of self-sacrifice. own. Life is harsh in THE WAR and inevitable. The bleakness of Fadanelli’s the swamp, and as fever Helen Simonson picks off their children, world is always handled with care. THE YEAR OF THE Text. PB. Was $32.99 husband and wife take solace in separate It’s also a relief that the book’s dark RUNAWAYS $29.99 subject matter is occasionally lightened comforts. Their fighting takes its toll on all Sunjeev Sahota East Sussex, 1914. It’s by its ironic tone and genuine moments of the family – a battle that will resonate Picador. PB. $19.99 the end of an idyllic of humour – Ulises boss’s wife handing over the years and across America. Fifteen Thirteen young men summer and Hugh everyone in the office a lottery ticket years later their youngest son, Robert, is live in a house in Grange, down from his each month, for example, exclaiming that drifting through goldrush California and Sheffield, each in medical studies, is everyone should hope to ‘finally break haunted by the broken family he fled years flight from India and visiting his Aunt free of this prison,’ or the discussion over earlier. When he finds steady work for a in desperate search of Agatha in the pretty whether or not a stuffed coyote’s head on plant collector, peace seems finally to be a new life. Tarlochan, coastal town of Rye. the wall is actually just a dog. within reach. But the past is never really a former rickshaw Casting aside the It’s in these brief moments of change that past, and one day Robert is forced to driver, will say recent sabre rattling See You At Breakfast? offers genuine insight, confront the brutal reason he left behind nothing about his over the Balkans, Agatha has more and becomes an engrossing look at life in everything he loved. past in Bihar; and immediate concerns; she has just risked her current-day Mexico City. For such a short Avtar has a secret that binds him to reputation by pushing for the appointment novel it certainly carries a lot of weight. MOTHERING SUNDAY protect the choatic Randeep. Randeep, in Graham Swift of a woman to replace the Latin master. Chris Somerville is from Readings Carlton turn, has a visa-wife in a flat on the other When Beatrice Nash arrives, it is clear she S&S. HB. $29.99 side of town. Sweeping between India is significantly more free thinking and THE LIFE OF ELVES and England, and between childhood and How will Jane Fairchild, attractive than anyone believes a Latin Muriel Barbery the present day, this unforgettable novel orphan and housemaid, teacher should be. For her part, Beatrice occupy her time when Text. PB. $29.99 is a story of dignity in the face of simply wants to be left alone to pursue her she has no mother to Maria, raised by powerful adversity and the ultimate triumph of the teaching and writing. But soon everything visit on Mothering older women, lives in a human spirit. will be tested as this small Sussex town and Sunday, 30 March remote village in its inhabitants go to war. 1924? How, shaped by Burgundy, where she THIS CENSUS-TAKER the events of this discovers her gift of China Mieville THE NATASHAS never-to-be-forgotten clairvoyance, of healing Picador PB. $32.99 Yelena Moskovich day, will her future and of communicating Serpent’s Tail. PB. $27.99 In a remote house unfold? Beginning with an intimate with nature. Hundreds of on a hilltop, a lonely assignation and opening to embrace B.atrice, a solitary miles away in Italy, Clara boy witnesses a decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart young jazz singer from discovers her musical genius and is sent from traumatic event. He both the story of a life and the life that a genteel Parisian the countryside to Rome to nurture her tries – and fails – to stories can magically contain. Joyously suburb, meets a extraordinary abilities. The Life of Elves is the flee. Left alone with sensual and moving, it is Graham Swift at mysterious woman story of two children whose amazing talents his increasingly his thrilling best. named Polina. Polina will bring them into contact with magical deranged parent, he visits her at night and worlds and malevolent forces. dreams of safety, of BARBARA THE SLUT whispers in her ear: joining the other AND OTHER PEOPLE ‘There are people who JOE SPEEDBOAT children in the town below, of escape. leave their bodies and Lauren Holmes Tommy Wieringa When at last a stranger knocks at his their bodies go on living without them. Fourth Estate. PB. $19.99 Scribe. PB. $22.99 door, the boy senses that his days of These people are named Natasha.’ C.sar, a A fresh, honest, and When Frankie isolation might be over. But by what lonely Mexican actor working in a call darkly funny debut Hermans emerges authority does this man keep the centre, receives the opportunity of a collection about family, from a coma after 200 meticulous records he carries? Is he lifetime: a role as a serial killer on a friends, and lovers, and days, life is never friend? This Census-Taker is a poignant French TV series. But as he prepares for the flaws that make us going to be the same and riveting exploration of memory and the audition, he starts falling in love with most human. One again. He can’t talk or identity. the psychopath he is to play. This is an woman takes a job walk and it’s a original novel that recalls the unsettling selling sex toys in San struggle even to wield visual worlds of Cindy Sherman and David Francisco rather than a pen. But Joe Lynch. embark on the law Speedboat – a boy READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 11

UNDER THE VISIBLE LIFE him to a remote village on the border with Kim Echlin Turkey, a stone’s throw away from Greece, high up in the Strandja Mountains – a place Serpent’s Tail. PB. $27.99 March To-Read List of pagan mysteries and black storks nesting Half Chinese and half in giant oaks; a place where every spring, Canadian, Katherine possessed by Christian saints, men and Goodnow struggles women dance barefoot across live coals in through a 1950’s search of rebirth. Here in the mountains, he childhood hostile to is drawn by his grandfather into a maze of all she represents. half-truths. Then, as a teenager, she discovers jazz, MAKER OF SWANS and her life is Paraic O’Donnell transformed. Half American and half W&N. PB. $29.99 Afghani, Mahsa Weaver is only twelve Mr Crowe was once when, after the death of her parents, she is the toast of the finest sent to live with strict relatives in Karachi. salons. Now, Mr Struggling to break free, she escapes to Crowe devotes David Dyer’s astonishing novel is based Frank, fearless, funny and Montreal, but the threads of her past are himself to earthly on the true story of the SS Californian, articulate, Yassmin Abdel-Magied not so easily severed. For Mahsa, too, pleasures at his the ship that saw the Titanic’s distress is a dynamo, offering a bracing music becomes her solace and passion. sprawling country rockets and yet did nothing. breath of fresh air and hope. When these two women meet in New estate, where he lives York, they begin a friendship that will with Clara, his change everything. mysterious young ward, and Eustace, his faithful THE PAINTED OCEAN manservant. But Mr Crowe and his Gabriel Packard extraordinary gifts have not been entirely forgotten. When he acts impetuously over Headline. PB. $29.99 a woman, he attracts the attention of Dr When eleven-year-old Chastern, the figurehead of a secret Shruti’s father leaves, society to which Crowe still belongs. her hopes for more of Chastern calls him to account, and what her mother’s affection follows will threaten everyone he cares are in vain: Shruti’s for. But Clara possesses gifts of her own, mother is lost, and which she must learn quickly if she is to soon falls prey to save them all. family pressure to return to India and find THE MARAUDERS We learn how to love through A life-affirming reflection on facing our a new husband, leaving Tom Cooper our parents. So how does a child mortality and on the relationship between Shruti behind. Meanwhile, at school a new Crown. PB. $29.99 process the world with a traumatised doctor and patient, from a gifted writer arrival, the indomitable Meena, dispenses Vietnam veteran as their father? who became both. Heartbreaking, and When the BP oil spill with Shruti’s bullying problems and unforgettably powerful. transforms her day to day life. Shruti latches devastates the Gulf on to Meena to the point of obsession, coast, those who made following her through high school and on to a living by shrimping university. But when Shruti joins Meena on find themselves in dire holiday in India, she has no idea how straits. For the oddballs dangerous her obsession will turn out to be. and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, THE BUTCHER’S HOOK working class bayou Janet Ellis town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the Two Roads. PB. $29.99 catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever At nineteen, Anne risky schemes they can dream up to reverse Jaccob is awakened to their fortunes. At the center of it all is Gus the possibility of joy Lindquist, a pill-addicted, one armed when she meets Fub, treasure hunter obsessed with finding the the butcher’s lost treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte. As the Whether you’re contemplating A fast-paced, witty and apprentice. The only tension and action ramp up, it becomes clear retirement or not, this is an gripping historical crime series daughter of well-to-do that not all of them will survive these events. parents, Anne lives a indispensable guide to a from Tom Keneally and his sheltered life. Though slower, more contented life. eldest daughter Meg. her family want for Science Fiction nothing, her father is uncaring, her mother is ailing, and the baby brother who taught her to love is dead. Her parents have EMPIRE V already chosen a more suitable husband, but Victor Pelevin in the matter of pursuing her own Maclehose. PB. Available 10 November. $29.99 happiness, Anne shows no fear or hesitation, Roman thought he’d even if it means getting a little blood on her found the perfect hands. A surprising tale, The Butcher’s Hook opportunity to rebel. brims with the colour and atmosphere of He may have been Georgian London. wrong. He awakens strapped to a set of STORK MOUNTAIN parallel bars in a Miroslav Penkov richly appointed Sceptre. PB. Available 8 March. $29.99 sitting room, and An American student begins a conversation All Ryan, Harley and Miles had in common The fifth instalment of the My Struggle returns to Bulgaria, the with a masked man which will change his was that they shared the same best friend, cycle looks at Knausgaard’s battles country he left as a life. His world has been a facade – one Isaac. They were sidekicks. And now that with introversion, alcohol abuse, child, on a mission to which the mysterious Brahma is about to Isaac’s gone, what does that make them? infidelity and artistic ambition. track down his tear away. A novel about the hidden grandfather and find channels of power behind the scenes, out why he suddenly Empire V is a post-modern satirical novel cut off all contact with exploring the cults and corruption of the family three years politics, banking and power. Not only are before. The trail leads these cults difficult to join – it turns out they may be impossible to leave . 12 READINGSReading-Work-Strangers-CMYK-print.pdf MONTHLY MARCH 1 201616/02/2016 2:33 PM

