march 2013
Free
Benjamin Law ON Michelle Dicinoski / Simmone Howell on groupie love
Event
s
Highlight
Moni c a
Dux
e wit h
obji
P
Ben
Y o u ng
D a m on
L ili W ilkinson
B ooks
m u si c
fil m
e v e nts
March
new releases
Michelle
Dicinoski
$24.99
p4
J.M.
Coetzee
$35 / $29.95
p5
$16.99
p10
SEARCHING
FOR SUGAR
MAN
$29.95
p17
Emmylou
Harris
$24.95 / $21.95
p18
m o r e insid e . . .
Cover illustration by MARC MARTIN (The Jacky Winter Group)
Simmone
Howell
Marc Martin’s The Curious Explorer’s Illustrated Guide to Exotic Animals A-Z
easter
intensive
courses
☎ 9525 3463
mon
fri
08 apr
12
apr
to
Get cracking!
AllianceFrançaise
de Melbourne
We teach French
Learn French these holidays
51 Grey street, St Kilda
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
www.afmelbourne.com.au
2
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
This month’s news
ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE FRENCH
FILM FESTIVAL
LAST WEEKS FOR SCHOOL OF
LIFE POP-UP SHOP
Now in its 24th year, the Alliance Française
If you haven’t yet visited the School of Life
French Film Festival is set to rekindle its love
in Collingwood and its special Readings’
affair with audiences once again. Running
pop-up shop, now’s your last chance. Based
from 6 to 24 March, the festival will screen
on philosopher Alain de Botton’s famed London
an enchanting selection of the finest movies
institution, which opened in 2008, The School of
to emerge from France over the last 12
Life runs a wide range of classes, conversations,
months. Readings is proud to be a sponsor
meals and workshops with Australia’s most
of the Melbourne festival for 2013. For more
innovative thinkers. But hurry – the end of the
information and to book tickets, please visit
summer term is fast approaching, with the last
www.affrenchfilmfestival.org.
day of trading for the Readings pop-up shop
being Sunday 24 March. The School of Life is
THE MELBOURNE PRIZE FOR
MUSIC 2013
located at 22 Peel Street, Collingwood. Visit
The annual Melbourne Prize, which operates
art form of music. The 2013 award will consist
AUSTRALIAN FESTIVAL OF
TRAVEL WRITING
of the Melbourne Prize for Music ($60 000),
The Australian Festival of Travel Writing is on
the Outstanding Music Award ($30 000), the
again from 22 to 24 March at the Melbourne
Development Award ($13 000) and the Civic
Brain Centre at the University of Melbourne.
Choice Award ($4000), of which Readings is
This year’s festival will uncover the wonders and
a proud sponsor. International air travel and
delights of crossing borders, the ethics of travel,
an artist residency will also be included with
industry secrets, and researching and writing
the 2013 prize pool. Please note the prize is
travel narratives, featuring a stellar line-up of
open to Victorian residents only. For more
internationally acclaimed guests. Readings are
information, and to register your interest for
also thrilled to be the official booksellers. Please
an entry form when it becomes available,
visit www.aftw.com.au for the full program.
www.theschooloflife.com/australia for more.
on a three-year cycle, will return this year to the
please visit www.melbourneprize.org or call
Mark’s
Say
News and views from Readings’
managing director, Mark Rubbo
It was dusk when our bus reached the outskirts of Jaipur; fleetingly, down a side road, an elephant lumbered
by. Our guide, Prabahv Dev Shekhawat, began to give us a rundown on the city and on the literary festival
that was about to start the next day. Prabahv’s cousin had been involved in the first festival six years ago.
Then, around 100 people came. Last year over 120,000 attendees were counted; this year, it was 200,000.
Set in the grounds of the Diggi Palace, a former backpackers’ hotel, the Jaipur Literature Festival must
be the grandest celebration of books and ideas in the world, attracting writers and patrons from the
whole subcontinent and across the globe. I was part of Readings’ tour to the festival, eleven of us
alive with anticipation in Jaipur’s dusk. Over the next five days, we were treated to some of the best
discussions about writing from authors such as Sebastian Faulks, Zoë Heller, Tom Holland, Howard
Jacobson and Pico Iyer, as well as writers from the subcontinent. A surprise guest was the Dalai Lama
in conversation with his biographer, Pico Iyer. However, the biggest crowd came to see Rahul Dravid,
former Indian Test captain and now captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Naturally, given the overwhelmingly local audience, the focus turned to writing and issues from around
the region. Eager to learn something about India, these were the sessions that attracted me. Obviously
the Delhi rape case was at the forefront of many of the discussions. There is a terrible problem with
the Indian justice system, with far too few judges and courts to hear cases. Gurcharan Das, author
of India Grows at Night and a former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, commented that his son had had
a case before the courts for years. Even with his influence, he couldn’t progress it. In his book, Das
argues that India is a strong society but suffers from weak and ineffectual government that holds back
development and economic growth. One of the problems is the power of sectional interests that stifle
03 9696 4410.
civil progress. This was demonstrated when, in another session, sociologist Ashis Nandy, talking
about corruption, said that lower caste Indians were more likely to be caught for this. This drew boos
from the audience and resulted in the issue of arrest warrants against Nandy and the festival organiser,
25% OFF LONELY PLANET
VERSO RADICAL THINKERS
Sanjoy Roy, for criminal intimidation.
Back from summer holidays and already
The Verso Radical Thinkers series brings
As well as the politics, there was talk about good writing. US writer Andrew Solomon gave a moving
planning your next trip? Luckily, the Readings’
together seminal works by leading left-wing
talk about his book Far from the Tree, which examines how parents cope with a child that is different
annual Lonely Planet sale is on once more,
intellectuals in beautifully designed paperbacks.
to them. One of the festival’s organisers, William Dalrymple, gave a brilliant presentation on his new
with 25% off all titles from 1 to 31 March. This
During March, you can buy any two of the titles
book, Return of a King. It was an exciting and immensely rewarding time, wonderfully organised in a
fantastic offer includes travel guides, phrase
and receive a third free! (Please note, offer only
beautiful setting in a fascinating city and country. Why don’t you join us on next year’s tour? Margaret
books, activity guides, photography books and
available at Readings Carlton and while stocks
Atwood, Pat Barker, Peter Carey, Umberto Eco, Stephen Fry, Michael Palin and Jeanette Winterson
more. Sale on at all Readings shops and online
last. Lowest-priced book will be free of charge.
are just some of the announced guests. Expressions of interest should be sent to Christine Gordon at
at www.readings.com.au.
Not available online.)
[email protected].
Readings Monthly is a free independent monthly newspaper
published by Readings Books, Music & Film.
Editorial enquiries:
Jessica Au at [email protected]
Advertising enquiries:
Ingrid Josephine at [email protected] 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
TOM HANKS
HALLE BERRY
★★★★
JIM BROADBENT
“One of the most ambitious
Rogerassisted
Ebert
films ever made”
thriller
SUSAN SARANDON
Based on the prize-winning
novel by David Mitchell,
directed by Tom Tykwer
and Lana & Andy Wachowski
“An ambitious
FEBRUARY 28
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.
HELENA BONHAM CARTER
ROBBIE COLTRANE
RALPH FIENNES
JEREMY IRVINE
DAVID WILLIAMS
SALLY HAWKINS
GREAT
“AnEXPECTATIONS
ambitious thriller assisted
Mike Newell lavishly
adapts the classic novel
by Charles Dickens
for the screen
by excellent performances”
EmpireMARCH 7
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
Free, no booking required.
Simmone Howell and Kate Constable will
talk about their new books – Simmone’s Girl
Defective (Pan Macmillan, PB, $16.99) and
Kate’s New Guinea Moon (A&U, PB, $16.99).
Thursday 7 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
14
Free, no booking required.
launch
A Song for
the Road
Tuesday 12 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
launch
Sally
Rippin
Sally Rippin, of Billy B Brown fame, is back with
another wonderful book in the Our Australian Girl
series. Meet Lina (Penguin, PB, $14.95) is set in
Carlton. Join us for a chat, a reading and a book
signing. Parents welcome.
Earlier this year, Age investigative journalists Nick
McKenzie and Richard Baker were ordered by the
Supreme Court to take the witness box and be
questioned over a confidential source. They’ll talk
with Margaret Simons and Peter Bartlett about
the importance of confidentiality in today’s media.
Organised together with New News.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 1749
or at [email protected].
7
Hawthorn premiership player, and premiership
coach for the Hawks and the Blues, David Parkin
will talk with journalist Mike Sheahan about the
game and Mike’s new book, Open Mike (Slattery
Media Group, PB, $34.95).
launch
Thursday 7 March, 4.30-5.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053.
13
19
Free, no booking required.
Monday 25 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
26
Professor Greg O’Brien will launch Stephen
Downes’ A Lasting Record (HarperCollins,
PB, $29.99), the true story of an extraordinary
recording of one of America′s greatest
concert pianists, made by a little-known
man from Melbourne.
20
Sue
Williams
Chris
Somerville
Ronnie Scott will be launching Chris Somerville’s
collection of short stories, We Are Not the Same
Anymore (UQP, PB, $19.95).
Free, no booking required.
Tuesday 26 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
4
Andy
Muir
Simon Hudson
Band
Join us for the launch of Underbelly: Squizzy
(A&U, PB, $22.99) by Andy Muir, the official
book of the new Channel 9 miniseries.
Pop into Readings St Kilda for some
Latin-infused folk, courtesy of the wonderful
Simon Hudson Band and their delightful new
record, Time and Space.
Free, no booking required.
Free, no booking required.
Free, no booking required.
Wednesday 13 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
Wednesday 20 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
launch
Professor Stuart Cunningham will talk about his
new book, Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry
and the Creative Sector (UQP, PB, $35).
Stephen
Downes
Tuesday 19 March, 6.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.
Stuart
Cunningham
Sue Williams – Australia’s own answer to Janet
Evanovich and Sue Grafton – will launch her new
crime novel, Murder with the Lot (Text, PB, $29.99).
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819
1917 or at [email protected].
Thursday 4 April, 6.30pm
Readings St Kilda
112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182.
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.
launch
Thursday 7 March, 6.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.
Tuesday 19 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633
or at [email protected].
25
Free, no booking required.
Tuesday 12 March, 6.30pm
Readings at the Brain Centre, Dax Centre
auditorium, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3052.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633
or at [email protected].
Mike
Sheahan
Hot Source/
Hot Water
launch
7
12
Geraldine
Robertson
Free, no booking required.
launch
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9525 3852
or at [email protected].
The Zigzag Effect (A&U, PB,
$17.99) is a highly entertaining and original story of crime
and romance, perfect for
teens who like their fiction
fast, funny and chock-full of
sass. Join author Lili Wilkinson as she talks with our very
own children’s specialist, Emily Gale.
Thursday 21 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053.
Join us for the launch of Geraldine Robertson’s
Prejudice and Reason: Some Australian
Women’s Responses to War. Jacinda Woodhead
and Noni Sproule will discuss this historical
journey, as articulated in women’s own words,
from 1909 to the present day.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633
or at [email protected].
Join us in celebrating A Song for the Road: Touring
Tales From Our Best Singer-Songwriters (Murdoch,
PB, $29.99), with live performances and readings
from Kim Salmon, Mark Seymour, Angie Hart,
Dave Graney and Magic Dirt’s Raúl Sánchez.
Thursday 7 March, 6.30pm
Readings St Kilda
112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182.
19
Love With a Chance of Drowning (Penguin,
PB, $29.99) is a breathtakingly brave memoir
about adventure and overcoming your deepest
anxieties. Author Torre DeRoche will speak on her
travels, and why some risks are worth taking
launch
7
12
Torre
DeRoche
Lili
Wilkinson
In conversation with Emily Gale
Lilies and Stars (Picaro Press), Rebecca Law’s
second poetry collection, will be celebrated
at Readings Carlton. The poems explore
the philosophy of place, esprit, nature and
endurance by reflecting on personal value
systems. Expect a reading and wine!
Free, no booking required.
Wednesday 6 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
21
Rebecca
Law
Thursday 14 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053.
Wednesday 20 March, 6.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.
launch
Don’t miss comedian and
broadcaster Libbi Gorr talking
with Monica Dux about
Monica’s new book, Things I
Didn’t Expect (When I Was
Expecting) (MUP, PB, $24.99),
a much-needed attempt to
make sense of the absurdities,
harsh realities and downright lies we’re told
about having babies.
Thursday 14 March, 6.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.
launch
Monica
Dux
launch
Simmone Howell
& Kate Constable
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917
or at [email protected].
launch
6
Writer and comedian Ben Pobjie will talk with
Damon Young about Damon’s new book,
Philosophy in the Garden (MUP, PB, $24.99).
launch
Tuesday 5 March, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
launch
Free, no booking required.
In conversation with Ben Pobjie
launch
7
Illustrator Marc Martin will launch his new book,
The Curious Explorer’s Illustrated Guide to Exotic
Animals A to Z (Penguin, HB, $24.99). See more of
Marc’s work at www.marcmartin.com.au, and on
the cover of this edition of the Readings Monthly!
YA author Kate Forsyth will talk about her new
book, The Wild Girl (Random, PB, $32.95), an
extraordinary re-imagining of how the Brothers
Grimm discovered their fairy tales.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9819 1917
or at [email protected].
launch
5
Marc
Martin
Damon
Young
launch
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.
14
Kate
Forsyth
launch
March Events
20
3
4
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
New Australian Writing Feature
In 2005, Michelle Dicinoski
and her girlfriend, Heather,
decided to get hitched,
travelling to Canada, where,
unlike Australia, same-sex
marriage has been legalised.
Their brave, romantic and
sometimes wonderfully
funny journey has become the subject of
Michelle’s debut memoir, Ghost Wife. Here,
she talks to Benjamin Law about revolution,
love and our hidden queer histories.
C
ast your mind back to the last
decade, and you might be forgiven
for thinking same-sex marriage was
going to be legalised in Australia
at any moment. For the first time in history,
the majority of polled Australians supported
the idea. Around the world, countries made
history by passing it into law. First came the
Netherlands in 2001, then Belgium, Spain,
South Africa, Norway and some American
states. Shortly after Canada legalised same-sex
marriage, Australian writer Michelle Dicinoski
and her girlfriend (now wife), Heather, flew over
to get hitched – the story of which has become
Dicinoski’s debut memoir, Ghost Wife.
‘I kept thinking I’d have to write this
book relatively quickly,’ she says now, ‘because
the law would change [in Australia].’ She laughs
thinking about it. ‘Ridiculous, in retrospect.’
