Issue #251 December 2010 Ars Sacra Prime Minister’s Rolf TOMAN Book launch Literary Awards 800pp Hb $350 Join Patrick Wilcken for the launch of his new book. Christianity is the most widespread Wednesday 15 December 6-8pm Fiction religion in the world. This beautiful Light refreshments will be served. Dog Boy volume pays due tribute to its art No RSVP required. Eva HORNUNG Pb $23.95 and architecture; a comprehensive compendium presenting just under 2,000 years of Claude Levi-Strauss Four-year-old Romochka is left Christian art, from early Christianity to the present The Poet in the alone in a dark, empty Moscow day. Sumptuous illustrations allow you to come Laboratory apartment. After a few days, within grasp of the displayed objects and leisurely Patrick WILCKEN hunger drives him outside, indulge in the details. Excellently researched text where he sees a large, yellow dog lopingoping pastpast 384pp Hb $59.99 highlights the specifi c changes in the sacral art, and follows her to her lair on the outskirts of the Levi-Strauss was one of the architecture and culture over the centuries. For city. During the seasons that follow, Romochka most infl uential intellectuals of further inspiration visit our website to view a video changes from a boy into something far wilder. the 20th century. His ideas and showing production of this opulent tome. A feast for methods inspired the work of Michel Foucault, Young Adult Fiction the senses! Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan, and arguably changed the face of Western thought. He argued Confessions of a Liar, Quarterly Essay #40 that the “savage” mind had the same structures as Thief and Failed Sex Trivial Pursuit: the “civilised” mind and that human characteristics God Leadership and the End are the same everywhere. These observations Bill CONDON Pb $18.95 of the Reform Era culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques, Neil Bridges attends a Catholic George MEGALOGENIS which positioned him as one of the central fi gures boys’ school in which teachers rule 144pp Pb $19.95 in the structuralist school of thought, where his ideas reached into fi elds including the humanities, with iron fi sts and thick leather straps.ps Some boys boys In the aftermath of the 2010 sociology and philosophy. Drawing on interviews crumble under the pressure, but Neil toughs it out, election, this essay considers with Levi-Strauss himself, Wilcken explores and just as his Vietnam-bound older brother has done what has happened to politics in Australia. Have explains his ideas, revealing the man behind them before him. He has to be a man, after all. But at we entered a new phase with minority government to be a writer and artiste manqué, who injected an 16, how can he be sure of himself when he’s not and the rise of the Greens and independents? artistic sensibility into academia, using imagery sure of anything else? He loses a friend and fi nds The Hawke, Keating and Howard years were and ideas worthy of a poet. another, falls in love, and unwittingly treads a path ones of bold reform; recently we have seen an that leads to revenge and possibly murder... era of power without purpose. But why? Is it down to powerful lobbies, or the media, or a failure of Children’s Fiction leadership, or all of the above? And whatever the case, how will hard decisions be taken for the Star Jumps Abbey’s Gift Cards are the answer! future? In a brilliant analysis, the author dissects Lorraine MARWOOD available in any amount Pb $14.95 the cycle of polls, focus groups and presidential A verse novel told through the eyes politics, and explores what it has done to the of a young girl depicting the joys prospect of serious, diffi cult reform. Christmas Hours and heartbreaks of a farming family Suddenly, Last Winter as they struggle to cope with the devastatingvastating Regular trading hours except: effects of long-term drought. An Election Diary December Bob ELLIS 400pp Pb $32.95 Non-Fiction 11 Sat 8am - 8pm Just as Ellis’s last book, One 12 Sun 9am - 6pm The Colony Hundred Days of Summer (Tp $32.95), about Tony Abbott’s 13-15 Mon-Wed 8am - 7pm A History of Early Sydney ascension to the Liberal 16-17 Thu-Fri 8am - 9pm Grace KARSKENS Pb $45 leadership, was ready to hit the 18 Sat 8am - 8pm A ground-breaking history of shelves, the nation was stunned 19 Sun 9am - 6pm the colony of Sydney in its to witness Labor suddenly call time on Kevin 20-22 Mon-Wed 8am - 9pm early years, from the sparkling harbourbour to the Rudd’s Prime Ministership and replace him with 23 Thu 8am -10pm Cumberland Plain, from convicts to the city’s Julia Gillard. When the rural