New Crime Dead Write made a widower during a mass shooting. And now he’s been arrested for a triple with Fiona Hardy homicide. Not such a darling any more, Crime Book of the Month obviously, but Olivia is convinced the Jack she knows is no killer, even when a ALL THESE PERFECT STRANGERS connection between Jack and one of the dead strikes everyone else as a very clear Aoife Clifford motive for murder. Thrilling, smart S&S. PB. $29.99 writing, and – unlike past relationships – a Pen Sheppard is listless in her mother’s country home, lost again in the story you won’t regret. world of her childhood – her mother’s bad boyfriends, a town full of fakery, gossip as currency, and reputations that never die. Pen hoped she was THE PERFECT GIRL rid of her hometown when she went to university, living on campus and Gilly MacMillan making a new life, yet here she is, recovering in the only place that would have her back. Just Little, Brown. PB. $29.99 six months since she left and she’s in the town psychiatrist’s office, as she was before she left, but this time she has a different story to tell – if he can get her to tell it. And that’s if she can Zoe Maisey is a teenage piece together, for herself, the six months of university life that started as a delirious, prodigy with a genius IQ unnerving freedom and then turned into a semester of murky dangers, and on-campus and piano skills that bring claustrophobia that makes even a small town seem large. her adoration and Clifford’s debut novel is full of strengths: her sense of place and time is delivered with scholarships. She also has the utmost clarity, the late ’80s is rendered in a way that brings on waves of nostalgia a criminal record and without resorting to cheap tricks (or references to Cheap Trick). The emotional intensity eighteen months in of starting university is made even headier by undercurrents of threat on campus that detention behind her, but start as a game, then turn into something much more vicious. It’s a haunting read, a all that is in the past – now she is a new psychological thriller with loose threads picked at and unravelled chapter by chapter, girl in a new town, with a new surname from past to present, from truth to fiction and back again. This is one for anyone who and a new step-family. And now, a new wonders what really happens down those cobblestone paths on university grounds, or to concert to start her new life, until what lengths people will go to protect their secrets. someone comes crashing down the aisle. Everything falls apart so swiftly that the next day she’s at a criminal lawyer’s outfit, ORPHAN X to Sydney, and instead teaches English to asking for help. Her mother is dead. Her Gregg Hurwitz international students, staying clear of old life has found her. And the truth will crime – until one of her students jumps out Michael Joseph. PB. $32.99 come find her as well. Told from multiple of a window. Even through her grief she points of view, this is a psychological On one of those days when takes notes on what’s happening, and when thriller to make you terrified of teenagers, you kind of want to see a it turns out the student was using a false and of everyone you know and love. movie but immediately identity, her detective side kicks in and she become outraged when starts to investigate the expansive business SIX FOUR thinking about the price of ruining – and sometimes taking – students’ popcorn, pick up Orphan X Hideo Yokoyama lives. Vividly depicting the way the world Quercus. PB. $29.99 C instead – it’s a treat of an around her smells and tastes, Ghost Girls is action thriller. Evan Smoakes was Orphan X, This month’s entry into the M mouth-watering enough to make you a brash little kid chosen to join a secret ‘book that doubles as a Y hungry and heart-stopping enough to put weapon’ category comes the operation that turned him into a pint-sized you off eating. CM assassin. But as he grew, all those smarts he 640-page Six Four. The title MY picked up showed him a way out of that VIRAL is the code name for a case lifestyle and into one that does good instead some fourteen years old, CY Helen FitzGerald of bad – now he’s known as The Nowhere unsolved to this day. A CMY Man, someone who will go to any lengths to Faber. PB. $29.99 seven-year-old girl goes for a walk to her K help those in need who call on him. But can From the Too Real pile of uncle’s house. She is kidnapped, and you ever avoid your past when you’re an books comes the former- ransom is demanded and supplied. A week assassin in literature? Of course not – and the Victorian-now-Glaswegian later they find her dead body in the boot of next time The Nowhere Man’s phone rings, FitzGerald, who tells the a car. Fourteen years later her case is it’s the sound of your adrenaline starting up. story of a teenage girl revisited, and Yoshinobu Mikami, once- filmed performing a sex detective and now media liaison, is the one MAESTRA act in a Spanish club – a tangled in all the politics that surround the L.S. Hilton film which somehow past, the present, the press, the police, and makes it into everyone’s Bonnier. PB. $29.99 the victim’s now-reclusive father. Six Four social media feed. Su Oliphant-Brotheridge is an addictive police procedural to get fully If luxe-crime isn’t a genre, I watches the number of views climb from the immersed in, heavy on the detail yet always feel it’s about to be, with hotel room she has retreated to, still unclear light on its feet. Hilton’s Maestra crashing all as to what really happened, but unable to over our shelves and into a look away. Back home, her mother Ruth – a THE SOLDIER’S CURSE movie deal within a week of respected judge – is dealing with the fallout, hitting American shores. It’s Meg Keneally & Tom Keneally as well as Su’s sister Leah, who returned Vintage. PB. $32.99 the rags-to-reprobate story of from Spain without her. The tale of Ruth’s The Booker Prize has long Judith, who is undervalued and unimpressed skewed quest for justice for her daughter been blind to the merits of by the British art auction house she works at, while Su herself seeks to find the truth about genre fiction, as we all and discovers a world of bar work that leads her recent and distant past is short and (angrily) know, but maybe to generous male patrons, extra favours for sharp, fast-paced and dramatic. said patrons, a spot of accidental murder, and they’ll notice with a losing one’s identity completely in the heady THE EX previous winner in the mix: world of the ultra-rich. Judith – now Lauren here’s Tom ‘Schindler’s Ark’ Alafair Burke – is up for anything to stay in this entertaining Keneally and his daughter and co-writer new lifestyle, and one body is hardly enough Faber. PB. $29.99 Meg’s colonial crime fiction series, led by to be interesting. Maestra is unflinchingly There’s a bit of a the dashing yet unfortunate Hugh Llewelyn erotic, flashy as a yacht, and fast as a ... (note to vengeance theme in Monsarrat, dapper in his waistcoat but self, learn about cars faster than the Mazda3). some of the books this sadly imprisoned in a penal settlement for month, it seems. Don’t second offenders. His position as clerk GHOST GIRLS be misled by the title – affords him some luxuries, including a good Cath Ferla this ex is no rabid reputation and the opportunity for cups of stalker, but NYC defence Echo. PB. $29.99 tea with his housekeeper friend Mrs attorney Olivia Randall, Mulrooney – until she is accused of Sophie Sandilands has a summoned by phone to a poisoning the Commandant’s wife. Keen to history with private jail cell inhabited by a man she’s been free his friend, Monsarrat is on the case, detectives that she’d rather studiously avoiding for nearly twenty and it’s such a smartly funny, cleverly forget. Now, she avoids years. Jack Harris is her ex-fiancé, but researched tale that we should all be jolly talking about her cultural more recently he became a New York glad of it, to be quite honest background and the darling as a successful writer who was circumstances that led her READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 13

New Young Adult Fiction MARTIANS As insults are hurled and feelings are hurt, Blythe Woolston one has to ask the question: can the five manage to finish the yearbook and help See books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 18–19 Walker. PB. $16.99 each other survive Year 12? In a futuristic The Yearbook Committee is a compelling Young Adult Book of the Month world not too read. The characters are well established different from our with the dialogue between the five witty own, where THE SIDEKICKS and believable. The plot is well set-out, consumption is the Will Kostakis however I did feel the early drama in main objective, lives Penguin. PB. Was $19.99 the opening chapter about the party was 16-year-old Zoë $16.99 slightly unnecessary. That said, it’s a minor Zindleman. She has After Isaac dies, his three best friends struggle to fill the glitch in what is otherwise a great read. been forced to space he occupied in their lives. To make the situation worse, Ages 14 and up. graduate from high the three weren’t actually friends with one another, but now find school early and there Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn their lives increasingly tied together through their grief. are only two places to go after school – to The Sidekicks is divided into three parts; each section is narrated work in retail, or to the penitentiary. There LADY MIDNIGHT by a different character. Ryan ‘the jock’, Harley ‘the rebel’ and Miles are also only two remarkably similar places Cassandra Clare ‘the brains’ have little in common other than Isaac. This makes to shop – AllMART or Q-MART. S&S. PB. $29.99 seeing Isaac through three different pairs of eyes a treat. His spectre looms over the story Zoë and her mum live in a bland It’s been five years since to the perfect degree, present but illusory. Kostakis’ depiction of the other three boys is spot housing estate where every house is for the events of City of on. They are each fully drawn and heartbreakingly whole. I found that as each section came sale, but on the day that Zoë graduates Heavenly Fire that along I loved that boy the most, and I couldn’t help but see the other two through his eyes. her mum tells her that she must move brought the This is a story about friendship, but also about kindness. Through their grief the boys somewhere else for work and Zoë will now Shadowhunters to the learn to be kind to one another and to themselves, a lesson that could be taught more have to live alone. Her only companionship brink of oblivion. Emma often. Not only are the characters fully realised but the plot is engaging and this is a swift, comes from the relentless banter of the Carstairs is no longer a engrossing read. Each boy has a distinctive and engaging voice and my only issue with this male and female anchors on the free 24 child in mourning, but a book is that I could have read each boy’s story and point of view for the length of a full book! hour news show, and a boy who says the young woman bent on There is a lot to love about The Sidekicks; the strong and inspiring messages for young electricity will soon be turned off on her discovering what killed adult readers, the beautiful writing, the humour – I should mention that I laughed a lot house so she will need to abandon it and her parents and avenging her losses. Emma throughout. But the primary pull is the boys themselves. Their stories, pains and joys are all move on. This boy, Timmer, is determined must learn to trust her head and her heart as achingly relatable. And for the record, I’m #TeamHarley. All the way. I’ve got a soft spot for a to rescue and help those who have become she investigates a demonic plot that stretches rebel with a heart of gold. lost in the dehumanising system. He knows across Los Angeles. If only her heart didn’t Isobel Moore is from Readings St Kilda that Zoë needs help. lead her in treacherous directions. This is a terrifying world where consumerism has run rampant and there’s a real pleasure to be found in seeing A TANGLE OF GOLD: personal relationships are discouraged YA Nonfiction these smart, enterprising teenagers take THE COLOURS OF because they might distract from the matters into their own hands to save the day. MADELEINE BOOK 3 importance of working and shopping. It’s WE SHOULD HANG OUT Bronte Coates is the digital content coo a world where strict rules and regulations Jaclyn Moriarty SOMETIME Macmillan. PB. $19.99 have taken over from any semblance of THE WAY WE ROLL love, but the leaders of this society are Josh Sundquist Either, like me, Scot Gardner never clear. Is it a Kafkaesque nightmare or Hachette Livre. PB. $16.99 you’ve read the A&U. PB. $19.99 a potential future scenario? Either way, this I don’t often read first two books of All we know slim book packs a big punch and is sure to young adult Jaclyn Moriarty’s about Will in the stimulate discussion. Ultimately hopeful, it autobiographies. This Colours of Madeleine first few chapters of makes for fascinating reading. may be because the trilogy and have been The Way We Roll is he’s majority lately are by waiting anxiously to Angela Crocombe is from Readings Carlton dropped out of a bloggers or YouTube find out what wealthy private sensations and, quite happens next to the THE YEARBOOK boarding school (it’s frankly, I couldn’t give wonderful characters COMMITTEE complicated) and he two hoots about those that inhabit its pages. lives under a bowling Sarah Ayoub people. Luckily for Or, you’re one of those unlucky souls yet to alley. With Julian, the HarperCollins. PB. $19.99 Josh Sundquist I didn’t realise he was a discover the Kingdom of Cello. other main character, we are falsely lead to It’s always nice YouTube sensation when I was given this If you are among the latter, allow me believe we’ve learnt all there is to know to be given an book to review. Or maybe it was lucky for one brief rave: I fell in love with this series about him in the first few pages. But this is Australian author to me as this turned out to be a great `read. slowly, but completely. Moriarty’s story a Scot Gardner novel. review as I’m a huge Sundquist opens with the statement, of two teenagers who discover a crack Gardner introduces the rowdy boys advocate for Aussie ‘When I was twenty-five years old, it came between their two worlds is funny and who sit up the back of the bus and drown YA. Having not read to my attention that I had never had a charming, smart and magical, and yes – like out the music in our headphones with their Sarah Ayoub’s first girlfriend’ and proceeds to explain that all of Moriarty’s books – a little whimsical, brash, boastful conversations, and then he book, Hate Is Such A at the time of said epiphany, he actually but with a satisfyingly ironic wit that cuts takes us behind the scenes. He also shows Strong Word, I wasn’t thought he was in a relationship, making through the froth. A fresh and imaginative us the quiet boys who are, seemingly, so sure what to expect the realisation come as quite a shock to him. approach to the fantasy genre, The Colours perfectly average they’re invisible, and from her latest novel, And so from this one statement we go back of Madeleine is a delightful way to spend a invites us into their lives. The Yearbook Committee. Luckily, I was in in time and reminisce with him about the weekend; I highly recommend it. Through Will’s eyes we see Julian’s for a good read. different girls in his life he has courted, and I also recommend you stop reading this family – a family who have lived through It’s the final year at high school for Ryan, with whom nothing eventuated. To try to get review right now as it contains spoilers. horror but have come out the other end, Tammi, Charlie, Matty and Gillian. Ryan, some answers, Sundquist seeks these past A Tangle of Gold is the final book in mostly in one piece. We see Julian’s the school captain, has had his dreams almost-flames and asks them the question, the trilogy, and the stakes are high from mum, who has every right in the world of being a soccer player squashed after ‘Why did we never go out?’ Was it his looks? the opening pages. Princess Ko is due to to be bitter, dark, and angry but instead an accident leaves him unable to play His missing limb? Was there something be executed, Elliot is being held hostage welcomes her son’s guests with an open anymore, while Charlie just wants to do wrong with him? As he asks the questions, by hostiles and with plans underway to heart. We’re slightly uncomfortable when well at her new school so she can quickly the girls respond in all sorts of ways. But will transport the rest of the royals back to Julian’s dad, Sandy, greets him with a bear get out of Sydney and back to Melbourne. it help him discover the truth? Cello, Madeleine is afraid she’s about to hug and a kiss and find it almost curious Tammi and Matty both have family issues Sundquist, even though he is a YouTube lose her connection to this world (and when he throws his head back and laughs that need to be resolved so there’s hope for star, has managed to turn a somewhat one of her best friends) forever. The at an indecent volume. The climax, as their dreams for life after high school and embarrassing story into a funny, touching Kingdom itself is in crisis – rife with well, is as real as the characters. There’s Gillian is just trying to ignore her bullies book about the anxieties that come with miscommunications, political turmoil, no dramatic showdown between Will and and create a yearbook to remember. Not fancying someone and not knowing how and increasingly erratic, deadly, weather. his father; the ending we get isn’t really an only do these five teens have exams to think to tell them, or getting up the courage to Moriarty expands on its mythology and ending at all, it’s a beginning. about, there is a world of personal problems tell them and facing rejection. Overall, he history with a deft touch. As always, Scot Gardner nails it. The that need tackling. Throw in the yearbook, has written a heartwarming story, taking a The plot of this series continues to twist Way We Roll is magic; it’s dirty, rough, something none of these teens (except for good look at himself and the insecurities he and weave, with some wonderful surprises beautiful and understated magic, full of Gillian) want to be a part of and life is full internalises, as well as at his projects. This still to be revealed. The way in which hope, love and hugs. to the brim. With these five completely is a great read for young adults who want these threads wind their way together is different personalities forced together to a romance without the romance, but with immensely satisfying (if a little neat), and Dani Solomon is from Readings Carlton produce a yearbook, conflict is inevitable. many laughs. Ages 13 and up. KD 14 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