Ghost Wife is a pioneering book on
‘It’s easy to
see how
Ghost Wife
– published just
in time for
Mardi Gras
– might be seen
as a clarion
call for equal
marriage.’
several levels. As far as I can tell, it’s the first
published Australian memoir about same-sex
marriage. It’s also released at a weird juncture in
time where Australians can get married overseas,
Benjamin Law interviews Michelle Dicinoski about
her debut memoir Ghost Wife.
then travel back to an odd mirror existence where
no one legally recognises it at home.
‘I always wanted to make some
document that would last,’ Dicinoski says,
‘because I knew the wedding, in some ways,
wouldn’t. There was the question around the
legality of it, and the fact it would be this “ghost
marriage” in Australia. So I wanted to give it an
embodiment in another way. If it couldn’t have it
through legal standing, I’d try to make a book.’
The book is revelatory in other ways
too. While Ghost Wife centres on the story of
Michelle and Heather’s marriage in Canada,
Dicinoski also weaves in the history of same-sex
couples from decades – sometimes centuries
– ago. There is Lilian Cooper and Josephine
Bedford, who board a ship in 1891 from London
to Brisbane to carve out a new life together,
and are now buried side-by-side in Toowong
Cemetery. There’s Bill Edwards, the Victorian
man who moved to Brisbane to take a wife, only
to have the police discover him to be a woman
in 1905, igniting a media frenzy. And there’s Ivy
and Jerry, the interracial lesbian couple who
staged a wedding in Toronto in 1957, only to
have the ceremony written in the local gossip
rag as a scandalous freakshow.
‘During the research, I found these
other stories of these people who really were
pioneers,’ Dicinoski says. ‘Some of them I knew
about already. Others, I started to dig up once
I started writing the book. What I wanted to do
was map not only my journey with Heather to
these different cities in our wedding journey, but
also uncover these relatively hidden histories of
other people who were, themselves, ghost wives,
from 50, 100 or 150 years ago. Just because you
don’t always see this history doesn’t mean it’s not
there. It was important for me to feel like we had
these predecessors, these people who were so
brave. I wanted to create a link.’
where
the
heart
lies
Unexpectedly, Dicinoski also found
herself writing about her own hidden history
and the secrets that wound their way up
her family tree. Her great-grandfather was
Japanese, her mother grew up in a children’s
home and had her sister taken away – they
were part of a generation that the federal
government now acknowledges as the
Forgotten Australians.
‘When I started digging into my
childhood and teenage years, I was surprised
at how related these stories seemed to be,’
Dicinoski says. ‘Throughout history, different
kinds of stories have been silenced, for
different reasons.’ Another reason Dicinoski
included these histories was to properly explain
and contextualise her parents’ discomfort with
the idea of her marriage to Heather. ‘In order to
write about them – and how they happen to feel
this way – I needed to acknowledge: they’re
not just my parents. They’re people with this
whole history.’
It’s easy to see how Ghost Wife
– published just in time for Mardi Gras – might
be seen as a clarion call for equal marriage.
Dicinoski says she’s still getting her head
around the possibility of being a spokesperson
for the cause. At the same time, she has always
attended protests and marches, and still feels
palpable frustration towards the government’s
lack of progress on the issue.
‘I’m extremely frustrated,’ she says.
‘But I’m also sort of beyond being frustrated,
because I was frustrated for so long. I’m
resigned to it taking a lot longer than I thought it
would.’ However, she adds, she used to take it
more personally than she does now. ‘You know
when Penny Wong said on Q&A, “I know what
my family’s worth”? It’s like that. I used to feel
like I maybe needed the law to change to feel
like I was married. Now I just know. I’m married.
And I have been for quite a while now.’ She
laughs. ‘The public support is there, but I’ve just
become more realistic about how slow the legal
side of things is to change.’
However, Ghost Wife is not all
serious. There are some tragi-comic moments,
like the chapter where Michelle and Heather
must decide what they’re going to wear to the
wedding, resulting in a grand-mal meltdown at a
department store.
‘It’s a funny section of the book,’
Dicinoski says. ‘In some ways, it encapsulates
so much about this situation. You don’t know
what to do. How do you have a gay wedding?
You don’t know! Our wedding was the first
same-sex wedding we ever went to.’ She
laughs. ‘In retrospect, I actually wish I wore
something else now.’ Which, when you think
about it, makes her not too different to most
other brides then.
Benjamin Law is the author of The Family
Law (2010) and Gaysia: Adventures in the
Queer East (2012).
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
New Fiction
book
of
the
month
The Childhood of Jesus
J.M. Coetzee
Text. HB. Was $35
Special price $29.95
ebook $24.50
Released 7 March
Review: When they arrive in the town of
Novilla, a child and a man are directed to a
building with a large sign in Spanish that
reads ‘Resettlement Centre’. The man seems
to have had his memory wiped from him. The
boy in turn has been separated from his
parents, his identification washed away
literally and metaphorically.
At the camp they are given names,
David and Simon, clothed and taught
rudimentary Spanish. The man is determined
to reunite the boy with his mother; although
he has not met her, he is certain he will know
her when he sees her. They are treated in an
offhand, but not unkind, manner. They are
allocated an apartment and Simon is given a
work permit and instructions to try the docks
for employment. He gets a job unloading
sacks of grain from what seems like a neverending procession of ships. His workmates
are a kindly bunch and treat him well. The
foreman, Alvaro, teaches David chess while
Simon works.
As ship after ship arrives and is
unloaded, Simon wonders why they do not
use a crane. When he brings this up with
his colleagues, they are shocked and hurt:
‘What is wrong with our honest work; do
we choose to do it because we are stupid?’
Alvaro explains that theirs is a labour that
keeps them in touch with the food that gives
them life, that they are proud of it. There is no
place for Simon’s cleverness here.
One day, after taking a bus to the
end of the line, David and Simon chance
upon a palatial yet rundown home with a
large tennis court. Two men and a woman
are playing. Simon becomes certain that
the woman, Ines, is the boy’s mother and
implores her to take David, offering her their
flat, his possessions and money, though they
both know that she is not the boy’s biological
mother. While he has grown to love the boy,
Simon is prepared to give him up. In this
new land everyone has been washed free
of their memories and is free to create new
ones. David is like everyone in his quest for
a present and a future, but the nature of his
urgency makes him different and unique.
Coetzee’s characters play with
conflicting ideas in a way that is at once
disarmingly simple and maddeningly
convoluted. The result is a delightful,
stimulating puzzle. The Childhood of Jesus is
a beautiful yet complex work that will reward
the reader handsomely.
Mark Rubbo is managing director
of Readings
Australian
Fiction
From
the
Books
Desk
—Martin Shaw,
Readings Books Division Manager
Mullumbimby
Melissa Lucashenko
UQP. PB. $29.95
Review: Melissa
Lucashenko’s latest novel
depicts life as equal parts
cheerful and heartbreaking,
mundane and back-breakingly
hard. Jo, recently divorced,
moves to an old farm in the
Byron Bay hinterland – the Bundjalung land of
her ancestors. She is a strong, intelligent figure:
sharp and funny, with a measured cynicism
towards the hippies, tourists and tree-changers
who people the area. The tone is richly
descriptive, evoking the fierce sense of
belonging that Jo feels now that she has
returned to country.
A central theme of Mullumbimby is
the duality of modern life. The novel depicts
the conflict between urban cosmopolitanism
and life on the land, between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous people and between traditional
and contemporary beliefs. This is mirrored in
the parallel story of Twoboy and Laz, a couple
of brothers who are pursuing a native title
claim, single-mindedly trying to prove traditional
ownership of their own ancestral lands.
In reading Mullumbimby, I had the
distinct impression of a novel written for an
Indigenous audience, first and foremost. As
with all Aboriginal art, each viewer will take
something different away from it, depending on
their own experiences of life and the country in
Australia. And so it is with this novel. Its slang
and humour reminded me of the town of my
North Queensland childhood, and the country
described was that of more recent ambling
drives between Brisbane and Lismore. At times I
felt a cultural cringe at the colloquial and daggy
expressions used, but I wonder whether this is
the point. While the book is an exploration of
ideas of Indigenous belonging and entitlement,
I felt as I read that I was being prompted,
challenged even, to think about my own place
in Australia. Where do I come from? Where do
I belong? To what am I entitled, and where do I
truly call home?
Amy Vuleta is from Readings St Kilda
We are not the
Same Anymore
Chris Somerville
UQP. PB. $19.95
Review: A collection of
short stories by Tasmanianborn writer Chris Somerville,
We Are Not the Same Anymore
reflects upon loss, trauma,
memory and isolation.
Although each tale is varied,
there is a strong common voice that binds them
together, creating an interesting metanarrative in
which the shadows of the past continue to
trouble the present.
The collection focuses on the
simple connections and voids that exist
within relationships. ‘Snow on the Mountain’,
a particularly interesting story, follows the
interaction between a 35-year-old woman
and her young neighbour as they drive up
Let’s start my wrap-up of March with some highlights from the thriving independent Australian
publishing scene. Our new writing feature this month focuses on Michelle Dicinoski’s Ghost Wife
from Black Inc., a moving account of her long journey to marry her partner by way of Canada,
one of the few countries to legally recognise same-sex marriage. From MUP, Monica Dux gives
us an insiders’ guide to pregnancy and birth in Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting),
which also takes to task some of the impediments the medical profession – and society at large –
put in the way of how new and expectant mothers ‘do’ pregnancy.
In fiction, the redoubtable Sleepers Publishing bring us this year’s Almanac, their eighth assembly
of some of the most interesting new writing in Australia today. Text also have J.M .Coetzee’s
astonishing new novel, The Childhood of Jesus. I found my reading experience of this unusual.
I tend to make copious (and sadly very hard to decipher) notes for fiction that I seriously engage
with, but I jotted down not a word in this case. I was simply transfixed by a work of great beauty and
sadness. And, as to my mind it so clearly tips its hat to Kafka’s The Castle, I couldn’t help but think
that it might possibly be, like that novel, a final fictional work as well; a Coetzee summa.
Some other great new releases this month include Kate Atkinson, who has taken the ambitious
decision to have her protagonist suffer multiple deaths, and then to consider the various
trajectories her life could have taken in each instance. Our reviewer is already ranking it as their
likely book-of-the-year.
High praise too for new novels by Jim Crace, Javier Marias and Tash Aw, as well as a new
short-story collection by Appalachian writer Ron Rash. In biography, Daphne du Maurier and her
Sisters looks a treat – it seems her two siblings had creative and romantic lives even more bold
and unconventional than Daphne’s own. Finally, in young adult writing, there’s Simmone Howell’s
Girl Defective, which I’ve heard described as ‘the best St Kilda novel ever’ and – you guessed it –
is already our reviewer’s pick of the year.
a mountain for firewood. In ‘Aquarium’, a man
negotiates an uncomfortable exchange with
his ex-wife and her new lover for his daughter’s
birthday. The birthday present, a goldfish in an icecream container, operates as a potential analogy
for the claustrophobic nature of suburban life – the
drama itself unfolding in the familiar domesticity of
the kitchen and the backyard.
The stories themselves are often
left without any formal conclusions, creating a
feeling of continuity between them. There is also
a similarity in mood that provides a space in
which one can dwell upon questions of familial
loyalty, the gradual demise of relationships, and
the uplifting possibility of rebirth in the aftermath
of trauma.
Somerville’s collection features a
range of different narrators and it is this diversity
that best demonstrates the common threads
that connect us. His strength as a storyteller
resides in his ability to draw upon seemingly
simple, ordinary occurrences and routines, and
tease out the significance of emotions hidden
just below the surface.
Felicity Ford is from Readings Carlton
Fractured
Dawn Barker
Hachette. PB. $29.99
Drawing from her real-life
experience as a child
psychiatrist, Dawn Barker
tackles the trauma of mental
illness in a new family in this
emotionally fraught debut.
Tony’s wife has wanted a child
for so long that when their son is born, Tony
expects her to be overjoyed. But when they
arrive home from the hospital, the woman he
knows begins to fade. Anna’s behaviour
becomes increasingly erratic and then she
disappears altogether, along with their son.
Twitcher
Cherise Saywell
Vintage. PB. $32.95
The small coastal town where
16-year-old Kenno lives has hit a
boom time. Tourists are buying,
building and developing
property, and to Kenno, it seems
like easy money is everywhere.
When his own family, haunted by
a recent loss, is evicted, he figures they’re entitled
to a little of their own share. He makes a plan to
buy a new house, but it isn’t long before events
move quickly beyond his control.
Anthologies
The Sleepers
Almanac No. 8
Louise Swinn & Zoe Dattner (eds.)
Sleepers. PB. $24.95
Review: Sleepers
Publishing and their Almanacs
are known for championing
new authors, many of whom
have gone on to win acclaim,
awards and hearts with their
work. This edition contains 28
quality short stories and showcases many
promising writers. ‘Happy Monday’ by Michelle
Radke is a superb opener. The main character is
assailed by a plague of anthromorphised cane
toads, one of whom knows about past
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R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
indiscretions and makes her re-examine her
motivations. Just when I was thinking ‘oh no, not
another talking animal story…’ another level of
insight and pathos is introduced in the form of a
drug-addicted daughter.
Another piece that stands out for its
use of form is Belinda Rule’s ‘Statement of Claims
on Behalf of My Father’. First the narrator itemises
(‘Ways in which I have disappointed my father’).
This is followed by a formatted table (‘Places
that the small screwdriver my father has had
since he was 14 was not able to be found, with
related comments’) and, finally, a diagrammatic
(‘Reasons I rang my father from overseas and
their probability of untruth’). This is a sweet
summary of a father/daughter relationship and
family history in the vein of Jennifer Egan’s prizewinning A Visit From the Goon Squad.
There are also some excellent stories
by authors whose books will be published by
Sleepers later this year. In the ironically titled
‘Kid-free’, Eleanor Limprecht writes about
a struggling couple who try to revive their
relationship. In ‘Pilgrimage’, Vanessa Russell
focuses on a young wife who is suffocating
under intense pressure from her husband and
their rural fundamentalist community.
The collection also includes work
by established authors like Melanie Joosten,
Paul Mitchell, S.J. Finn and Laurie Steed. Overall,
there’s a lot in here for a very little, making this
one of the best-value anthologies around.
Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn
International
Fiction
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Ron Rash
Text. PB. $29.99. ebook $19.47
Review: I first discovered
Ron Rash when I read his 2008
novel Serena, a brilliant retelling
of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and
have been a fan of his prose
ever since. Rash hasn’t had as
much success in Australia as
he should. His storytelling is concise and to the
point – a talent that is paramount in the craft of
short-story writing – and his latest collection,
Nothing Gold Can Stay, is true to form.
The book’s title may refer to Robert
Frost’s poem of the same name, and Frost’s
sentiment of innocence lost seems to be echoed
in each tale. In the title story, two drug-addled
young men revisit the farm they worked on
as boys to steal their former employer’s very
unusual trophies of war. In ‘A Sort of Miracle’,
Denton deplores his brothers-in-law, the oddly
named Marlborough and Baroque. He thinks
they’re lazy, naive and lack ambition. But one
day he drives into the forest with them to set
bear traps. Hopefully his passengers have learnt
something from the medical reality programs
they watch. ‘The Magic Bus’ finds sixteen-yearold Sabra entranced by hippies Thomas and
Wendy when their bus overheats in front of her
family farm. She knows her parents wouldn’t
approve, but she insists that they stay overnight
in the barn. Her ingenuousness and lack of
judgement ends in disaster. Two runaway
slaves, one young and flighty, one older and
worn down, find themselves at the mercy of an
elderly farmer after they are caught trespassing
on his property in ‘Where the Map Ends’.
Each work here ends with a surprising
turn. I had to spend a day between some
stories mulling their sometimes devastating
conclusions. Despite the Robert Frost reference,
please forgive me when I say Nothing Gold Can
Stay is mis-titled. This collection is made up of
14 brilliantly glimmering nuggets.
Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton
The Infatuations
Javier Marias
Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99
Review: Even if your idea of
a good time isn’t reading an
emotionally complex and
intellectually subtle novel that
takes the tragic powers of love
as its subject, and that nearly
hums with latent erotic energy
and mystery (and if that isn’t your idea of a good
time, then you’re a miserable so-and-so), I
would still recommend reading Javier Marias’s
latest book, The Infatuations.
Before I try to back that up, a
question: what is a romantic writer? Is it
someone whose prose favours feeling over
thought? Is it a writer unconcerned with
theoretical questions, whose greatest ambition
is to move the reader? I’m not sure. Probably the
question requires hundreds, if not thousands,
of pages of meticulous argumentation from a
team of only the most prestigious and erudite of
scholars to be answered. All the same, I’m going
to go ahead and say that Marias is amongst the
most romantic of contemporary novelists. Love
and death, those evergreen sources of sublime
literary material, are his bread and butter.
The Infatuations runs deep. The story
– of a woman who falls in love with a man after
an improbable and gruesome murder – is the
sort of thing a more conventional writer might
deal with in a novella. There are only a handful of
characters, connected via a web of relationships
that forms following the death of Miguel Desvern,
a handsome and charming Madrileño. Marias
probes leisurely and delicately at the thoughts
and feelings of each. Never rushing, he teases
out allusions and possibilities. Secrets abound.
Marias knows how to cater for doubt and
curiosity, and to engage the intelligence as well
as the emotions of his readers.
The Infatuations is a holistic and
atomic examination of the behaviour of those
citizens that Marias takes to be the most
dangerous members of society: people in love.
Will Heyward is from Readings St Kilda
A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki
Text. PB. Was $32.99
Special price $27.95
Review: A Tale For the Time
Being is an engrossing story
that alternates between the
diary of Nao, a suicidal
16-year-old teenage girl from
Tokyo, and the musings of
Ruth, a middle-aged novelist
living in Canada. Parts of the novel are set a few
months after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, and
the subsequent tsunami which devastated
north-eastern Japan. Ruth discovers a plasticwrapped package washed up on the beach,
ominous and covered with barnacles. The
package reveals a metal Hello Kitty lunchbox
with a diary inside, as well as some other
mysterious objects – an antique watch engraved
with Japanese kanji characters and a collection
of letters written in French. Ruth supposes that
WHAT I LOVED
It’s Raining in Mango
Thea Astley
Penguin. PB. $9.95
ebook $7.99
Review: As 2013 will see the introduction of the inaugural Stella
Prize, the first literary prize for Australian women writers, I feel compelled
to revisit one of my favourite Australian authors. Despite winning four
Miles Franklin Awards – as many as Tim Winton and more than any other
writer, male or female – Thea Astley’s novels have never reached an
audience as widespread as the likes of Winton or Peter Carey, who won the award three times.
(Incidentally, Astley shared two of her Miles Franklin wins with a man, the only two times the
award has been shared in its history.) Sadly, most of Astley’s books are now out of print. Every
single one of her Miles Franklin Award-winning titles is no longer available, whereas each of Tim
Winton’s prize-winners are. Astley was a prolific writer, and before her death in 2004 she had
published fifteen novels and two short-story collections. Only three novels and one short-story
collection remain in print.
It’s Raining in Mango was her tenth novel, and its relative stylistic simplicity may explain
why it is one of the few still available. Published in 1987, it tells the story of four generations of
the Laffey family in far north Queensland. Each of the family member’s lives intersect in some
way with the history of Australia itself, from the murderous settlement, the gold rush and the
Depression to the Stolen Generation, World War II and the hippie movement of the 1970s. But It’s
Raining in Mango is far from a celebration of Australian history or a heroic family epic. Published
in the lead-up to the Bicentennial celebrations, Astley uses the particular failings of each member
of the Laffeys to parody the failure of the popular narrative of Australian history.
Astley has cited Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers as influences on her writing.
Of McCullers, she has said that ‘she writes with tenderness and sympathy for the oddball. I have
sympathy for the oddball.’ The Laffeys are most definitely a family of oddballs, filled with strongwilled and intelligent women and sensitive but often misguided male characters. The landscape
of northern Queensland is a character unto itself and the sound of thudding mangos is a regular
backdrop to the conversations. Astley has also said she relates stylistically to Patrick White and
credits him with teaching her to ‘look at the essence of things [and to use] ordinary words in
strange metaphysical juxtapositions’. Astley loves to play with language and particularly favours
using grammatical terminology in unexpected ways to comic effect.
It’s a shame that her final novel, the Miles Franklin Award-winning Drylands, is out of print.
The subtitle of Drylands is ‘a book for the world’s last reader’ and her narrator (an ex-bookshop
manager) despairs that people are no longer reading books that matter. Written 12 years after It’s
Raining in Mango, her last novel revisits many of the same themes, particularly that of violence
against women and Indigenous people. Drylands is a darker book and perhaps more subtle in its
message than her previous novels. I can only hope that this year’s Stella Prize will bring a renewed
focus on Australian women writers and that we will see Astley’s novels returning to the shelves.
Kara Nicholson – Readings Carlton
the package must have been washed out to sea
by the tsunami and set down on the coast of the
remote island where she lives, and she seeks to
discover more about the diary’s author.
Nao’s first-person narration is often
extremely distressing – she suffers insidious
ijime (bullying) from her classmates and
escapes into the pages of her diary. Yet these
chapters are also the most compelling. Ruth’s
reading of the journal is a meditation on the
space between fiction and reality, exploring the
relationship between the writer and the reader,
and how humanity is connected through time.
With constant references to Marcel Proust’s
In Search of Lost Time, Zen Master Dōgen’s
thirteenth-century Buddhist teachings, quantum
mechanics and time slips, this novel could span
many genres including literary, popular and
speculative fiction, as well as philosophy. The
novel’s power lies in the way it poses so many
questions about states of existence, and how to
live as ‘time beings’. You may lose your sense
of reality and wonder what is up or down while
reading A Tale For the Time Being, but perhaps
you’ll find, as Nao’s great-grandmother Jiko says,
‘Up, down, same thing. And also different too.’
Ingrid Josephine is marketing and events
assistant at Readings
Five Star Billionaire
Tash Aw
HarperCollins. PB. $27.99. ebook $13.99
Review: In Five Star
Billionaire a large cast of
migrants battle to find security
and happiness in a New China
that is hurtling into the future.
Malaysian author Tash Aw
skilfully juggles the perspectives
of all these loosely related characters: the heir to a
property development empire, a fiercely
aspirational young woman, a disgraced pop star, a
lovelorn businesswoman, a smooth philanthropist
and an unnamed writer of self-help books.
Aw takes a painterly and impressionistic
approach to the city of Shanghai, focusing on the
lights and colours of a metropolis that morphs
daily in the name of progress. The relentless
demolition and construction of the physical city
is mirrored in the destruction and rebuilding of
individual identity. The characters of Five Star
Billionaire all recognise that survival requires their
personal histories to be erased and replaced with
something newer and shinier. Yet what grows
clearer towards the end of the book is that it is very
difficult for people not to let past events drive future
actions, no matter how much the more superficial
aspects of their lifestyles may have changed.
Following the separate threads
requires concentration, but the rewards are
many. Aw’s characters are isolated and deeply
insecure, tethered to the past even as they try
to shrug it off, but their resilience and pugnacity
insure them against pity. There’s great pleasure
to be had in glimpsing these varied slices of life,
and Five Star Billionaire gives true insight into
the forces driving modern China.
Leanne Hall is from Readings Carlton
Wise Men
Stuart Nadler
Picador. PB. $27.99. ebook $14.99
Review: Arthur Wise
epitomises the great American
bluff – where arrogance is ‘often
mistaken for the genuine artifact:
skill or competence’. A
loudmouth lawyer obsessed
with wealth and full of disdain for
any moralising argument, he becomes obscenely
rich on the back of a crashed Boston Airways jet.
Wise catapults from borderline poverty to dining
with presidents, from fifties ‘new money’ to
becoming friends with the powerful and elite.
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
It’s unsurprising then that his son Hilton
‘Hilly’ Wise rejects his dirty money and tries to
carve out a life for himself. The key ingredient for
this is what Hilly later calls the ‘race beat’. Moving
from New Haven at the age of 17 to a prestigious
beach house in Cape Cod, Hilly falls for Savannah,
the young black girl whose uncle is the family’s
housekeeper. But is this just another tale of
forbidden love? No. What happens here is quick
and drives the rest of the book, and Nadler has no
qualms about ripping the rug of expectations from
under you. The plot turns like a curve ball, at times
to great effect, at others less so.
A story in three parts, with 20-odd
intervening years between each, it is narrated
by Hilly in his old age. While the swift death
of characters is sometimes a relief in fiction,
it’s frustrating to jump ahead and leave details
unresolved. The expectation is that they will all
come out in the wash at the end. By and large they
do, but the narrative harness tightens occasionally,
giving you a sense of running against the wind.
Regardless, Nadler’s first novel is very much like
a Seurat painting, where the whole puzzle locks
into focus at some point. In this case it’s the last
page, where Marilynne Robinson’s epigraph also
becomes most poignant: All love is in great part
affliction. This is much more than race and wealth;
it’s about men and taste.
always varied, changing both Ursula’s lives and the
lives of those around her. While Ursula is born and
dies many times throughout the novel, it never feels
repetitive. She doesn’t exactly remember her
previous lives, but there is a sense of subconscious
memory that prompts her to respond differently
each time. Her family think she’s a little odd, but
are otherwise oblivious to Ursula’s frequent
reincarnation.
I know it’s early to make statements like
this, but I think this might be my favourite book of
2013. I wanted to re-read it as soon as I’d finished.
Life After Life reminds me a bit of Sarah Waters’
The Night Watch, partly because of the wartime
English setting, but also because I felt the point
of both books was not the ending so much as
the journey. Atkinson has constructed a complex
narrative – we go back and forth many times, yet
still feel like we’re moving forwards because of the
way Ursula develops as a character. We all have
things we might have done differently if given the
opportunity. Here Atkinson extrapolates that feeling
to explore how if one person had that chance, she
could have changed the course of history.
Luke May is a freelance writer
Picador. PB. $27.99
The Light and the Dark
Review: Harvest is a
slow-burner of a book that
sneaks up and surprises you.
There’s ‘witchery about’ but I
think that’s more to do with Jim
Crace’s sorcery with words than
anything else. Starting off as a
quiet meditation on ancient village life, the rituals of
the annual crop harvest are laid out. The novel
becomes more gothic as we get further into it, with
civil manners and neighbourly thoughtfulness
covering up acts of shockingly careless brutality.
There are men given rough village justice – sent to
the pillocks for seven days with their bodies bent
over and their hands and heads locked into place
– all for the crime of being in the wrong place at
the wrong time. Children are pronounced witches
and taken from their kin. Neighbours turn on
neighbours. Mob rules. It takes just a single week
for an entire thriving, comfortable village to
become an empty, dry husk.
On a thematic and environmental
level, we can see the seeds of the modern world
sown in those ancient times, when crops made
way for sheep and workers were damned, all in
the name of progress and profit.
This book is as close to perfect as you
get. Crace’s writing is so beautiful, so evocative,
that I’m now gathering his entire backlist into my
arms and reading through it. Expect to see this
little gem appearing on all the major shortlists.
An absolute beauty.
Mikhail Shishkin
Quercus. PB. $29.99
ebook $14.99
Review: Two lovers,
separated by circumstance,
begin to write letters. Tentatively
at first, they explore their feelings
and their ability to express them
– their shared joys and love for
one another, as well as cherished
past moments and everything that they miss. As
time goes on, the letters expand, recounting their
evolving lives: his as part of the Expeditionary
Force sent to China during the Boxer Rebellion,
hers as a medical student and then a doctor, alone
in the city, surrounded by sickness, sex and death.
As they never receive the other’s letters, their
reflections turn inward, at once philosophically
speculative and sharply observant. The letters are
full of love and yearning, for each other and for the
quandary that is the world as they’ve found it,
uplifting and harrowing in equal measure.
The original title of the book translates
from Russian roughly as ‘Letter-Writing Manual’
and Shishkin has used this epistolary form to
free the novel from narrative constraint, letting his
characters explore their existence and mortality in
their own words, as addressed to the only one who
will understand. In the end, one wonders whether
our two are even writing to each other, so disparate
have they become, and so seemingly distant in
time. One of the most intensely human books I’ve
ever read.
Andrew Cornish is a former employee
of Readings
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday. PB. Was $32.95
Special price $27.95
Released 18 March
Review: Ursula Todd is born
on a snowy night in an English
village in 1910. She dies before
taking her first breath. But what if
things had happened differently?
