June new - Readings

Transcription

June new - Readings

JUNE 2013
F r ee
Simmone Howell on Fiona Wood / Mel Campbell on Miles Franklin
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Books
music
film
events
J UNE n e w
releases
Neil
Gaiman
$27.99
p8
Philipp
Meyer
$32.95 / $27.95
p5
Fiona
Wood
Silver Linings
Playbook
$39.95 / $34.95
p17
Laura
Marling
$26.95 / $21.95
p18
more inside...
Cover illustration by pat grant
$16.99
p4
Graphic Novels! Ronnie Scott on Art Comics, Peanuts, Chip Kidd & more...
COVERED IN MONSOON MUD AND INVITED INTO
A LOCAL’S HOME FOR YAK-BUTTER TEA.
TIBET, 1999.
SHARE YOUR TRAVEL STORY TO WIN!
lonelyplanet.com/shareyourtravelstory
To enter, purchase a Lonely Planet book with a promotional sticker
from Readings and enter online before 30 June 2013.
CARLTON 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 HAWTHORN 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952
ST KILDA 112 Acland St 9525 3852 READINGS AT THE STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA 328 Swanston St 8664 7540
READINGS AT THE BRAIN CENTRE 30 Royal Parade, Parkville 9347 1749
See shop opening hours, browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au
2
R e a d i n g s M O N T H LY j u n e 2 0 1 3
This month’s news
COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE
REGIONAL WINNERS
The regional winners of the 2013 Commonwealth
Book Prize have been announced. The winning
titles, by region, are Sterile Sky by E. Egya
Sule (Africa), Island of a Thousand Mirrors
by Nayomi Munaweera (Asia), The Death of
Bees by Lisa O’Donnell (Canada and Europe),
Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (Caribbean)
and The Last Thread by Michael Sala (Pacific).
The judging panel, which included our very
NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS: 3 FOR 2
If you’re a lover of the classics, then you’ll be
glad to hear that we’re running our annual Naxos
AudioBooks sale again in June. Buy any two
Mark’s
Say
Naxos AudioBooks from our featured range and
News and views from Readings’
managing director, Mark Rubbo
receive a third (of equal or lesser value) free. From
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman, we have hours of wonderful
stories to choose from. Offer available at our
Carlton, Hawthorn and St Kilda shops.
Last month, we mentioned some interesting new fiction coming out later this year and I’ve been
alerted to two other major titles to look forward to. Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan has a new
own Books Division manager Martin Shaw,
novel in September, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which borrows its title from the Japanese
made their announcement in May, awarding
poet Basho’s seventeenth century travel memoir. It’s partially set in a Japanese labour camp in 1943.
each winning author prize money of £2500. See
Chris Womersley, author of the acclaimed Bereft also has a new novel due in September, Cairo.
more on the regional winners on page 6.
It centres around the theft, and return, of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of
Victoria. Chris’s publisher, Scribe, will be publishing Cairo under their UK imprint.
HAPPINESS & ITS
CAUSES CONFERENCE
Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom has always had an interest in featuring international books on
his lists (last year, for example, he acquired the National Book Award-winning Behind the Beautiful
Happiness & Its Causes is one of the world’s
Forevers by Katherine Boo). When a slot came up at the Faber Factory Plus, a sales and distribution
leading forums on the causes of a happy and
meaningful life. Now in its eighth year, the
conference will be hosted in Melbourne for the
first time on 19 and 20 June, and Readings is
thrilled to be the official bookseller. The conference
will feature more than 35 amazing speakers,
including the world’s foremost expert on the
science of life satisfaction Professor Ed Diener,
acclaimed psychologist and researcher in the
field of motivation Professor Carol Dweck, and His
Holiness the Dalai Lama. For more information,
visit www.happinessanditscauses.com.au.
MADMAN FESTIVAL AT HOME
DVD SALE
Together with Madman, we’re excited to
announce Festival at Home, a new project
that offers cinephiles the opportunity to curate
their own film festival. To participate, simply
choose any five titles from our hand-picked
selection of critically acclaimed DVDs, slide
them into one of the specially designed box
sets, and they are all yours to take home
for just $59.95. Titles include Melancholia,
BLOOMSDAY IN
MELBOURNE FESTIVAL
The Trip, Animal Kingdom, In the Loop, Bill
Cunningham New York and more. Offer
available at our Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda
The Bloomsday in Melbourne festival will
celebrate its 20th year at fortyfivedownstairs
and Malvern shops until the end of June.
service in the UK for independent publishers, Henry jumped at the chance, although not without some
trepidation. Scribe plan to publish a small list overseas. This will consist of their Australian releases,
like Cairo, where appropriate, and they have also started acquiring rights to publish international titles
in the UK, Europe and Australia. At the recent London Book Fair, Scribe picked up UK and Australian
rights to some major US titles. They included New York Times bestseller, The Way of the Knife by Mark
Mazzetti, which describes how the lines between the CIA and the American military have been blurred,
and The Book of Woe by Gary Greenberg, a critical look at the psychiatrist’s bible, the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This comes out appropriately just after the release of
the latest edition, the DSM-5, which has been ten years in the making. The DSM-5 has already been
creating waves with its reclassification of Asperger’s syndrome as an autistic disorder, and is sure to
cause further controversy.
Scribe are not the only Australian publisher to venture into international waters. Lonely Planet was the
first successful organisation to become a truly international, Australian-based publisher. Trade publisher
Hardie Grant have also had a UK presence for some years and have recently come to an arrangement
with US publisher Rizzoli to move into that market. Sandy Grant, one of the principals of Hardie Grant,
has extensive UK experience, having been CEO of Reed Publishing in the late 90s. Hardie Grant’s
from 12 to 16 June. The festival pays tribute
high quality illustrated books have found a niche in the UK. Scribe’s foray is different in that they will
to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and this year
concentrate on serious non-fiction and some literary fiction. Perhaps some other publishers will follow –
comprises of four events: a series of readings,
Text, maybe, as their new shareholders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, maintain a base in London? In any
a dinner and a seminar, as well as a play
case, I wish Scribe and our other Australian publishers well as they venture further abroad!
directed by Wayne Pearn, The Seven Ages of
Joyce, which dramatises Joyce’s tumultuous
and free-spirited life while drawing on his often
hilarious and always mercurial fiction. To book
for the play, visit www.fortyfivedownstairs.com or
phone (03) 9662 9966. For general information,
visit www.bloomsdayinmelbourne.org.au or
phone (03) 9898 2900.
Readings Monthly is a free independent monthly newspaper
published by Readings Books, Music & Film.
Editorial enquiries:
Jessica Au at jessica.au@readings.com.au
Advertising enquiries:
Ingrid Josephine at ingrid.josephine@readings.com.au or
call 03 9341 7739.
Design by Sonja Meyer www.sonjameyer.com.au
Thank you to Readings staff members and contributors for
your reviews.
CINEMA
Leonardo DiCaprio Carey Mulligan Tobey Maguire
The highly-anticipated new film from Baz Luhrmann
“AnGROUP
ambitious
thriller
assisted
BOOKINGS
AVAILABLE
IN BOTH 3D AND 2D!
by excellent performances” Empire
NOW SHOWING
NOVA
Oslo Davis
www.oslodavis.com
RECOMMENDS
Visit the Cinema Nova Bar
380 LYGON ST CARLTON
www.cinemanova.com.au
Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera,
National Theatre and other stage spectaculars.
Léa Seydoux
Diane Kruger
Virginie Ledoyen
Director
Benoît Jacquot
lavishly adapts
Chantal Thomas'
novel on the
final days of
Marie Antoinette
“An ambitious thriller assisted
★★★★by SBS
Film
excellent
performances”JUNEEmpire
6, EXCLUSIVE
R e a d i n g s M O N T H LY JUNE 2 0 1 3
Meet
the Bookseller
June Events
Gabrielle Williams, Readings Malvern
For more information and updates, please visit the events page at
www.readings.com.au. Please note bookings do not necessarily
guarantee a seat and some events may be standing room only.
World
environment
day
14
Join us at Readings Carlton on World
Environment Day. The Wilderness Society will
announce the winner of the 2013 Environment
Award for Children’s Literature, which honours
books that promote caring and responsibility
for the environment. Previous winners include
Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch, Jackie French
and Sue deGennaro.
Singer-songwriter and exquisite musical stylist
Monique diMattina will perform from her brand
new album, Nola’s Ark ($24.95), featuring an
all-star cast of musicians.
Free, but please book on 9347 6633 or at
events@readings.com.au.
Friday 14 June, 6pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
Free, no booking required.
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Monique
diMattina
Justin
Clemens
Join us for the launch of Justin Clemens’s
Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy
(Edinburgh University Press, PB, $44.99).
Alain Badiou described psychoanalysis
as an ‘antiphilosophy’ – a practice that
offers the strongest possible challenges to
thought. Now, Justin Clemens examines
psychoanalysis under this rubric, examining
the relationships of humans to drugs,
animality and sexuality.
What was your favourite book as
a kid?
I adored Paddington Bear. From the moment
I read about him sitting at the train station
with ‘please look after this bear’ pinned
launch
5
to his coat, I felt utterly protective of him.
His penchant for marmalade sandwiches,
the fact that he was from deepest, darkest
Peru, the respect he got from the local
For bookings, please visit
www.happinessanditscauses.com.au.
Wednesday 19 & Thursday 20 June
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition
Centre, South Wharf, Southbank, 3006.
Wednesday 12 June, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
13
launch
Paul
Fearne
Join us for the launch of A Schizophrenic
to Strindberg: An Unanswered Letter, Paul
Fearne’s epistolary novel addressed to the
famous nineteenth-century playwright
August Strindberg.
Thursday 13 June, 5.30–7pm
Readings at the Brain Centre, Dax Centre
30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3052.
launch
launch
I loved Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (me
and about a bazillion other people)
and I thought Harvest by Jim Crace
Join us for the launch of Anthony R. Jansen’s
thriller Severed Past. Fourteen years ago,
computer expert David Hayes surfaced from a
terrible car crash with amnesia. It seemed like
an accident, but was it? His search for his true
identity will take him across Europe and bring
him into contact with the formidable Company.
was spectacular, but they’ve both been
pipped at the post by Malcolm Gladwell’s
Outliers, which I just finished reading.
It’s a fascinating insight into what makes
humans tick – and tick successfully.
Name a book that has changed
the way you think, in ways small
or large.
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Australian
Impressionists
in France
In celebration of the NGV’s latest exhibition,
we are delighted to invite you to a special
conversation with the curator of Australian art at
the NGV and author of Australian Impressionists
in France (NGV, PB, $39.95), Elena Taylor, and
the assistant curator of Australian art, Humphrey
Clegg. They’ll look at the visual journeys of
Australian artists who left for France in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917
or at events@readings.com.au.
Readings Hawthorn
701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.
20
Readings Hawthorn
27
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633
or at events@readings.com.au.
Thursday 20 June, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
I have to go back to Outliers. While it may
be that this book is the first thing that
comes to mind because I’ve only just
finished it, I’m seriously and constantly
astonished by what he has to say. I’d even
use the word gobsmacked. Gladwell’s
research and writing has completely
changed the way I look at everything.
Brown Brothers
Winter Poetry
Festival
What’s your favourite book?
Our winter poetry festival continues and as
the nights get colder, the verse gets warmer.
This session features multi-award winning
poet and critic Jill Jones, writer and artist
A. Frances Johnson, and emerging poet
Caroline Williamson.
I can’t name a favourite book because that
would feel disloyal to all my other favourites,
although I will admit to loving Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights. This novel is still the
most intense, Gothic, intuitive exploration of
human nature that I’ve ever read. (Just don’t
tell all my other favourite books I said that.)
Talkin’
Graphic Novels
Join Bernard Caleo of Cardigan Comics,
Dr Elizabeth MacFarlane of the University
of Melbourne and graphic novelist Nicki
Greenberg (of The Great Gatsby and Hamlet
fame) as they discuss the power of the
unwritten word, and the next wave in comics.
launch
launch
Join us for the launch of Robin Jeffrey’s The
Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap
Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics
and Daily Life (Hurst, HB, $45). This is a
multidimensional tale of what happens when
a powerful and readily available technology
is placed in the hands of a large, still
predominantly poor population.
Anthony
R. Jansen
Readings Carlton
28
launch
12
Robin
Jeffrey
bargain, his partiality to ‘elevenses’ – I mean,
he was completely beguiling.
Readings Hawthorn
26
shopkeepers because he drove a hard
What’s the best book you’ve
read lately?
Brother
Johnstone
Join us as local band Brother Johnstone
launch their brand new album, Ghost, a
mesmerising soundscape of indie-folk
hooks, laid-back grooves and acoustic rock,
produced by the ARIA award-winning
Chris Thompson.
Friday 28 June, 6pm
Readings St Kilda
112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182.
launch
Join us for the launch of a very special young
adult debut, The Whole of My World (Random,
PB, $18.95) by Nicole Hayes. Desperate to
escape her grieving father and harbouring her
own terrible secret, Shelley disappears into
the intoxicating world of Aussie Rules football,
joining a motley crew of footy tragics. Finally,
things seem to be working out, if only she and
her team can keep winning.
Happiness & Its Causes is one of the world’s
leading forums on a happy and meaningful life.
This year’s conference features more than 35
amazing speakers, including special guest His
Holiness the Dalai Lama.
launch
Nicole
Hayes
Readings Carlton
launch
19-20
Happiness &
Its Causes
Conference
launch
6
launch
Readings Carlton
GOLD COIN DONATIONS: We’re now asking people who attend our events to please make a small gold coin donation, when
possible, to The Readings Foundation. There will be a tin for donations at each event. All contributions over $2 are tax deductible.
Thank you for your support.
Why do you work in books?
Working in a bookshop is like conducting
my own mini-marketing research every
day. As a writer, I’m fascinated by what
motivates readers to choose certain books.
Is it zeitgeist, word of mouth, reviews,
literary awards? What? So every day I get
to go to work and talk to customers about
books, while secretly grilling them on their
book-buying habits. Oh, and also, I love
books. Or did I mention that already?
What’s the best experience you’ve
had in a bookshop?
Having someone come up to the counter
and say, ‘I’m looking for a book by someone
called Gabrielle Williams.’ It’s happened a
couple of times and each time I look around
to see if someone’s set me up, to see if the
guys from Punk’d are lurking behind the new
release section.
3
4
New Australian Writing Feature
Fiona Wood won readers
over with her debut novel,
Six Impossible Things,
which was also shortlisted
for the 2011 CBCA Book of
the Year Awards. Wildlife, a
loose follow-up, tackles
teenagehood, contraband,
sex, survival and moving on in the theatre
of the great outdoors. Here, she talks to
Simmone Howell.
F
iona Wood’s much-loved debut, Six
Impossible Things, was a funny and
forensic look at the life of 14-year-old
nerd-boy Dan Cereill. The novel worked
through his impossible love, his depressed
mother, his gay dad and his dying dog. In her
sophomore release, Wildlife, Wood opens the
tent fly on teenage social and sexual mores at
a private school’s outdoor education campus.
The year tens at the prestigious Crowthorne
Grammar have the dubious honour of spending
their fourth term at Mt Fairweather in the
Victorian highlands. There they will partake of
the fresh air, consider their relationship with
nature, run a lot and NOT be alone with the
opposite sex. Ostensibly. If you ever went on
school camp, you may remember the lack of
privacy, the strain of the share, the realisation
that your body was built to embarrass you.
If not, consider Wildlife an education and a
serious entertainment.
Wildlife alternates between narrators
Sibylla and Lou. Early on, Lou observes that
‘If you ever
went on school
camp, you may
remember the
lack of privacy,
the strain of
the share, the
realisation
that your body
was built to
embarrass you.
If not, consider
Wildlife an
education
and a serious
entertainment.’
Me, You
and
Everyone
We Know
Simmone Howell interviews Fiona Wood about her
latest YA novel, Wildlife.
camp ‘is functional, but also concerned with
appearing to be functional’. Yet this description
could easily apply to herself and Sibylla,
both of whom are outwardly calm while a sea
rages within. Sibylla’s recent appearance on a
billboard (as the face of a perfume called Jeune
Femme Sauvage) has elevated her status from
class nondescript to Person of Interest. Now that
she’s uncharacteristically kissed golden boy
Ben, she must navigate all that tricksy romance
stuff in the ‘fishbowl’ camp environment. Sibylla
is egged on by Holly, who is a ‘good friend but
a mean enemy’ and looked after by Michael,
her ‘weird’ friend. Lou is the new arrival, staying
in the same house. She’s a girl with a secret:
she’s grieving the death of her boyfriend, Fred,
who was killed in a road accident. Lou is at Mt
Fairweather to heal, but healing is a long way
off: ‘My heart is its own fierce country where no
one else is welcome.’
Wildlife is a companion book of sorts
to Six Impossible Things. Lou had a smaller role
in SIT, but remained for Wood a character who
lived off the page.