New Nonfiction language and thought, and is an and talking about sex. These quotidian exploration of what it means to be a moments lead back to literature, to writer and to really tell one’s story. It feels existential musing and then on to another Book of the Month incredibly personal. Beyond the love of moment lived. language, beauty of words and magic of Through this rising tide of voices TALKING TO MY COUNTRY literature, In Other Words feels honest in from many eras cuts the authorial voice a way most books don’t. With this book, of a woman who recognises herself in the Stan Grant Lahiri breaks open her heart and puts it on city she inhabits, who revels in it. As an HarperCollins. HB. Was $29.99 the page. Odd Woman, a woman who has forever $24.95 been on the margin, she writes beautifully In 2015, veteran journalist and Wiradjuri man Stan Grant caught “The language is clear and of the interplay between the city and the attention of Australia with his short but passionate response beautiful, the metaphors palpable, self, between the lived and the always to the booing of footballer Adam Goodes. Earlier this year, he got the unlived, the multitude of the city and the country talking again when his speech on racism at the IQ2 Debate the pace slow and dreamy.” singularity of the self, the Odd Woman. was released online a few days before Australia/Invasion Day. Now, Lahiri’s first language is Bengali, the Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton Grant is set to do the same all over again. Talking to My Country is one language of her parents. She uses In Other of those rare books that has the potential to change the way people think. Words to explore ways in which language THE LONG RUN Described as a personal meditation on race, culture and national identity, Talking to My is formative of identity, how her parents’ Catriona Menzies-Pike Country is part memoir, part letter and part history lesson. Grant opens with a declaration – language made her feel ashamed, and Affirm Press. PB. $29.99 ‘These are the things I want to say to you’ – before admitting that what he has to say won’t be how she has always felt like an outsider, a easy. It’s this direct, unadorned manner of enquiry that sustains his writing. Catriona visitor, an interloper in any language. Lahiri Menzies-Pike also examines how language separates came late to running. “Talking to My Country is one of those rare us from the world even as it helps us to Until she turned 30, books that has the potential to change the way understand it. She explains that while she was known to her fictional work is often perceived as friends and family as people think.” autobiographical, writing fiction was the person ‘least actually a way for her to hide behind words. likely to run around Here, with astounding clarity, she reveals As a journalist and through his family heritage, Grant is a storyteller. Within these the block’; a gin- herself. pages he shares tales of his life and those of his ancestors with great gentleness, even while addled bookworm In Other Words is broken into short discussing some of our history’s darkest moments. It’s significant that these events are often who rolled her eyes sections that each resonate with their left out of the common Australian narratives. Hard statistics pepper his yarns and attest to at runners prancing through the park. own timbre. The language is clear and the reality of life for First Australians today. There was no great, revelatory moment in beautiful, the metaphors palpable, the With this work, Grant allows himself space to dwell on hard questions – the kind without which she realised that running could be an pace slow and dreamy. There are two answers. Such a decision is always a risk for a writer, yet here this lack of resolution is emotional refuge as well as a physical act. pieces of short fiction, little jewels tucked understandable, even necessary. The answers do not yet exist, and to imply they do would She simply started running on a treadmill away within the voyage of self-discovery. feel disingenuous. Instead of leaving me with a sense of satisfaction, this book inspired me in a grimy Kings Cross gym after arbitrarily I highly recommend In Other Words to to read further, to ask questions – and this feels like Grant’s intention. More than anything, announcing to her family that she would lovers of language, literature, memoir, Talking to My Country is a call-to-action, and an extremely effective one. someday run a marathon. journeys, and words. Bronte Coates is the digital content coordinator for Readings Ed Moreno is from Readings Carlton “If you’ve never thought of running THE ODD WOMAN AND as being culturally significant for But it is the second half when he describes THE CITY women, consider this: until 1984, Biography the passage of his illness and its effect on Vivian Gornick women were banned from entering him both physically and mentally that is Nero. PB. $22.99 the Olympic marathon.” WHEN BREATH BECOMES profoundly harrowing yet uplifting. It is his great skill as a writer that raises this The Odd Her description of that first visit AIR book from just a tragic tale to one that has Woman and the introduces the first of many interesting Paul Kalanithi lessons and meaning for us all. City is Vivian Vintage. HB. Was $32.99 Gornick’s memoir of facts: did you know the treadmill was Mark Rubbo is the managing director for her most enduring actually invented to punish inmates in $26.95 Readings friendship: her 19th-century prisons? Menzies-Pike, who is This is a short editor of the Sydney Review of Books, soon but profoundly IN OTHER WORDS friendship with New York. She starts with shirks the gym for leafy streets and parks, moving and Jhumpa Lahiri & Ann Goldstein her friend Leonard. but keeps running. She becomes fascinated powerful book. (trans.) by the connection between running and Kalanithi, a young Every week they Bloomsbury. HB. $29.99 feminism, and the stories of female long- and brilliant meet and walk and Indian- distance runners in history. neurosurgeon, is talk through the streets of New York. They American If you’ve never thought of running as confronted by what are old friends re-establishing themselves writer Jhumpa Lahiri being culturally significant for women, proves to be his own in each other’s company each week as they was awarded the consider this: until 1984, women were terminal cancer. In take in the city. She sets out, in an Pulitzer Prize for banned from entering the Olympic his undergraduate unchaptered stream of anecdote, the Fiction in 2000 for marathon. Up until very recently, the days he had contemplated a career as a geography of her life, both internal and her first book, most common historical depictions of writer and had completed a degree in external; the life she has led and the one Interpreter of women running were of women running English Literature; for Kalanithi literature she has always waited to begin. New York Maladies, a collection from danger or disgrace. Menzies-Pike ‘illuminated another’s experience ... and provides a map of both. What works so of short stories. She explores the Western world’s uneasiness provided the richest material for moral beautifully in these memoirs are the has since published with women running through their reflection.’ However, it was science and moments when the imagined life and the two novels and another collection of representation in books, film and art. She medicine that won him over. lived life collide. stories, picking up numerous awards along derides the ‘pinkification’ of women’s-only the way. Her latest book, In Other Words, “What works so beautifully in these running events and skewers TV tropes like “... profoundly harrowing yet ‘Joggers Find Death’ for perpetuating the is a departure from her previous work in memoirs are the moments when uplifting.” that it is autobiographical, and notably, irrational sense that women look or become was written in Lahiri’s newly adopted the imagined life and the lived life vulnerable when they run. We are very fortunate that, in his last language, Italian. There is a personal journey here, few years, months and days, he recorded collide.” In Other Words was first published too. Despite her insistence that she the passage of his life and the emotions in Italy as In altre parole, and has been Woven into the tapestry of voices that has nothing coherent to say about her he confronted as he became aware his life translated into English not by Lahiri is New York and Gornick’s own search for parents’ premature death, Menzies-Pike was imminently finite. He wrote to a friend herself, but by editor and translator Ann self are the stories of other odd women is eloquent and articulate when writing that the good news was that he’d survived a Goldstein who is best known for her and men whose relationship to a city about grief. She posits that movement Keats and a couple of Brontes. translations of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan and to friendship were so central to their can simultaneously be a metaphor and an This is, in some ways, an easy book to Quartet. In the Australian edition of In being. She walks with Samuel Johnson, action; that running can transform the body read; Kalanithi’s skill as a storyteller jumps Other Words, the Italian and English who could only find solace from his deep into a medium of perception. off the page. The first half is the account language versions of each page face one melancholy in the evidence of the city, the There is a lot of literature on running of how a good, intelligent young man another – it is possible to read either evidence of other lives being lived. We already around – Murakami’s memoir conducted his early life and made choices language or both within the same volume. find that same relief from introspection springs to mind – but none of it speaks about who and what he was going to be. This memoir is a voyage through in the man who won’t get off the bus, and specifically to, and of, women’s experience This alone would make the book stand out. the people waiting in line in the pharmacy in what was up until the 1960s an READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 15 exclusively male domain. This is a deftly Angeles in the early 1960s, before charting researched and deeply satisfying book, his progression from young doctor to his which ultimately covers a great deal of public role as a neurologist and author. ground. Here we see Sacks’ private passions – Hilary Simmons is from Readings Malvern among them, motorcycling, weightlifting, travel, and botany – placed alongside his YASSMIN’S STORY professional life. Yassmin Abdel-Magied Random House. PB. $34.99 Australian Studies At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil BALANCING ACT and gas rig – the only George Megalogenis woman, and certainly Quarterly Essay. PB. the only Sudanese- Available 14 March. $22.99 Egyptian-Australian Malcolm Turnbull says Muslim woman. With we need to be agile her hijab quickly citizens, and that there christened a ‘tea cosy’ has never been a more there could not be a more unlikely place exciting time to be an on earth for a young Muslim woman to Australian. On the want to be. Frank, fearless, funny, other hand, the mining amned Whores and God’s Police articulate and inspiring, this is the story of boom is over and a Dwas first published in 1975. In how she got there, where she is going, and question looms: is a the 40 years since, it has sold over how she wants the world to change. recession on the way? In this timely and 100,000 copies and is considered original essay, George Megalogenis an Australian classic. In that time ENEMY investigates a nation in transition. What we have seen the introduction of the Ruth Clare will a new Australia look like, economically Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 and women have become increasingly Penguin. PB. $32.99 and socially? How do we re-imagine a wealthy country notable for its equality; a visible in employment, in politics Ruth Clare’s father and elsewhere across society. In this cohesive country notable for its diversity? came back from the updated edition, however, Anne Vietnam War a THE ROAD TO RUIN Summers argues that the stereotypes changed man: a that characterised women in 1975 violent, controlling Niki Savva as either ‘damned whores’ or ‘God’s police’ persist to this parent and a Scribe. PB. Available 14 March. $32.99 day. Who are today’s damned whores? Why do women dominating, aggressive In The Road to Ruin, themselves still want to be God’s Police? And why are husband. Wanting to prominent political sexual harassment, domestic violence and date rape still understand the commentator, author, with us and on the rise? experiences that had and columnist for The damaged her father, she met with other Australian Niki Savva www.newsouthpublishing.com veterans and began listening to their reveals the ruinous stories, of war, conscription, returning to behaviour of former civilian life. Weaving a striking personal prime minister Tony narrative with a revelatory exploration of Abbott and his chief of the effects of war, Enemy is a bold, staff, Peta Credlin. compelling and ultimately triumphant Based on her unrivalled access to their memoir from a hugely impressive new colleagues, and devastating first-person Australian writer. accounts of what went on behind the scenes, Savva paints an unforgettable picture of a THE BEAUTIFUL unique duo who wielded power ruthlessly STRUGGLE but not well. Ta-Nehisi Coates Verso. PB. $21.99 TAKING FLIGHT Ta-Nehisi Coates Kristen Alexander grew up in 1980s National Library of Australia. PB. $39.99 Baltimore, a city on From her first taste of the verge of chaos: the air, Lores Bonney drugs, gangs and was hooked on violence haunted a aviation. In 1932 Lores young black man’s life. became the first A boy needed to learn woman to the knowledge fast circumnavigate and Coates’s father mainland Australia by was a fine teacher: a Vietnam vet who air. After a bid to rolled with the Black Panthers, launched a become the first woman to fly from Australia publishing company in his basement, and to England, Lores undertook her last long taught his sons the tactics to survive. The distance expedition, the first solo flight from Beautiful Struggle is a moving father-son Australia to Cape Town. Drawing on diary story, about the reality that tests us and extracts, interviews and documents, Taking the love that saves us. Flight celebrates this audacious pilot’s aerial accomplishments. ON THE MOVE Oliver Sacks HIGH SEAS & HIGH TEAS A CHEF’S COMPENDIUM FOR HOME Picador. PB. $22.99 Roslyn Russell Few people can claim National Library of Australia. PB. $44.99 Mark Best to have made such a Free settlers from profound impact on Britain and Ireland For chef Mark Best, the art of cooking is to take a simple ingredient and the public endured raging seas, turn it into something beautiful. With this selection of more than 90 understanding of the the dazzling heat of recipes and techniques that he has developed during his 25 year career, brain and its inner the tropics and he shares how easily this can be done. workings. In this book, freezing temperatures Oliver Sacks describes as they journeyed to his time at Oxford Australia. They also University and the formed social communities, putting on