What if she had lived? Ursula is
born again on that snowy night,
and again, though older this time, she dies. Then
she is born again, and we see another life she
could have led. Atkinson has crafted an entrancing
novel in which the same event is repeated, but
MARCH RELEASES
This March, we are delighted to
bring you three masterworks of
20th-century literature by Hans Fallada
Little Man, What Now?,
Wolf Among Wolves, and The Drinker
Praise for Hans Fallada:
‘As morally powerful as anything
I’ve ever read’ Telegraph
‘Deeply moving’
The New York Times
‘An heroic book, brave, fearless
and honest.’ The Sunday Times
Edwina Kay is from Readings Carlton
Harvest
Jim Crace
ebook $14.99
This groundbreaking book explores
the phenomenon of internet piracy
asking: if everything on the internet
is free, how do artists get paid for
their work?
Essential reading for anyone involved
in social change — at any level.
‘Your behavioural-change toolkit
won’t be complete until you’ve
read Changeology.’
LINDSAY TANNER
What if there was a magic bullet
to fix our ailing planet?
What if it meant seizing control of the Earth’s climate?
Gabrielle Williams is from Readings Malvern
Instructions for
a Heatwave
Maggie O’Farrell
Headline. PB. Was $29.99
Special price $24.95
Review: London during the
remarkably hot summer of 1976
is the setting for Maggie
O’Farrell’s sixth novel, Instructions
for a Heatwave, and although the
actual temperature would seem
quite ordinary to most
Australians, her story of a family suffocating in its
own drama is perceptive, enjoyable and intense.
The disappearance of sixty-something
Robert, father of three grown-up children and
husband of Gretta, is where we begin. But in
order to find out where he’s got to, the story
goes backwards as well as forwards, delving
into the family history of these Irish Catholics.
Clive Hamilton investigates the huge risks of the desperate
measures being contemplated to save the planet.
Available now where all good books are sold
Join the debate on Twitter: #Earthmasters
www.allenandunwin.com
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R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
Short loves by longtime fans
Contributors to the Sleepers Almanac No. 8 tell us about their favourite
short stories and why they love them.
Eleanor Limprecht: ‘Good Country People’ by Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find
I was a high school student in Arlington, Virginia, the first time I read Flannery O’Connor’s short
story ‘Good Country People’ in her collection A Good Man is Hard to Find. It has lingered in my
head ever since. Her bleak portrait of an unhappy family – a mother and a grown daughter at odds
– is shaken up by a visit from a Bible salesman. There is more than a touch of the Southern gothic
in O’Connor’s writing but there is also an economy to her words in this story. The epiphany that the
daughter has with the Bible salesman is fleeting and ends up being this extraordinary moment of
grace amidst the stark landscape of her life. And then it all disappears as quickly as it has come,
and no one is quite who they appeared to be. It is a haunting story, and one that reminds me how
powerful short fiction can be.
Melanie Joosten: ‘The Beautiful Indifference’ by Sarah Hall, The Beautiful Indifference
My favourite short story is the somewhat reticent title story from Sarah Hall’s collection The Beautiful
Indifference. A woman waits in a hotel room for her much younger lover, who has missed his train
from London. She dresses, then changes her outfit. Applies lipstick, knowing it will not last long
after his arrival. Her friends think her relationship with a younger man is irresponsible, that she is
running out of time for the important things, for children. And perhaps she is. A quiet and careful
story which, considering its denouement, is oddly uplifting. To a reader it embodies acceptance, to
a writer, enviable control.
Vanessa Russell: ‘Speaking in Tongues’ by ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
The characters are so vibrant and complex in ZZ Packer’s ‘Speaking in Tongues’ that they leave
an afterglow. Fourteen-year-old Tia Townsend is punished by a church elder after she laughs at a
mawkish Jesus comic. The next day, a fuming Tia boards a Greyhound bus. In Atlanta she catches
the eye of Dezi, equal parts drug-dealer, saviour and sleazebag. Packer balances the story on Tia’s
church-bred apartness, but never lets her tip into naivety. The dialogue sparks with Tia’s bravado,
while the narrative shows how she wavers between fear and fascination as she encounters a
church-free world.
Helen Addison-Smith: ‘The Girl who was Blind All the Time’ by Sheila Heti, The Middle Stories
Shelia Heti’s writing is risky and the thing it risks most of all is being bad. This story has odd,
unnatural cadences. It skips from one place to the next, without a why or a wherefore. But it’s one
of the most alive stories I’ve ever read. I guess it could’ve been too fey and hipsterish, what with
the blind girl, the odd flat tone and the marching with flags. I think what saves it is smut and snot,
the suffering of real live bodies. What I admire most about Heti’s writing is that it (and she) doesn’t
seem nice. It’s peculiarly brave.
S.J. Finn: ‘Lyrebird’ by Isabelle Li, Sleepers Almanac No. 7
You don’t have to go far to find this gem of a story in the Sleepers Almanac No. 7. ‘Lyrebird’ by
Isabelle Li is a seamless, well-told tale of a quietly ambitious girl who is bright, thrifty and socially
astute. Exquisitely drawn, the narrative takes the reader from the working-class suburbs of Sydney
to the leafy possibilities of the Blue Mountains. With a subtlety that deserves to be applauded, Li
weaves a taste of suspense throughout. Then, in a whimsically uplifting manner, the end rings of
heart without fuss, joy without sentimentality. ‘Lyrebird’ left me sated and awestruck.
Paul Mitchell: ‘The Boat’ by Alastair McLeod, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and Island: The
Collected Short Stories
Picking a favourite story is like choosing your favourite song. ‘What about The Stones, Nirvana or
The Smiths’ becomes ‘What about Carver, O’Connor, Winton, Carey or Strout?’ I’ve just grabbed
one from my top ten, Alastair McLeod’s ‘The Boat’. The opening story in his collection The Lost Salt
Gift of Blood, ‘The Boat’ captures a lifetime’s yearning, despair and hope in a few thousand words.
The final image whiplashes you back through the narrative, giving retrospective power to McLeod’s
masterful prose. The story’s boat becomes a character, alive in an ocean swirling with human
questions of loyalty, honour and regret.
Laurie Steed: ‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams’ by Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and
the Bible of Dreams
An unnamed narrator records the dreams of mental health patients in a city hospital. She sees their
woes as endemic, feeling the world to be rife with one thing: ‘Panic with a dog-face, devil-face,
hag-face, whore-face, panic in capital letters with no face at all – it’s the same Johnny Panic, awake
or asleep.’ This piece of short fiction taps Plath’s poetic spirit more successfully than any of her
other stories. As an exploration of madness, sanity and all points in between, it is striking, even by
today’s standards.
Michelle Radtke: ‘The Happiest Moment’ by Lydia Davis, Samuel Johnson is Indignant
‘The Happiest Moment’ by Lydia Davis from her collection Samuel Johnson is Indignant is a brilliant
nugget of a story about a man who is asked to recall the happiest moment of his life. Davis writes
with such sure economy, her prose so unadorned, that it is hard to believe the rich and complex
truth that a text only one paragraph in length can deliver. Every time I read ‘The Happiest Moment’
I feel my expectations at once fulfilled and subverted, and I am reminded that human emotion is
layered and conflicted. Happiness, as Davis points out here, is no exception.
J.Y.L Koh: ‘William and Mary’ by Roald Dahl, Kiss Kiss
As with friendships, it can be difficult to predict which short stories will stay with you in the long
run. In Roald Dahl’s ‘William and Mary’, William Pearl has terminal cancer. To his wife’s horror, he
considers taking extreme measures to ensure that his brain lives on after the death of his body.
The first time I read the story, I was a teenager and I hated it; no other tale had made me feel so
uncertain about my attitude to revenge. ‘William and Mary’ has since become a favourite (though
still unsettling) companion. Its images haunt me – the smoke of a defiant cigarette and the stare of
an ice-blue eye floating in a basin.
Meanwhile, in the 1976 ‘present’,
the three siblings scrabble about for our
attention as they deal with the mystery as a
dysfunctional unit, reunited utterly against
their will. First-born Monica is gripped by an
anxiety common in eldest daughters, while
middle child Michael Francis is fed up with
his lot (a wife who can’t stand the sight of him
and two eccentric children). The youngest,
Aiofe, who has been living in New York, is at
once ashamed of herself and bolder than the
other two put together. The head-hopping
narrative churns up our perspective on each
sibling and wittily demonstrates how families
get so tangled up in misunderstanding that
they can hardly be in the same room.
The level of dysfunction isn’t
particularly shocking – that’s not O’Farrell’s
style. She’s a sensual writer who cleverly
involves us in every character, teasing us
about whose side we should be on. But for
me her triumph is Gretta, the impossible
matriarch whose backstory deserves to be a
novel of its own. My one disappointment was
that the level of ambition O’Farrell showed in
her last novel, The Hand That First Held Mine,
has eased off here in terms of storytelling.
However, that was a particularly hard act to
follow, and this is still a very worthwhile read.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
How to get Filthy Rich
in Rising Asia
Mohsin Hamid
Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99
From the internationally
bestselling author of The
Reluctant Fundamentalist, this
boldly imagined tale steals its
shape from the self-help books
devoured by ambitious youths
all over ‘rising Asia’. Our
nameless hero journeys from impoverished
rural boy to corporate tycoon in a sprawling
metropolis where he begins to amass an
empire built on the most fluid and increasingly
scarce of goods: water. Throughout this
journey, his heart remains set on a girl whose
life crosses and recrosses his path.
The Fun Parts
Sam Lipsyte
FSG. HB. $35
In this book of bold, hilarious
and deeply felt fiction, a boy
eats his way to self-discovery
while another must battle the
reality-brandishing monster
preying on his fantasy realm.
Meanwhile, an aerobics
instructor, the daughter of a Holocaust
survivor, makes the most shocking leap
imaginable to save her soul. This collection
gathers together new stories alongside old
favourites previously published in The New
Yorker, The Paris Review and Playboy, to
recreate Lipsyte’s richly imagined worlds in a
single volume.
Red Doc>
Anne Carson
FSG. HB. $35.95
Award-winning poet Anne
Carson reinvented a genre in
Autobiography of Red, a
stunning work that was both a
novel and a poem, both an
unconventional re-creation of an
ancient Greek myth and an
original coming-of-age story set in the present. In
this earlier work, a boy named Geryon fell in love
with Herakles and now Carson asks, what
happened next? Red Doc> continues their
adventures in a wholly new and imaginative style.
Middle C
William H. Gass
Knopf. HB. $40.95
Released 12 March
William H. Gass gives us a
mosaic of a life with music. In
1938, Joseph Skizzen’s father
leaves Austria for England with
his family, pretending to be
Jewish in the hope of avoiding
any connection with the Nazis,
whom he believes will soon take over his
homeland. In postwar Ohio, Joseph becomes a
decent amateur piano player, all the while creating
his own fantasy self to cope with his father’s
abandonment and a crippling sense of guilt.
Benediction
Kent Haruf
Macmillan. PB. $27.99. ebook $14.99
When Dad Lewis is diagnosed
with terminal cancer, his wife and
daughter must work to make his
final days as comfortable as
possible, despite the noticeable
absence of Lewis’s estranged
son. Next door, a young girl
moves in with her grandmother and contends with
the memories that Lewis’s condition stirs up in her
own family, while down the street, a newly arrived
preacher soon faces the disdain of his
congregation when he offers more than they are
used to getting on Sunday mornings.
All the Way
Marie Darrieussecq (translated by
Penny Hueston)
Text. PB. $29.99. ebook $19.47
Solange wants to have sex,
though she’s not sure who with
yet; there’s really not much scope
in her boring village, Clèves.
She’d also like to see more of her
father even though he’s so
embarrassing, and as for her
mother, that woman is too depressed. Meanwhile,
her neighbour, Monsieur Bihotz, is supposed to be
her babysitter, but Solange has other ideas. All the
Way is a hilarious and achingly honest picture of a
young French girl discovering her sexuality.
The Drinker
Hans Fallada (translated by
Charlotte & A.L. Lloyd)
Scribe. PB. $22.95
This astonishing autobiographical
tour de force was written by Hans
Fallada in an encrypted
notebook while he was
incarcerated in a Nazi insane
asylum. Discovered after his
death, The Drinker tells the tale of
a small businessman losing control as he fights
valiantly to blot out an increasingly oppressive
society. Fierce, poignant and extremely funny. This
edition includes an afterword by John Willett.
In Diamond Square
Mercé Rodoreda
Virago. PB. $29.99
When a stranger asks Natalia to
dance at the fiesta in Diamond
Square, she’s hesitant at first,
but Joe is charming and
forceful and, almost inevitably,
she accepts his hand. The
former shopgirl is soon sharing
her life with two children and a husband who
breeds pigeons. When the Spanish Civil War
erupts and Joe leaves to fight the fascists, she
remains in Barcelona, struggling to feed her
family and care for the birds left behind.
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
New Crime
Linda, As in the
Linda Murder
Leif G.W. Persson
Doubleday. PB. $32.95
Released 18 March
Witty and blackly entertaining
without losing a realistic touch,
Leif G.W. Persson has unleashed
a new character upon readers:
the ‘short, fat and primitive’
Inspector Evert Backstrom. Here
is a man full of loathing for just
about everyone and everything, including those
with the misfortune to work under him. When a
police academy recruit is murdered, Backstrom is
there to be utterly useless to the case and as
offensive as possible. This is a crime you actually
won’t want solved, just so you can read about him
for more pages yet.
Dead Girl Sing
Tony Cavanaugh
Hachette. PB. $29.99
Darian Richards isn’t enormously
keen on the Gold Coast’s
raucous schoolies week, but
when he’s contacted by
someone who needs his help,
that’s exactly where he finds
himself. Upon arrival, however,
she’s vanished, but there are two beautiful young
women who have suffered a much worse fate in
the water. No stranger to the darkness of
humanity, Richards will not stand by with a killer
Dead Write
with Fiona Hardy
amongst the country’s sparkling teenagers. Dead
Girl Sing is a searing thriller not recommended for
reading on the Gold Coast’s beaches.
book
of
the
month
not take her angle seriously, but Commissaire
Adamsberg is determined to follow the case to
whatever end, despite the distraction of his new
family connection and a dearth of clues.
Murder With the Lot
Sue Williams
Text. PB. $29.99
ebook $19.47
The Lost Boy
Camilla Lackberg
HarperCollins. PB. $24.99. ebook $12.99
After the breathtaking last pages
of Camilla Lackberg’s last book,
followers of Detective Patrik
Hedström and crime writer Erica
Falck will probably be desperate
to pick this one up and find out
exactly what happened to them.
So (spoiler alert) ... Council member Mats Sverin
is murdered in his home and uncovering his life
leads a recuperating Hedström to the island of
Gråskär, a place residents call haunted. Here
he’ll find a woman from Sverin's past with literal
blood on her hands.