Wood explains, ‘Lou and Sibylla’s
stories were separate ideas that ended up
intersecting. I wanted to write about Sibylla,
a character in a state of flux who’s being torn
between old and new friends, and finding those
worlds hard to reconcile. As well, I had loved
writing Lou and Fred in Six Impossible Things,
and wanted to spend more time with one of
them. So when I started thinking about what
sort of friend Sibylla needed, it was someone
like Lou. And to get Lou into a different school,
something had to have changed in her life. The
thing that changed was someone dying. Having
lost someone she loved, she then became
uniquely situated to help Sibylla.’
Wood’s great strengths are voice and
characterisation. The girls’ voices are distinct,
though they share the sophistication/bluff
dialectic that, to me, spells Teenage. Reflecting
on Fred’s death, Lou notes, ‘So much swings
on shitty timing.’ Lou’s voice, bleak in the first
half of the novel, then growing warmer, tempers
Sibylla’s parabolas of insecurity. Post party,
and post kiss with Ben, Sibylla’s mind rolls on:
‘What’s it going to be like seeing him today?
My lips still tender, chin scratched. It had to be
a casual hook-up, right? A party thing? Please,
party-fling fairy, oh please visit and tell me what
face to put on this morning.’
Initially, both Sibylla and Lou are
focused on their own dramas but as the weeks
progress and camp-life infiltrates, change
begins to happen. Lou develops a friendship
with Michael, and Sibylla realises that what she
thinks she wants is actually what somebody
else wants. Through Lou, she is presented
with an alternative friendship to the one she
has with Holly. Increasingly, each girl delivers
commentary on the actions of the other. And
the reader feels privy to the happenings – it’s a
royal-court-ish kind of feeling. Meanwhile, the
students are studying Othello, and jealousy,
manipulation and betrayal are happening all
around them.
Wildlife is a novel concerned with
getting through, or over, things. Wood says that
the setting helped to push the theme. ‘Initially
an outdoor education campus was appealing
simply because it was a place away from
parents, texting and Facebook. But wilderness
also suggests the Romantic Movement and the
primacy of emotion and feeling over reason.’
There is a classicism to Wood’s
writing that makes sense when she reveals her
teenage reading. She cites Charlotte Brontë,
Nancy Mitford, Jane Austen, Lynne Reid Banks
and F. Scott Fitzgerald as influences. ‘Books
were so vivid and offered such compelling
say youth is youth, fads change but feelings
stay the same. If I stretch my memory I can
alternatives to my actual (so-called) life at that
age.’ And yet, Wildlife sits firmly in the world of
contemporary young adult fiction. Wood writes
picture my own school camp at Somers in
year 11. Somewhere there exists a photograph
about sex and desire with cool-headed clarity:
‘Because I was going there, I also wanted
to say a few things around the topic – from
remembering about safe sex, to ‘drunk means
no’, to GLBTG are all normal. At certain ages,
you probably don’t want to listen to parents
or teachers talking about sex, but if you come
across it in fiction, that’s fine. By dealing well
with sex and sexuality, YA fiction can help to
counteract homophobic and misogynistic
attitudes that still abound.’
As a writer who is often faced with
the old head/young heart question, I always
of a four-bed cabin packed with flaming youth
and nary a smoke alarm in sight. There was
jealousy, laughing so hard that I thought
I’d die, hopeless crushes, daggy teachers,
pranks, theatre sports and contraband.
Reading Wildlife brought it all back in a mad
flood with art and insight and beautiful lines.
It’s a truly satisfying read.
Simmone Howell is the author of Girl
Defective (Pan Macmillan). She likes op
shops, sand dunes, polished ﬂoorboards, girl
gangs, freesias, old records and chocolate.
Find her at www.simmonehowell.com.
New Fiction
book
of
the
month
The Son
Philipp Meyer
Vintage. PB. Was $32.95
Special price $27.95
Review: If John Wayne were still alive, he’d
be salivating. For Phillipp Meyer’s second raid on
the American heart is the story of Texas, where
strength, men, dust, violence, gunpowder, cattle
and oil come together to shine in a blood-soaked
cowboy state. Meyer’s first novel, American Rust,
took place in a dilapidated small town. In stark
contrast The Son is a broad sweeping epic that
traverses multiple generations, with enough
horror and violence to rival Cormac McCarthy’s
Blood Meridian. But this is not simply a tale of
war and incoherent brutality; it’s about what it is
to be American.
The McCulloughs are a powerful
Texan dynasty, and each chapter is narrated
by a different family member, decades apart.
Their patriarch is one of the most formidable
men in Texas, known as The Colonel. He was
kidnapped by Comanche Indians as a boy, and
reared on the plains of war and battle cries. Eli is
renamed Tiehteti by the Indians, and eventually
lives to be 100 years old. His years spent with the
Comanche are narrated until the 1870s, where
the story shifts into the hands of his son Peter.
Told through journal entries from 1915-17, Peter
is haunted by the murder of a neighbouring
Mexican family. The third voice is Jeannie, the
Colonel’s great-granddaughter, who wanders
through her memories from the floor of the family
mansion after suffering a fall in 2012.
You can almost feel your own scalp
being ripped off by the complexity of such
a long-sweeping narrative, but Meyer kindly
includes a genealogy for us to return to. After
all, it’s family he is concerned with, and the vast
differences between siblings and the choices (or
lack of) available to them. Meyer dissects this
idea through Texas – the classic American son –
where ‘the strong must be encouraged, and the
weak allowed to perish’.
Luke May is a freelance reviewer
Australian
Fiction
Now Showing
Ron Elliott
Fremantle Arts Centre Press. PB. $29.99
Review: Now Showing is
quick, punchy and pulls you
from page to page like a series
of explosions. That is, it takes
you to the movies. Ron Elliott’s
second book comprises of five
long short stories – novellas,
really – that depict a relationship drama in the
desert, a botched mafia job, a post-office heist
gone wrong, the mishaps of a gambler and a
crazy sociopath who can’t handle not getting his
way. All of this is peppered with sharp dialogue
and plenty of guns – some of them homemade.
Elliott is a screenwriter by trade and
these stories are the result, in his own words, of
‘adapting backwards’. That is, transforming his
unpublished screenplays into prose. ‘They taste
a little like films,’ he says in the introduction,
and ‘if you don’t like movies, you won’t like
these stories’. For Elliott hasn’t just rewritten his
film ideas in the short story form, he’s actually
attempted to retain the cinematic nature of the
original screenplays, focusing on the traditional
three-act structure; short, crosscut scenes; a
sense of immediacy; and the inscrutability of a
character’s inner thoughts.
I confess, I was initially sceptical – but
it worked. When I visualised the stories as if I
were watching them on television, they really
came to life. Dialogue and description that
would’ve perhaps seemed wooden in a more
traditional novel seemed incredibly vivid and
convincing when I imagined it being enacted by
the characters on my favourite TV shows.
Elliott states that the stories aren’t for
literary consumption, but are for reading while
consuming popcorn, which I think is an apt
description. The speedy, action-packed nature
of the stories means you can read through
them quickly without missing anything, and
have clear, colourful imagery in your head at the
same time. A very fun read.
Julia Tulloh is a freelance writer and a PhD
candidate in American Literature.
A Wrong Turn at the
Office of Unmade Lists
Jane Rawson
Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95
Review: Picture Melbourne
in 2030 – what do you see?
Jane Rawson paints a bleak
picture. There’s a heatwave,
clean water is hard to come by
and disparity of wealth is rife.
UN troops are a common sight
and basic necessities like food and soap are
expensive. The landscape is almost apocalyptic
as you’re guided through it by Caddy.
As a narrator, Caddy is charming in
her bluntness, living off the streets and getting
by on what she can. She once had a husband,
a home and a cat, before an explosion on the
Maribyrnong River left her to fend for herself.
Now, she sleeps in a humpy on the riverbank,
living day to day. She has no perceivable goals
for the future and spends most of her time
dreaming of a different reality.
Jump back to 1997, San Francisco.
Two kids, Sarah and Simon, have been sent to
see America. Not just to see it, but to stand in
every 25-foot square of the country.
Although the book deals with some
pretty big ideas, Rawson manages to integrate
them into an endearing narrative. Sustainability is
one of the issues raised. 2030 is not that far away,
but realistically what resources will still be readily
available to us? Characters ask for water in a bar
but realise beer will be cheaper. Caddy relies on
drinking boiled river water, which isn’t clean but is
the only source she has access to.
Playing with the idea of parallel
universes and reality versus the imagination,
the plot of this book is unpredictable, to say the
least. This is Jane Rawson’s first novel. She is
currently the section editor for environment and
energy at The Conversation.
Ella Mittas is a freelance reviewer
From
the
Books
Desk
—Martin Shaw,
Readings Books Division Manager
Late last year, I was very honoured to be invited to join the judging panel for the Commonwealth Book
Prize, an annual award for a best first novel from member countries. We were asked to choose winners
from the five Commonwealth regions, and from those five to also elect an overall winner. So it was that in
early January we began to whittle down an 80-odd longlist, which by late April became a shortlist of 20,
and finally just five. Needless to say it was a staggering amount of reading. But it was also fascinating to
look at books from such diverse parts of the world, including some countries that have only a modicum
of the literary apparatus that we take for granted in Australia. I was also struck by how literature functions
differently in different societies: a novel that emerges from war-torn Nigeria or Sri Lanka, for instance,
is very unlikely not to bear traces of such conflict. Of course, one of the Australian shortlistees – Majok
Tulba’s Beneath the Darkening Sky – is also marked in this way, as he tries to make sense of the
homeland he escaped as a teenager, Sudan.
I would of course recommend all of the winning titles to you very highly. From Australia, there’s Michael
Sala’s wonderful The Last Thread, which one of my fellow judges described as ‘deeply touching’ and
‘unforgettable’. Sri Lankan-born Nayomi Munaweera writes a heartfelt and utterly magical reckoning
with her homeland in Island of a Thousand Mirrors, and Scot Lisa O’Donnell has The Death of Bees,
which takes on a confronting issue – parental neglect and abuse. The novel transports us through with a
dramatic opening scene, and contains some of the most tenderly-drawn and endearing characters I’ve
encountered in fiction in a long while.
Turning to June releases, we have some exciting new novels by Philipp Meyer, Colum McCann and
Rachel Kushner. Also, there is a welcome retrospective of James Salter’s wonderful short fiction, Collected
Stories, which is likely to be an essential volume for all fans of contemporary American literature. In
non-fiction, Anne Summers’ The Misogyny Factor explores the relevance and meaning of the term in
contemporary Australian society. Meanwhile, Mel Campbell examines the fashion industry in Out of Shape,
and how sizing and fit is a social construct. ‘It’s about bodies and ideals, reflections and distortions, gazes
and doubts,’ reflects our reviewer, Jessica Au.
Finally, our pick of Australian fiction this month is a young adult novel: Fiona Wood’s Wildlife. It's a followup to her enormously successful Six Impossible Things, and there’s a veritable clamour around it here at
Readings pre-publication. Our children’s book buyer Emily Gale simply says, ‘Amazing!’
WHO WE WERE
just_a_girl
Text. PB. $29.99
UWAP. PB. $24.99
Melbourne, 1938. Annabel’s
dream is to be a scientist. Falling
in love is not part of her plan. But
when she meets Bill Whitten, she
knows instantly that they are
destined for each other. After the
war, the newlyweds emigrate to
New York, where they meet Frank, an exCommunist from Hungary, and his playwright
wife, Suzy. Frank, Annabel and Bill find work as
microbiologists, experimenting with lethal
infectious diseases. But it’s the 1950s and the
Cold War is in full swing, with suspicion, paranoia
and deceit threatening to unravel everything.
Layla is only 14. She cruises
online. She catches trains to
meet strangers. Her mother,
Margot, never suspects, even
when Layla brings a man into
their home. Margot is caught in
her own web: an evangelical
church and a charismatic pastor. Meanwhile,
downtown, a man opens a suitcase and
tenderly places his young lover inside. A
Puberty Blues for the digital age, just_a_girl
tears into the fabric of contemporary culture
and explores what it’s like to grow up in a
world of Facebook, webcams, internet porn
and cyberbullying.
Lucy Neave
The Asylum
John Harwood
Random. PB. $32.95
Georgina Ferrars wakes to find
herself in a private asylum.
She has no memory of the
past six weeks. Dr Straker, the
charismatic physician in charge,
tells her that she has suffered a
seizure – and that her name is
not Georgina Ferrars, but Lucy Ashton. Her
protests only serve to convince the doctors that
she is in the grip of ‘hysterical possession’ and
Georgina is certified insane. With no money,
and no one she dares trust, Georgina is left with
only a stubborn determination to find out what
happened during those missing weeks, no matter
how terrifying the consequences.
Kirsten Krauth
Poetry
Novelties
Fiona Hile
Hunter Publishers. PB. $19.95
Novelties is a collection that
resonates with wildlife, love and
literature – the traditional
Australian ballad is thwarted
through playful language to
provide a counterfeit narrative,
the history of love is seized and
re-written, and an easel is a guillotine for writing
poems about nature. This is prize-winning poet
Fiona Hile’s first full-length collection.
5
6
COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE:
REGIONAL WINNERS HIGHLIGHTS
Island of a Thousand Mirrors
Nayomi Munaweera (Sri Lanka)
International
Fiction
THE FLAMETHROWERS
Rachel Kushner
Harvill Secker. PB. Was $32.95
Asia Perera Hussein Publishing House. PB. $22.95
A few months after the 1983 riots, a Sinhalese family leaves Sri Lanka for
America. The two children, Yasodhara and Lanka, adapt to their new life
quickly, but memories of their childhood on a tropical island are seared into
their souls. Meanwhile, Saraswathi, living in the middle of a war-torn
country, is struggling to be a teenager in a land that is anything but normal.
Review: It’s possible that,
in another life, I lived in New
York, rode a motorcycle and
was in love with an Italian
artist. This would certainly
explain why I find myself
captivated by Rachel
Kushner’s The Flamethrowers – her second
and much-lauded novel.
The Flamethrowers is set in the
mid-70s, and the novel’s narrator, nicknamed
Reno (it’s where she’s from) is a young woman
obsessed with speed, motorcycles and, to a
lesser degree, art. We first encounter Reno
setting records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in
Utah. This racing turns out to be a catalyst for
her art; she wants to photograph the traces her
bike leaves in the earth. A year later, she arrives
in New York, where she falls in with a rather
outrageous group of artists, and finds herself
girlfriend to Sandro Valera, an estranged scion
of the Moto Valera motorcycle and tyre empire.
As it happens, it’s a Moto Valera that Reno rides
and this convenient coincidence helps to set up
the story’s darker subplot.
Later, after Sandro abandons her
in Rome, Reno finds herself in the midst of a
violent demonstration led by Italian radicals. She
falls in with the welcoming group of militants,
and it is at this point that the simmering political
menace of the novel finally goes up in flames.
Reno’s story is cleverly entwined
with nominal doses of history, from the radical
New York artistic scene of the 70s to the Red
Brigades and proto-fascists of Italy, and the riots
that ensued.
Kushner’s narrative stays brilliantly
alive despite a less than electric denouement.
Her prose is sharp and her characters are
sublimely real, complemented by vivacious
dialogue. This is a story of losing one’s
innocence and finding one’s place in the
complex social and political contexts of the time.
The Death of Bees
Lisa O’Donnell (UK)
William Heinemann. PB. $19.95
At the Hazlehurst housing estate in Glasgow, 15-year-old Marnie and her
little sister Nelly finish burying their parents in the back garden. Meanwhile
Lennie, the old guy next door, soon realises that the girls are all alone, and
need his help – or does he need theirs? As the year ends and another
begins, the sisters’ friends, neighbours and the authorities begin to ask
questions. And as one lie leads to another, darker secrets about Marnie’s family come to light.
The Last Thread
Michael Sala (Australia)
Affirm. PB. $24.95
Michael Sala’s The Last Thread recounts a life in fiction. From his early
years in the Netherlands to growing up in Australia during the 1980s,
Michael recalls how events from the past fractured his family. And, as his life
unfolds, Michael – now a father himself – must decide if he can free himself
from the dark pull of history.
WHAT I LOVED
The Complete Peanuts
Charles M. Schulz
Fantagraphics Books. HB
Review: There’s this story about Charles M. Schulz, the creator of
Peanuts, that I really love. After drawing and writing strips for close to 50 years, uninterrupted
except for a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday, he was diagnosed with
cancer. The illness soon began to affect his ability to see clearly and, as a result, he announced
his retirement. Later, in an interview on The Today Show in 1999, Schulz said that some time after
drawing his final panel, he looked up and thought, ‘You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even
got to kick the football.’ For those who’ve never read a Peanuts comic, Schulz is referring to a
long-running gag where the main protagonist, Charlie Brown, is repeatedly thwarted in his
attempts to kick a football by the bossy, vivacious Lucy.