plays, period he spent in San Francisco and Los developing sometimes lasting relationships 16 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 and taking part in wild nautical rituals. diverse as 1980s swearing, benefits, boarding the 22-city tour. It soon grew into a Art & Design Using diary entries and shipboard schools, and why the internet is like a restless full-length contemporary epic. newspapers, author Roslyn Russell gives a drunken toddler. Never afraid to address the Spurred by encounters with modern day with Margaret Snowdon vivid sense of what it was like to leave one big issues of the day, Caitlin also makes a North America, and racked by romantic life for another and sail across the world passionate effort to understand 21st century longing and exhaustion, Cave teases out HALF THE SKY into the unknown, with a foreword by society, presenting her ‘Moranifesto’ for the significant moments, the people, the Luise Guest Kerry O’Brien. making the world a better place. music and the books that have influenced Piper. HB. $69.95 and inspired him. It was Chairman Mao THE BOY WHO COULD who said, ‘Women hold Cultural Studies CHANGE THE WORLD ROAD SERIES up half the sky’. Author Aaron Swartz Hugo Race Luise Guest of White QUEER WARS Verso. PB. $34.99 Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 Rabbit Gallery, travelled Dennis Altman & Jonathan Symons In January 2013, Aaron Road Series is both love many times to China to Polity. PB. $28.95 Swartz, threatened with story and elegy, a true research and interview and revealing tale. the thirty-two women artists featured in Half The claim that LGBT 35 years prison for Renowned musician the Sky. The dynamic artistic centres of China rights are human rights downloading online Hugo Race’s evocations are producing some of the most interesting still encounters fierce journal articles, of Melbourne, Europe and compelling contemporary art of our time. opposition in many parts committed suicide at just and the USA, Berlin The approach in this new book is to allow the of the world. Queer Wars 26 years old. But in that and Eastern Europe, artists the space to reveal their ideas about explores the growing time he had reshaped the Italy, Brazil and Mali what drives their work, in their own words, international polarisation Internet, challenging our and Africa are poetic whilst at the same time placing their works in over sexual rights, and assumptions about copyright and intellectual and searching, always incisive and historical, social and political context. the creative responses property. Besides being a technical genius exquisitely written. Music and travel collide from social movements and activists, some of and a passionate activist, he was also an and coalesce, and the reader is given rare INSIDE STREET ART whom face murder, imprisonment or rape insightful critic of the politics of the internet. insights into what it means to devote one’s because of their perceived sexuality or gender This collection of his writings, spanning over MELBOURNE life to the musical journey, to traverse the expression. This book asks why sexuality and a decade, shows the passion and knowledge Allison Fogarty & Toby Fairbank world in search of true spirit. gender identity have become so vexed an of one of the most original minds of our time. T&H. HB. $19.99 issue between and within nations, and how Melbourne is the we can best advocate for change. Psychology Australian home of Politics street art. International OUTBACK PENGUIN visitors and locals alike Elizabeth Lane & Fiona Kells BLOOD YEAR NOT IN YOUR GENES flock to street art hot Black Inc. HB. $49.99 David Kilcullen Oliver James spots like Hosier Lane Richard Lane was one of Black Inc. PB. $29.99 Vermilion. PB. Available 3 March. $35 and Footscray to witness the evolution of these transient the three brothers who We have seen a ‘blood Using a number of streetscapes. From city laneways to public founded Penguin Books year’ – the rise of ISIS, famous and ordinary parks, and suburban shopping strips to in 1935. But before the splintering of people as examples, abandoned car lots, murals, stickers, stencils Penguin, Richard was a government in Iraq, and Oliver James drills and painted works of art can be found in boy migrant in rural a brutal Syrian civil war. deep down into the virtually every pocket of the city. Inside Australia, working the What went wrong? childhood causes of Street Art Melbourne is the ultimate land and enduring many David Kilcullen calls on our individuality, beginner’s introduction. Organised by hardships. His 25 years’ experience to revealing why our location and featuring an array of styles, you remarkable diary today stands amongst the make sense of the crisis. upbringing, not our can go on your own self-guided tour or take best descriptions, from the perspective of a What are the roots of the global jihad genes, plays such an a vicarious visual trip via the images of these boy migrant, of the ‘Barwell Boys’ movement? What threats does it pose for important role in our wellbeing and powerful and inspiring works of art. migration scheme, which brought scores of Australia? And what does a coherent success. The implications for individuals, young Englishmen to Australia. Richard’s families and societies are huge. Not In strategy look like? Blood Year is a vivid, LUMITECTURE diary vividly charts his life and loves, his urgent account of the war on terror by a Your Genes will not only change the way deepening appreciation for literature, and thinker who witnessed its evolution. you think about yourself and the people Anna Yudina his coming of age in a new land. around you, but give you the fuel to T&H. HB. $65 IN WARTIME change your personality and your life for Light makes an DAMNED WHORES AND Tim Judah the better. architectural space GOD’S POLICE Allen Lane. HB. $55 liveable, shapes it and guides us within it. The Anne Summers Seasoned war reporter Health role of light reaches well NewSouth. PB. $39.99 Tim Judah brings a rare beyond practical needs to Sexual harassment and glimpse of the reality create environments, emotions and spatial domestic violence had behind the headlines. THAT SUGAR GUIDE illusions. Some 200 projects are organized not been named or Along the way he talks to Damon Gameau into three sections: lighting that transforms understood when the people living through Macmillan. PB. $39.99 space; lighting that alters the experience of Damned Whores and the conflict – mothers, $29.99 time; and lighting that evokes emotion or God’s Police was first soldiers, businessmen, On the back of the psychological change. Projects range from published in 1975. It was poets, politicians – whose enormous success of design solutions to highly experimental or in this climate that Anne memories of a contested past shape their That Sugar Film and immersive experiences that induce Summers identified attitudes, allegiances and hopes for the future. That Sugar Book, physiological responses or use entirely new ‘damned whores’ and ‘God’s police’, the This urgent, insightful account of the human Damon Gameau sources of light, such as bioluminescence or stereotypes that characterised all women as side of the conflict in Ukraine is an evocative brings us That Sugar rarefied gasses. The glow from every page being either virtuous mothers or bad girls. exploration of what the second largest country Guide, the book for of this dense visual and design resource These stereotypes persist to this day, argues in Europe feels like in wartime. the legion of fans who will provide endless inspiration for the next Anne Summers in this updated version of asked for more recipes generation of designers and space-makers. her classic book. Who are today’s damned and more ideas for weaning themselves whores? And why do women themselves Music and their families off the white stuff. INSIDE HAUTE COUTURE still want to be God’s Police? Damon and his wife, Australian actor Zoe Desiree Sadek THE SICK BAG SONG Tuckwell-Smith, give us 80 brand-new Abrams. HB. $70 MORANIFESTO recipes and the kind of advice that is easy Nick Cave Inside Haute Couture offers Caitlin Moran for every family to integrate into their Text. PB. $24.99 a private tour of 10 meccas Ebury. PB. Available 10 March. $35 daily lives. The Sick Bag Song is an of French fashion. From the This is Caitlin’s engaging exploration of love, splendour of VIP reception and amusing rallying call inspiration and rooms to the privacy of for our times. Combining memory, shaped sewing ateliers, the daily the best of her recent around the events of lives of the most renowned columns with lots of new Nick Cave’s 2014 tour figures in haute couture are shown alongside writing unique to this of North America. It the skilled artisans and their stunning book, Caitlin deals with began life scribbled on creations. This book offers an unprecedented topics as pressing and airline sick bags during journey into a world often closed to the READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 17 public against the backdrop of the Food & Gardening exceptional architectural heritage of famous fashion houses. with Chris Gordon VINTAGE DETAILS SPICE JOURNEY: Jeffrey Mayer and Basia Szkutnicka ADVENTURES IN MIDDLE Laurence King. HB. $70 EASTERN COOKING This is a stunning Shane Delia collection of more than Murdoch. PB. $44.95 Was $49.99 600 beautifully $44.95 photographed details Following on from the from previously unseen popular television series, 20th-century vintage Spice Journey the book THE SILENT INHERITANCE THAT SUGAR GUIDE clothing. The images are takes readers on a Secrets lurking behind closed doors could On the back of the global phenomenon arranged by detail: necklines; collars; sleeves; whirlwind tour of be the key to saving the life of a young girl... that was That Sugar Film and That Sugar cuffs; pockets; fastenings and buttonholes; Middle Eastern food at Joy Dettman, author of the bestselling Book, comes That Sugar Guide, for those hems, darts, stitching and fitting devices; its best. Award-winning ‘Woody Creek’ series, keeps you compulsively who have kicked the habit and want pleats, frills, and flounces; embellishment; Maltese–Australian chef turning the pages with her signature dark inspiration, ideas and recipes for surface texture and print. Easy to navigate sugar-free living. Shane Delia, the poor man, journeys twists and turns and explosive family secrets. and packed full of inspirational images, this across six countries in the Middle East, in book will become an indispensable reference search of the most authentic and to vintage detailing for fashion design representative local recipes to bring back students and professionals. to his kitchen. Spice Journey offers 80 of these recipes distilled for the home cook, JUXTAPOZ WILD accompanied by hundreds of stunning Evan Pricco images shot on location. This is a coffee Gingko. HB. $52.50 table book of beautiful photos, achievable Juxtapoz Wild is a recipes and inspiration for a more contemporary examination colourful lifestyle. of why and how artists use the natural world in their ON TOAST: TARTINES, work. In some instances, like CROSTINI AND OPEN- Keyes, Ryan McLennan, and FACED SANDWICHES THE FORGETTING TIME THE COMPLETE MINDFULNESS Lara Ball, the work speaks to nature’s balance Kristan Raines Noah is four and wants to go home. COLOURING BOOK in the absence of humans. AJ Fosik, Laurel Quarry. HB. $24.99 The only trouble is he’s already there. The original colouring book for adults Roth and Dennis McNett all find strength and that started the worldwide trend – ‘When I wasn’t reading Sharon Guskin’s symbolic power in transforming animals into This may be the book The Complete Mindfulness Colouring Book The Forgetting Time, I was itching to almost folklorish heroes. And there are for you if you believe includes all of Emma Farrarons’ exquisite return to it.’ muralists like Jane Kim, ROA, Faith47 and the greatest meal you scenes and patterns for you to mindfully – JODI PICOULT DALeast who use the public arena to remind can have is a freshly and creatively fill with colour. us of the destruction of other species with sliced tomato on which we share the Earth. sourdough, or a www.panmacmillan.com.au smashed avocado with MODERN ART IN cracked pepper on top. The idea being that AMERICA 1908-68 the simplest of meals can be the platform for solving life’s problems. Or it may be William C. Agee that you are in a toast rut, or even that Phaidon. HB. $140 you’ve lost your way and need inspiration off A ground-breaking for keeping the simplest of meals zesty account of American and zany. This humbly presented book is % Bloomsbury modernism that unites full of excellent ideas. It is possible to have pre- and post- 1945 20 toast three times a day and still manage to American art in a cover all food groups. This is an enticing Revelations continuous narrative book that makes sense in a complicated spanning four world. generations of artists. American artists such as De Kooning, SORTING THE BEEF Rothko, Pollock and Warhol are amongst the FROM THE BULL: THE most famous mid-century modernists, but what underpinned their evolution? Written SCIENCE OF FOOD by one of the world’s experts in the field, in FRAUD FORENSICS an accessible and compelling style, this is a Richard Evershed & Nicole Temple must-read for students and scholars of Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 American art as well as all those interested If ever there was the perfect in modernism and its wider cultural history. book to inspire you to grow your own food, shop only at MAPPLETHORPE FLORA farmers’ markets and Mark Holborn et. al. locally owned delicatessens, Phaidon. HB. $200 then this is it. The authors Robert Mapplethorpe is of this book are not chefs, one of the twentieth they are detectives. Their century’s most influential aim is to show you what can and does and controversial happen out there in the big bad land of photographers. greed. Sorting the Beef from the Bull is a Beginning in 1973 and collection of food fraud tales from around until his death in 1989, the world. It explains the role of science in he explored the flower with extraordinary uncovering some of the century's biggest dedication, using a range of photographic food scams, and explores the arms race Thinkers who have fundamentally shaped the processes – from Polaroids to dye-transfer between food forensics and fraudsters as way we see the modern world. colour works. In carefully constructed new methods of detection spur more compositions, he captured roses, orchids, creative and sophisticated means of snapdragons, daisies, tulips and other species committing crimes. Food adulteration, – both common and rare – and forever motivated by money, is an issue that has transformed the way we perceive a classic spanned the globe throughout human and familiar subject. The complete flower history. If you pride yourself on living well, then read this book. Offer is available at our Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda and Malvern shops and online at readings.com.au. Only available images are collected in this elegant book that on a select range of in-stock Bloomsbury Revelations books, while stocks last. Offer ends 31 March 2016. is cloth-bound in a perfect dark crimson red. 18 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