independents swung 24 Fri Christmas Eve 8am - 7pm political elite, from the impact of its geology to its their support behind Gillard, Ellis was there, 25 Sat Christmas Day closed economy. chatting to them between the closed-door meetings 26-28 Sun-Tues 10am - 5pm that decided the government. This is another 31 Fri New Year’s Eve 8.30am - 5pm diary of an extraordinary period in Australian January political history, as ever combining Ellis’s insider Books - understanding with caustic wit. 1 Sat New Year’s Day closed Where Ideas Grow 3 Mon Public Holiday 10am - 5pm www.abbeys.com.au 1 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 FICTION Sunset Park Shall We Dance? Paul AUSTER Maggie ALDERSON How it Feels 320pp Hb $32.99 432pp Tp $32.95 Brendan COWELL In the sprawling fl atlands of On the eve of her dreaded 234pp Tp $32.99 Florida, 28-year-old Miles is 49th birthday, Loulou Landers, An electrifying coming-of-age photographing the last lingering London’s undisputed Queen of story from actor/screenwriter/ traces of families who have Vintage Fashion, meets a man. director Brendan Cowell. In the abandoned their houses due to He’s kind, he’s sensitive, he’s claustrophobic Cronulla of the debt or foreclosure. He is haunted divinely handsome and he carries a designer suit early 90s, four friends - an old by guilt for having inadvertently caused the death like George Clooney. Unfortunately, he’s barely friend, a best friend, a fi rst love, of his step-brother, a situation that caused him half her age, and Loulou’s just not ready to ‘go and the dreamer Neil who connects them all - to fl ee his father and step-mother in New York cougar’. Then there is her 21-year-old daughter, celebrate their fi nal exam results. But this single seven years ago. What keeps him in Florida is Theo, who won’t get a job, won’t move out, wears night changes things forever. A decade later - when his relationship with a teenage high-school girl, chain-store fashion and hasn’t said a civil word to one is dead and one is famous - the truth cannot Pilar, but when her family threatens to expose their her for years. So how will she cope with a daughter help but erupt. I couldn’t help wondering how much relationship, Miles decides to protect Pilar by going who’s off the rails, a man who won’t take no for of this is based on Cowell’s own experiences, but back to Brooklyn, where he settles in a squat to an answer, an ageing process that won’t slow either way, I could not put down this painfully true, prepare himself to face the inevitable confrontation down, not to mention a birthday party in a camping brutally honest, novel. Christos Tsiolkas calls it “a with his father that he has been avoiding for years. ground? Like she always has – with wit, grit and an lacerating, blackly comic novel about the suburban As mythic as it is contemporary, this is a story exemplary sense of style. masculine psyche, but it also extends a warmth about love and forgiveness, not only among men and understanding to contemporary society that and women, but between fathers and sons. Mary Ann in Autumn confronted my prejudices and forced me to look at Armistead MAUPIN the world anew. Cowell’s voice is truthful, without Hand Me Down World 320pp Tp $32.95 any condescension. A smashing novel – urgent, Lloyd JONES The brilliant new episode in the challenging and humane”. Agreed. - Annabel 336pp Tp $32.95 magical Tales of the City series. A woman washes ashore in Sicily. “Everything around her was Preincarnate She has come from north Africa to familiar but somehow foreign to her Shaun MICALLEF fi nd her son, taken from her when own experience, like a place she 192pp Hb $29.95 he was just days old by his father had seen in a movie but had never actuallyactually visited.visited Australia’s pre-eminent comic and stolen away to Berlin. With She had climbed these weathered steps - what? - Renaissance man turns his genius nothing but her maid’s uniform and a knife stashed thousands of times before, but there wasn’t a hint to novel writing. Suppose you in a plastic bag, she relies on strangers - some of homecoming, nothing to take her back to where were murdered and woke up 300 generous, some exploiting - to guide her passage she used to be. The past doesn’t catch up with us, years earlier in someone else’s north. These strangers tell of their encounters with she thought. It escapes us...” Mary Ann Singleton body. Wouldn’t you put yourself a quiet, mysterious woman in a blue coat - each returns to San Francisco a very different person in suspended animation and be re-awoken in account a different view of the truth, a different from when she left.