Much like a television sitcom, the world of Peanuts features a cast of characters who
all operate within their own idiosyncratic framework, from Lucy’s enduring love for the musically
talented and definitely-not-interested Schroeder to Peppermint Patty’s mistaken belief that
Snoopy is just a ‘funny-looking kid with a big nose’. (A mistake easily made given the dog’s
lovable tendency to act human.) Perhaps it is Schulz’s adherence to this winning formula – one
that rewards our love for nostalgia – that has ensured the overwhelming popularity of Peanuts
over the years.
Back in 2003, Fantagraphics Books announced an ambitious project: the complete
reprinting of every Peanuts strip, to be published in 25 volumes over 12 years. Now up to volume
19, this is a mammoth undertaking and I’m more than a little in love with it. Reading from the very
beginning, it’s fascinating to see how Schulz’s comics have developed in terms of artistic style as
well as character and narrative. For example, even the famous football gag I mentioned earlier was
originally performed by another little girl named Violet, who later disappeared.
One of my favourite Peanuts moments (first published in a strip on 25 April, 1960 and
later the inspiration for a book with the same title) is ‘Happiness is a warm puppy’. To regular
readers, Lucy and Snoopy’s animosity is well known. They fight and treat one another with
disdain. Perhaps most memorably, Snoopy will often plant a surprise kiss on Lucy, causing her
to run away screaming. Yet in this particular strip the girl embraces the ‘stupid beagle’ to the
pleasing sound of ‘mmmmm’. As a dog lover, this sweet, simple interaction tugs a heartstring,
but what I really like is the implied understanding that while Lucy and Snoopy will invariably
clash, there’s love here as well. Even as Schulz is delivering the familiarity we so often seek as
readers, he suggests there will always be exceptions to the rule.
And so I wonder, why didn’t he make an exception for Charlie Brown? Just imagine
if, in that final strip, the little boy had kicked that football. On the one hand, I do wish for the
pleasure such a triumphant moment would have awarded me, yet I also like that Schulz
withheld this ending. His decision reveals a deeper truth: a sense that sometimes things don’t
happen and ‘that's the way it goes’. Charlie Brown is not going to be anyone other than Charlie
Brown, and that’s okay too.
Bronte Coates – Readings Monthly & Online Assistant
Nicole Mansour is from Readings St Kilda
It’s rare for sex to be merely erotic in Salter’s
work, and it’s never prurient.
Collected Stories is a book that brings
together Salter’s two collections, Dusk and Other
Stories and Last Night, plus one other piece.
It’s sometimes an uneasy mix and a Selected
Stories might have been a more welcome option
to a reader encountering Salter for the first time.
However, you can rest assured that despite
a few poor examples there are undeniable
masterpieces of the short form to be found in
what is a deeply rewarding book.
A.S. Patrić is from Readings St Kilda
TransAtlantic
Colum McCann
Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99
Review: I have to confess to
being a fan of Colum McCann’s
writing. When I read his 2009
novel Let the Great World Spin, I
raved about it for months
afterwards, so needless to say I
was very excited to receive his
latest offering, TransAtlantic.
McCann was born in Dublin but now
resides in New York, and the Irish-American
connection has been a recurring theme in
his work. As the title suggests, this is again
the case with TransAtlantic. Similarly to Let
the Great World Spin, McCann sets his fiction
against historical events to deliver a book
that is immediately absorbing. The opening
chapters are seemingly unrelated and could
almost be considered a collection of short
stories. However, it soon becomes clear that
what McCann is doing is delivering a series
of snapshots of characters and the moments
of history that they find themselves in. It is a
saga that spans three generations of women
and covers the Irish potato famine in 1845, the
American Civil War, the Troubles in Northern
Ireland and the first non-stop flight across the
Atlantic in 1919, as well as the present day.
McCann’s writing is so wonderfully
descriptive that it’s not difficult to be transported
to another era or to share the experiences of his
characters. His account of the flight across the
Atlantic, for instance, had me nervous for the two
aviators; I could almost feel the icy air that made
‘the bones in their ears ring’. Not only did I enjoy
TransAtlantic as a work of fiction, but I enjoyed it
as a work of history as well. A great book to curl
up with in front of the fire on a cold winter’s day.
COLLECTED STORIES
Sharon Peterson is from Readings Carlton
Picador. HB. $39.99
AND THE MOUNTAINS
ECHOED
James Salter
Review: James Salter is a
deeply satisfying combination
of raw power and finetuned
precision. He writes stories that
are never content to rest at
perfection – they push and
shove for more. Writers are
often described as elegant and polished as
though that were the epitome of literary art, but
the ugly and ragged are just as vital for a
genuine reflection of life. And the Collected
Stories of James Salter do indeed reflect the
long and varied life of a man who has been a
fighter pilot for the US Air Force, a Hollywood
screenwriter and a mountain climber.
Running through almost everything
Salter has written is sexual passion. It’s a
particular sense of vitality that animates his
writing in the same way as with the works of
D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. In
most fiction, the sexual life is often seen as an
experience of encounters. Yet in Salter’s stories,
we are more likely to discover long relationships
that are examined or informed through sexuality,
and the ways in which it waxes and wanes.
While this might provide frisson in an otherwise
flat story, there’s also an implacable sense of
hunger for life that it gives each of his characters.
Khaled Hosseini
Bloomsbury. PB. Was $33
Review: And the Mountains
Echoed is Khaled Hosseini’s
much-anticipated third novel,
following bestsellers The Kite
Runner and A Thousand
Splendid Suns, which
combined sold more than 38
million copies worldwide.
Despite similar themes of love, loss
and powerful yet fragile family connections,
this is a quieter story than his previous
epics. The novel begins in 1952, in the small
village of Shadbagh, Afghanistan. Kaboor, a
labourer, tells his 10-year-old son, Abdullah,
and daughter, Pari, a story about a young
child being taken from his family in distressing
circumstances. In the fable, the father makes
a brave pilgrimage to faraway mountains to
save his son, only to realise that the child is
being raised in paradise. He needs to make the
difficult decision of whether to take him home
to a life of poverty or leave him there. In the
end, he leaves him.
Kaboor later hands Pari over to a
wealthy poet in Kabul, who is barren and in a
loveless marriage, for the money that will keep
his remaining family alive in their impoverished
village. The poet moves with Pari to Paris, and
the girl is never told that she was adopted, let
alone that she was paid for.
The novel then radiates from this small,
broken family nucleus into the second generation.
Here, we meet Abdullah’s daughter, also named
Pari, who, as a middle-aged woman, meets her
aunt and learns the terrible truth of her beginnings.
This is a beautifully crafted novel
and the true story lies within Hosseini’s
multigenerational, layered strands. He moves
from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the
Greek island of Tinos, encountering wives and
mothers, refugees and druglords, doctors and
villagers. It explores the many ways in which
families love and betray each other and how
often we take these formative bonds for granted.
Emily Harms is Readings’ marketing manager
VIENNESE ROMANCE
David Vogel
(translated by Dalya Bilu)
Scribe. HB. $29.95
Review: In 2012, poet and
novelist David Vogel
posthumously set the Israeli
literary world alight with his
unpublished manuscript,
Viennese Romance. Scribed on
15 large sheets of paper in tiny
writing, it was uncovered during a search for
Vogel’s 1934 novella, Facing the Sea. Most likely
written in the 1920s, it is the latest of his works to
be translated for the English-speaking world.
The protagonist of Viennese Romance
is 18-year-old Michael Rost, a Russian-Polish
Jew who arrives in Vienna with no money or
direction. In the smoke-filled cafes and bars, he
soon finds himself in the company of aristocrats,
artisans and actors, all of whom have Woody
Allen-style obsessions with philosophy, despite
Rost’s own disengagements. ‘In my opinion most
men of action invest themselves in activity itself,
in order to save themselves from the boredom
and emptiness of doing nothing, and the goal
incidental … How do you intend to live?’ asks the
man who later becomes Rost’s patron.
The novel is also an account of Vogel’s
sexual awakening. In Vienna, Vogel himself had
an affair with his landlady and his landlady’s
daughter. Here the women are fictionalised as
Gertrude, a woman whose loneliness and nearobsession with Rost is born out of ‘existing in a
state of constant thirst, forever unsatisfied’, and
her 16-year-old daughter Erna, who although
initially wary of Rost’s involvement with her
mother, later only wishes to ‘hide her hand in
[Rost’s] forever; to be buried inside him, reduced
to a tiny, distant dot at the core of his being’.
Each woman is acutely drawn, and in this arena
Vogel’s observations are deeply felt.
Vogel later died in Auschwitz.
Viennese Romance is a seminal addition to the
secular Hebrew canon, providing vital insight
into the history of the Jewish diaspora. Along
with its author, it must not be forgotten.
Nicole Lee is a freelance reviewer
The Son
Michel Rostain
Headline. PB. $24.99
Review: Filmmaker Michael
Haneke’s Amour (2012) offers
viewers an unflinching look at
death, or rather the less-talkedabout aspects of dying.
Chronicling the final days of an
elderly woman being cared for
by her husband in their Parisian apartment, Amour
has an honesty and compassion that devastates
its viewers. It is a film that everyone should watch,
but for many might be unwatchable.
A far more accessible meditation
on grief is Michel Rostain’s novel The Son,
winner of France’s Prix Goncourt Debut
Novel award. Rostain tells the story of a father
struggling to cope after the unexpected death
of his son from an aggressive virus. Although
told through a softer, more hopeful lens than
Haneke’s masterpiece, the novel still delves
into uncomfortable territory, from the body’s
frightening decay to the business side of funerals.
Punctuating the chapters are quotes
from famous writers and thinkers, musing on
those age-old concepts of love and death. The
acknowledgements section sadly reveals The Son
is loosely autobiographical. It’s clear that when
faced with the unexplainable, we, like Rostain,
seek solace in literature where words are carefully
measured, at once intimate and universal in their
reach. How well the novel’s second person,
omniscient narration works is a matter of individual
reception. Some might find its tone preachy,
others consoling. To be fair, The Son is coming to
readers as a French-to-English translation.
Rostain also makes clear in his
acknowledgements that he is not providing
any set answers for the living. He believes,
rather, ‘It’s for each of us to work out. And for
each of us to help others work it out.’ As a work
of fiction The Son is flawed, the plot largely
overshadowed by its themes. Nevertheless, it
generously offers a window into grief and the
painstaking journey to the other side of it.
Emily Laidlaw is a freelance reviewer
SISTERLAND
Curtis Sittenfeld
Doubleday. PB. Was $32.95
Identical twins Kate and Violet
share a hidden gift – a special
kind of intuition that allows them
to see things yet to come. Yet
when Kate inadvertently reveals
their secret at 13, both are set
on diverging paths. Twenty
years later, Kate is a suburban housewife, while
Violet works as a psychic medium. Then, one
day, Violet ignites a media storm by predicting a
major earthquake in the St Louis area where they
live and the sisters are left grappling with the
legacy of the past, as well as the unsettling
glimpses they both have of the future.
One wet Friday evening, Professor Andrew Martin solves the world’s
greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found
walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems … different.
Besides the lack of clothes, he hates everyone on the planet.
Except Newton. And he’s a dog.
THE YONAHLOSSEE
RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS
Anton DiSclafani
In 1930s America, 15-year-old
Thea Atwell is exiled from her
wealthy family following a
scandal and sent to a debutante
boarding school in North
Carolina. As Thea grapples with
the truth about her role in the
tragic events, she finds herself enmeshed in the
world of the Yonahlossee Riding Camp, with its
complex social strata of money and beauty.
Brief Loves That
Live Forever
Andreï Makine (translated by
Geoffrey Strachan)
MacLehose Press. HB. $29.95
Now entering middle age, an
orphan recalls the fleeting
moments that have never left
him from Soviet Russia – a
scorching day in a blossoming
orchard with a woman who
loves another, and a desperate
affair in a Black Sea resort. It is an era in which
the desire for freedom is also the desire for the
Can a bit of Debussy and Emily Dickinson keep him from murder?
Can the species which invented cheap white wine and peanut butter
sandwiches be all that bad? And what is the warm feeling he gets
when he looks into his wife’s eyes?
7
8
freedom to love. And, as the dreary Brezhnev era
gives way to Perestroika, the orphan finds himself
discovering the truth about another memory – the
life of Dmitri Ress, and his tragic fate.
exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London, as well as specially commissioned
drawings and illustrations.
A TREACHEROUS
PARADISE
EVERY PROMISE
Andrea Bajani (translated by
Alastair McEwen)
Henning Mankell
Harvill Secker. PB. Was $32.95
MacLehose Press. PB. $24.99
When Sarah leaves –
heartbroken by their inability to
conceive – Pietro reverts to a
younger self, leaving the dishes
unwashed, his bed unmade
and the post unopened. Soon
afterwards, Sarah confesses
that she is pregnant, but from a casual
encounter. She comes to rely on Pietro’s mother
for support, leaving all three in a painful limbo.
Into this void falls Olmo, an old man haunted by
memories of war. At first he provides a
distraction, but when he asks Pietro to travel to
Russia on his behalf, he offers the chance for a
new beginning.
In 1904, Hanna Lundmark
escapes the brutal poverty of
rural Sweden for a job as a
cook on board a steamship
headed for Australia. But
disaster strikes on the East
African coast, and Hanna jumps
ship and decides to begin her life anew.
Stumbling across a down-at-heel hotel, she
somehow ends up inheriting the most
successful brothel in town. Hanna tries to make
changes for the better, but the distrust between
blacks and whites, and the shadow of
colonialism, lead to tragedy and murder.
MY NOTORIOUS LIFE BY
MADAME X
MEMORY PALACE
Hari Kunzru
Kate Manning
Bloomsbury. HB. $27.99
Bloomsbury. PB. $27.99
Memory Palace is an innovative
new work of fiction and
collaboration by Hari Kunzru,
the bestselling author of Gods
Without Men. In a dark future,
books, as well as the act of
remembering itself, is banned.
A small group of renegade memorialists is all
that stands in the way of total oblivion. One of
their members lies incarcerated in a cell,
clinging to the belief that a civilisation without
memory is a world doomed. The book includes
an essay by the curators of a supporting
This is the testament of Axie
Muldoon: female physician,
distributor of ‘obscene’
materials and the most
scandalous woman in all of
New York. As Axie goes from
impoverished beggar to local
midwife, she soon discovers that the right way is
not always the way of God or the law, and that
you should never trust a man who says ‘trust
me’. But her downfall might yet surface in the
form of the irresistible Charlie G. Jones, a fellow
orphan and poetical Irish soul.
Science Fiction
The Ocean at
the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman
An unnamed man and narrator
returns to his Sussex roots to
attend a funeral and, before
long, memories begin to flow.
His mind is cast back to 40
years ago, when a South
African lodger stole the family
car and committed suicide in it, stirring up
ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark
creatures from beyond the world are on the
loose, and it will take everything he has just to
stay alive. The man’s only defence is three
women on a farm at the end of the lane. The
youngest claims that her duck pond is ocean.
The oldest can remember the Big Bang.
Graphic Novels
Batman: Death
By Design
Chip Kidd
Random. PB. $22.95
An original graphic novel from
superstar writer-designer Chip
Kidd and artist Dave Taylor.
Gotham City is undergoing one
of the most expansive
construction booms in its
history, with the most
prestigious architects from across the globe
completing buildings all over town. And then the
explosions begin. There are faulty crane
calculations, software glitches, walkways giving
way and much more. This bizarre string of
seemingly random catastrophes threatens to
bring the whole construction industry down.
Batman must somehow solve the problem and
find whoever is behind it all.
My Dirty Dumb Eyes
Lisa Hanawalt
Drawn & Quarterly. PB. $32.95
My Dirty Dumb Eyes is the
debut collection from awardwinning cartoonist Lisa
Hanawalt, whose satirical, wild
sense of humour has won her
acclaim in publications such as
The New York Times, The
Believer, Lucky Peach and at VanityFair.com.
Combining drawings and single-panel jokes, My
Dirty Dumb Eyes is a startlingly observant
commentary on pop culture and contemporary
society, from the secret lives of celebrity chefs to
our animal friends and their tennis-ball brides.
The Playboy
Chester Brown
Drawn & Quarterly. PB. $23.95
A blazingly honest memoir about
adolescence, sexuality and
shame, The Playboy chronicles a
teenager’s obsession with the
magazine of the same name.
Fifteen-year-old Chester is visited
by a time-travelling adult Chester,
who narrates his younger self’s compulsion to
purchase each issue of Playboy as it appears on
newsstands. Even more fascinating is Brown’s
need to keep this habit secret, and the great
lengths he goes to in an effort to avoid detection
by his family, and then, later, by girlfriends.
Originally published in 1992, The Playboy was
ahead of its time. This expanded reissue includes
all-new appendices and notes from the author.