Frost’s circus-themed illustrations make this pop-up, Baby Board Books fold down, pull out book something very special indeed. Middle Fiction PATTERN-TASTIC TREASURE MAGRIT HUNT: LEARN YOUR COLOURS Picture Books Lee Battersby WITH NATURE Walker. HB. $19.99 A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO Nan Na Hvass & Sofie Hannibal One Day a ‘horrible thing’ is Wide Eyed. BB. $19.99 BEAR SPOTTING dropped down into Magrit and Michelle Robinson Master Puppet’s home by a stork. Learn to spot different patterns with Bloomsbury. PB. $22.99 Master Puppet thinks it should be this nature-inspired treasure hunt, killed, Magrit wants to keep it. They which contains 80 first words to see Now, there are a few fun bear facts in this book and have their first big disagreement. and say. Turn the tabs of the chunky How can a ten-year-old girl look after boards book to discover a world of also a couple of practical hints about bear management if one a baby (the ‘horrible thing’ ), stripes, spots and spirals, then try to particularly if her home is a long spot the odd one out. Pattern-tastic were to encounter a bear but, really, avoidance, unless you are at forgotten, secluded cemetery? In this Treasure Hunt is visual learning made the zoo, is the best policy. haunting and beautifully written novel the surreal runs fun. However, just say you were headlong into reality as Magrit is challenged by a baby’s needs. However, she proves to be a resourceful if TECHNICOLOUR TREASURE HUNT: walking in the woods and came across a bear or two, this guide unconventional guardian and Bugrat (the baby) thrives. LEARN TO COUNT WITH NATURE may help or maybe you will be laughing too much to But as time passes the outside world threatens and Master Nan Na Hvass & Sofie Hannibal worry if a bear was about to eat you. The text can be Puppet’s initial foreboding feels prescient. Finally, Magrit Wide Eyed. BB. $19.99 instructive or plain silly, and the illustrations have all the is faced with some truths that are heartbreaking, and from which Master Puppet was trying to protect her. This Learn to count from one to ten with hallmark David Roberts’ brilliance, which makes this curious and poignant story will appeal to kids 8–11 years this nature-inspired treasure hunt, perfect for bear-loving children of 3 and up. of age who like a creepy little tale tempered with a whole which contains 80 first words to see Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Carlton lot of heart. AD and say. Turn the tabs of the chunky board book to discover all the colours SOMETHING WONDERFUL TIME TRAVELLING WITH A of the rainbow. With gorgeous and Raewyn Caisley & Karen Blair HAMSTER vibrant illustrations, Technicolour Viking. HB. $24.99 Treasure Hunt is a delightful visual Ross Welford Sam likes to pull things apart and learning experience. Harpercollins. PB. $14.99 put them back together, and think Under instruction from his about how things work. But he is deceased father, low-key, THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR’S sometimes so busy doing this, he likeable hero Al is caught riding a EASTER COLOURS forgets his chores on the family wave of action and criminal Eric Carle farm. Then one day he creates behaviour as he goes back in time to Puffin. BB. $12.99 something truly wonderful. An stop the go-kart accident that caused inspirational story about discovery, This book enables you to his father’s early death. invention and the importance of discover all the colours of Easter Al has a great relationship with dreams. with The Very Hungry his charming, robe-wearing, chai- Caterpillar in this bright and HATTIE HELPS OUT drinking Indian grandfather, and beautiful board book. Yellow a focus on family in this novel means the author has chicks, a white lamb – what are Jane Godwin, Davina Bell & Freya Blackwood created a warm and funny time-travel story that doesn’t all the colours of Easter? Let The A&U. HB. $24.99 ever come off as corny. Simple explanations of Einstein’s Very Hungry Caterpillar and A delightfully funny story about a theory are included within the text and this book friends take you on a rainbow tour of Easter colours in little girl with big ideas, from a nurtures an interest in scientific theory in its readers. this beautiful board book. Perfect for learning first winning combination of creators. Strong, thoughtful characters, along with plenty of wit colours with simple text and pictures, this chunky board It’s a busy day at Hattie’s house. and adventure, ensure it will appeal to a wide audience book is ideal for little hands. There’s a lot to do before Dad’s though. Great for ages 9 and up. birthday party. Hattie is being very Kim Gruschow is from Readings Hawthorn helpful, until it’s time for her Novelty afternoon nap – but she’s not even HAMISH AND THE NEVERPEOPLE sleepy! But Mama looks tired, very tired. Danny Wallace MEGALOPOLIS AND THE VISITOR S&S. PB. $14.99 FROM OUTER SPACE PIG THE WINNER Aaron Blabey Nobody knows it yet, but the people Clea Dieudonne Scholastic. HB. $16.99 of Earth are in big, big trouble. Like, T&H. HB. $35 huge trouble. Oh, come on, where’s Pig was a pug and I’m sorry to say, It seems French illustrators your imagination? Double what if he didn’t come first it would ruin just love to experiment you’re thinking! And it’s all got to do his day. Won’t he ever learn? Pig, with what picture books can do. with a shadowy figure, an enormous the world’s greediest Pug, won’t Megalopolis unfolds like a scroll tower, some sinister monsters, huge play fair. He’ll do anything to win! clanking and thundering metal to more than three metres long: Another laugh-out-loud book from oddballs, and people who are just like it’s a book not just for the eyes but for the knees and Aaron Blabey, the best-selling you … but not like you at all. Luckily elbows, too. When an alien from another galaxy arrives creator of Pig the Pug and Pig the Hamish and the PDF are around to help save the day! in Megalopolis the citizens are as fascinated by him as he Fibber. is by this new world. With a whiff of Jules Verne to this Aren’t they? playful adventure, there are fireworks and marching WARTHOG bands and games to play and cakes to eat and that’s just Birdie Black & Rosalind Beardshaw the welcome party. Readers aged 3–6 will want to Nonfiction Nosy Crow. HB. $19.99 explore Megalopolis again and again and again. When a plucky little warthog sets BE THE CHANGE, MAKE IT Mike Shuttleworth is from Readings Hawthorn out on an ill-advised solo HAPPEN adventure, he meets all sorts of Bernadette Russell THE GREATEST OPPOSITES BOOK fascinating creatures, from two Ivy. PB. $21.99 ON EARTH angry bees, all the way up to nine scared monkeys. Lift the flaps to Little actions that you make can have Lee Singh & Tom Frost big consequences. This book details Big Picture. HB. $29.99 count the hidden animals, and follow the ten muddy footprints all the little and large ways you can A fabulously clever lift-the-flap, which lead to one rather fierce-looking lion! Children will help make a difference, in your pop-up conceptual book about all the love this funny, rhyming story, with a die-cut cover plus neighbourhood, in your country and opposites inside a fun and magical flaps and holes to reveal hidden characters on every in the world. From helping the circus tent. Ingenious paper spread. planet through recycling and saving engineering and gorgeous artwork water, to promoting important combine to make possibly the most causes with awesome art exhibitions, fun opposites book for all ages. Tom and partying to raise money for charity, there are tons of ways for kids to get their voices heard and make an impact READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 19