The town of Rusty Bore is not
exactly brimming with excitement
(or with people, it has to be said),
so the arrival of someone new is
the highlight of the day, not in the
least because that someone is
covered in blood and ordering a
burger from Cass Tuplin, private investigator and
superb burger-flipper. The arrival coincides with
Cass’s discovery of a body, but the local police
force (i.e. Cass’s son Dean) is not interested. So it’s
up to Cass to track down the killer and prove that
she has skills beyond using the deep fryer.
Three Crooked Kings
Matthew Condon
UQP. PB. $29.95
The Ghost Riders
of Ordebec
Fred Vargas
Harvill. PB. Was $32.95
Special price $27.95
Released 18 March
A young woman sees visions of
ghostly men on horses who
come for the wicked – a myth
that has fed into local lore for
centuries – and, sure enough,
someone very wicked vanishes
right afterwards. Local police do
C
enturies of agriculture have
dramatically depleted our
soils causing the nutritional value
of fruits, grains and vegetables
to decline dramatically, but the
process of returning soil to true
fertility is widely misunderstood.
The Intelligent Gardener is an
essential guide to achieving better
health for you and your family by remineralising your soil using natural
materials to grow nutrient-dense
produce.
w w w . n e w s o u t h b o o k s . c o m . a u
Matthew Condon, author of
recent Dead Write favourite Toe
Tag Quintet, has spent two
years interviewing those
involved in the infamous
Fitzgerald Inquiry – the one that
unveiled the extent of decades
of corruption in Queensland’s police force.
Terence Murray Lewis was the police
commissioner knighted for his work, then jailed
for corruption years later. With Condon granted
total access to Lewis, his files and hundreds of
others involved, this is a great writer tackling a
sordid part of Australia’s past.
Good News, Bad News
Maggie Groff
Macmillan. PB. $27.99. ebook $14.99
Review: Sometimes a book comes along that
is exactly the right read at the right time. Good
News, Bad News, and the perky heroine contained
inside its pages, were a balm for me this month.
After too many crime reads that were just a step
beyond gritty into the unpleasant, or filled with
violence against women, I’d almost had enough
and was thinking of watching Play School reruns
to make myself feel better. Then Byron Bay
investigative journalist Scout Davis flew out of the
pages to save the day.
A trio of reclusive sisters, much
gossiped about in town, hire Scout to find a
runaway husband who had apparently died some
30 years earlier but whose handsome face shows
up in a current newspaper article. Scout is unsure
about the proposition – bossy sister Hermione
is not her usual cup of chai – but she is far too
intrigued by the mystery to say no. So she rounds
up her friends and family to take on the case, one
eccentric day at a time.
Starring alongside Scout is the bay
itself, full of endearing characters, delicious
food and petty crimes. Throw in a boyfriend
returning from a war zone alongside another
equally handsome man and the whole book is a
delight. It’s sexy, funny, rollicking and, best of all,
completely refreshing.
9
10
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
GROUPIE GIRL
Simmone Howell writes on her failed attempt at groupiedom and her
beloved collection of band-date paperbacks
New Young Adult Fiction
See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 15.
book
of
the
month
Girl Defective
Simmone Howell
Pan Macmillan. PB. $16.99. ebook $9.99
‘Research psychologists say that girls from the ages of 11-14 reach a lifetime high energy peak. Their
appetite is insatiable. They never again care about things as much as they do during this period, and
minutiae don’t exist for them.’ – Groupies & Other Girls by John Burks and Jerry Hopkins
One summer’s day when I was 13, I dressed in purple baggy pants and a lilac polo shirt and caught
the 9.22am train from Ringwood to Flinders Street. I was off to meet The Hooters, an American pop
band named not for their manboobs but for their signature instrument, a melodion, which looks like
a Casio organ with a mouthpiece attached. The year was 1985. ‘And We Danced’ was charting and
the band had just played Festival Hall. I’d been in the front row, screaming, because everyone knows
that’s what you do at pop concerts. There were five Hooters and each wore a different colour. Rob
wore white, Eric wore black, Andy wore blue, David wore yellow and John wore red. Rob was my
favourite. He looked mouse-ish, nice, non-threatening – what you want at that age.
This was my second attempt at making contact. Two days earlier, I’d set my alarm and
snuck out at 5am to wait for the Airport Bus, but my mother had come tearing down Loughnan Rd
in her dressing gown, scooping me up and scuppering my plans. Later, after much argument, it
was decreed that I could go to the city and attempt to meet the band, but only if my sisters came
with me. I had been growing my nails in preparation for the coming of The Hooters. As I sat on
the train, I stared at the smooth ovals (painted lavender, with Stop-bite) and thrummed with the
knowledge that if I could grow my nails I could do anything.
We camped outside the Rockman’s Regency hotel for most of the day, meeting other
fans and exchanging gossip and phone numbers. And then: a sighting. That’s HIM. OVER THERE!
Exiting the cafe, wearing sunglasses (of course!). Our new, more experienced friends stormed the
pop star, blocking his path, proffering Violet Crumbles and cling-on koalas and autograph books. I
had my photo taken with Rob and John. Rob seemed slightly bored but John signed his autograph
with ‘Love’ , put his man-sized arms around me and kissed my cheek for the camera. I had that
photo blown up and framed. In retrospect it looks like a girl getting monstered by some old dude in
a bolo tie. But it was the start of something.
Stalking John Justin at a Saturday afternoon sound check, ‘fainting’ to get backstage
at Mister Mister, nicking Paul Hester’s phone number from my guitar teacher’s Filofax … over the
summer I apprenticed but never managed to get up close and personal. I was too young, too
deluded and too, well, tame. You wouldn’t have found me brazenly waving a toothbrush about like
that girl at Billy Idol.
Perhaps it was my failed attempt at groupiedom that led to me to collect books by and
about fans, groupies, muses, inamoratas and ‘ol ladies. I devoured rock biographies, not because
I wanted to read about the musicians, but because I wanted to read about their girlfriends. Tony
Sanchez’s Up and Down With the Rolling Stones had whole chapters on Anita Pallenberg and
Marianne Faithfull. A photo of Jim Morrison and his girlfriend Pamela Courson in No One Here Gets
Out Alive was, to 14-year-old me, the image of romantic love. I found Rock Wives by Victoria Balfour
at the book-swap outside the cobblers at the new Ringwood market. Reading it felt like walking into
a lightning field. There was Myra Lee Lewis (who married Jerry Lee Lewis, her cousin, at age 13)
and Suze Rotolo (the girl on Bob Dylan’s arm on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) and Gail
Zappa (whose numb acceptance of her husband’s infidelities boggled my teenage mind). Then
there was ‘super-groupie’ Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With the Band, where she detailed her exploits
with Jimmy Page etc. in a breathless, stream-of-consciousness style that I echoed in countless
‘Fantasy Time’ notes to friends during veggie maths or unwinding post-exams.
I read Angie Bowie’s Free Spirit and Cynthia Lennon’s A Twist of Lennon. I was
disappointed with the G-rated content of Carol Bedford’s Waiting For the Beatles: An Apple Scruff’s
Story but made up for it with Body Count: The Sexual Autobiography of Francie, Queen of the
Groupies. Groupie by Jenny Fabian was frank and funny, even if the names had been changed, and
Going Down With Janis Joplin by Peggy Caserta was a carnival of smack, smut and feather boas.
I was looking for the kind of education I wasn’t going to get from school. I can’t remember how to
do fractions but I can tell you that when Cynthia Plaster Caster made a model of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘rig’,
despite assiduous ‘plating’, he could only rise to ‘half-mast’ (it was still impressive). Revisiting my
groupie books now is like an invitation to cringe, but I know what I loved about them then. Even in
the sordid stories, the dream is there: it’s about freedom and living an unconventional life, of being
known-of but not known. It’s about being Ruby Tuesday or Penny Lane and not someone who
works part-time after school at Target. It’s about getting so close to the light that it reflects upon
you, until one day it might even be you.
By Simmone Howell
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
Review: Sky lives above the family record
shop with a dad who loves beer too much and a
brother, Gully, who has trouble fitting into
society’s idea of normal. Oh, and there’s Nancy
– Sky’s idol of sorts. She doesn’t live there but
she’s around, in a world of her own.
Sky spends summer at the shop
putting zinc on Elvis’s nose and dusting the
Freaks Like Us
Susan Vaught
Bloomsbury. PB. $15.99
Review: Plenty of YA novels
contain characters that see
themselves as existing at the
edges of society, but in Freaks
Like Us it’s undeniably true.
Jason becomes an instant
murder suspect when his best
friend goes missing, and his story is one of a
person rarely given a voice, both in fiction and in
real life. The interesting twist here is that Jason
doubts himself as much as everyone around him
does, because his thoughts and recollections are
never free of a disturbing crowd of extra voices.
Jason has schizophrenia. Finding out whether or
not he’s killed Sunshine, the girl he’s loved for most
of his life, is a confronting, addictive experience. I’d
have read it in one sitting if life hadn’t got in the
way. Two sittings had to do. The voices in Jason’s
head are relentless and Vaught’s prose never lets
us forget it. Jason’s perceptions of himself and
others are as witty as they are heartbreaking.
Although he is no stranger to reactions ranging
from indifference to violence, his inner turmoil is the
most confronting. Mental illness is still so feared in
our society, and I loved how Vaught, who has a
background as an adolescent psychiatrist, shows
us that the real fear is being on the inside. A
moving, brave read for ages 14 and up.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
Stagefright
Carole Wilkinson
Black Dog. PB. $18.95
Review: Carole Wilkinson,
the award-winning author of the
Dragonkeeper and Ramose
series, has revisited her 1996
book, Stagefright. She’s
‘updated and rejigged the
story a bit’ for a whole new
cohort of readers, who’ll enjoy poor Velvet
Pye’s consternation at being forced to attend
Yarrabank High. This grungy school and its
collection of temporary classrooms is populated
by bullies, dummies, emos and boy-crazed
girls, all under the inept leadership of a sportsmad principal.Much to Velvet’s horror, there’s
no music program, but there is an abundance
of sporting pursuits which she deftly dodges.
Relegated to the Cultural Studies class with
records. But when a brick is thrown through
the shop window, a girl drowns in the St
Kilda canal and a new boy starts working at
the store, the season turns into anything but
ordinary. Gully leads the investigation into
the window vandalism and Sky becomes
obsessed with the dead girl from the canal.
Nancy becomes scarce as she takes up being
a groupie for one of the local musicians, and
the new boy plasters pictures of a stencilled
girl crying around St Kilda.
With investigations, new friendships
and experiencing the world with all its quirks
and problems, Girl Defective, simply put,
is brilliant. Once again, Simmone Howell
captures her audience with unique characters,
captivating situations and a creativity that
always astounds me. I know it’s early days
but I can’t see anything beating this one for
my book of the year! For ages 15 and up.
Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
the rest of the sportingly handicapped students
and ordered to stage Shakespeare, this bunch
of misfits interprets Richard III as a musical! I can
see why one enthusiast has aptly described this
as ‘Glee meets Summer Heights High’. It’s a fun,
tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted and irreverent look
at what happens when a bunch of teenagers with
nothing in common are forcibly thrown together.
Recommended for ages 13 and up.
Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern
New Guinea Moon
Kate Constable
A&U. PB. $16.99
ebook $9.99
Review: This is a wonderful
coming-of-age story set in the
exotic and racially divided world
of New Guinea just before
Independence. Julie is 16 and
has asked to spend the holidays
in New Guinea with her father,
whom she has not seen, and barely heard from,
since she was three. Brought up to be spirited
and independent by her strongly feminist mother,
Julie is forced to call on all her resilience, despite
the kindness of those she meets, and the
support and attentions of two very different guys.
Though Kate Constable, who grew up in New
Guinea, clearly sets out to question white expat
assumptions of superiority, she does so with a
light touch. Her characters are flawed but
likeable, and dramatically unexpected moments
keep the narrative alive and compelling. Highly
recommended for ages 13 and up.
Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton
All This Could End
Steph Bowe
Text. PB. $19.99. ebook $13.97
Nina’s family is unconventional.
They rob banks, and even she
and her 12-year-old brother Tom
are in on the act. After yet
another move and another new
school, Nina wants things to
change. This time she’s made a
friend she’s determined to keep: Spencer. The
two of them can talk about anything and need
each other more than ever when their families
start to fall apart. But soon Nina is back on the run
and doesn’t know if she’ll ever see Spencer again.
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
New Non-Fiction
QUARTERLY ESSAY 49:
Not Dead Yet: Labor’s
Post-Left Future
Mark Latham
Black Inc. PB. $19.95
ebook $9.99
Australian
Non-Fiction
Ghost Wife
Michelle Dicinoski
Black Inc. PB. $24.99
ebook $9.99
Review: In 2005, Michelle
Dicinoski and her American
girlfriend, Heather, decided to get
married. The proposal came,
wildly and beautifully, from
Michelle musing casually about a
road trip together to Canada.
And of course, it had to be Canada, because
neither Australia nor the US recognise same-sex
marriage.
Strong-willed and simply told, Ghost
Wife is a memoir of turns and eddies. Michelle
begins with her contemporary self – tracing
her long flight with Heather to the town of
Newburyport, just outside of Boston, and from
there, their journey to Toronto’s City Hall. It is a trip
filled with anticipation and nervous excitement, but
also uneasy reflections on the nature of belonging
and choice. What will it mean, for example, to be
married in one country but not at home? Will her
soon-to-be in-laws accept them? And what does
one wear to a wedding when the last thing you
want to appear like is a stock-standard hetero
bride and groom?
The book is also interspersed with
memories of Michelle’s teenagehood and
early twenties, from her move to Melbourne in
the hope of meeting a girl to her eventual and
painful coming out to her parents. Moving, gentle
fragments of hidden queer histories drift by.
There’s Lilian Cooper and Josephine Bedford, two
women who journeyed from London to Brisbane
so that Lilian could work as Queensland’s first
female doctor; they spent their entire lives together
and were eventually buried side by side at the
Toowong Cemetery.
It’s hard to describe just how affecting
Ghost Wife is. Because it is, at heart and in the
truest sense, a very romantic book, meaning it
rests not on clichés but deep-running emotions.
Michelle’s voice is clear, sensitive and defiant, and
her gathering of stories and histories gracefully
handpicked. That it is timely and important is a
given, but that it is unsentimental and yet incredibly
moving is a feat. This is one that will stay with you.