OUT NOW
A
nne Summers makes the case
that Australia, the land of the
fair go, still hasn’t figured out how
‘I thoroughly loved this book. Melbourne looks great as a ruined
tropical mega shanty town – I can’t wait. Film-like, dream-like,
life-like. Funny and charming.’ Dave Graney
‘A free-range and funny apocalyptic time-space road trip with
James M. Cain, J.G. Ballard, and Tom Robbins all fighting for
the wheel.’ Steven Amsterdam
to make equality between men
and women work. She shows how
uncomfortable we are with the
idea of women with political and
financial power, let alone the reality.
Summers dismisses the idea that we
should celebrate progress for women
as opposed to outright success. She
shows what success will look like.
w w w . n e w s o u t h b o o k s . c o m . a u
New Crime
Little Green
Dead Write
with Fiona Hardy
The Heist
heart of the organisation that really runs this
troubled city: the Catholic Church.
Headline. PB. Was $33
The Crocodile
Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg
Janet Evanovich’s new series
with Lee Goldberg stars FBI
Special Agent Kate O’Hare and
notorious con artist Nicholas
Fox. O’Hare has been in pursuit
of Fox for five years and then
there he is: caught. But Fox is
never one to let an opportunity pass, and instead
of jail time the dashing criminal wrangles a job
with the FBI. He’s put to work with the
determined agent and they travel to Indonesia to
find a corrupt banker, but the new team end up
causing some turbulence of their own.
Holy Orders
Benjamin Black
Mantle. PB. $29.99
Benjamin Black (aka Man
Booker Prize-winning author
John Banville) puts another
body in front of the everinquisitive pathologist Quirke.
It’s 1950s Dublin and the city is
collapsing under the pressure
of its own strict rules. The body in question
belongs to a friend of Quirke’s daughter Phoebe
and, with Phoebe’s own safety compromised,
Quirke and Inspector Hackett set out to rail
against the oppressive system in place. It’s an
investigation that will lead them into the dark
Maurizio de Giovanni
Abacus. PB. Was $33
Sent to Naples for a Mafia-related
debacle that was not his fault,
Detective Inspector Giuseppe
Lojacono is supposed to keep
quiet in his new little police
station. One night, however,
he’s called to a murder, where
it’s revealed that his skills are far beyond those
of the other officers. Asked to join the
investigative team, Lojacono is on the hunt for a
vengeful killer, someone much more dangerous
than the Mafia – The Crocodile.
Someone To Watch
Over Me
Yrsa Sigurdardottir
H&S. PB. $29.99
Lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir is
working on the case of Jakob, a
man with an intellectual disability
who has been accused of
burning down his shelter home
and killing five people. She’s
been hired by another inmate at
Jakob’s current home, who believes that he is
innocent. But the killer, and the connection to a
hit and run accident, are still a mystery.
book
of
the
month
Walter Mosley
W&N. PB. $29.99
Recovering slowly from a coma
after his car flew off a cliff,
hardboiled detective Easy
Rawlins returns to life in the
new, psychedelic world of the
1960s. Ignoring instructions to
rest, he goes on the search for
Evander ‘Little Green’ Noon at the request of his
oldest, most loyal and generally most
dangerous friend, Mouse. Gritty, rollicking and
sharp, Mosley’s latest venture through a Los
Angeles both bright and dark is an indication of
his bestselling status.
A Bitter Taste
Annie Hauxwell
Penguin. PB. Was $29.99
Review: Elly Cartwright
writes software manuals for Soft
Serve. On returning home one
evening after having a meeting
with Carlos, the company’s
brilliant and reclusive
programmer, her Brunswick
neighbour is shot and killed by a mysterious
assassin. A second shot grazes her arm. Her
neighbour is an elderly woman and there is no
motive for the murder. The next day, Elly discovers
Carlos brutally murdered in his backyard – is there
a connection between the drive-by shooting and
Carlos’ death? The question leads Elly and her
colleagues at Soft Serve on a suspenseful quest to
track down the culprits using all their hacking
skills. Jenny Spence has introduced a clever, feisty
character and created a gripping urban thriller set
in inner Melbourne and Sydney.
Review: In crime fiction, the downtrodden are
frequently used as asides – bribed for information
or killed off with little remorse. Annie Hauxwell’s A
Bitter Taste takes us into their world, one that not
every crime reader might be prepared for.
Catherine Berlin is a 56-year-old mostly highfunctioning heroin addict. She’s trying to get clean
with methadone to heal her physical and internal
scarring, and working with little money after her
career as a private investigator was ruined. Now
unhappy enough to accept crappy jobs and be
paid in booze, she carries on through the heat of a
blistering summer until an old acquaintance turns
up with a request that Berlin cannot bring herself
to refuse: a missing daughter.
A Bitter Taste is yet another example of
how excellently painted characters and thrilling
action that doesn’t resort to cheap tricks can
plunge you directly into a world. I hated putting
this one down, often saying ‘just another chapter’
before bed and then secretly reading eight more.
London’s grime is on show and Berlin is often
more at home bunking down with the homeless
than in the bright and untrustworthy world of the
authorities. This book has enough to differentiate
Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director
itself to make it a stand-out in the genre.
No Safe Place
Jenny Spence
A&U. PB. $29.99
State Library
of Victoria
Full program on sale now
Paul Kara, mentalist,
c. 1921, gelatin silver
photograph, WG Alma
conjuring collection
Join us for a day of curious delights from
across time! Marvel at stilt walkers and
magicians, march alongside an old-time
brass band, enjoy tours, talks and
performances. Whether you’re 1 or 101,
there will be surprises galore for all.
www.byronbaywritersfestival.com
or phone 02 6685 5115.
Sponsor of the
Dome Centenary
Sunday 7 July
Free!
FH
9
10
I N N O VAT I V E
YA F I C T I O N from
JUNE RELEASES
AUSTRALIA'S SMALL PUBLISHER
OF THE YEAR, 2012
NEW IN
JUNE
NEW TEXT
CLASSICS
STILL
‘The loss of ALP voters to the
Greens is, in the long term,
potentially as damaging as earlier
splits of the ALP’
An election is looming, and the future
of progressive politics nationwide
seems deeply uncertain. In this timely
and visionary book, Brad Orgill argues
that progressive voters, and Australia
as a whole, deserves an aligned
ALP-Greens platform.
See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 15.
book
of
the
month
Wildlife
Fiona Wood
Pan Mac. PB. $16.99
Review: It’s the term of all terms for the year
tens at Crowthorne Grammar as they embark on
their school’s annual outdoor education camp,
tucked away in the Victorian bush. As if it’s not
enough to be surrounded by your classmates
24/7 and made to tackle the wilderness, Sibylla
is also getting used to her newfound fame that
stemmed from a perfume ad that she modelled
for over the school holidays. Plus, there’s Ben
Capaldi, and the kiss. Really, everything should
be perfect, but as the term progresses and
friendships and morals are questioned, Sibylla
has to think about what and who is really
important in her life.
Watching all this is Sibylla’s roommate
Lou (from Fiona Wood’s first novel, Six Impossible
Things). Lou is dealing with a death that has
torn her apart, and she has decided to move
to Crowthorne Grammar instead of going on
exchange to France. Reserved and hiding in her
own world, Lou finds herself slowly becoming
more intrigued at the drama that is Sibylla’s life.
Wildlife is wonderful. Fiona Wood has
once again created a quirky and intelligent novel
for young adults, with characters that question
friendships, learn that fitting in isn’t everything
and tackle that scary thing called first love.
Highly recommended for ages 14 and up.
Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
$12.95
NAN CHAUNCY
introduced by
John Marsden
JOAN PHIPSON
introduced by
Margo Lanagan
IVAN SOUTHALL
introduced by
James Moloney
PATRICIA
WRIGHTSON
introduced by
Kate Constable
TEXTPUBLISHING.COM . AU
TALKIN’
GRAPHIC
NOVELS
Available in English for the first time,
here is David Vogel’s previously
unknown novel that had literary
New Young Adult Fiction
THURSDAY 20 JUNE
6:30PM
READINGS CARLTON
Israel abuzz when it was published
in 2012, almost one hundred years
after the author started working
The Bone Dragon
Alexia Casale
Faber. PB. $19.99
Review: I wanted to read
this story as soon as I saw the
beautiful cover and read the
single line hook: a teenage girl,
Evie, carves a tiny dragon from
a piece of her rib that has been
removed after an operation,
and it becomes a powerful symbol of her road to
recovery from an abusive past. Evie’s voice
convincingly navigates us through both her
wisdom and her anguish. At 14, she’s suffered
more pain than many of us will in a lifetime, but
this is no misery memoir. Through her dreamlike visions and the difficult conversations she
has with those trying to help her adjust, we learn
just enough of her past to understand what
she’s up against. However, the focus is on
dealing with the present. Evie can’t be generous
with the specific details of her trauma, but she is
with her fluctuating emotions, torn between the
courageous drive to move on and a deep desire
to avenge her lost innocence. While the dragon
is a regular fixture, overall the story is fairly light
on the magic realism elements, leaving just
enough room for the reader to interpret what is
happening. Recommended for ages 12 and up.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
on it. A compelling portrait of a
decadent society, it also lays bare the
obsessive–destructive nature of love.
The Whole of My World
Nicole Hayes
Woolshed Press. PB. $18.95
Viennese Romance is the first
in a series — scan here for more
information on these stunning books
JOIN BERNARD CALEO,
DR ELIZABETH MACFARLANE
AND GRAPHIC NOVELIST
NICKI GREENBERG AS THEY
DISCUSS THE POWER OF THE
UNWRITTEN WORD, AND THE
NEXT WAVE IN COMICS.
Review: AFL has always
been a huge part of Shelley’s
life, from going to local games
to analysing every part of the
Glenthorn Football Club’s
performance, the team she is
passionate about. But then the
accident happens and everything changes. With
a father who’s just barely functioning and a
secret that’s breaking her heart, Shelley throws
herself even further into the game she loves.
Leaving behind the awkwardness of
her old school and beginning afresh at St Mary’s
Catholic Ladies College, Shelley meets Tara, a
fellow Glenthorn fan, who introduces Shelley to
the world of fanatics. Shelley starts watching the
players train and joins a cheer squad to help rally
them on the weekend. And when a friendship
blossoms with one of the club’s new stars, Shelley
begins to feel like life is getting back on track, just
as long as Glenthorn can keep winning.
This is a brilliant coming-of-age story
about family, tragedy and the power of AFL.
I’m beyond thrilled that someone has finally
given us a well-written, fun yet serious novel
about girls who love our great game. I loved it.
Recommended for ages 13 and up.
Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
Fairytales for
Wilde Girls
Allyse Near
Random. PB. $19.95
Review: Isola Wilde sees
ghosts, is obsessed with
fairytales and has no less than six
brother-princes to protect her.
She lives so much in the world of
the unseen that she seems not
quite of this world to those
around her, including her friend James, whom
she’s known forever, and the new boy next door,
Edgar. When Isola spies a dead girl in a birdcage
in the woods, the ghost of the girl starts haunting
her and terrible things begin to happen. Her
tenuous relations with her real friends start to fail
and her brother-princes disappear one by one.
This fascinating story is interspersed
with beautiful illustrations, quotes from Edgar
Allen Poe and metaphorical fairytales. It’s
beautifully written and utterly unique. Allyse
Near lives near Melbourne and is only 23. She’s
already quite a talent and definitely one to watch.
Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda
Through My Eyes:
Shahana
Rosanne Hawke
A&U. PB. $15.99
The first title in a new Australian
series that focuses on children
living in conflict zones around
the world. Shahana lives alone
with her young brother in the
shadow of the Line of Control,
the border between the
Pakistani and Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir.
One day, she finds a boy lying unconscious near
the border. Zahid is from the other side, but how
can she give Zahid up to the authorities when
she knows he'll be imprisoned – or worse?
New Non-Fiction
Australian
Non-Fiction
THE MISOGYNY FACTOR
Anne Summers
New South. PB. $19.99
Review: In August 2012,
Anne Summers delivered a
speech at the University of
Newcastle titled ‘Her Rights at
Work: The Political Persecution
of Australia’s First Female
Prime Minister’. The speech
detailed the sexist treatment that Julia Gillard
has received in the media, in parliament and
more widely on the internet. A little over one
month later, the Prime Minister gave her now
legendary ‘misogyny speech’ in which she
urged Tony Abbott to ‘think seriously about the
role of women in public life and in Australian
society, because we are entitled to a better
standard than this’.
The Misogyny Factor is an extension
of Summers’ original speech and a deeper
analysis of the status of women in Australia
today. In it, Summers defines the ‘misogyny
factor’ as entrenched attitudes within major
institutions that ‘stand in the way of women
being included, treated equally and accorded
respect’. I was dismayed to read that in Canada
80.2 per cent of women aged 25 to 54 are in
full-time work, but in Australia the figure is 66.2
per cent. Summers contends that we still have
a culture that disapproves of working mothers
and, despite progress made by the women’s
movement, an increasingly large number of
educated women are choosing motherhood
and domesticity over a career.
I personally don’t agree with
Summers’ criticism of stay-at-home mothers.
Until full-time parenthood is respected as much
as a career (coupled with a transformation
of our economic system that presently only
unevenly rewards certain types of ‘work’),
women will continue to do the lion’s share of
child care, and gender inequality will persist.
However, I’m thankful for Summers’ book,
because although the internet and social media
helped Julia Gillard’s speech reach a wide
audience, there’s something comforting about
an analysis of its context and impact being
preserved here in book form, ensuring the issue
remains one to debate well into the future.
Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton
Out of Shape
Mel Campbell
Affirm. PB. $24.95
Review: Mel Campbell has
a brilliant eye for popular culture,
as anyone who’s followed her
blog, A Wild Young UnderWhimsy, or her other writing will
know. Her first book, Out of
Shape, tackles the fashion
industry on the issues of sizing, fit and feel, and is
a smart, sharp mix of cultural anthropology,
first-person journalism and online trawling.
Out of Shape isn’t a fashion glossy
or a confessional. Rather, it’s a look at how
the industry works on a social level: how
what we’re offered influences what we wear,
how what we wear makes us feel about
ourselves and others, and what this signals to
the broader social strata in return. It’s about
bodies and ideals, reflections and distortions,
gazes and doubts.
Most of all, it’s a fascinating examination
of what popular culture and fashion actually are
– a manifestation of both the lowbrow and the
high. Campbell travels easily from dreamscapes
of couture to Target’s latest 3D body scanning
booth. She explores the evolution of standardised
sizing, as well as fashion’s many waves, from
Regency-era dandies to the queens of French
gamine. From there, Out of Shape goes deep into
the arteries of media storms and gossip rags –
wardrobe malfunctions, slut shaming and plus-size
modelling. There is as well a genuine love of
materials and clothes, with savouring descriptions
of garments and styles, films and fantasy: lowretro, mid-century glam, 1950s crinoline petticoats,
rolled fringes and 80s excesses.
Throughout, Campbell is also savvy
to the ironies and inequalities of where research
can lead. The antique garments often housed
and treasured in museums, for instance,
will only ever represent the lives of a select
privileged few, and not that of ethnic minorities
or the working class. Stores often don’t stock
larger sizes not because they aren’t aware
that the majority of women aren’t a size 8, but
because they deliberately want to restrict their
clientele. This is exactly the type of writing that I
love – intellectually charged, feminist and smart.
Jessica Au is editor of the Readings Monthly
Life in Ten Houses:
Penguin Specials
Sonya Hartnett
Penguin. PB. $9.99
Review: Coming in at just
over 70 pages, this latest
addition to the Penguin
Specials range is an evocative
glimpse into a writer’s life.
Sonya Hartnett’s has been a
rather peripatetic one, having
lived in ten houses over the last ten or so years.
As I’m someone who’s only lived in three over
the last 40 years, Hartnett’s quest for the place
that she’ll live in forever struck me as bold and
a little bit unsettling. When Hartnett makes a
mistake in her choice of abode, she moves on
and thinks hang the consequences. It goes
without saying that she’s become somewhat of
a real estate expert.
Hartnett also recounts how each
house, except for one, has been the place in
which she has produced one of her works,
and how the area or residence provided
certain touchstones. The house in Of a Boy
– one of my favourite works of hers – for
instance, was in Box Hill (I don’t know why but
I always thought it was in Adelaide). It won’t
take you long to read this short, engrossing
memoir, but I can assure you that it will give
you a lot of pleasure.
Mark Rubbo is Readings’ managing director
The Year it All
Fell Down
Bob Ellis
Viking. PB. $29.99
The year 2011 was portentously
charged, from the Arab Spring to
the London riots and Occupy
Wall Street, from the Christchurch
earthquake and the Fukushima
meltdown to the possible
discovery of the Higgs-Boson
‘God’ particle. Together with collaborators Damian
Spruce and Stephen Ramsey, Bob Ellis reviews
these events and more, and charts the powerful
echoes of their influences.
Project Republic
Benjamin T. Jones
& Mark McKenna (eds.)
Black Inc. PB. $29.99
Featuring forewords by
Malcolm Turnbull and Wayne
Swan, Project Republic unites a
range of passionate Australian
voices to argue why Australia
must become a republic. It
explores how such a change
could be viewed as a chance for national
renewal, as well as how we get there from here.