Book of the Month

THE FAMILY WITH TWO FRONT DOORS Anna Ciddor A&U. PB. $14.99

What a treat it is to spend time with the Rabinovitches, a loving family living in Lublin Poland during the 1920s, a family so large they need two apartments, hence the two front doors: one blue, the other brown. Right there reader – what wouldn’t you give to be a fly on the wall! From the outset, the author’s friendly voice beckons the reader into the palpable excitement of this exuberant family. Whether it’s the feverish anticipation of a prospective wedding or the minutiae of everyday adventures everyone has an important role to play regardless of age and I quickly became part of the family, anticipating their fears, relishing in their joys and laughing at their mischief making. So well-drawn are the characters, it’s not surprising that this compelling book is based on fact – the ten-year-old ‘Nomi’ of the story was the author’s grandmother! The story is refreshingly joyous and satisfying, and a window into the fascinating rituals and traditions of an Orthodox Jewish family. But more significantly it celebrates the importance of family life and the curiosity of children. It’s warm and humorous and as delectable as the food within its pages.

Highly recommended for ages 9 and up.

Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern

New Classic of the Month MARY POPPINS P.L. Travers Harpercollins. PB. $12.99 Like a lot of kids, my first experience of Mary Poppins was of the spit-spot, spoonful-of-sugar, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious variety. I watched the Disney musical religiously, and was infatuated (and Kids’ impressionable!) enough to write my own letter to Mary Poppins and deposit it in the fireplace. I didn’t discover the ‘real’ Mary Poppins until I was in my teens, which meant that I was the perfect age to really appreciate the vain, snarky, half-wild creature she is in her literary incarnation. P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins is a wonderful contradiction – her severe appearance (shiny black hair, thin with large feet and peering blue eyes) and terse responses belie the magic that she has running through Books her veins. She’s stroppy and obstinate, whether she’s bobbing about on the ceiling taking tea or feeding the on issues that are important to them. Be the change, be a birds at St Paul’s Cathedral, and yes she might be able to hero. Anthology speak to animals, but she usually only employs it to give WHERE THE SHORELINE USED them a dressing down. Each chapter in Mary Poppins is THE OUTSIDE: A GUIDE TO a self-contained adventure, and while some are familiar DISCOVERING NATURE TO BE from the film, the book includes stories that are a bit more Maria Ana Peixe Dias, Ines Teixeira do Rosari Susan La Marca & Pam Macintyre fey, a bit less pretty. There’s Mrs Corrie who snaps off & Bernardo P. Carvalho Penguin. PB. $24.99 her barley-sugar fingers for treats, a nocturnal zoo where Frances Lincoln. HB. $34.99 A rich and unique collection of short the humans are caged for the animal’s enjoyment, and a Who does this footprint belong to? fiction, poetry, illustration and song shopping trip with a fallen star (Maia, the second of the What is this worm up to? What is the lyrics from Australia and beyond. An Pleides). The stories are illustrated by Mary Shepard, the name of this tree? Even if we live in encounter with a strange boy on a daughter of Winnie-the-Pooh illustrator E. H. Shepard, the city, nature is still all around us: beach, a dog in space, a world of and they have a similarly endearing 1930s nostalgia to clouds and stars, trees and flowers, butterflies, a talking whale, two girls them. Shepard’s Mary Poppins is based on a wooden rocks and beaches, birds, reptiles or who take on the world, and a thousand peg doll that P.L. Travers used to play with during her mammals. What are we waiting for? silver ghosts. Funny, dramatic and childhood in Queensland: straight up and down without Including activities and illustrations poignant by turns, and featuring both an ounce of softness. No nonsense. Much like Mary to get you started, The Outside established writers and exciting new Poppins herself. encourages the whole family to leave the house, and go out talent, Where the Shoreline Used to Be is a stunning collection Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager for Readings to discover the amazing world that exists outdoors. that will challenge and excite your imagination. 20 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

JUST KIDS BREAKING THE worked out the combinations that make a territory irresistible to the British, who Patti Smith CHAINS OF magic. With over 200 perfectly simple plundered everything. Exiled to England, recipe ideas, this book will unlock a whole Sophia was raised a genteel aristocratic Audiobook (CD). Was $79.95 GRAVITY new world of fantastic food. Englishwoman. But after a secret trip back Now $19.95 Amy Shira Teitel to India, she returned a revolutionary, In this audiobook, hear HB. Was $35 THE LITTLE devoting herself to the struggle for Indian Patti Smith reading her evocative, honest Now $12.95 FRIEND independence and women’s suffrage. and moving coming-of-age story, and of her NASA’s history is a familiar story, peaking Donna Tartt This enthralling story introduces an extraordinary relationship with the artist with Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon PB. Was $24.99 extraordinary figure in both British and Robert Mapplethorpe. Just Kids begins as in 1969. But America’s space agency wasn’t Now $12.95 Indian history. a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves created in a vacuum. It was assembled from Twelve-year-old Harriet is as a salute to New York City during the late pre-existing parts, drawing together some of doing her best to grow up, which is not THE BEST OF sixties and seventies and to its rich and the best minds the non-Soviet world had to easy when her family is still suffering from ROSE ELLIOT poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, offer. Breaking the Chains of Gravity tells the the shocking and mysterious death of her Rose Elliot it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a story of America’s nascent space program, brother Robin twelve years earlier. So when HB. Was $59.95 prelude to fame. its scientific advances, its personalities and Harriet and her friend Hely set out on a the rivalries it caused between the various Now $19.95 quest to find Robin’s murderer and punish CO-MIX arms of the US military. With more and more him, what starts out as a child’s game soon Art Spiegelman of us choosing to reduce our meat becomes a dark and dangerous journey HB. Was $59.99 DRUNK TANK consumption, The Best of Rose Elliot is a into the menacing underworld of a small Now $15.95 PINK timely compilation of the very best that Mississippi town. vegetarian cuisine has to offer. Notable In an art career that now Adam Alter for her dependable, uncomplicated and spans six decades, Art PB. Was $19.99 KILL CHAIN trustworthy dishes, Rose Elliot’s food Spiegelman has been a Now $10 Andrew Cockburn is nevertheless imaginative, stylish and groundbreaking and influential figure with Most of us go through life HB. Was $40 mouthwatering. With flavours from around a global impact. Co‑Mix is a comprehensive believing that we are in Now $12.95 the world and recipes for entertaining and career overview of the output of this control of the choices we make. But in fact Kill Chain uncovers the real busy weeknights in, vegetarian food takes legendary cartoonist, showing for the our environment shapes our thoughts and and extraordinary story of on a whole new identity. first time the full range of a half-century actions without our permission drone warfare, its origins in long- of relentless experimentation. Including or knowledge. Armed with buried secret programs, the ABSOLUTE essays by film critics and curators, the surprising data and breakthroughs that made RECOIL book demonstrates how he has persistently endlessly fascinating drone operations possible, cross-pollinated the worlds of comics, examples, Adam Alter Slavoj Zizek and the powerful commercial design, and fine arts. illustrates that the HB. Was $39.99 interests – military, Now $16.95 truth behind our CIA, and corporate – VIVIENNE feelings and actions In this major new work, that have led the drive WESTWOOD goes much deeper leading philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues to kill individuals by Vivienne Westwood than the choices Bargain that philosophical materialism has failed remote control. Most we take for granted to meet the key scientific, theoretical & Ian Kelly importantly of all, the every day. and political challenges of the modern HB. Was $49.99 book describes what Now $15.95 world, from relativity theory and quantum Table happens when the theories physics to the failure of twentieth-century Vivienne Westwood is FOCUS underpinning the strategy – Communism. To bring materialism up to one of the icons of our age. The fashion Daniel and the multibillion-dollar date, Zizek proposes a new foundation for designer, activist, co-creator of punk, global Goleman contracts they spawn – are put to the test. dialectical materialism. In Absolute Recoil, brand and grandmother is a true living PB. Was $19.99 Zizek offers a startling reformulation legend. This is her story, told for the first Now $10 THE GLAMOUR of the ground and possibilities of time in all its glamour and glory and with Psychologist and journalist OF ITALIAN contemporary philosophy. her unique voice, unexpected perspective Daniel Goleman delves into the science FASHION and passionate honesty. Biographer Ian of concentration, boiling down attention HYMNS FROM Kelly highlights the life and works of one research into three parts: inner, outer, and Sonnet Stanfill (ed.) of the major influences of our age in this other focus. Using a variety of case studies, HB. Was $69.99 THE SOIL Now $19.95 wonderful, insightful collaboration. Goleman shows why high-achievers need Vikas Khanna all three kinds of focus, and the kind of Showcasing the fashions that turned ‘Made HB. Was $59.99 in Italy’ into an internationally recognized PROVENCE smart practices – mindfulness meditation, Now $19.95 mark of style, this beautiful book brings AND THE positive thinking, and mental ‘prosthetics’ – Michelin-starred chef together stunning fashion photography, Vikas Khanna writes COTE D’AZUR that help them improve habits, add new archival material, and previously unseen about the lessons he’s learnt from Mother Janelle McCulloch skills, and sustain excellence. objects from private collections to explore Nature, how the changing seasons inspired PB. Was $49.99 Italian style. Essays from experts reveal the him to cook and to combine flavours. Now $13.95 A FORCE FOR inspiration, reputation and craftsmanship GOOD of the designers, labels and tailors of the Vegetarianism has always been integral A trip through the to Indian culture and it has become a Daniel Goleman Italian fashion industry. enchanting landscapes and villages of preferred way of life the world over. Vikas PB. Was $19.99 the south of France, from the grand brings together traditional time-tested architecture of Nice to the breathtaking Now $10 TOUR DE FRANCE 100 recipes, handed down over generations, gardens of Menton and the striped beach For decades, the Dalai and conjures up exciting new recipes that chairs and cocktails of St Tropez. After 20 Lama has travelled the world, meeting with Peter Cossins et al. will surprise you and your family. years exploring Provence and the French people from a wealth of countries who differ HB. Was $59.95 Riviera, journalist and photographer Janelle greatly in their background, social status and Now $19.95 THE ORIGINS McCulloch has discovered all of its gems and viewpoint, bringing them his own individual Published to mark the OF ITALIAN shares them in this beautiful guide. wisdom and compassion. Now, the Dalai 100th anniversary of the world’s most FASHION Lama gives us his vision of a better future, gruelling, fiercely contested and famous BENARES: one that puts the concerns of humanity at cycle race, this is a lavish guide. It contains 1900–1945 MICHELIN large, and explains how we can get there. comprehensive profiles of 100 of the Tour’s Sofia Gnoli STARRED most famous stages, each featuring unique, PB. Was $39.99 COOKING HUGH’S detailed computer-generated artworks Now $12.95 of the route, along with key facts, figures The Origins of Italian Fashion examines Atul Kochhar THREE GOOD and information that together produce a the history of Italian fashion from the HB. Was $59.99 THINGS multitude of facts and stories – a fitting beginning of the twentieth century, when Now $15.95 Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall celebration of a unique sporting event. Lombard tailor Rosa Genoni created the Atul Kochhar’s unique, world-class cuisine first Italian fashion house, to World War is showcased in this beautiful book of HB. Was $50 Now $15.95 SOPHIA II, when the Fascist regime co-opted recipes from his Michelin-starred kitchen. Anita Anand fashion as a propaganda tool. Illustrated How often have you wished there was a 80 signature dishes reflect the excellent food with archive material from designers magic formula to simplify cooking? Well, PB. Was $29.99 ethos that Atul has created using the best Now $12.95 and magazines, this book concentrates of British produce with his modern Indian there is – put three good things together on In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh showcases the pioneering Italian fashion style. Every aromatic desire is explored on a plate and, somehow, the whole is always was born into royalty – her designers whose influence continues to a journey to the heart of Benares, revealing greater and more delicious than the sum of father the heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, be felt today. exotic fusions and dazzling flavours. its parts. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 21