Jessica Au is editor of the Readings Monthly
THINGS I DIDN’T EXPECT
(WHEN I WAS EXPECTING)
Monica Dux
MUP. HB. $24.99
Review: It’s been nearly a
decade since I was first
expecting, and six years since
my last child, but I seized on
the chance to read what might
be described as the antipregnancy book – the one
that tells it like it really is. And that’s because,
like Monica Dux, I’m still really miffed about
the whole thing.
In Things I Didn’t Expect (When I
Was Expecting), Dux categorises all of the
remarkable and unremarkable aspects of
being pregnant – from petty annoyances to
major outrage – and her personal experience
creates a far more realistic document than the
books that tell you to look forward to shiny
hair, an increased sex drive and bucketfuls
of euphoria.
There are many laugh-out-loud
moments, though admittedly some of my
laughter had a distinctly hollow sound as a
few of the disappointments and discomforts
of pregnancy, birth and post-birth came
flooding back. Dux discusses the vast
range of emotions women experience, most
notably guilt, fear and anger, as well as the
accompanying physical symptoms of an
average pregnancy and post-birth, from
unrelenting nausea to mastitis. Try knitting
booties during that lot. But Dux isn’t just
angry with Mother Nature, she has bones to
pick with the way the medical profession and
wider society treat women who are pregnant
or have just given birth, including the
righteousness of breastfeeding evangelists.
Blokes get their own chapter, with
Dux pointing out the honest truth that one of
the best reasons to have your partner in the
room when you give birth is so you can use
the ‘I gave birth, you saw how awful that was,
so it’s only right that you should clean up this
poo/make the tea’ argument, which, when
used sparingly, can work for years. This is a
smart, sardonic but somehow joyful romp.
Dux gives just the right amount of history and
social commentary to make Things I Didn’t
Expect an intelligent read without turning it
into a dry text. Accessible and lively, with a
satisfying blend of humour and fact.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
Released 11 March
In the latest Quarterly Essay,
former Labor Party leader Mark
Latham argues that the time has
come to go beyond the criticism
of recent years. Instead, he offers
a timely assessment of the future,
examining the union nexus, the
Keating settlement, the education revolution,
climate change and the party’s handling of the
Greens. Latham suggests that Labor’s biggest
problem is the steady erosion of its traditional
working-class base. Families who were once
resigned to a lifetime of blue-collar work now
expect their children to be well-educated
professionals and entrepreneurs. Can Labor
reinvent itself and speak to a changed Australia?
Glorious Days:
Australia 1913
Stuart Macintyre et al.
National Museum of Australia. PB. $44.95
The year 1913 was a
fascinating and important time
for Australians. Ambitions
were high, the new navy was
a source of pride, the arts
flourished, and the motor car
and movies were having their
first impacts. This richly illustrated book, a
companion to an exhibition at the National
Museum of Australia, takes us into the lives of
ordinary Australians and an emerging nation.
Science
Heretics
Will Storr
Macmillan. PB. $29.99
ebook $14.99
Review: The subtitle of this
book is ‘adventures with the
enemies of science’, which is
perhaps slightly misleading
because not only does Will
Storr interview a creationist, a
UFO expert and a homeopath
(the so-called ‘enemies’), he also spends time
talking to neuroscientists, oncologists and
biologists in his quest to understand exactly why
we believe what we believe.
Storr refers to himself as a ‘longform’
journalist, and several of these chapters have
appeared in publications like The Guardian and
the Good Weekend. Storr has covered some of
this territory before in his first book, Will Storr vs.
the Supernatural – One Man’s Search For the
Truth About Ghosts; however, the difference with
Heretics is that rather than trying to find out the
truth about what a person believes, he is more
interested in why they might hold that belief in the
first place.
This leads to some interesting
conclusions about how the brain works to create
narratives in order to make sense of the world.
Storr asks, ‘[H]ow is the conscious function of the
‘mind’ created?’ and receives some fascinating
responses from a variety of philosophers and
neuroscientists. As well as one-on-one interviews,
Storr tours Holocaust sites with David Irving and
talks to Lord Monckton about climate change. He
is particularity interested in how different people
respond to facts and evidence, and how their
upbringing may influence this process.
Storr is often compared to Jon Ronson
and Louis Theroux and their styles are certainly
very similar; Storr is perhaps a little darker and
not afraid to confront his own history and belief
system. Heretics is a compelling read and highly
recommended to anyone who is interested in a
variety of theories abo0ut how our brains might
actually work.
Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton
Animal Wise
Virginia Morell
Black Inc. PB. $29.99
ebook $12.99
Did you know that dolphins are
self-aware, that rats love to be
tickled, that chimps grieve, and
killer whales have cultures and
octopuses personalities? Animal
Wise takes us on a surprising
and enlightening exploration into
the minds and emotions of everything from parrots
to wolves through the researchers who study
them. Virginia Morell examines the amazing
inroads made in the field of animal cognition, the
moral and ethical issues raised, and the profound
depth of the human-animal bond.
Permanent Present
Tense
Suzanne Corkin
Penguin. HB. $39.99
In 1953, at the age of 27, Henry
Gustav Molaison underwent an
experimental procedure intended
to alleviate his debilitating
epilepsy. The outcome was
devastating – when Molaison
woke, he was unable to form new
memories and, for the rest of his life, would be
trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy
‘Text’s offer to the
reader is intelligently
straightforward and
respectful: “We love
this. We think you
will too.”’
LLOYD JONES
‘Text is the excitement
in Australian
publishing.’
N E W I N M A RC H
T EXT PU BL I SH I NG.COM . AU
DAVID VANN
These are simple stories about
everyday lives, about the people we
love and the lies that we tell.
/randomhouseau
What if you had the chance to
live your life again and again,
until you finally got it right?
There’s so much more at
randomhouse.com.au
11
12
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
would provide an unexpected gift to humanity,
illuminating the functions of the brain and
revolutionising the science of memory. For
nearly five decades, distinguished
neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin studied
Molaison and oversaw his care. Her account
of his life and legacy reveals an intelligent
man who, despite his profound amnesia, was
altruistic, friendly, open and humorous.
Writing
On Writing
Daphne Du Maurier
and Her Sisters
A.L. Kennedy
BY JANE DUNN
Special price $39.95
9780007347087
Special Price $29.95
Released 7 March
Based on new research, this group
biography explores the dysfunctional
upbringing of Daphne du Maurier
and her two equally talented sisters.
Full of jealousy, creative energy and
compulsive make-believe, their lives
were as unconventional and complex as
a Daphne du Maurier plotline.
The Accursed
BY JOYCE CAROL OATES
9780007494200 | RRP $29.99
An eerie, unforgettable story of power,
loss and family curses in early 20th
century Princeton. Narrated with Oates’
unmistakable psychological insight,
The Accursed combines beautiful
historical detail with chilling fantastical
elements to stunning effect.
Random. HB. Was $49.95
Review: Largely made up of
blog posts written by A.L.
Kennedy over a three-year
period, all of which first
appeared on The Guardian
website, On Writing is made for
those interested in what it’s like
to lead a writer’s life. It’s also a lesson, in itself, on
how writers can recoup more from their work
through the simple act of republishing material on
a different platform to reach a wider audience.
The tone is colourful, chatty, anecdotal
and, at times, introspective, and fans of Kennedy
will enjoy reading about her experiences, from
having a book published to attending literary
festivals, as well as the various aspects of a
novelist’s day – from the mundane to the sublime.
The blogs are followed by a BBC
Radio talk, a lecture explaining why she gave up
on a career in the arts sector and three essays
on the technical craft of writing. Indeed, the
book is worth buying for the essays alone. One
is a humorous, self-aware piece that examines
the value of conducting and enrolling in writing
workshops. Another examines the development
of character in fiction and the third is an acutely
personal essay on the connection between a
writer’s ‘voice’ on the page and their actual self.
The last piece is the script of a oneperson show that Kennedy has toured with over
several years. Here she talks passionately about
what motivates her to write (it’s a four-letter word
that’s as good a motivator as any).
These pieces are infinitely readable
and Kennedy has a refreshing ability to take
the piss out of herself, as well as the publishing
and writing industry. On workshops, she writes:
‘That’s what you do when you can’t write yet:
you lead workshops for other people who can’t
write yet, and hope they can’t write yet a little bit
more than you can’t.’
Clare Kennedy is a freelance reviewer
Biography
Daphne du Maurier
and her Sisters
Jane Dunn
The Fine Colour of Rust
HarperCollins. HB. Was $35
Special price $29.95
BY PADDY O’REILLY
ebook $17.99
9780007434954 | RRP $17.99
The middle sister in a celebrated
artistic dynasty, Daphne du
Maurier, author of Rebecca and
Jamaica Inn, is one of the master
storytellers of our time. But her
fame and success overshadowed
that of her sisters, Angela and
Jeanne, a writer and an artist of talent in their own
rights. In this group biography they are
considered side by side: three sisters brought
up in the hothouse of a theatrical family with a
peculiar and powerful father, full of creative
energy and compulsive make-believe in a life as
psychologically complex as a du Maurier plotline.
The Fine Colour of Rust is a beautifully
observed, wryly funny novel about
friendship, love and fighting for things
that matter. Single mother Loretta
Boskovic is a heroine with a big heart
and a strong sense of injustice who
gives us all permission to dream.
Love with a Chance
of Drowning
Torre DeRoche
Penguin. PB. $29.99
ebook $6.99
A city girl with a morbid fear of
deep water, Torre DeRoche is
not someone you would
ordinarily find adrift in the
middle of the stormy Pacific.
But when she meets Ivan, a
handsome Argentinean with a
humble sailboat and a dream of exploring the
world, Torre has to face a hard decision: watch
the man she’s in love with sail away forever, or
head off on the watery journey with him. Set
against a backdrop of the world’s most beautiful
and remote destinations, Love with a Chance of
Drowning is a sometimes hilarious, often brave
memoir that proves some risks are worth taking.
Wave
Sonali Deraniyagala
Little, Brown. PB. $24.99
In Sri Lanka on 26 December
2004, Sonali Deraniyagala lost
her parents, her husband and her
two young sons to the tsunami
that she miraculously survived.
During the initial aftermath, she
found herself entrapped by her
own horror, her whole being furiously clenched
against the reality of what happened, someone
always at her side to prevent her from harming
herself. Wave then traces her reluctant emergence
over the ensuing years, moving from memories of
her childhood in Colombo and her family’s home in
London to the year she met her English husband at
Cambridge and the birth of her children. A frank
and profoundly moving memoir of grief and loss,
told without artifice.
Politics
SEX AND THE CITADEL
Shereen El Feki
Vintage. PB. $34.95
In the political unrest that swept
across the Arab world in 2011,
all eyes were on the streets and
squares erupting in protest. But
for the past five years, Shereen
El Feki has been looking at the
upheaval a little closer to home
– via the sexual lives of men and women across
region. Sex might seem a strange lens through
which to examine change, but it is in fact a prism
refracting political, economic and social trends.
Rich in first-person stories and original research,
Sex and the Citadel gives unprecedented insight
into a part of the world that is transforming
before our very eyes.
CulturalStudies
FREELOADING
Chris Ruen
Scribe. PB. $27.95
Internet piracy has created
unlikely allies. On the one hand,
there are the original creators of
content, including artists and
corporate copyright holders. On
the other, there are legions of
free-spirited consumers and fans
who see themselves as part of the hacker tradition.
In Freeloading, Chris Ruen takes a critical, cool
look at this phenomenon, examining the famous
SOPA protests and the attendant rhetoric, as well
as proposing practical solutions that would
provide protection to artists and consumers alike.
Philosophy
Landscapes of the
Metropolis of Death
Otto Dov Kulka
Penguin. HB. $35
As the child of a distinguished
historian, Otto Dov Kulka was
sent first to the ghetto of
Theresienstadt and then to
Auschwitz. As one of the few
survivors, he has spent much of
his life studying Nazism and the
Holocaust, but always with his personal story set
to one side. Nevertheless, he has remained
haunted by specific memories and images –
thoughts he has been unable to shake off. The
result is Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death,
a unique and powerful account of one man’s
attempt to understand his past, and our history.
History
The Penguin History
of the World (6th ed)
J.M. Roberts & Odd Arne Westad
Penguin. HB. $59.99
For generations of readers The
Penguin History of the World
has been one of the great
cultural records – the entire
story of the human endeavour
laid out in all its grandeur and
folly. Now, for the first time, this
landmark authority has been completely
overhauled and revised in light of new
discoveries, looking back on the Ancient World
to the inexorable rise of Asia and the
increasingly troubled situation in the West.
Business
Changeology
Les Robinson
Scribe. PB. $27.95
Changeology is all about
influencing the behaviour of
human beings for the better, for
projects both large and small,
with particular emphasis on
climate change, poverty, obesity,
AIDS, tobacco and drug use. It is
for anyone – professionals and individuals – who
wants to make a change to their corporations, cities
and neighborhoods, as well as in their own lives.
Lean In
Sheryl Sandberg
Random. PB. $34.95
Released 18 March
Ask most women whether they
have the right to equality at
work and the answer will be a
resounding yes, but ask the
same women whether they
feel confident asking for a
raise, a promotion or equal
pay, and some reticence creeps in. The
statistics, although improved, are still grim –
of 197 heads of state, only 22 are women.
Women hold just 20% of seats in parliaments
globally, and a meagre 18 of the Fortune 500
CEOs are women. In Lean In, Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg looks at what women can
do to help themselves and effect change on
a more universal scale, drawing on her own
experiences working in some of the world’s
most successful businesses, as well as
academic research.
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
Food&Gardening Art & Design
with Christine Gordon,
Readings Carlton
with Margaret Snowdon,
Readings Carlton
A Bite of the Big Apple
The Books That Shaped
Art History
Monica Trápaga & Lil Tulloch
Lantern. HB. $39.99
Here is the dream: mother and
daughter run away to New York,
collecting food ideas and friends
while they search for their
Hispanic and Filipino roots. For
Monica Trápaga and Lil Tulloch,
it’s a dream that lasted two years.
A Bite of the Big Apple is a collection of their
favourite experiences along with 60 recipes for
tapas, cocktails and a particularly delicious batch
of spicy oatmeal biscuits. Think of it as a crosscultural romp through the melting pot of a city that
never sleeps. This is the book you give someone
who wants to go to New York, who has never been
to New York or who should go to New York. It’s
also for you, who may have already been to New
York. Drink the Manhattans and reminisce.
Hummingbird Bakery:
Home Sweet Home
Tarek Malouf
HarperCollins. HB. $35
It goes without saying that our
love of baking has
been handed down from
generation to generation.