Contributors include Thomas Keneally, Larissa
Behrendt, Julian Morrow, Anthony Dillon, Helen
Irving, Joy McCann and more.
Why Labor Should
Savour Its Greens
Brad Orgill
I Take You
BY Nikki Gemmel
9780732297787 | RRP $27.99
Scribe. PB. $24.95
Australia is suffering from a
crisis of confidence. Now, with
an upcoming election, the
Australian Labor Party and the
Greens are splitting the
left-of-centre vote, leaving the
future of progressive politics
deeply uncertain. Former investment banker and
economist Brad Orgill reviews the Greens’ major
economic, social and environmental policies,
and argues that progressive voters are due an
aligned ALP–Greens platform incorporating the
best elements of each.
Nikki Gemmell concludes the loose
trilogy started with international
bestsellers The Bride Stripped Bare
and With my Body with this astonishing
new tour de force.
A Savage History:
Whaling in the Pacific
and Southern Oceans
John Newton
New South. HB. $49.99
Hunted, studied and revered,
whales have always held a
particular allure for humans. In
A Savage History, John
Newton explores our complex
and bloody relationship with
these magnificent creatures,
following whalers from the eighteenth century
who stalked their prey along the coasts of
Australia and New Zealand, across the Pacific
and into the Southern Ocean. Newton’s
overview exposes the truth that while the
modern era has seen the end of industrial
whaling, whales are not yet protected.
The Shining Girls
BY laureN BeukeS
9780732295530 | RRP $29.99
The girl who wouldn’t die ... hunting a
killer who shouldn’t exist.
Anthology
Just Between Us
Maya Linden (ed.)
Pan Mac. PB. Was $33
Review: Female friendships
are often stereotyped. There’s
the saccharine BFF (Best
Friends Forever) types, the
pathological ‘Single White
Female’ or the dysfunctional
pull/push of the bully/doormat
(think Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and
Wannabes). However, this wonderful collection
takes the time and emotional energy to really
explore individual friendships and examine the
grey areas in between.
Just Between Us contains 12 works
of non-fiction, which I generally enjoyed more
than the six fiction pieces. The standout for me
was ‘In Broad Daylight’ by Julienne van Loon,
which describes her long-term friendship with
Jo, a university friend. The story is punctuated
with letters between the two that demonstrate
their closeness and their understanding of
Atomic City
BY SallY BreeN
9780732293017 | RRP $24.99
Set in the dark shadows of the Gold
Coast’s glittering high-rise strip, atomic
City is a wild rollercoaster ride of a
story — a neo-noir tale of identity theft,
subterfuge and new beginnings.
11
12
Jawbreakers for your eyes
Ronnie Scott tells us why art comics are the true radicals of the
graphic novels world, from Paper Rad to Kramers Ergot.
It’s been a long time since the 80s and getting longer every day, but looking at headlines about
comic books you wouldn’t really know it.
It all started with three books that changed the game forever: two apocalyptic
reimaginings of the superhero origins-story, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen and
Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a Holocaust memoir in
which mice menaced by cats stood in for the Jews and Nazis.
‘BANG! POW! ZAP! Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!’ And so they weren’t.
Comics was suddenly recognised as a medium as unique as text or art or film, which led to a
general explosion of cultural weirdness as the world tried to separate the medium’s most likely
content – tights, capes and funnies – from its potential, which was largely untapped. This is
roughly the time we got the term ‘graphic novel’. At best, it’s
a descriptive term, like hardcover or paperback, for a booklength work of comics that’s bound into a codex. At worst,
it’s a class category – a way for publishers to indicate that
their readers should expect serious stuff.
The problem is that there’s always more than one way
to be serious. Because while the headlines have stayed pretty
much unchanged since the 80s, comics has expanded in
directions nobody back then could have foreseen. A side
effect of comics’ ongoing quest for legitimacy is that the ones
that tend to get the most cultural space are, well, literary. And
by literary, I don’t mean complex and thrilling and boundarypushing and smart and fun (although frequently, they are).
I mean they tend to be the comics that have a whole lot of text – the comics that are most like
written books. But when the space devoted to discussing comics in newspapers and magazines
is so limited, this means a whole slew of terrific work gets swept under the rug.
Much of it belongs to the non-genre you can loosely group as ‘art’. It’s the medium being
pushed and squeezed and distorted by fine artists, installation artists, architects, programmers …
the list goes on and on.
By far the best and most consistent publisher of art comics is PictureBox, a Brooklynbased outfit fronted by Dan Nadel, who also co-edits The Comics Journal (the best online
venue to keep up with this stuff). One collective of artists producing great work through them is
Paper Rad. One member, Ben Jones, makes hallucinatory animations for the Cartoon Network.
To give you an aesthetic idea: it’s absurdist, retro and wild.
A world apart, there’s Renée French, also publishing through PictureBox, who has
more in common with H.R. Giger, designer of the monster from the Alien movies, than with
psychedelic cartoons. We can part-claim French as Australian, since she’s sometimes based
in Sydney, but her work belongs to a beautiful and terrifying dreamscape that’s often purposebuilt for rendering her chronic migraines. Her pages dizzy you.
For my money, the most interesting artist working
in comics today is C.F., the alias of Rhode Island-based artist
Chris Forgues. He’s highly memeable, having spawned even
Melbourne-based copycats, and one look at his pages shows
you why. They’re deceptively simple, with wan, lanky, malleable
characters interacting in a world of quick, clean lines. In his
ongoing series, Powr Mastrs, they’re all coalescing into a scifi-inflected fantasy universe that will eventually – you imagine
– make sense. But maybe it won’t, because Forgues’s bright,
shocking characters might just be tools for him to exhibit his
ingenious grasp of form. A page might be devoted to showing a
drop of liquid falling (I won’t say what kind of liquid; his comics
are very adult). But the same drop of liquid is shown almost
identically across 12 panels, which confuses the very dimensions of comics. Which panels are
meant to show space? Which are meant to show time? In the hands of Forgues, basic sensemaking questions like ‘how long?’ and ‘how far?’ become ontological exercises. If you let them.
Unlike dense, difficult prose, they’re also stunning visual documents, which means you’re
entirely welcome to dissemble them – or just drink them up.
C.F., Renée French and Paper Rad suggest alternate futures for comics. They’re
equally radical departures from the sophisticated narratives towards which the 80s forefathers
directed the form. For anyone who loves books, they’re also just the start. Mould Map is a
gorgeous, tabloid-sized publication from UK set-up Landfill Editions. It defines its content as
‘narrative art’, lets artists run wild and prints on sumptuous paper. Kramers Ergot, edited by
also-sometimes-Australian Sammy Harkham, unearths fascinating artists and puts them in
contrast and context with Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine and Daniel Clowes (Time magazine called
one issue ‘a jawbreaker for your eye’). Dig deep on blogs and you’ll find more.
Comics is attracting more types of readers, thinkers and practitioners than ever
before, and nobody knows what the medium will look like in ten years’ time. As artists continue
their excursions beyond the realm of the book – into online platforms, mobile devices and
even 3D media, such as sculpture – we’ll be seeing work that demands fresh answers to the
question ‘what is a comic?’ for longer than any of us will be alive. For now, comic-makers are
taking the question of what books are to deep places, and since they’re artists, they know how
to make experiments look nice. For the lazy home decorator, I’d even suggest them as a lowinvestment alternative to succulents.
By Ronnie Scott
Ronnie Scott is a contributor to The Believer, The Australian and Meanjin, and is the comics
and graphic novels critic for ABC Radio National. In 2007, he founded The Lifted Brow, a freeform culture and fiction magazine; nowadays, he's the art editor. www.ronalddavidscott.com.
each other’s attempt to find a place in the
world. The relationship is complicated by Jo’s
schizophrenia and her battle to stay well.
Nikki Gemmell confronts women’s
goading of each other, quoting emails sent
in response to her newspaper column and
describing these vicious put-downs as ‘voices of
the dark heart of the female psyche’. She then
turns to examine her five-year-old daughter’s
friendship with another girl, whose desire seems
to be to make Gemmell’s normally vivid and
vibrant child self-conscious and unsure.
Some close bonds in the book simply
‘seep away’ with changing times or circumstances.
Some writers lament this, while others recognise
that the friendships cannot continue. A frequent
question arises: could/should I have done more?
Another extremely honest exposition
is Liz Byrski’s ‘Friendship – In Several Painful
Lessons’. Byrski details three friendships, the
earliest at age five, and examines the role
she has played in maintaining less than ideal
connections. Byrski describes the process of
discovering what she requires in a friend as
‘protracted and painful’, and quotes author Alice
Walker: ‘No person is your friend who demands
your silence, or denies your right to grow.’
Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn
Cultural Studies
CONFESSIONS OF
A SOCIOPATH
M.E. Thomas
Pan Mac. PB. $29.99
M.E. Thomas is a highfunctioning non-criminal
sociopath. In this compelling
memoir, she writes honestly
about her life, from the confusion
of trying to fit in as a child to her
growing need for power over
others, and her motivations for controlling her
behaviour – most of the time. Drawing on the latest
research, Thomas explains why at least one in 25
of us are sociopaths and gives a gripping insight
into the mind of a social predator.
Philosophy
PSYCHOANALYSIS
IS AN ANTIPHILOSOPHY
Justin Clemens
Edinburgh University Press. PB. $44.99
Psychoanalysis was the
most important intellectual
development of the twentieth
century. It left no practice, from
psychiatry to philosophy to
politics, untouched. Drawing
on the work of Freud, Lacan,
Badiou and others, Justin Clemens re-examines
a series of psychoanalytical themes – addiction,
fanaticism, love, slavery and torture – and offers
a radical reconstruction for thinkers today.
History
Money
Felix Martin
Random. PB. $34.95
Review: Felix Martin’s
Money: The Unauthorised
Biography is more than just an
attempt to chart the history of
money from its ambiguous
origins to the elaborate world of
finance today. Motivated by the
great calamities that have bedevilled the global
economy in recent years, Martin endeavours to
recreate the way we perceive money through both
a historical narrative and contemporary analysis.
The book begins with the fascinating
case of Yap, a remote island in Micronesia
that managed to construct a highly developed
system of debt and credit that mirrors our own.
Underlying Yap is Martin’s central argument that
money should be viewed not as a ‘thing’ or a mere
medium of exchange, but as a social technology.
From Yap, Martin meanders back
and forth throughout history. He describes the
origins of numeracy and literacy in Ancient
Mesopotamia, explores merchant banking in
sixteenth-century Lyons, and examines both the
Soviet Union’s and the Spartans’ attempts to
fundamentally reshape the idea of money. What
makes this book so compelling is the author’s
ability to draw upon a variety of seemingly
unrelated theorists and historical events. In
doing so, he demonstrates how the financial
world of today came to be, and how that world
has become crippled by debt and uncertainty.
Of course, Money culminates in the
current global crisis, where Martin makes his
most pertinent contributions to the discourse of
our wounded financial system. He challenges
flawed assumptions underpinning our system
and describes alternatives. But, ultimately,
Martin’s greatest observation echoes that of
Larry Summers and an emerging group of
prominent economists and academics. Much
can be learnt about our present crisis by
examining the past.
Martin’s work is considerably
complex yet undeniably provocative. But then
again, any attempt to redefine the concept of
money needs to be.
Dexter Gillman is a freelance reviewer
CARELESS PEOPLE
Sarah Churchwell
Little, Brown. PB. $29.99
Careless People is a fascinating
reconstruction of the crucial
months during which F. Scott
Fitzgerald and Zelda returned to
New York in the autumn of 1922,
and when the seeds for The
Great Gatsby were sown. Sarah
Churchwell tells the surprising story behind
the novel, exploring in detail the relationship
between Fitzgerald’s masterpiece and the chaotic
world in which he lived – a world of high society,
organised crime and celebrity culture.
Travel Writing
Italian Ways: On and
Off the Rails from
Milan to Palermo
Tim Parks
Random. HB. Was $35
Review: There is often a
level of trepidation when
approaching a travel memoir –
what new truth or epiphany is
going to be revealed this time?
Happily, in the hands of Tim
Parks, Italian Ways doesn’t rely
on the quest for personal growth that has lately
become the norm for so many books of this genre.
Parks’s reflections on his journeys as a passenger
onboard the trains of Italy are not just mere travel
adventures. Rather, they delve into Italy’s past, and
not only observe the cultural identity of the country
as a whole, but also consider where this might be
heading in the future.
Having lived in Italy for 30 years,
Parks is a refreshingly legitimate voice, but in
true Italian style he’ll never be considered a
local. Thus, we get to enjoy his perspective as
our connected but far from constricted guide.
Parks relays hilarious accounts of the charms
and eccentricities of fellow passengers during his
daily commutes from Verona to Milan, or jaunts
to Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily as well as
other less familiar destinations. At the same time,
his travels often reveal the links between the rail
system and the political and social aspects of the
Italian way of life, both then and now.
For those of us who have been
charmed by Italy, or who have dreams of
visiting, Italian Ways is an utterly enjoyable and
unpredictable journey.
Danielle Mirabella is from Readings Hawthorn
Biography
SANE NEW WORLD
Ruby Wax
H&S. PB. $32.99
Ruby Wax – comedian, writer
and mental health campaigner
– shows us how our minds can
jeopardise our sanity. With her
own periods of depression and
a Masters in Mindfulness-Based
Cognitive Therapy from Oxford
to draw from, she explains how our busy,
chattering, self-critical thoughts drive us to
anxiety and stress. If we are to break the cycle,
we need to understand how our brains work and
find calm in a frenetic world.
NIJINSKY
Lucy Moore
Profile. HB. $49.99
Immersed in the world of dance
from his childhood, Nijinksy
found his home in the Imperial
Theatre and the Ballet Russes,
acclaimed for his extraordinary
grace and elevation. Then, a
dramatic and public failure
ended his career and set him on a route to
madness. In this landmark biography, Lucy Moore
examines a career defined by two forces – inspired
performance and a talent for controversy.
Popular Science Art & Design
with Kate O’Mara,
Readings at the Brain Centre
with Margaret Snowdon,
Readings Carlton
Food & Gardening
Cracked
Australian
Impressionists
in France
The Set Table
James Davies
Icon. PB. $24.99
One in four people will develop
a mental disorder in any given
year. That’s what psychiatry
tells us. But many – even most
– will not actually be mentally
ill. The everyday sufferings and
setbacks of life are now
‘medicalised’ into illnesses that require
treatment – usually with highly profitable drugs.
In Cracked, psychological therapist James
Davies uses his insider knowledge to show
how psychiatry has put riches and medical
status above patients’ wellbeing. He reveals for
the first time the true human cost of an industry
that, in the name of helping others, has actually
been helping itself.
Chaotic Fishponds and
Mirror Universes
Richard Elwes
Quercus. PB. $19.99
What can we learn from fish in a
pond? How do social networks
connect the world? How can
artificial intelligences learn? Why
would life be different in a mirror
universe? Mathematics is
everywhere, whether we’re aware
of it or not. This book provides an insight into the
‘hidden wiring’ that governs our world. From the
astonishing theorems that control computers to
the formulae behind stocks and shares, Chaotic
Fishponds and Mirror Universes explains how
mathematics determines every aspect of our lives
– right down to the foundations of our bodies.
SCATTER, ADAPT
AND REMEMBER
Annalee Newitz
Black Inc. PB. $29.99
The Astronaut
Wives Club
Lily Koppel
As American astronauts were
launched on death-defying
missions, television cameras
focused on the brave smiles of
their wives. Overnight, these
women were transformed from
shy military spouses to
American royalty. Here, Lily Koppel tells the true
story of the wives behind the American Space
Race, chronicling their romantic, domestic and
public dramas, the challenges they faced and
the 40-year friendship that bound them together.
The Trip to Echo Spring:
Why Writers Drink
Olivia Laing
A&U. HB. $35
Why is it that some of the
greatest works of literature have
been produced by writers who
are in the grip of alcoholism?
Here, Olivia Laing examines the
link between creativity and
drinking through the lives of six
extraordinary minds. As she travels from John
Cheever’s New York to Ernest Hemingway’s Key
West to Raymond Carver’s Port Angeles, she
pieces together a topographical map of
alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the
miraculous possibilities of recovery.
13
Climate change. Pandemics.
Catastrophic volcanoes.
Should we just give up and
accept our doom? Annalee
Newitz’s speculative and
hopeful work of popular
science focuses our attention
on humanity’s long history of dodging the
bullet of extinction – and suggests practical
ways to keep doing it. From bacteria labs in St
Louis to ancient underground cities in Turkey,
we discover the keys to long-term survival.
Scatter, Adapt and Remember leads us away
from apocalyptic thinking into a future where
we live to build a better world.