New Film & TV MACBETH matter how high the cost or how low he $39.95 falls, makes for compelling viewing. If with Lou Fulco ‘Manages to be faithful to Luther is falling anywhere, it’s right back DVD of the Month Shakespeare’s gloriously into place.’ – The A.V. Club evocative language while WAR AND PEACE taking the play in a new THE Available 9 March. $29.95 visual direction, toward DRESSMAKER Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the classic of classics. Andrew Davies is deep-red fire, brimstone, and Grand $39.95 perhaps the man most synonymous with adapting classics for the Guignol gore and savagery.’ ‘A winning, whacky, hugely BBC. Davies brought us the yardstick by which every other Sunday – Entertainment Weekly enjoyable slice of Australiana night period drama will be forever judged, 1996’s Pride and Prejudice. It that begins with a whisper gives this new BBC 6-part adaptation of War and Peace a very high bar and ends with a heck of a bang ... a big, to clear, and I think it just does. TV boisterous period comedy driven by a thirst War and Peace opens on a misty romantic-looking field that, as it comes into focus, for revenge, a desire for romance and a reveals an army amassing in the countryside. Napoleon is moving through Austria, and the UN VILLAGE hunger to entertain.’ – 3AW Russians are standing with their Austrian allies. In this moment though, the Russian nobility FRANCAIS: is unconcerned. Russia hasn’t lost a war in a hundred years and nothing need change. VOLUME 3 Documentary “The Englishness of the cast is at first jarring. It sounds Available 9 March. $49.95 ‘Some of the most well- THE WALK meaning people collaborate, like Austen or Dickens with Russian names, but this soon $39.95 and some of the bravest resisters are works to the production’s advantage.” downright unpleasant. It’s a subtle, ‘The absolutely true and historically accurate but not unsympathetic genuinely amazing story of We are introduced to the main players in a drawing room, as young Pierre enters and look at ordinary people suddenly tested by Philippe Petit, a decorated disrupts the smooth order of things with his clumsiness. The Englishness of the cast is war, defeat and enemy invasion.’ – The New French high-wire walker… at first jarring. It sounds like Austen or Dickens with Russian names, but this soon works York Times is a genuine visual wonder to behold. The to the production’s advantage. It emphasises the disconnect between the Russian Court Walk puts you right at the shoulder of Petit (which in the preceding 100 years had adopted French as its language, in an effort to be MR. ROBOT: as he goes from one terrifyingly beautiful more European) and the Russian people. Many nobles were unfamiliar with their own SEASON 1 centimetre to the next.’ – The Herald Sun language and wholly separate from their surrounds. Yet the outside world swoops in to $39.95 dominate the action at every turn. STRANDED ‘A cyber-age thriller infused Pierre’s father dies, and Pierre unexpectedly inherits a noble title and fortune. The $24.95 with a dark, almost nihilistic scene could be an eighteenth-century oil painting: dark, sumptuous, rich, and static. Later, ‘A truly fascinating [look] at pessimism about the Internet, as Pierre is betrayed, he flees through his new home into an empty ballroom as blinding the Brisbane punk scene of capitalism and income inequality. And that as snow. Everywhere the immensity of Russia overwhelms. This is the achievement of the ‘70s through the lens of makes it kind of fun.’ – The New York Times this production: it brings to life the vast scope of war and peace as it presents these small their progenitors The Saints, players in a huge landscape. MASTERS OF who became accidental heroes and embroiled Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton in the global scene just by railing against the SEX: SEASON 3 local backdrop.’ – TheMusic.com.au $44.95 ‘Masters of Sex remains THE FASHION Film a slick vehicle, one that COLLECTION thoughtfully examines the $44.95 relationship between sex and romance that The Fashion Collection BRIDGE OF SPIES SPECTRE Masters and Johnson sought to uncoil – far contains the stars of the cinematic runway. Available 2 March. $39.95 Available 9 March. $39.95 less effectively, it’s worth noting, than either Enter Anna Wintour’s fabulous and frenzied ‘Bridge of Spies is one of ‘A slick, beautifully of them would care to admit.’ –Variety VIP world with The September Issue; peek the most dexterous and photographed, action-packed, ‘behind-the-seams’ at the making of Raf pleasurable films of the international thriller with LUTHER: Simons’ first haute couture collection with year; a fine example of Spielberg’s unique a number of wonderfully, ludicrously SEASON 4 Dior and I; be inspired by the rags-to-riches late style, which shows a grasp of viewer entertaining set pieces, a sprinkling of $19.95, or Seasons 1–4 $59.95 journey of Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer; psychology any marketing guru might envy.’ dry wit, myriad gorgeous women and a ‘John Luther’s compulsion and hear from famous beauty icons in About –The Sydney Morning Herald classic psycho-villain.’ – The Chicago Sun-Times to chase rough justice, no Face: Supermodels Then and Now.

THE LADY IN THE VAN Now Showing (M) SPEAR Opens March 10 (M) THE WITCH Opens March 17 - Exclusive to Nova (MA15+) Adapted from Alan Bennett’s award-winning stage production, A ground-breaking work from Bangarra Dance Theatre's Stephen In 1630s New England, a farmer is cast out of his colonial THE LADY IN THE VAN is a wryly funny and moving look at the joys Page telling a contemporary Aboriginal story through movement plantation and forced to move his family to a remote plot of and lows of letting a stranger in need set up camp in one’s life. and dance. It follows a young Aboriginal man Djali (Hunter Page- land on the edge of an ominous forest. Almost immediately, Lochard) as he journeys through his community to understand what strange and unsettling things begin to happen - the animals The legendary Maggie Smith reprises her stage role as Mary it means to be a man with ancient traditions ina modern world. turn violent, the crops fail, and one of the children disappears, Shepherd, the original, cantankerous (and slightly mad) woman only to return irrevocably changed. THE WITCH is a truly creepy who forced herself into Bennett’s life when her broken down old MEET THE FILMMAKER special event: and heart-stopping thriller that unspools like the harshest of van appeared in his London street. screening and Q&A with Director Steven Page. Puritan fables. Sunday 13 March, 4pm. Book online or ★★★★ – The Guardian. at the Cinema Nova box office. ★★★★★ – Time Out

380 Lygon Street Carlton Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema cinemanova.com.au 22 READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016