The smell of baking breads
and cakes is surely one of
the greatest loves in life. This
collection of 100 recipes includes cupcakes,
loaves, layer cakes, biscuits, sweets, roulades,
pies, puddings and savouries. There’s everything
from the really simple Olive Loaf to the much more
time-consuming Lemon Layer Cake. You may
have been to the famed Hummingbird Bakery
in London. If not, here is your chance to create
your own world of whimsical delights. This book
is definitely for the home kitchen – the recipes are
easy-peasy and a sure way to achieve success.
The Perfect Meal
John Baxter
Harper Perennial. PB. $19.99
ebook $10.99
John Baxter’s The Perfect Meal
is part grand tour, part French
culinary history. Having lived in
Paris for more than 20 years,
Baxter guides us through some
of the country’s most famous
(and not-so-famous) eateries,
and argues that some of the more complex
elements of French cuisine are in danger of
disappearing. If you are someone who needs to
know the history of every garnish, who believes
that the French do it better or simply enjoys food
journeys, then this book is for you. Personally,
I’m going to give a copy to my partner in the
hope that it spurs him on to buy those tickets for
us. It’s that type of book. It makes you dream.
Toxic Oil
David Gillespie
Viking. PB. $29.99
ebook $19.99
David Gillespie, of Sweet
Poison fame, simply does not
hold back in his new book,
again forcing us to question
our own eating habits. He
outlines why seed oils will
make you sick with cancer and
heart diseases and offers a practical guide to
dealing with the shock of coming to terms with
the truths he presents.
Meet
the Bookseller
Lou Fulco – Readings Hawthorn
John-Paul Stonard &
Richard Shone (eds.)
T&H. HB. $49.95
Fifteen out of these 16 essays on
groundbreaking art history books
originally appeared in The
Burlington Magazine as part of a
series called ‘Art History
Reviewed’. This approach is
excellent because it informs on
several different levels – exploring the books
themselves and providing an introduction to their
content, as well as looking at the achievements of
the authors and the important historical and
cultural context of the works. John-Paul Stonard
says in his introduction, ‘Whereas many books
introducing art history do so from the perspective
of theories and methods, the points of
embarkation for this volume are rather the
landmark publications that have shaped the
subject, as well as the personalities and stories
behind those contributions.’ I didn’t read one
sentence that I wasn’t engagingly informed by,
from the preface to the biographies at the back.
Paris Street Style
Isabelle Thomas &
Frédérique Veysset
Abrams. PB. Was $29.95
Special price $24.95
An indispensable guide to
easy everyday chic, straight
from the streets of Paris.
Pitch-perfect wardrobe advice
is accompanied by a list of
essential French boutiques
and restaurants. The book
includes tips from designers, stylists and
editors, and mixes eclectic design with photos
and hand-drawn sketches.
Phaidon Focus Series
Phaidon. HB. $24.95 each
Francis Bacon, Brice Marden,
Andy Warhol, Robert
Rauschenberg, David Smith
and Anselm Kiefer are the first
six artists to be covered in the
new Phaidon Focus series, a
collection of accessible,
enjoyable and thought-provoking books on
internationally renowned modern masters.
Up-to-date and authoritative, each title covers
the full span of an individual artist's work.
Chronological essays are accompanied by
Focus sections that explore specific themes,
series or pieces. These lively and beautifully
illustrated books are perfect and indispensable
introductions to modern artists, providing
invaluable insight into their life and work.
A Map of the World
Antoniou et al
Die Gestalten Verlag. HB $85
A new generation of designers,
illustrators and mapmakers are
discovering their passion for
various forms of illustrative
cartography. A Map of the
World is a compelling
collection of their work, from accurate and
surprisingly detailed representations to personal,
naïve and modernistic interpretations. Featured
projects range from maps and atlases inspired by
classic forms to cartographic experiments and
editorial illustrations.
Why do you work in books?
I actually came to Readings as a music and
DVD specialist. Readings was the place that I
used to buy many of my books from prior to
that, so the marriage was a bonus.
What’s the strangest experience
you’ve had in a bookshop?
Many years ago, working in a music store,
I was confronted by a very angry man who
wanted to return a DVD that had bite marks
and saliva on the case. When I told him
that his dog had bitten it and I wouldn’t
take it back he got angry, to say the least,
telling me that it was only the case that was
damaged. When I opened the case to find
the disc had also been bitten I laughed and
told him in no uncertain terms that I was
not taking the disc back. This angry little
man lost the plot. My boss at the time made
me give him his money back (not so much
because he was so angry but probably
because she thought I might belt him) but
not until I had told him subtly that I would
not have him in the store again. (NB. This
story has been cleaned up for the reader).
DR BRYAN
MENDELSON
In
Your
Face
A lively exploration
of the history of
facial surgery and
why looks matter,
from world-renowned
aesthetic plastic
surgeon Dr Bryan
Mendelson.
What’s the best experience you’ve
had in a bookshop?
Whenever someone comes in wanting to
chat about something that I also like usually
makes my day. I find these customers are
open to recommendations. I also find they
can have a surprise or two that I haven’t
seen or heard or read about before.
One such customer is Jan Grant. Our
conversations about foreign crime shows
have been known to be lengthy.
What’s your favourite book, film or
album of all time and why?
Favourite book is probably The World
According to Garp by John Irving. His style
is unique in that he puts me right into the
heart of his stories. His humour is also left
of centre, much like mine. Never have I
laughed out loud in public as much as I
have with this book.
Favourite albums are probably Bruce
Springsteen’s Born to Run, The Beatles’
Abbey Road and Santana’s Abraxas. I can’t
decide! Don’t make me, please don’t make
me. All different moods but all powerful for
different reasons.
As far as movies go, I will watch anything.
I have been watching some old westerns
lately, of which Red River and The
Searchers stand out as wonderful for
different reasons. I am also partial to the
four-hour print of Dances With Wolves. I
love the cinematography, the soundtrack
and the story.
But hey, that’s just this week!
AVAILABLE
MARCH
13
14
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
e!
z a p mapter 1
to rea d
ch
Picture Books
The Curious Explorer’s
Illustrated Guide to Exotic
Animals A to Z
This month’s Readings Monthly cover art by
Marc Martin has been proudly brought to you
by the very friendly faces, mouths, and hands
at The Jacky Winter Group.
Marc Martin
Viking. HB. $24.99
jackywinter.com
Did you
know...
Preschool
Story
Time
the final thrilling
story in
the hero trilogy
Come along to Story Time
at Readings! Everyone is
welcome to listen to some
wonderful books, suitable
for a pre-school audience.
No bookings required.
Readings Carlton
out now
Monday 11am
Readings St Kilda
Thursday 10.30am
amba2839r
...that Dr Seuss’s
Green Eggs
and Ham
was written
using only 50
words? Seuss’s
publisher,
Bennett Cerf,
bet him $50 that
it could not be
done. Out of the
50 words, 49
have just one
syllable – the
longest word in
thewholebookis
‘anywhere’.
Review: Kids may have to fight for
ownership of this absolutely splendid book.
Sure, it’s an alphabet book, but children will
delight in the bold shapes and luscious
colours. They will wonder at the Latin names
that sound poetic and magical. They can
ponder the fascinating facts and descriptions
of the curious creatures. Adults with artistic
persuasions will also be beguiled by the beauty of Marc Martin’s
creativity. His first picture book, A Forest, portrayed a fragile
world with pleasing patterns and delicate watercolours. In his
new work, he is bold and no less admiring of nature. He
luxuriates in the perfection of each animal’s anatomy. The
circular motif is central to the illustrations and satisfyingly links
the elegant shapes of the animals and birds. Nature appears so
noble and empowered, even as so many are fighting for their
survival in their precarious environments. This is a book that
respects the intelligence and creativity of children while
remaining sophisticated enough for designers and artists to be
truly inspired.
Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
Flora and the Flamingo
Molly Idle
Chronicle. HB. $22.95
Review: A graceful flamingo attempts to
teach Flora how to dance in this gentle
story of patience and friendship. The
narrative is eloquently expressed through
pictures – no words are used, and nor, in
fact, are they needed. The clever flaps
capture Flora’s journey from clumsy
copycat in flippers, poorly mimicking the flamingo’s every
move, to the two performing a routine and soaring in tandem.
This beautiful, pink-hued story will particularly appeal to young
readers who love movement and dance.
Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda
I Dare You Not to Yawn
Hélène Boudreau & Serge Bloch (illus.)
Candlewick. HB. $24.95
Review: This cheeky bedtime book
warns young readers against the perils of
an inadvertent yawn. Be careful – yawning
is contagious and it inevitably leads down
a slippery slope to bed and lights out. In
fact, even looking at a picture book that
gives us the sights and sounds of a yawn
can be enough to induce one in the reader. My daughter and I
have enjoyed this story a few times now and have both felt
compelled to yawn at each and every reading. Bold and
colourful illustrations by Serge Block perfectly complement this
amusing story for ages 3 and up. AC
My Easter Egg Hunt
Rosie Smith & Bruce Whatley (illus.)
Scholastic. HB. $16.99
Hunting for eggs is fun ... when you share
with everyone. Beautifully put together by
well-known Australian husband-and-wife
team Rosie Smith and Bruce Whatley, and
including many delightful animals, My
Easter Egg Hunt captures the excitement of
Easter time.
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
Book of the Month
Timmy Failure
Stephan Pastis
Walker. HB. $17.95
Review: Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is so funny and engaging that as my
nine-year-old son sat reading it on the tram, giggling away, he completely missed his stop,
twice! In fact, all of the members of my household, children and adults, read and loved this book.
Along with his polar bear sidekick, Timmy Failure runs a detective agency, which he claims
is perhaps the best in the nation (modesty is not his strong point). Timmy takes his detective
business very seriously indeed; however, his complete lack of actual skills or insight sees him
blundering his way from one misunderstanding to another. Author Stephan Pastis’ clever use of
drawings and comics not only adds to the charm, humour and accessibility of the text, but also
serves to show the reader much of what Timmy misses or misinterprets.
This book will definitely appeal to reluctant readers and established book lovers alike.
Highly recommended for mums, dads, girls and boys ages 8 and up. We’re living in
hope of another hilarious tram-stop-missing instalment.
Kate Campbell is from Readings Hawthorn (this review was written
in collaboration with Blake Williams (9), Clay Williams
(11) and Steve Williams)
My Superhero
Chris Owen & Moira Court (illus.)
Fremantle. HB. $26.99
Superheroes have lots of super attributes:
amazing strength, incredible speed,
sensational costumes. But this charming book
is a celebration of super skills of a different kind
– the kind that are much closer to home – and
the illustrations are a hit.
Not a Cloud in the Sky
Emma Quay
HarperCollins. HB. $24.99
Released late March
Bird had been flying for such a long time.
Sometimes everything looks the same all
over, with nothing different apart from the
clouds. A beautiful picture book about how
finding a friend can change the shape of a
day, from the author of Rudie Nudie and
Shrieking Violet.
New
Kids’
Books
Quiz Champs
Susan Halliday & Tom Jellett (illus.)
Ford Street. PB. $9.95
Marcy, the lead female character from the
Toocool books, now has her own series.
The class has been divided into two teams
for a quiz. It’s boys versus girls and Marcy
is the captain of the Girls’ Team. She has a
go at everything, and her positive attitude,
self-confidence and candid humour are
contagious – there is no challenge too large!
Paris, Line by Line
Robinson
Universe. HB. $26.95
A brilliant souvenir for people of all ages, back in
print for the first time in 40 years. In the early
1960s, Robinson documented Paris in his
signature style. Page after page is filled with
beautiful, precise drawings of the Right Bank, the
Champs-Élysées and the Moulin Rouge.
Junior Fiction
Starring Jules (As Herself)
Beth Ain & Anne Keenan Higgins (illus.)
A&U. PB. $11.99
Review: Jules Bloom is the central
character in this new series that will appeal to
fans of Judy Moody. Quirky, fun and
wholesome, the first story sees Jules tying
herself in knots about an audition for a TV
commercial – the trouble is that the audition
involves gargling orange mouthwash and
Jules has terrible associations with the flavour
of orange. Like a lot of US fiction, the young characters sound
older than they are, but Jules is not overly sassy for the
six-to-nine-year-olds this book is aimed at. Sweet illustrations,
sound themes relevant to the age group and a heart-warming
sibling relationship complete the picture.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
Non-Fiction
Meet Ned Kelly
Janeen Brian & Matt Adams (illus.)
Random. HB. $19.95
‘Ned Kelly was a notorious bushranger.
He was daring and clever and bold. In a
suit made of iron, he battled police; and
his story is still being told.’ Meet Ned
Kelly is part of a great picture book
series on the people who shaped
Australian history, from Saint Mary Mackillop to Captain Cook
and Douglas Mawson.
Jandamarra
Mark Greenwood & Terry Denton
A&U. HB. $29.99
Set in the Kimberley region in north-west
Australia, this is the story of a young warrior
born to lead. To the settlers, he was an outlaw
to be hunted. To the Bunuba, he was a
courageous defender of his country. Mark
Greenwood’s text and Terry Denton’s
watercolour illustrations bring to life this story
of conflict and divided loyalties – giving a
unique insight into an extraordinary man and a tragic but
important part of Australia’s frontier history.
Graphic Novel
LiO: There’s a Monster in
My Socks
Mark Tatulli
Andrews McMeel. PB. $14.95
Review: Liō is naughty and inventive. He
devises cool experiments that fool his father
and get the better of bullies. He has a pet
snake and octopus, but sometimes the
animals fool him, even an alien or two. He has
been known to associate with ‘Wild Things’
and vampires hold an endless fascination for
him. He’s an awesome little dude and all
without uttering one word!
This is a funny and offbeat graphic novel, and Liō
has an Edward Gorey sensibility as he masterminds ingenious
creations and hoodwinks those around him. Mark Tatulli’s
cartoons are very clever and Liō is a hilarious and endearingly
crafty kid who will have wide appeal, particularly for those who
find reading a struggle. This is a book that isn’t a battle and
yet sneakily promotes reading, as books are Lio’s constant
companions as he plans his cheeky contraptions. Young
artists and cartoonists will also find plenty here to inspire them.
Madcap fun for ages 6 and up. AD
Classic
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Cynthia Rylant & Jen Corace (illus.)
T&H. HB. $25.95
A new version of the classic Hans
Christian Andersen fairytale about a tin
soldier who falls in love with a ballerina.