Mad Science 2
Theodore Gray
Black Dog & Leventhal. PB. $29.99
For nearly a decade,
Theodore Gray has been
demonstrating the basic
principles of chemistry and
physics through exciting and
sometimes daredevil
experiments for his popular science column,
Gray Matter. This second volume includes a
host of even more dramatic, enlightening and
daring demonstrations. Gray dips his hand into
molten lead to illustrate the Leidenfrost effect,
crushes a tomato between two small magnets
to explain their power, and creates trinkets out
of solid mercury to show how the state of
matter depends very much on the temperature
at which it exists.
Elena Taylor
National Galley of Victoria. PB. $39.95
Australian Impressionists in
France explores an overlooked
period in our art history. Many
Australian artists spent time in
France during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, yet this era is often bypassed in favour
of examining the work of well-known impressionist
landscape painters, such as Tom Roberts and
Frederick McCubbin, and their role in developing
our national identity. Beautifully illustrated with
more than 130 paintings, prints and drawings, this
catalogue is a comprehensive and welcome look
at a vibrant and fascinating time of artistic
exchange. It includes a series of informative
essays looking at different groups of artists and
collaborators, and it is divided into two timeblocks: 1885-1900 and 1900-1915. Australian
Impressionists in France uncovers a period of
artistic creativity and diversity that many will not be
aware of, and will be pleasantly surprised by.
Vitamin D2
Phaidon. HB. $79.95
The sequel to Vitamin D is an
up-to-the-minute survey of
international contemporary
drawing, featuring 115 artists
nominated by respected critics
and curators from around the
world. Drawing has resumed its importance in
artistic practice, and all the artists featured here
are pushing the boundaries of the medium. This
is both an inspiring reference book for the
practitioner and an accessible introduction for
newcomers, with the same lovely production
values as the first volume.
Genesis
Sebastião Salgado
Taschen. HB. $100
I suspect many readers
would have been introduced
to Sebastião Salgado’s
photographs by his
extraordinary images of massive
gold mines from his 1993
book, Workers, where human
beings toil like ants in a scene from purgatory.
Genesis, his new opus, is a beautiful publication.
It is the result of an epic eight-year expedition to
rediscover the mountains, deserts and oceans,
as well as the animals and peoples that have thus
far escaped the imprint of modern society.
Taxidermy
Alexis Turner
T&H. HB. $39.95
From icky and dusty to the
height of cool, taxidermy has
staged an extraordinary
comeback. No longer confined
to stately homes, stuffed
animals are appearing
everywhere, from modern
apartments to luxury department stores.
High-profile artists have rejuvenated the medium
and museums have dusted down their historic
collections and put them back on display.
With stunning photography that explores this
rich art form, past and present, this title is the
most comprehensive and beautiful survey of
taxidermy ever produced.
with Christine Gordon,
Readings Carlton
Hannah Shuckburgh
T&H. HB. $35
Of course this is a beautiful
book. The author, Hannah
Shuckburgh, is the lifestyle
editor for Condé Naste’s Easy
Living magazine. Here, she
takes you through the basics of
how to set a lovely and
imaginative table from scant resources, from
linens to glasses, flowers and serving platters. It’s
full of sweet pictures: brown paper twisted
around bread, tables laden with vibrant colours.
My daughter has created some masterful
arrangements with ideas picked from the great
glossary of ideas – one ho-hum Wednesday eve
we even served our pizza on some coloured tiles.
Eye-catching and inspiring.
A Cook’s Tour
of France
Gabriel Gaté
Hardie Grant. HB. $34.95
We are nearly at that time of
the year again, when that great
road race is about to begin: the
Tour de France. This is when
Australian-based French chef
Gabriel Gaté talks up the very
best of French food as cyclists
head for the hills and we head for our couches.
Obviously the gastronomy of the country is quite
simply superb, and here Gaté pulls together a
collection of easy-to-follow traditional recipes.
There’s the popular Chicken Casserole Vallée
d’Auge from Normandy, the vibrant Ratatouille
with Lemon and Olive Chantilly from Provence,
and, of course, divine desserts, as only the
French can do, like the luscious Strawberry Tart
from the Loire Valley. Why not use this book
throughout the race – it will give you the energy
you need to stay awake in the wee hours.
Rick Stein’s India
Rick Stein
Random. HB. $49.95
I reckon Rick Stein is the type
of bloke that always wants
answers. He might ask himself,
what makes a good curry? It’s
not good enough to follow a
few recipes or visit a few
restaurants. Rather, Rick wants
to immerse himself in the answer, and so he
journeys to India to eat every curry he can. Is it
sensual spicy aromas or thick, creamy sauces
that makes the dish? Rich, dark dhals or crispy
fried street snacks? As Rick travels through this
colourful, chaotic nation, he encounters fragrant
kormas, delicate spiced fish and slow-cooked
biryanis, all the while gathering ideas, for what
will be the perfect curry.
Not Quite Nigella
Lorraine Elliott
Penguin. PB. $29.99
Lorraine Elliot is Australia’s Julie
Powell (of Julie & Julia novelturned-film fame). Her popular
blog Not Quite Nigella was so
successful that she was able to
leave her corporate life and write
about food full-time. This book is
the story behind the story and the hard yards she
did before her blog took off. In each chapter,
there’s a recipe, along with recollections of the
good times and the downright disasters.
14
Miles Franklin & Anti-Romance
Picture Books
Mel Campbell writes on why My Brilliant Career is modern,
feminist, funny and brilliantly anti-romantic, still.
She’s now lent her name to two literary prizes, but until recently I’d never read Stella Maria
Sarah Miles Franklin’s famous novel My Brilliant Career. The reason I’d avoided it for so long
was that its worthiness made it seem leaden. I expected it to be long-winded, boring, full of
clichéd outback colonialism. Instead I found it astonishingly fresh, funny and modern, and its
protagonist, Sybylla Melvyn, uncompromisingly feminist.
I especially enjoyed Franklin’s ear for the Aussie vernacular, now sadly lost to our
globalised tongues. As the Melvyns’ disgruntled servant Jane says: ‘A girl could have a fly
round and a lark or two there I tell you; but here … there ain’t one bloomin’ feller to do a mash
with. I’m full of the place.’
The novel got me actively interrogating why I hate books set in the Australian bush.
It’s not that I dislike the outdoors; rather, I’m a Romantic by disposition. I love the capacity of
wild landscapes to inspire feelings of sublime awe and admiration. And I’ll happily read about
remote places in other countries. Literary depictions of wilderness reflect local ideologies. For
instance, books by Mark Twain, Jack London and Henry David Thoreau echo the American
doctrine of ‘manifest destiny’. In these works the vast sprawl of the North American continent
symbolises freedom and redemption though adventure. Meanwhile, in the European literary
imagination, the wilderness is a space of magic and myth. A mystical, allegorical atmosphere
also leaks into European colonial narratives, from Rudyard Kipling’s whimsical The Jungle Book
to the Congolese nightmare of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
My Brilliant Career was published in 1901, at the height of the chauvinistic Australian
nationalist movement championed by The Bulletin magazine. This was the heyday of the
idealised Aussie bushman of Banjo Paterson, Norman Lindsay and Henry Lawson. To give these
stoic, sardonic heroes a struggle by which to define themselves, their bush surroundings are
described as inhospitably harsh and arid. It’s a tradition I find deeply dreary, not to mention
repellently racist and sexist. Franklin rapturously praises the struggling rural peasant in her
closing pages:
‘Ah, my sunburnt brothers! – sons of toil and of Australia! I love and respect you
well, for you are brave and good and true … I love you, I love you … but I cannot help you. My
ineffective life will be trod out in the same round of toil – I am only one of yourselves, I am only
an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a – woman!’
Henry Lawson endorsed Franklin’s novel in a preface whose casual sexism annoys
me: ‘I don’t know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book – I leave that to girl readers to
judge; but the descriptions of bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me … the
truest I ever read.’
Yet Sybylla’s struggle is clearly also a woman’s demand for self-determination. It’s
strikingly similar to the speech Charlotte Brontë gives to her sensitive, suffering heroine Jane
Eyre: ‘Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?
You think wrong!’
Like Jane Eyre, My Brilliant Career is a powerfully interior coming-of-age novel, driven
by Sybylla’s inner desires and torments. Her capacity for emotion makes her an appealing
heroine, but she’s doomed to be misinterpreted by others as cynical, uncaring and ungrateful:
‘Did my mother understand me, she would know that I am capable of more depths of agony
and more exquisite heights of joy in one day than Gertie will experience in her whole life.’
Jeffrey Eugenides’ recent novel The Marriage Plot has been hailed as a clever
deconstruction of the romantic narratives of the nineteenth century. These literary conventions
guide not only Eugenides’ protagonist Madeleine, but also the reader. We expect Madeleine to
find happiness with one of several potential suitors, but neither she nor we find such simple,
familiar comfort.
My Brilliant Career similarly subverts the reader’s expectations … more than a
century earlier! It surprised me that it seemed to satirise a Jane Austen comedy of manners.
Caddagat, the gorgeous rural property where Sybylla stays with her grandmother,
plays the same pivotal role in this novel as the country houses in Austen’s fiction. Franklin sets
up several potential love interests for Sybylla: honest jackaroo Frank Hawden, sophisticated
urbanite Everard Grey, and smouldering local squattocrat Harold Beecham. Each pair gets
a meet-cute, zingy dialogue and emotionally charged encounters. They circle one another
at dinners and parties, and pay and return visits in elegant formal attire and in charmingly
unguarded dishevelment.
The scene in which Sybylla finally provokes Harold into displaying his notorious
temper is genuinely steamy in a way today’s pallid erotica can only hope to imitate. He seizes
her arm in a bruising grip, brutishly ignoring her cries of ‘Unhand me!’
‘He drew me so closely to him that, through his thin shirt – the only garment on the
upper part of his figure – I could feel the heat of his body, and his big heart beating wildly.
“I’ll do what I like with you. I’ll touch you as much as I think fit.”’
Eat your heart out, Christian Grey!
But Franklin has her reject him and her other suitors, for the sake of her immutable
moral principles! That Sybylla values intellectual and creative freedom over love and financial
security makes My Brilliant Career resolutely feminist. The passionate Harold seems like an
ideal match – he begs to marry Sybylla and even pledges to support her authorial ambitions.
But she knows that eventually Harold will want a ‘normal’ wife – which she can never be.
Of course, as Sybylla pens her autobiography, she’s still a teenager driven by
immature impulses and smarting from fresh wounds. Franklin’s literary conceit is that Sybylla’s
story has taken just one month, March 1899, to write. This lends hope to what is otherwise a
total downer of an ending. The ‘brilliant career’ Sybylla ironises so bitterly could still be hers.
By Mel Campbell
Mel Campbell is a Melbourne freelance journalist and cultural critic. Out of Shape, her
non-fiction investigation of clothing size and fit, is published by Affirm Press.
Yoo Hoo, Ladybird!
Mem Fox & Laura Ljungkvist (illus.)
Viking. HB. $19.99
Did you
know...
... that Pippi
Longstocking
started out as a
bedtime story?
Astrid Lindgren
made up the
character of the
beloved redhead
(who was strong
enough to lift a
horse and was
proud of her
freckles) for her
daughter, Karin,
who was ill with
pneumonia at
the time.
Review: There is a giraffe in the bath and is
that really a car in there too? But where is the
ladybird? As we hunt for the elusive little bug,
we are introduced to an array of creatures and
objects that surreally populate the pages from
start to finish. Mem Fox’s ear for rhythmic
rhyme is flawless and guarantees a fun,
must-join-in read aloud, and the colourful, playful illustrations are
perfect for the intended audience. Young children (and not so
young adults!) will delight in looking for the cheeky red bug, but
there are plenty of other things to keep an eye out for too,
including the busy, dizzy endpapers. This is Mem Fox at her
best, and Laura Ljungkvist’s capricious artwork has ensured a
perfect picture book that is sure to become a classic. For ages
12 months and up.
Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
On the Day You Were Born
Margaret Wild & Ron Brooks (illus.)
A&U. HB. $24.99
Review: This sweet and gentle book will
give you both goosebumps and a warm glow
in your stomach. It will sing to you of a father’s
love, and the wonder and elation that the birth
of a child can bring. It will carry you through
nature’s wonderland and paint images of a
busy, radiant world, before lulling you with serene skies or a
tranquil, moonlit night. On the Day You Were Born is a celebration
of life and a beautiful introduction to our magnificent world by two
of our most esteemed picture-book makers. This is the perfect gift
to welcome a new baby, and for children ages 2 and up. AD
Scarlett and the Scratchy Moon
Chris McKimmie
A&U. HB. $29.99
Review: Scarlett can’t sleep again. The
moon is scratching the sky, and she’s
counting sheep called Daddy Neema, Mummy
Neema and Baby Neema. Scarlett is also sad
because her pet dogs, Holly and Sparky, have
died. But then a surprise comes to the door
and the world seems new again. Chris
McKimmie is well known for his strange, metaphoric and utterly
beautiful picture books, and this is no exception. There’s
something new to discover upon each reading and a four-yearold will have an entirely different perspective on the story to an
adult, which makes for an enjoyable experience for all.
Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda
Ballet Cat
Fiona Ross
Walker. HB. $27.95
The Crazy Cat Crew love to dance – they
groove and bop, they move and hop, all night
long. Then, one night, Arthur slinks off and
discovers something really special: a pair of
ballet shoes. He puts them on and goes back
to show the gang his new style. But the other
cats don’t like ballet and laugh Arthur out of town, only to realise
that all dancing is cool and that they really miss their friend.
The Circus and Other Stories
Samuil Marshak & Vladimir Lebedev
Tate Gallery. HB. $35
These four books, published in the Soviet
Union between 1925 and 1927, were a
collaboration between poet Samuil Marshak
and painter Vladimir Lebedev. Based on the
idea that children’s literature is an important
cultural object in its own right, they linked
painting, poetry and typography, creating the
timeless precursor to the modern picture book.
15
Book of the Month
The Apprentices
Maile Meloy
Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to
Not Reading
Text. PB. Was $19.99
Review: This is an utterly delicious read in so many ways. On one level, it’s rich in everyday
realism. On another, it’s full of impossible, thrilling but always believable happenings.
Janie is a clever girl at a privileged American school. One day, her science experiment, a simple way to
desalinate water, is stolen, and she believes that the culprit is one of the parents – the blustery mining tycoon
Mr Magnusson. To get it back, Janie contacts friends she has not seen for two years: Benjamin and his father,
and Pip and Jin Lo, all of whom were party to Janie’s adventures in Maile Meloy’s previous novel,
The Apothecary.
Benjamin, who has never stopped thinking of Janie, has been working on a sort of telepathic powder that allows
a person to see through another’s eyes for a brief period, even on the other side of the world. He and Jin Lo also
know the powers of the Avian Elixir, which facilitates transformation into a bird but is
uncomfortably unstable.
Mr Magnusson is mining an island in the Pacific but that’s just the half of it, and The Apprentices moves
from the US through to England through to war-torn Vietnam, as well as the idyllic but ravaged Pacific
Islands themselves. The story is compelling and culturally rich, and, above all, the young characters
are courageous, resourceful and fiercely loyal to each other. The Apprentices stands on its
own and you don’t need to have read The Apothecary, the first book in this series, to
enjoy this one (although of course both are well worth reading). Recommended for
imaginative readers aged 11 to adult. Personally, I can’t wait for the next one.
Kathy Kozlowski is from
Readings Carlton
Exclamation Mark
Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld (illus.)
Scholastic. HB. $24.99
From the bestselling creators of Duck!
Rabbit! comes an exciting tale of selfdiscovery. It’s not easy being seen,
especially when you’re not like everyone
else. Especially when what sets you apart is
you. Sometimes we squish ourselves to fit in. We shrink, twist and
bend. Until, that is, a friend shows us other possibilities. In this bold
and highly visual book, an emphatic but misplaced exclamation
mark learns that being different can be very exciting! Period.
New
Kids’
Books
Junior Fiction
Australia. What a rich and inspiring background Murrell had at
her fingertips. Readers of the Our Australian Girl series who are
looking for something more detailed, or fans of Jackie French,
will enjoy this.
Lulu Bell and the Birthday
Unicorn
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
Random. PB. $9.95
Rob Lloyd Jones
Belinda Murrell & Serena Geddes (illus.)
Meet Lulu Bell. Where there’s Lulu, there’s family,
friends, animals and adventures galore. It’s almost
time for Lulu’s little sister’s birthday party. But
there’s a problem – a pony is running loose and
Lulu and her dad, the local vet, have to rescue it.
Can they find the runaway in time? And what will
happen if the naughty pony gets into more mischief
at the party? It’s lucky that Lulu has a plan!
Middle Fiction
The River Charm
Belinda Murrell
Random. PB. $15.95
Review: I can’t resist a time-slip novel and
Belinda Murrell has already established herself
as a contender in this genre with The Ivory Rose
and The Forgotten Pearl. Her stories are a
wonderful way to access Australia’s past; this
one draws on Murrell’s own family history,
dating back to the 1840s.