New Music RISING WITH THE SUN Kang, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston in re-imagining time-honored The Cat Empire gems from the big and small screen. Album of the Month Available 4 March. $19.95 TENDERLY DIG IN DEEP Recorded over the course of 2015 in Stacey Kent Bonnie Raitt Melbourne, Rising with $29.95 Was $26.95 the Sun expands on The Cat Empire’s new Tenderly, an intimate $21.95 sound, first heard on 2013’s Steal the Light, collection of jazz What Bonnie Raitt has created on her 20th studio album is and its reputation for spontaneous, singable standards, sees Stacey a mastering of all of her talents as musician, singer, music. With songs fine-tuned on stages Kent revisit the Great songwriter, producer, band leader and interpreter of great songs. throughout Europe, the new material on American Songbook, the repertoire for Her choice of songs – five written by Raitt herself – fall into a Rising with the Sun feels explosive, joyous, which she first became known. The album blues, R&B, and rock pocket, with a hint of New Orleans thrown and custom built for festivals. sees Stacey performing alongside legendary in for good measure. As a bottleneck-blues-slide guitarist with no peer and a singer with a voice composer–guitarist, Roberto Menescal – recognisable though slightly worn (that’s not a bad thing), she has taken all of her 45 years as an one of Brazil’s most important twentieth- artist, dug in deep and produced one of the finest albums of her varied career. Nostalgia century musical figures, the founding Lauded as the critics’ darling and loved by musicians and hardcore fans alike, she spent father of Bossa Nova, record producer, and her first 9 albums building a body of work that was worthy of any career, but it wasn’t winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award at until her 10th album in 1989, Nick Of Time, that she was finally recognised commercially NOEL COWARD: HIS the 2014 Latin Grammy Awards. for her melting pot of smooth-blues-inspired soul. Luck of the Draw followed in 1991 and HMV RECORDINGS continued the momentum. Well, there have been another 10 albums and it seems as if, just Noel Coward GOD DON’T NEVER when everyone had forgotten that she has been producing wonderful albums, she comes 4CDs. $32.95 CHANGE through again with an album set to resonate as widely as Nick of Time did. These recordings from Various I must confess that when I heard the second track, her interpretation of INXS’s ‘Need the HMV archives, $26.95 You Tonight’, I was confused. It is a unique interpretation of a much-loved song, but I spanning 25 years, show A stunning didn’t understand why she had chosen to do it. Then, BANG! Tracks 3, 4, and 5 had me Coward’s remarkable collection of artists grooving to classic Raitt. Great songs! By the end of the album I had to press play again. career. Arranged mostly in chronological and performances Surrounded by her touring band of many years, she grooves in the original space she carved order and consisting mostly of Noel’s own celebrate the timeless for herself, inimitable and comfortable. And by the third listen, ‘Need You Tonight’ starts to solo recordings, more than 70 of the 80 appeal of legendary gospel bluesman sound like a Raitt classic. Dig In Deep puts Raitt at the top of the tree again, exactly where tracks here feature Noel singing his own Blind Willie Johnson. With transcendent she deserves to be. Fans would say she never left. songs, and chart the legendary Englishman’s recordings from Sinead O’Connor, Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn transition from wartime troop concerts to Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits and many his flourishing post-war cabaret career. more, God Don’t Never Change speaks as much to the greatness of the artists as FALCON Country their performances do to the enduring Pop & Rock legacy of Blind Willie Johnson. The Glorious $19.95 CAYAMO SESSIONS I LONG TO SEE YOU PAINTING WITH Falcon is the third AT SEA Charles Lloyd & The Animal Collective record from The Marvels Was $26.95 Glorious, a tour de force Buddy Miller & $26.95 $22.95 of beautifully crafted, Friends Iconic saxophonist Animal Collective’s melodic and deeply affecting songs. $21.95 Charles Lloyd continues tenth studio album Swaggering grooves sit alongside bruised, On Cayamo Sessions his innovative trajectory follows on from 2012’s mournful ballads, hypnotic incantations At Sea, award-winning into the upper spheres of jazz and the Centipede Hz, and features contributions and even a shimmering pop chronicle of guitarist, singer– spiritual realms of wonder and beauty from John Cale and Colin Stetson. Warm a journey into deep space. It is all made songwriter and producer Buddy Miller with I Long to See You, a sumptuous and personal, kaleidoscopic and high seamless by the restrained, uncluttered enlisted some of his talented pals to record collection of ten songs ranging from from definition, concerned with art (cubism, production of singer–songwriter David with him on the Cayamo concert cruise in traditional hymns to anti-war folk protests Dadaism, and the distorted way those Mather and long­time collaborator Julian 2014 and 2015. Recorded entirely at sea, to re-envisioned originals that appeared artists viewed the world) and the human Mendelsohn. the album includes collaborations with on his earlier recordings, with guest vocals experience, and the meeting of both, Kacey Musgraves, Brandi Carlile, Lucinda from Willie Nelson and Norah Jones. Painting With is elemental, joyous, and MORE RAIN Williams and many more. unmistakably Animal Collective. M. Ward LIVIN’ ON A HIGH NOTE Available 4 March. FULL CIRCLE Mavis Staples AFTER WHAT I DID LAST $TBC Loretta Lynn $21.95 NIGHT… M. Ward’s eighth solo Available 4 March. Mavis Staples has been Henry Wagons affair picks up the $19.95 a soul and gospel music $21.95 tempo and volume a Full Circle is the first bit from his previous releases. Initially new studio album in legend for more than 50 After many years of imagined as a DIY doo-wop album that over ten years from years. With Livin’ On A fronting the floor- would feature Ward experimenting with American music icon Loretta Lynn, taking High Note, she delivers the most joyful and fracturing outlaw band layering his own voice, it soon branched listeners on a journey through her musical uplifting record of her career. It features Wagons, Henry has out in different directions, resulting in a story, from Appalachian folk songs and 12 original songs written exclusively for taken his unique storytelling and knack collection of upbeat, sonically ambitious gospel music, to new interpretations of Mavis by some of the finest songwriters of of outlaw melody to a Nashville studio, yet canonically familiar songs that both her classic hits and country standards, to our time including M. Ward, Ben Harper, surrounding himself with Tennessee’s propel Ward’s reach and satisfy longtime songs newly-written for the project. At 83 Neko Case, Nick Cave, John Baptiste, Justin finest noise makers to record his first ever fans. years old, Lynn’s voice sounds as powerful Vernon, Aloe Blacc, and more. full-length solo album. After What I Did as ever. Last Night... is a kaleidoscopic songwriting SIDE PONY journey that harnesses Wagons’ swag, Folk & World charm and mystery. Lake Street Dive $19.95 Jazz, Blues, & Soul OUROBOROS Side Pony, Lake Street MUNDO Ray LaMontagne Dive’s debut release WHEN YOU WISH UPON Mariza Available 4 March. on Nonesuch records, A STAR $26.95 $19.95 takes its name from Bill Frisell Portuguese fado artist a song on the record that refers to a Mariza returns with Grammy Award-winner $29.95 whimsical hairstyle, but it also serves her sixth studio album, Ray LaMontagne’s sixth Guitarist Bill Frisell as a metaphor for Lake Street Dive’s Mundo, her first new studio album, Ouroboros, draws upon the classic philosophy and personality as a band. release in over 5 years. The new record, shows the folk-blues singer–songwriter film and television music, Recorded fast and loose in the studio, produced by Grammy award-winning pushing himself in different directions and and the way it shapes and the Boston four-piece embrace the Spanish producer Javier Limón, features 14 to new heights. Produced by Ray and Jim informs our emotional relationships to what unorthodox, experimenting with sound, songs that combine traditional Portuguese James of My Morning Jacket, the album we see. Frisell, whose own music has been arrangements and songwriting like music with jazz, blues, tango and flamenco, was written by LaMontagne and features featured in major motion pictures, performs never before. resulting a truly pan-European folk sound. the inspired lead single, ‘Hey No Pressure.’ with singer Petra Haden, violist Eyvind READINGS MONTHLY MARCH 2016 23

New Classical Music accounts of scores which, if no longer confined to the fringes of the repertoire, have yet to command universal Classical Album of the Month admiration … playing with almost intimidating dexterity and polish, not to THE KISS mention impeccable intonation [Frang’s] music-making still manages to project an Nicole Car impression of honesty and naturalness’ ABC Classics. 4812371. $21.95 – Gramophone I first heard soprano Nicole Car ten years ago at a master class in Melbourne. Her voice was beautiful. The THE COMPLETE conductor turned to the audience and said, ‘Melbourne sure CONCERTO RECORDINGS knows how to produce a good singer!’ And he was right. Car, Narciso Yepes unlike many young Australian singers today, trained almost DG. 4795467. exclusively in Melbourne. She eschewed the well-worn path 5CDs. $49.95 of study at a UK conservatoire and subsequent participation in a European young artist Spanish guitar legend program, and yet she is blessed with a glorious voice and a budding stellar international Narciso Yepes, who career. Last year, Car made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, singing was known for his Tatyana in Eugene Onegin. And this is the music she presents on her debut album, The outstanding technical abilities and his fine Kiss. Another anomaly: rather than a recital disc or a collection of obscure orchestral songs, artistic judgment, recorded exclusively for Car has aimed right for the heart of the lyric-soprano repertoire, and, in doing so, has Deutsche Grammophon for more than 20 pitted herself against the greatest singers today and of the last fifty years. years. This collection brings together all Alongside Slavic arias, Car sings such favourites as Mimi’s ‘Si, mi chiamano Mimi’ of his concerto recordings for the Yellow from La Bohème – a role she recently performed with Opera Australia. How does Car Label, recorded between 1969 and 1979. compare? Not only does she hold her own against the competition, she sings with The repertoire ranges from Vivaldi Lute intelligence and individuality. Her voice is smooth and full, and, on the higher notes – Concertos adapted for guitar to works such as the climactic B flat at the end of Dvorák’s ‘Song to the Moon’ – the sound freely written for Yepes and other leading unfolds and blossoms. It’s sumptuous and lovely and deserves repeat listenings. My guitarists of the 20th century. personal favourite, however, is the opening ‘Jewel Song’ from Faust. Car exuberantly portrays the young Marguerite, enchanted by her own beauty, while maintaining metronomic and tonal accuracy. Car’s voice really is uncommonly beautiful, and I MY TRIBUTE TO YEHUDI wonder what the next ten years will hold for her. MENUHIN Daniel Hope Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton DG. 4795305. $21.95 This year marks the LALO: SYMPHONIE transports you back in time to when there 100th anniversary of was unmatched elegance and an outpouring violin legend Yehudi ESPAGNOLE; SARASATE: Menuhin, and Daniel ZIGEUNERWEISEN; of such beautiful music that you still hear it performed today. Formed two decades ago, Hope dedicates a complete album to his & BRUCH: VIOLIN the Seraphim Trio are some of the most former mentor and close friend. Hope CONCERT0 NO. 1 dedicated musicians you’ll hear. Not only do says Menuhin is the reason he became a Renaud Capuçon, they all have full time jobs (in different violinist. This new album is a beautiful Paavo Jarvi & states!), they work tirelessly to bring classical selection of works, mostly commissioned Orchestre de Paris music and particularly chamber music to the by or for Yehudi Menuhin, including Erato. 2564698276. forefront of the Australian musical scene. Reich’s Duet for 2 Violins and String $21.95 Their new recording comes from a Orchestra and Henze’s Adagio. year touring Beethoven to every corner of During the early stages of composition Australia. They performed the complete BERG: LYRIC SUITE; Max Bruch wrote to his teacher, ‘I do Beethoven Piano Trios in every place WELLESZ: SONNETS FOR not feel sure of my feet on this terrain. Do imaginable – concert halls, pop up stages, ELIZABETH BARRETT you think that it is very audacious to write a libraries, schools and even train stations. BROWNING; violin concerto?’ Audacious or otherwise, What is immediately apparent from the first ZEISL: KOM SUSSER TOD strains of music that emerge is that they Bruch’s violin concerto has now become one Rene Fleming& of the most often recorded and performed, know every single note and what to do with it. Not only that, but they adore every single Emerson String not to mention famous, in the repertoire. Quartet Although Bruch himself was not Jewish, the note. The care and precision is just delightful, Decca. 4788399. $24.95 dedicatee and premiere violinist, Joseph particularly in the first piano trio where you ‘Fleming sings with Joachim, was, and to my ear the music can feel the spirits of Haydn, Mozart and velvety evenness, reveals distinct Ashkenazi folk influences. Beethoven blending to create something threading her vocal line through the As such, any soloist requires a certain truly magnificent. Don’t miss this album of swirling strings ... But it’s the performance chutzpah – a quality that virtuoso violinist Beethoven; it will capture your heart. of the whole work by the Emersons that Renaud Capuçon has in spades. Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings is so remarkable; there is much more Alongside his brilliant interpretation emotional directness, less of the usual of the Bruch, Capuçon delivers equally HAYDN: SYMPHONIES armour-plated efficiency about their impressive performances of Lalo’s NO. 78–81 playing, and that, combined with the total Symphonie Espagnole and Sarasate’s Ottavio Dantone & technical assurance, suits the world of late Zigeunerweisen. The latter is a particular Accademia Bizantina Berg perfectly.’ – The Guardian triumph. Not only is he a nimble and Decca. 4788837. energetic violinist, but his precision in the 2CDs. $36.95 J.S. BACH: VIOLIN faster passages is astonishing. Capuçon Accademia Bizantina CONCERTOS reels the music off as though, rather than under the direction of Cecilia Bernardini, being fiendishly difficult, it’s a mere trifle. Ottavio Dantone have released a stunning Dunedin Consort & The Orchestre de Paris, under Paavo Järvi, new album of Haydn Symphonies, Nos. John Butt deserves a special mention for its unified 78–81. This little-known quartet of Haydn and assured – but never overpowering – symphonies 78-81 date from the years Linn. CKD519. $29.95 sound. Be sure to make room in your CD 1782-1784. It is the first time Symphonies Dunedin Consort’s collection for Capuçon’s fabulous recording No. 79 and 81 have been recorded on formidable reputation of Bruch’s ‘audacious’ violin concerto. AM period instruments. for performing Bach is set to scale new heights with this highly anticipated SERAPHIM TRIO: BRITTEN & KORNGOLD: recording. Dutch-Italian violinist Cecilia BEETHOVEN TRIOS VIOLIN CONCERTOS Bernardini takes a break from leader duties as she steps into the spotlight to deliver a Seraphim Trio Vilde Frang virtuoso performance under the direction ABC Classics. 4811980. Warner Classics. of Bach specialist John Butt. $21.95 254600921. $21.95 With a flourish the ‘These are urgently new Seraphim communicative, Trio recording potentially transformative off 20% Bloomsbury Revelations

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