Sensitive Millie is living on an old estate in the bush
with her mother and sister when, with the help of an old charm,
she gains access to the past. There we meet Charlotte Atkinson,
whose family is in danger of losing their beloved home, as well
as their lives, due to marauding convicts, bushrangers and
an abusive stepfather who threatens them. The law is against
Charlotte and her mother, but they’re determined to survive and
seek refuge in a stockman’s hut in the wilderness.
I was fascinated to learn that Charlotte Atkinson had
gone on to write the very first children’s book published in
Wild Boy
Walker. HB. $19.95
Review: In 1840s London, the star attraction
of a travelling freak show is Wild Boy, whose
unfortunate appearance has condemned him to
a miserable life of rejection and ridicule. As Wild
Boy plots his escape from this intolerable
existence, he sharpens his Sherlock Holmes-like
talent for observation and deduction. And when
he’s wrongfully accused of murder and forced into a reluctant
alliance with Clarissa, the feisty acrobat, his talent for reason
becomes invaluable. While these two misfits attempt to clear
their names by finding the murderer, they also discover
friendship and acceptance.
This incredibly compelling mystery culminates in
a dramatic and surprising twist that readers will love. This
wonderful story will appeal to readers aged 9 and up and
I suspect (and hope) that there will be further adventures
involving Wild Boy and Clarissa. Highly recommended.
Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern
The Cat, The Rat And The
Baseball Bat
Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton (illus.)
Pan Mac. PB. $6.99
The title story from Andy Griffiths’ popular and
hilarious The Cat on the Mat is Flat is now
published as a stand-alone book for middle
readers. Cats and rats are natural-born enemies
– but throw a baseball bat into the mix and the
situation is sure to explode. Warning – this book
may cause a laugh attack!
Tommy Greenwald & J.P. Coovert (illus.)
St Martin’s Press. PB. $9.99
Charlie Joe Jackson may be the most reluctant
reader ever born. So far, he’s managed to get
through life without ever reading an entire book
from cover to cover. But now that he’s in middle
school, avoiding reading isn’t as easy as it used
to be. Then his friend Timmy McGibney decides
that he’s tired of covering for him, and Charlie
Joe finds himself resorting to desperate
measures to keep his perfect record intact.
Non-Fiction
Australians All
Nadia Wheatley & Ken Searle (illus.)
A&U. HB. $49.99
This is the history of our continent from the Ice
Age to the Apology, from the arrival of the First
Fleet to Mabo. The book is made up of brief
accounts of the lives of real young Australians
– some are famous, while others were legends
within their own families and communities.
Meticulously researched and highly readable,
Australians All helps us understand who we are and how we
belong to the land we share.
Reaching Out: Messages of Hope
Mariah Kennedy (ed.)
HarperCollins. PB. $19.99
Heartfelt and inspiring, Reaching Out contains
stories, poems and illustrations that have been
donated by world-renowned authors and
illustrators, including Graeme Base, Jackie
French, Michael Leunig, Bruce Whatley, Michael
Morpurgo, Andy Griffiths, Anna Perera, Libby
Gleeson, Melina Marchetta, Alison Lester, Morris
Gleitzman and many more. UNICEF Australia
Young Ambassador Mariah Kennedy created the book as a
fundraising project, and all royalties will be donated to UNICEF.
Classic of the Month
Comet in Moominland
Tove Jansson
Puffin. PB. $12.95
Review: How I wish I had been
introduced to these stories as a child, but
unfortunately for me, they were not widely
known in Australia in the 90s. The
Moomins are a lovely, whimsical family
created by Tove Jansson (1914-2001), a
Finnish author and illustrator of the
country’s Swedish-speaking minority who
produced numerous works for children
and adults. Comet in Moominland is
actually her second book about the Moomins, her first being
The Moomins and the Great Flood, which was the last to be
translated into English. Comet in Moominland serves well as
the introductory book to these characters, however, as it
presents the family and their friends afresh.
The story does, I suppose, deal with some darker
issues, such as the comet that is fast approaching (and
will destroy) the idyllic Moominvalley, where these happy
creatures live. Rather than being bleak or depressing, though,
these themes are handled with joviality and sweetness. The
creativity of these books is brilliant. They are as thrilling to
me as an adult as I know they are to seven to 11-year-olds. I
have even tried and tested them on a group of eight-year-olds
while working as a counsellor at a summer camp in Canada.
My campers would beg me every night to read them another
chapter about Moomintroll and his family.
George Munn is from Readings Hawthorn
16
Planet Word
Vanished
Kingdoms
A Hologram
for the King
J.P. Davidson (with a
forward by Stephen Fry)
Norman Davies
David Eggers
HB. Was $45
HB. Was $59.95
PB. Was $29.95
NOW $16.95
NOW $17.95
NOW $12
Planet Word uncovers everything
you didn’t know you needed
to know about how language evolves. Learn the
tricks to political propaganda and why we can talk
but animals can’t. Meet the 105-year-old man who
invented modern-day Chinese and find out why
language caused the go-light in Japan to be blue.
Europe’s history is littered
with vanished realms. There’s the Empire of
Aragon, which once dominated the western
Mediterranean, and the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania, which was, for a time, the largest
country in Europe. Much of this is now halfremembered at best, but here, Norman Davies
takes the reader through the cracks of history
to listen to the echoes of lost worlds across
the centuries.
Power Systems
Noam Chomsky
PB. Was $29.99
In a rising Saudi Arabian
city, a struggling businessman pursues a
last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay
his daughter’s college tuition and finally do
something great. In A Hologram For the King,
Dave Eggers shows us one man’s fight to hold
himself, and his splintering family, together in the
face of the global economy’s gale-force winds. A
powerful evocation of the contemporary moment,
and a moving story of how we got here.
Literary
Melbourne:
A Celebration
of Writing
and Ideas
Toby’s Room
NOW $12
In this collection of conversations,
conducted from 2010 to 2012,
Noam Chomsky explores
a diverse range of concerns: the future of
democracy in the Arab world, the implications
of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the ‘class
war’ fought by US business interests against
the working poor, the breakdown of mainstream
political institutions and the rise of the far right.
Pat Barker
PB. Was $29.95
NOW $12
Toby and Elinor, brother and
sister, closest friends and
confidants, are sharers
of a dark secret, carried from
the sweltering summer of
1912 into the battlefields
of France and wartime
London. When Toby
is reported ‘Missing,
Believed Killed’,
another secret casts a
lengthening shadow
over Elinor’s world:
how exactly did Toby
die – and why?
Steve Grimwade (ed.)
HB. Was $24.95
NOW $12
Created to mark the
celebration of Melbourne
becoming a UNESCO
City of Literature, this
anthology draws
together a selection of
the best local writing.
Extracts from 80
writers across different
genres – crime, literary
fiction, poetry, Indigenous
stories, migrant tales, theatre,
children’s fiction and more –
provide a colourful and insightful
snapshot of the city’s rich literary heritage.
Readings
Short Walks
from Bogotá
Tom Feiling
HB. Was $40
NOW $12
For decades, Colombia was the
‘narcostate’. Now, it’s seen as one of the rising
stars of the global economy. Where does the
truth lie? Writer and journalist Tom Feiling has
journeyed throughout Colombia, down roads
that were until recently too dangerous to travel,
to paint a fresh picture of one of the world’s
most notorious and least-understood countries.
Underground
David Bownes, Oliver
Green & Sam Mullins
HB. Was $49.95
NOW $14.95
A lavishly illustrated book with a cast of characters
encompassing entrepreneurs, architects,
politicians and passengers, Underground is a
must for every urbanite. Authors David Bownes,
Oliver Green and Sam Mullins draw on previously
unused sources and images to produce a new
history that celebrates the crucial role of the
Underground in modern London.
While
Mortals Sleep
Kurt Vonnegut
HB. Was $37.95
NOW $13.95
The 16 previously unpublished
short stories of this collection are taken from the
beginning of Kurt Vonnegut’s career, and show a
young author already grappling with themes and
ideas that would define his work for decades to
come. Vonnegut’s acute moral sense and knack
for compelling prose are very much on display.
Higher Gossip
John Updike
Bargain
Table
A Book
of
Secrets
Michael Holroyd
HB. Was $36.95
NOW $13.95
A Book of Secrets is a treasure-trove of hidden
lives and family mysteries. With grace and
tender imagination, Michael Holroyd brings a
company of unknown women into light, from
Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second
Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales, to
Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin, and the
novelist Violet Trefusis.
Future Perfect
Steven Johnson
HB. Was $33
NOW $12
What connects the ‘miracle
on the Hudson’ to the
French railway system? Or
the mysterious outbreak of strange smells
in downtown Manhattan to the invention of
the internet? With his characteristic flair for
multidisciplinary storytelling, Steven Johnson
shows what lies behind these and many other
fascinating human stories – namely the concept
of networked thinking.
No Regrets:
The Life of
Edith Piaf
Carolyn Burke
PB. Was $39.95
HB. Was $40
NOW $16.95
NOW $13.95
John Updike began compiling
Higher Gossip shortly before
his death in 2009. Displaying
characteristic humour and insight on subjects as
varied as ageing, golf, dinosaurs and make-up as
well as his own fiction, this delightful collection is a
wonderful legacy for fans of art and criticism alike.
In No Regrets, Carolyn Burke offers an eloquent
embrace of the famed French singer-songwriter.
Tracing her rise to international fame, Burke
details her tragedies and her triumphs, her
marriages and her music, as well as her
conquest of America from Carnegie Hall to The
Ed Sullivan Show.
A Classical
Education
Caroline Taggart
inside the perplexing world of cosmology.
Beginning with relativity theory and the Big
Bang, Greene introduces us to the world
of parallel universes. With his inspired
analogies starring everyone from South
Park’s Eric Cartman to Ms Pac-Man, Greene
presents a lucid, intriguing and triumphantly
understandable look at the universe.
The Better
Angels of
Our Nature
Steven Pinker
PB. Was $32.95
NOW $13.95
Given the images of conflict we see daily
on our screens, can violence really have
declined? And wasn’t the twentieth century
the most devastatingly brutal in history?
Extraordinarily, however, Steven Pinker
shows that humankind really has become
progressively less violent over millennia and
decades. Debunking both the idea of the
‘noble savage’ and a Hobbesian notion of a
‘nasty, brutish and short’ life, he argues that
modernity and its cultural institutions are in
fact making us better people.
1001 Paintings
You Must See
Before You Die
Stephen Farthing (ed.)
PB. Was $49.95
NOW $16.95
1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
brings you right up to date with an incisive
look at the world’s best artwork, from Ancient
Egyptian wall paintings to contemporary
Western canvases. Within its pages you will
see displayed 1001 of the most memorable,
important, controversial and visually arresting
paintings that have ever been created. Each
image is accompanied by text discussing both
the work and the artist.
HB. Was $17.95
Shakespeare’s
Restless
World
NOW $12
How many times have you
wished that you’d been taught Latin at school?
Or that your history stretched all the way back
to Greek and Roman myths and legends? Or
perhaps you wished you knew all about the
great inventions and medical developments
that have made our world what it is today?
A Classical Education provides all of these
facts and more, filling the gaps that modern
schooling leaves out.
Art + Soul
Hetti Perkins
HB. Was $89.99
NOW $20
This lavishly illustrated book
captures the remarkable
energy and diversity of Aboriginal art, from the
Papunya Tula Artists to Rover Thomas and his
heirs’ phenomenal achievements in the East
Kimberley. It features the work of contemporary
artists Destiny Deacon, Brenda L. Croft and
Michael Riley, as well as that of the celebrated
Emily Kam Ngwarray, whose paintings
revolutionised Australian art.
The Hidden
Reality
Brian Greene
HB. Was $39.95
NOW $15.95
Theoretical physicist and
celebrated author Brian Greene offers intrepid
readers another in-depth yet accessible look
Neil MacGregor
HB. Was $40
NOW $13.95
Shakespeare’s Restless World uncovers the
fascinating stories behind 20 objects from
the Bard’s life and times. The items range
from the rich, such as the hoard of gold
coins that make up the Salcombe treasure,
to the very humble, like the battered trunk
and worn garments of an unknown pedlar.
Through each, Neil MacGregor explores the
defining themes of the Shakespearean age –
globalisation, reformation, piracy, Islam, magic
and more.
The Man
Without a Face
Masha Gessen
HB. Was $39.95
NOW $15.95
Handpicked as a successor
by the ‘family’ surrounding an ailing and
increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir
Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the
Russian oligarchy. His popularity soared as
the country and an infatuated West were
determined to see the progressive leader of
their dreams, even as he seized control of
media, sent political rivals and critics into exile
or to the grave, and smashed the country’s
fragile electoral system.
New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at www.readings.com.au for more.
DVD
of
the
month
LINCOLN
$39.95
Released 13 June
A revealing drama that focuses
on America’s sixteenth President
and his tumultuous final months
in office. In a nation divided,
Abraham Lincoln pursues a
course of action designed to
end the Civil War, unite the
country and abolish slavery. With moral courage
and a fierce determination to succeed, his
choices will change the fate of generations to
come. Daniel Day-Lewis stars in his Academy
Award-winning role, supported by a great cast
that includes Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.
DJANGO UNCHAINED
$39.95
Released 6 June
Written and directed by Quentin
Tarantino and featuring an
award-winning cast, Django
Unchained is the tale of Django
(Jamie Foxx), a slave who teams
up with bounty hunter Dr King
Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to
seek out the South’s most wanted criminals. As
he hones his vital hunting skills, his one goal is to
find and rescue the wife he lost to the slave trade
long ago. When their search ultimately leads to
the infamous and brutal Calvin Candie (Leonardo
DiCaprio), they arouse the suspicion of Stephen
(Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s trusted house
slave. Now their moves are marked and Candie’s
treacherous organisation closes in on them.
THE IMPOSSIBLE
$39.95
The Impossible is the story of a
family caught in the mayhem of
one of the worst natural
catastrophes of our time – the
destructive tsunami that hit Asia
on Boxing Day 2004. Maria
(Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan
McGregor) and their three sons begin their
vacation in Thailand, looking forward to a few
days in tropical paradise. But on the morning of
26 December, a terrifying roar rises up from the
centre of the earth, and the family face their
darkest hours.
with Lou Fulco
The NEWSROOM: SEASON 1
$39.95
This brilliant new Aaron
Sorkin-created series centres
on a cable news anchor (Jeff
Daniels) who returns to work
from a forced vacation to find
his staff have jumped ship. His
boss (Sam Waterston) has
hired a new crew in his absence, but the
problem is they don’t all see eye to eye. Despite
this, they set out together on a patriotic and
idealistic mission to do the news well in the face
of corporate and commercial obstacles, and
their own personal entanglements.
LILYHAMMER: SEASON 1
$39.95
Released 6 June
Frank Tagliano (Steven Van
Zandt) is a former New York
mobster who, after testifying in
a trial, joins the witness
protection program. Intrigued
by the place after watching the
Winter Olympics in 1994, he is
relocated to Lillehammer in Norway. Yet the
transition from being a feared and respected
gangster in the US to becoming an unemployed
immigrant in another country is far from simple.
Frank soon discovers that in order to succeed in
this rural Norwegian society, he must resort to
his old ways.
MIRANDA: SEASON 3
$34.95
Released 5 June
UK comedienne Miranda Hart
returns for a third season of her
much-loved series. It doesn’t
matter what Miranda attempts
in life, whether it is dating or
simply dealing with her
overbearing mother, she always
seems to fall flat, quite literally. Miranda is over
six feet tall and gets called ‘Sir’ all too often. She
has never fitted in with her old boarding school
friends and finds social situations awkward,
especially around men. And she is a constant
disappointment to her mother, who is desperate
for her to get a proper job and a husband.
THE THICK OF IT: SEASON 4
17
SILVER LININGS
PLAYBOOK
Was $39.95
$29.95
Released 5 June
Released 5 June
After spending eight months in a state
institution on a plea bargain, former teacher
Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) moves back
in with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki
Weaver) and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Pat refuses
to take his medication, feeling that he can
manage solely through healthy living and
looking for the ‘silver linings’ in his life. Things
get more challenging when he meets Tiffany
(Jennifer Lawrence), a mysterious girl with
problems of her own. Tiffany offers to help Pat
reconnect with his wife, but only if he’ll help
her out in return. As their deal plays out, an
unexpected bond begins to surface, adding
what might just be a silver lining to their
troubled lives.
Government embarrassment,
ministerial cock-ups, coalition
rows, backroom deals, policy
U-turns, spin-doctoring, political
backstabbing and wild media
speculation. This can only be
the eagerly anticipated return of
Armando Iannucci’s Westminster political
comedy, The Thick of It. In the seven-part fourth
season, Nicola Murray and Malcolm Tucker are
now consigned to the opposition benches, but
still desperate for power. Meanwhile, Peter
Mannion is the new Secretary of State for Social
Affairs, and finds himself supported by his team
of special advisors and thwarted by his new
coalition partners in turn.
GALÁPAGOS with David
Attenborough
$29.95
Released 5 June
Explore a world full of mystery
and wonder. Filmed in one of
the most fascinating locations
on earth, this multi-awardwinning documentary is an
exploration of the environments
and species of the Galápagos
Islands. It was here, amongst the flora and fauna
of these enchanted volcanic lands, that Charles
Darwin formulated his groundbreaking theories
on evolution. Now, David Attenborough explores
how life there has continued to evolve in
biological isolation, and how the ever-changing
landscape has given birth to species and
sub-species that exist nowhere else in the world.
Also Available
Hitchcock, $39.95
Hemingway & Gelhorn, $29.95
True Blood: Season 5, $59.95
Disney’s Peter Pan, $39.95, 5 June
My Left Foot, $12.95, 5 June
Breaking Bad: Season 5, $39.95, 13 June
The Sweeney, $39.95, 13 June
West of Memphis, $29.95, 13 June
Flight, $39.95, 19 June
Amour, $39.95, 19 June
Dexter: Season 7, $59.95, 19 June
House of Cards: Season 1, $49.95,
20 June
Cloud Atlas, $39.95, 26 June
Beautiful Creatures, $39.95, 26 June
The Paperboy, $39.95, 28 June
3 FOR 2:
BUY ANY TWO NAXOS
AUDIOBOOKS FROM
OUR FEATURED
RANGE AND RECEIVE
A THIRD FREE*.
NAXOS AUDIOBOOK SALE
From Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to Arthur Miller’s Death of
a Salesman, we have hours of wonderful stories to choose from.
*MUST BE OF EQUAL OR LESSER VALUE.
Offer available at our Carlton, Hawthorn and St Kilda shops.
If you’re a lover of the classics, then you’ll be glad to hear that
we’re running our annual Naxos AudioBooks sale again in June.
18
cd
of the
month
Once I was an Eagle
Laura Marling
Was $26.95
Review: Twenty-three years old. I say
again, Laura Marling is 23 years old. I don’t
know why this surprises me, but it does – in a
positive way. I guess it’s just that what I hear
come out of the speakers sounds like
something from a soul who has been around
the block once or twice. This is Marling’s
fourth album in five years, and her folk
sensibilities gather a deeper and more
intriguing sense of wordplay with every new
release. Once I Was an Eagle is arguably her
finest album to date. Its 16 tracks explore the
ups and downs, the give and take, and, finally,
the prize that comes with new love. It is her
most coherent group of songs, seamlessly
flowing from one to the next. Highlights are
‘Where Can I Go?’ and ‘Master Hunter’.
Marling is a refreshing albeit old-soul talent.
Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn
Pop/Rock
American Kid
Patty Griffin
$21.95
Review: Patty Griffin is an
artist I have been following
(obsessing about, really)
ever since I heard her debut
Living With Ghosts in 1996.
She is quite simply one of my favourite
singer-songwriters; her lyrics and voice speak
to me like very few others. American Kid is
Griffin’s first album of original songs in six
years, and it’s reminiscent of her earlier work.
That is, it’s acoustic in nature, with stripped
back instrumentation that allows her incredibly
powerful voice to shine. An extra treat for fans
is the presence of her beau (some say
husband) Robert Plant, with whom she
records as The Band of Joy. Their duet ‘Ohio’
is a beautiful thing. Welcome back, Patty. Now
how about another tour?
Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton
Departures
Bernard Fanning
Released 7 June
Was $26.95
Review: Powderfinger
fans beware! You should
expect the unexpected. The
grunge guitars are gone, as is
the melancholy of Tea &
Sympathy. Departures is just that – a departure
from all expectation and a freedom to express
the joys and sorrows and fears and hopes of
life’s journey. In this case, life took Bernard
Fanning to Madrid, where he lived for a couple
of years and wrote this album. Synth sounds
wash over songs of rhythm and blues and soul.
Of course, with a voice as distinctive as
Fanning’s the journey may not seem as far from
one release to another but, as a Powderfinger
fan, I’m just happy to hear it again.
Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn
Modern Vampires of
the City
Vampire Weekend
$21.95
Vinyl $29.95
Review: Vampire
Weekend are known for their
infectious staccato rock, and
this album takes some risks.
It’s liberally sprinkled with
production effects and is musically diverse from
start to finish. But it all pays off, saturating you
with energetic guitar and keyboards. Joyous
track ‘Diane Young’ makes for a choppy play on
the words ‘dying young’, while squeaking
backing vocals on ‘Ya Hey’ provide the anthem
to your next break-up. ‘Steps’ even dips a toe in
the world of alternative classical music.
Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton
Trouble Will Find Me
The National
$21.95
Review: Trouble Will Find
Me is the highly anticipated
sixth album from Ohio-byway-of-Brooklyn band The
National. After topping many
critics’ best-of lists for 2010 and finally achieving
relative commercial success with the stunning
High Violet, one would think the pressure would
be on to repeat the trick, but in fact the reverse
is true. A grueling 22-month tour followed High
Violet – after all, this is a band who forged their
reputation not overnight but over the course of a
decade, through sheer grit and increasingly
strong records. Having reached this point, they
return seemingly reinvigorated, confident,
almost relaxed and decidedly self-assured. The
mood suits them too. They’ve produced another
glorious piece of work.
Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda
... Like Clockwork
Queens of the Stone Age
$21.95
Review: What have we
done without Queens of the
Stone Age over the past five
years to rock our little socks
off? The answer, for my
money, is filled the void with much lamer
comparison bands, Nickelback and Creed
aside! There is, however, a striking change of
direction on ... Like Clockwork. While still
brimming with all the muscle and thunder you’d
expect from this band, it also features rather fine
balladry and some of the greatest guitar work
Josh Homme has ever produced. Old boys Nick
Oliveri, Dave Grohl and Mark Lanegan are back
on board, as are guest luminaries Elton John
and Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears. Pretenders
beware. DM
disappear as quickly as they arrived. Amidon
himself describes the album as a journey, a
winding path that comes from a darker, more
internal place. Well, it is dark and edgy, but
nonetheless compelling. LF
Monomania
Deerhunter
$21.95
Vinyl $24.95
Review: Deerhunter have
been throwing around
attitude and alt-sometimesgarage tunes for over a
decade now. Here, title track
‘Monomania’ showcases their noise-rock history,
with a fuzzed-out chorus that bleeds into a
thrashing finale. Opener ‘Neon Junkyard’
plays to their more indie-rock side with a
swinging (left) hook to get you in the mood,
while straight and mellow track ‘The Missing’
feels quite beautiful in its clarity. It’s all a bit
unexpected, but if you embrace the low-key
distortion you will be richly rewarded with an
(occasionally) out-of-focus masterpiece. FH
Random Access
Memories
Daft Punk
$21.95
Vinyl $34.95
Review: French music duo
Daft Punk have long been
purveyors of exquisite house
music. Their debut Homework
(1997) and follow-up Discovery
(2001) are considered classics of the genre. Their
latest release, Random Access Memories,
features collaborations with Pharrell Williams
(The Neptunes and N.E.R.D) and Nile Rodgers
(Chic), among others. This highly anticipated
release will not disappoint, appealing to the Daft
Punk faithful and new converts alike. It is a funk,
soul and house musical celebration that serves as
a testament to the genre.
Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from
Readings Carlton
Love Has Come For You
Steve Martin & Edie Brickell
$21.95
Review: There has long
been a tradition of actorsturned-singers and vice versa,
and actor, comedian, novelist
and expert banjo player Steve
Martin is no stranger to swapping genres. On his
third album, Love Has Come For You, he teams
up with Edie Brickell of New Bohemians fame
(who you may remember found success with
the song ‘What I Am’ in 1988). Martin’s deft
accompaniments blend well with Brickell’s lyrics,
creating an exquisite record and a real treat. MAS
Bright Sunny South
Soundtrack
$19.95
The Great Gatsby
Sam Amidon
Review: Singer and
multi-instrumentalist Sam
Amidon steers away from his
usual folk roots and throws
up jazz-tinged, quirky sounds
on an experimental album that juxtaposes with
his deadpan vocals. Sounds come and go, at
times rushing like a bull at the gate only to
Various
$21.95
Review: The soundtrack
to Baz Luhrmann’s 3D film
adaptation of F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The
Great Gatsby, is a theatrical
compilation of originals and covers from a range
of contemporary artists. Jay-Z, Lana Del Rey,
will.i.am, Florence + the Machine, Gotye and
Sia all make an appearance, as do The xx, who
recorded a song especially for the film,
‘Together’. Other highlights include Jack White’s
cover of U2’s ‘Love is Blindness’, and The Bryan
Ferry Orchestra’s reinterpretation of Roxy
Music’s 1975 hit ‘Love is the Drug’ and cover of
Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’.
Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda
Jazz
Somewhere
Keith Jarrett Trio
$24.95
Review: This is the first
release in a while for the Keith
Jarrett Trio, which includes
Jarrett, Gary Peacock and
Jack DeJohnette. At 67,
Jarrett retains the energy and ambition of a
young man, and Somewhere has the group in a
joyous, playful mood. All three turn on a dime in
‘Solar’, and then there’s the fantastically
Thelonious Monk-esque stop-start feel of
‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’.
However, the highlight is the trance-like
‘Somewhere/Everywhere’, nearly 20 minutes of
undulating, gospel-drenched groove that stands
up on its own in comparison to epics such as
part two of The Köln Concert.
Richard Mohr is from Readings Carlton
Nola’s Ark
Monique diMattina
$24.95
Singer-songwriter, boogiewoogie barrelhouse basher,
composer, radio personality
and pianist – Monique
diMattina’s cred as a mature
and versatile artist is well deserved. Her new
album, Nola’s Ark, was recorded in New Orleans at
the famed Piety Studios with an all-star line-up of
musicians, including trumpeter Leroy Jones (Harry
Connick Jr.’s band) and bass/sousaphone player
Matt Perrine (Dr John, Jon Cleary). The album
features original songs written on Monique’s 3RRR
segment Shaken Not Rehearsed, alongside
well-loved standards such as ‘Young at Heart’ and
Fats Waller’s ‘Numb Fumblin’.
World/Folk
Beyond the
Ragasphere
Debashish Bhattacharya & Friends
$24.95
Review: Kolkata-based
guitarist Debashish
Bhattacharya has already
made several very fine
albums of Indian ragas. His
guitar is a highly modified one, with extra strings
capable of producing all the nuances of
traditional instruments. Beyond the Ragasphere
is a breakthrough album and features leading
musicians from several traditions, including Indo
Jazz pioneer John McLaughlin (Shakti and
Remember Shakti), flamenco player Adam del
Monte, dobro player Jerry Douglas and
nylon-string guitarist Nishad Pandey. Other more
mellow tracks show off the considerable vocal
talents of Bhattacharya’s daughter, Anandi. This
is an adventurous step from one of the world’s
great guitar players that takes him well out of the
strictly raga-based themes of earlier albums.
Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton
Special
of the
month
Nicola Benedetti
plays Vaughan
Williams & Tavener
Nicola Benedetti, London
Philharmonic Orchestra
& Andrew Litton
DG. 4766198. Was $26.95
Special price $14.95 (for a limited time only)
The sound of English composer Sir John
Tavener is often described as ‘ethereal’,
possessing an otherworldly, spiritual quality
that strikes deep in the soul. Meanwhile,
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending
has regularly been voted as one of the most
popular classical pieces in history. Now,
classical violinist Nicola Benedetti takes on
both in this stunning album.
Dvorák & Smetana
Tokyo String Quartet
Harmonia Mundi. HMU807429. $29.95
Review: In anticipation of
their forthcoming disbandment
in late 2013, the Tokyo String
Quartet have released a new
recording that pays tribute to
two famed Czech composers: Antonín Dvorák
and Bedřich Smetana. Despite often being
regarded as polar opposites in their homeland,
together Dvorák and Smetana came to represent
the quintessential sound of nineteenth-century
Czech music. Interestingly, Smetana’s Quartet
No. 1: From My Life, featured here, was written
as the composer began to lose his hearing. An
amazing album.
Plácido Domingo: Verdi
Plácido Domingo
Decca. 4791168. 2CDs. $29.95
Review: This remarkable
celebration of Verdi’s music is
presented over two discs and
features performances from
tenor Plácido Domingo over
the years, from 1972 to 2001. One listen and
you’ll truly understand why Domingo’s name is
known across the globe. KR
Percy Grainger:
Works for Large
Chorus and Orchestra
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra &
Sir Andrew Davis
Chandos. CHSA5121. $24.95
Review: I’m glad Percy
Grainger has been coming
back into vogue recently. His
innovative pieces blend
contemporary twentiethcentury musical ideas with those rooted in the
traditions of Bach and Beethoven. What’s
more, the use of evocative poetry within his
orchestration is truly exciting. KR
Bach Re-invented
Kristjan Järvi, Simone Dinnerstein
& Absolute Ensemble
Sony. 88691941682. $22.95
Spheres
Review: In their latest
album, Kristjan Järvi and the
Absolute Ensemble rework
Bach into a strange but
exciting version of a piano
concerto. While Bach is ever present, this
kaleidoscope of music is interwoven with ideas
from Klezmer, jazz, hip-hop and more. There is
some terrific playing on show here with each
musician given moments to shine. KR
DG. 4790571. Was $26.95
Chopin: The Nocturnes
Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton
Daniel Hope
Maria João Pires
Review: I got very
excited when I saw the
selection of composers
included on Daniel Hope’s
new album, from Einaudi to
Faure, Prokofiev, Jenkins and beyond. What is
particularly sumptuous about these
arrangements is the magical way Hope weaves
in and out of each work, demonstrating exactly
why he’s famous. I’m hooked on Spheres and
often have it on repeat as I travel to and from
work each day. KR
DG. 4779568. 2CDs. Was $24.95
Review: These
performances from 1995 and
1996 are some of the finest
examples of Chopin’s
Nocturnes ever recorded. Maria
João Pires seems to have that unique ability to
always give the listener something different, even if
they have heard the work many times before.
Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton
You can also browse and buy
at our secure website:
www.readings.com.au
19
classical
cd of the
month
Learning to Howl:
Music by Andrew Ford
Jane Sheldon, Sydney
Chamber Choir, Daryl Pratt
& Marshall McGuire
Mediterraneo
Christina Pluhar & L’Arpeggiata
Virgin Classics. 4645472. $29.95
ABC Classics. 4810188. $24.95
Review: Jane Sheldon’s
pure, graceful voice will
capture your ear in Learning
to Howl, from the ethereal
‘Snatches of Old Lauds’ for
bass clarinet and drone to ‘Elegy in a Country
Graveyard’, a special piece of music that
deserves a good, quiet listen. If you know
someone who’s in need of a good dose of
Australian voices and stories, then this album
would make the perfect gift. KR
David Garrett: 14
Review: I’m already a big fan of Christina
Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata and I was not
disappointed when I heard Mediterraneo.
Their effortless virtuosity breathes life into this
latest release, which features mainly Greek
and Turkish traditional tunes. The engaging
vocals will draw you into a world of ancient
gods and enchanting music. If you’re a fan of
Jordi Savall, then it’s likely Mediterraneo will
rarely leave your CD player.
Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton
group of five friends or family members
gathering together to play them. KR
David Garrett
DG. 4790933. Was $26.95
Review: These
recordings are from a very
young David Garrett, when
he was just 14 years old. His
surety of technique is
incredible for someone of his age, and there is
an obvious joy underlining his playing of these
gorgeous violin songs. KR
Mozart: Overtures
La Cetra & Andrea Marcon
DG. 4779445. Was $26.95
Review: I wasn’t familiar
with all the works on this disc
but I certainly wasn’t
disappointed. The playing
from La Cetra under the
astute direction of Andrea Marcon is energetic
and concise, while an added attraction is the
memorable sound of the period instruments. PR
Eduard Franck:
String Quintets
Pieter Wispelwey:
J.S. Bach: 6 Suites
for Cello Solo
Pieter Wispelwey
Evil Penguin. EPRC012. CD/DVD. $39.95
Review: Creating a
recording like this is the work
of a lifetime and I love that
Pieter Wispelwey has
included a DVD where he
talks about the scholarly ideas associated with
the project. It doesn’t matter if you already have
a recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, or indeed six
different recordings. This is one worth having on
the shelf simply because Wispelwey is such an
accomplished musician. KR
The Australian
Chamber Orchestra
presents The Reef
Richard Tognetti, Jon Frank, Mick
Sowry & Iain Grandage
ABC Classics. 0762850. $26.95
Edinger Quintet
Audite. AUD92578. $24.95
Review: Back when
chamber music was in high
demand, Eduard Franck was
the king of the musical world,
composing as well as
working as a concert pianist. Here, his string
quintets are gathered together – Op. 15 and
Op. 51 are both grand in musical ideas yet
have an intimate feel. You can easily imagine a
Review: If you’re a fan of
films such as the seminal
Baraka, then you will be
transfixed by The Reef. Richard
Tognetti teamed up with
directors, photographers,
musicians and locals to explore
how sound and nature intersect. The music was
originally presented at a woolshed in Western
Australia and was later performed at the Sydney
Opera House. KR
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