The tin soldier is thwarted by a goblin,
becomes separated from the other toys
and is washed down a sewer, where he
encounters a rat and gets swallowed by a
fish. Somehow, against all odds, he manages to end up back
home, only to be cast into the nursery fire! But there’s a happy
twist in this latest version.
Classic of the Month
King Matt The First
Janusz Korczak
Vintage. PB. $12.95
Review: King Matt the First is a classic
of children’s literature that seems to have
escaped the knowledge of those outside of
Europe. Indeed, it would have remained
unknown to me had I not begun teaching
grade six after teaching juniors. I spent my
summer searching for books to read aloud
– books that would interest both girls and
boys, that would provide them with
excitement, suspense and new ideas to
discuss, and that would lend themselves to being shared.
Thankfully I found King Matt the First.
In the story, a child is crowned as the ruler of his
country after the death of his father. Thrust into leadership before
he can even write or count, Matt must navigate the strange world
of grown-up politics.
King Matt the First offers as much to adults as it
does to children. On one hand, it is a rollicking tale filled with
adventure and excitement; on the other, it asks its readers
(especially adults) to consider not only the rights of children
as part of society, but just how much they are capable of when
given the chance.
I can’t wait to share this book with 6L.
Louisa Dretzke is a friend of Readings
15
16
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
The Age of
Wonder
Our Great
Game
Jonathan Fenby
Richard Holmes
John Murray
HB. Was $49.99
HB. Was $56
HB. Was $115
NOW $16.95
NOW $16.95
NOW $29.95
This captivating history argues
that the Romantic imagination was inspired,
not alienated, by scientific advances. Richard
Holmes looks at prominent British scientists
including astronomer Humphrey Davy, leading
chemist and amateur poet William Herschel
and his accomplished assistant and sister,
Caroline, and Joseph Banks, whose journal
of a youthful voyage to Tahiti was a study in
sexual libertinism.
The General
Follow the journey of the
country’s biggest sporting code, Australian
Rules, from it’s origins of in 1858 right through
to the present day. The glossy coffee-table
publication brings together the most complete
collection of images ever published on the
game, some of which have not previously been
seen by the sporting public, with a foreword
from Kevin Bartlett.
This is a magisterial, sweeping
biography of one of the great
leaders of the twentieth century,
Charles de Gaulle, as well as the country with
which he so identified, France. Written with
terrific verve, narrative skill and rigorous detail,
this major work brings to life the private man
as well as the public leader, through exhaustive
research and analysis.
Parallel
Stories
Felipe FernándezArmesto
Mateship With
Birds
Péter Nádas
Carrie Tiffany
HB. Was $55.95
PB. Was $19.99
NOW $15
PB. Was $25
NOW $11.95
Civilizations
NOW $15
Oxford academic Felipe
Fernandez-Armesto
argues that civilisation is not evidenced
by a formal political structure, aesthetics,
ethical principles or religion, but rather by a
culture’s attempt to refashion its environment.
By arguing that a society’s relationship
to climate, geography and ecology are
paramount in determining its degree of
success, Civilizations connects the world of
ecology with the panorama of cultural history.
Nine Lives
William Dalrymple
HB. Was $37.95
NOW $15
From the author of The
Last Mughal and In Xanadu
comes a mesmerising book
that explores how traditional religions are
observed in contemporary India, revealing
ways of life that we might otherwise never
have known. The titular nine lives are those
of a variety of religious adherents, including a
Jain nun, a sacred dancer, a Sufi mystic and a
Tantric practitioner.
The West &
The Map Of
The World
Matthew Richardson
HB. Was $69.99
NOW $16.95
Inspired by antique mapmakers and their
global vision, The West & the Map of the World
presents the past as a single narrative in
which European history is an offshoot of Asian
history. Lavishly illustrated with more than 100
maps from the State Library of Victoria, and
based on ancient writings, this book reaches
new conclusions about the modern success of
the West.
We Are
Geelong
John Murray
HB. Was $49.95
NOW $15
We Are Geelong explores
the special relationship between the city of
Geelong and Victoria’s only regional AFL club.
The handsome hardcover edition, celebrating
the 150th anniversary of the Cats, takes you
on a colourful journey through the club’s rich
history and includes essays from Australia’s
leading football writers and historians, along
with stirring photographs. An essential item for
any fan’s library.
Set on the outskirts of
an Australian country town in the
1950s, Mateship With Birds is
a novel about young lust
and mature love. It’s a
hymn to the rhythm of
country life – to vicious
birds, virginal cows,
adored dogs and illused sheep. On this
one small farm in a
vast, ancient landscape,
a collection of misfits
question the nature of what
a family can be.
In the year the Berlin Wall
came down, a university student on
his morning run finds a corpse
on a park bench and alerts
the authorities. From
this classic policeprocedural scene
we open up to
an extraordinary
novel that traces
the fate of myriad
Europeans across
the treacherous years
of the mid-twentieth
century. Parallel Stories
is a demanding and
moving exploration
of humanity.
Readings
Bargain
Table
Joseph
Anton
Salman Rushdie
PB. Was $35
NOW $19.95
Hailed as a literary martyr
and derided as a prima donna, Salman Rushdie
emerges as both inspiring and insufferable
in the memoir of his life following the 1989
fatwa issued against him by Iran’s Ayatollah
Khomeini. The British-Indian novelist’s thirdperson account of the firestorm surrounding The
Satanic Verses as he is taken under protection
and into hiding is frank and harrowing.
The Man Who
Loved China
Simon Winchester
PB. Was $22.95
NOW $13
Simon Winchester brings to life
the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the
brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the
most closely held secrets of China. By the time
of his death, Needham had produced seventeen
immense volumes, marking him as the greatest
one-man encyclopaedist who ever lived. The Man
Who Loved China is both an epic and intimate
portrait of a man, and the nation he loved.
Role Models
Warrior
Women
Robin Cross
& Rosalind Miles
HB. Was $49.99
NOW $15.95
Women leaders abounded in the ancient
world from Ireland to Israel, often rising to
power through naked opportunism and raw
courage. Presenting an array of fascinating and
sometimes little-known female leaders in war,
author Rosalind Miles and acclaimed military
historian Robin Cross do full justice to some
astounding achievements.
The Stranger’s
Child
Alan Hollinghurst
HB. Was $49.99
NOW $13.95
It is the late summer of the last
year before the first Great War. Cecil Valance,
a young aristocratic poet, is visiting Two Acres,
the home of his Cambridge friend and lover,
George Sawle. Here is a deliciously funny novel,
glittering with acute observation and arch insight
into the worlds of those who belong and of
those who are excluded.
HB. Was $29.95
Best Movies
of The 70s
NOW $16
Jürgen Müller
John Waters
John Waters’ Role Models
is a self-portrait told through
intimate literary profiles of the
cult filmmaker’s favourite personalities. Some
are famous and some unknown, some are
criminals and some surprisingly middle-of-theroad, but all of them, from the foul-mouthed
proprietress of a favourite bar to jazz singer
Johnny Mathis, influenced the author in forming
his own particular brand of neurotic happiness.
HB. Was $22.95
NOW $13.95
The 1970s, that magical era
betwixt the swinging 60s and the decadent 80s,
the age of disco music and platform shoes.
As war raged on in Vietnam and the cold war
continued to escalate, Hollywood began to heat
up, recovering from its commercial crisis with
box-office successes such as Star Wars, Jaws
and The Godfather.
The Search for
Tutankhamun
Niki Horin & Andrew
Hopgood (illus.)
HB. Was $34.95
NOW $13.95
The Search for Tutankhamun presents the
greatest real-life treasure hunt of all time
in breathtaking 3D detail and includes
educational aids such as a handbook of
archaeological terms, along with beautiful line
illustrations and photographs. The book reads
like an adventure story, so young readers can
easily follow in the steps of Howard Carter as
he searches for the tomb.
The Children’s
Atlas Of The
Universe
Mark Garlick
HB. Was $29.95
NOW $12
An authority on astronomy, Mark Garlick
creates a journey of discovery for children with
illustrations and lively, authoritative text, maps,
charts and hard-working cutaways that reveal
the inner workings of our universe. This book
is essential for any eager space explorer and
clearly explains complex concepts, covering key
areas such as deep space, supernovas, black
holes and visiting space itself.
A to Z of
Animals
Peter David Scott
HB. Was $24.95
NOW $12.95
Explore this amazing alphabet
of animals, from ants to butterflies, from
iguanas to polar bears, from whales to zebras.
Peter David Scott’s stunning artwork brings a
menagerie of creatures to life. Accompanied
by a section of fascinating animal facts and
nature notes, this wildlife adventure is a
pleasure to rediscover every time the book
is opened.
Rome: Rise and
Fall of an
Empire
Philip Wilkinson
HB. Was $29.95
NOW $11.95
Step inside Rome and take a journey back
in time to one of history’s greatest empires.
Immerse yourself in the excitement of the
crowd as gladiators fight to the death at the
Colosseum, read first-hand stories of what
life was like for the people of ancient Rome,
and see what happened to Pompeii when
Vesuvius erupted.
The
Inheritance
Cycle
Christopher Paolini
PB. Was $79.85
NOW $24.95
When Eragon finds a
polished stone in the forest, he thinks it is the
lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps
it will buy his family meat for the winter. But
when the stone brings a dragon hatchling,
Eragon soon realises he has stumbled upon a
legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself. The
Inheritance cycle is a thrilling fantasy series
about dragon riders, comprising of Eragon,
Eldest, Brisingr and Inheritance.
New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at www.readings.com.au for more.
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
DVD
of
the
month
GAME OF THRONES:
SEASON 2
$59.95
with Lou Fulco
Released 6 March
The battle continues in Westeros
with feuding families and
power-hungry rulers. Season 2
plays out against the backdrop
of a fast-approaching winter as
five kings vie for a single throne.
In King’s Landing, the coveted
Iron Throne is occupied by the cruel young
Joffrey, counselled by his conniving mother
Cersei and uncle Tyrion. But the Lannister hold is
under assault on many fronts – there’s Robb
Stark, Ned Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Stannis
Baratheon and Stannis’ brother Renly. In the
meantime, a new leader is rising among the
wildlings north of the Wall, creating peril for Jon
Snow and the Night’s Watch. Confused? Don’t
be. This brilliant series continues to take giant
strides in imagery and storytelling. Season 1 is
still available – don’t get left behind!
THE INTOUCHABLES
$39.95
Released 6 March
An irreverent, uplifting comedy
about friendship, trust and
human possibility, The
Intouchables is based on the
true story of a handicapped
millionaire and his street-smart
ex-con caretaker. The film
depicts an unlikely camaraderie rooted in
honesty and humour between two individuals
who, on the surface, would seem to have
nothing in common. A great film that
incorporates a fantastic soundtrack.
THE MASTER
$39.95
Released 13 March
A striking portrait of drifters
and seekers in post-World War
II America, Paul Thomas
Anderson’s The Master follows
the journey of troubled naval
veteran Freddie Quell
(Joaquin Phoenix). Freddie
drinks, fights and offends his way across the
country, until he encounters a group who call
themselves The Cause, forming a strange
bond with its charismatic leader, Lancaster
Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Seen as
controversial upon its release for its
Scientology overtones, The Master explores
cult fanaticism and lies being sold as religion.
places such as Hollywood and Mumbai, and
features interviews with legendary filmmakers
and actors.
$39.95
SEARCHING FOR
SUGAR MAN
Released 14 March
$29.95
A romantic comedy from Woody
Allen, To Rome With Love follows
four different storylines around
the Eternal City, ranging from the
absurd to the fantastical to
straightforward farce. While you
can’t compare this with the
brilliant Midnight in Paris, To Rome With Love is
well written and wonderfully acted, and has Woody
asking, ‘Just where has the time passed me by?’
Set in the near future, Frank, a
retired cat burglar, is gradually
going senile. Not wanting to be
placed in a home, his son buys
him a robot caretaker. Only Frank
manages to persuade his new
‘friend’ to be his partner in crime
for some late-life capers he has planned. What
follows is an often hilarious and heartwarming
story about finding friends and family in the most
unexpected places. Starring Frank Langella,
Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler and James Marsden.
Rodriguez was the greatest 70s US rock icon
who never was. Momentarily hailed as the
finest recording artist of his generation, this
Detroit folk singer disappeared into oblivion,
only to rise again in a completely different
context an entire continent away. In South
Africa, he became the musical inspiration for
a generation, even though it was rumoured he
had suicided. Thanks to a few fans hoping to
seek out the truth, this construction-workercome-singer discovered that long-lost dreams
can come true after all.
TO ROME WITH LOVE
$39.95
ROBOT & FRANK
ON THE ROAD
FRANKENWEENIE
$39.95
$39.95
Just after his father’s death,
aspiring New York writer Sal
Paradise meets Dean Moriarty,
a charming ex-con, married to
the very liberated and seductive
Marylou. Sal and Dean bond
instantly and, determined not to
get locked into a constricted life, the two friends
cut their ties and take to the road with Marylou.
Craving freedom and liberty, the three head off
in search of the world, of other encounters and
of themselves. Based on the groundbreaking
novel by Jack Kerouac.
When young Victor’s pet dog
Sparky (who stars in Victor’s
home-made monster movies) is
hit by a car, Victor decides to
bring him back to life the only
way he knows how. But when the
bolt-necked ‘monster’ wreaks
havoc and terror across the neighbourhood, Victor
has to convince everyone (including his parents)
that, despite his appearance, Sparky’s still the
good loyal friend he’s always been. Tim Burton
captures the feel of the old horror movies in this
stop-motion animated film.
Americans hostage. In the midst of the
chaos, six Americans managed to slip away
and find refuge in the home of the Canadian
ambassador. A CIA exfiltration specialist
named Tony Mendez came up with a risky
plan to get them safely out of the country – a
plan so incredible, it could only happen in the
movies. A critically acclaimed film directed by
and starring Ben Affleck.
GRAND DESIGNS
AUSTRALIA: SERIES 3
$39.95
Released 6 March
THE STORY OF FILM
ARGO
$89.95
$39.95
An epic 15-part guided tour of
the greatest movies ever
made, filmed over six years on
six continents and covering 12
decades and a thousand titles,
this definitive series is a love
letter to cinema. From the
silent era to the digital age, the show visits
Based on real events, Argo
chronicles the life-or-death
covert operation to rescue six
Americans, which unfolded
behind the scenes during the
Iran hostage crisis. On 4
November 1979, students
stormed the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52
Based on the successful UK
show and hosted by architect
Peter Maddison, the third
season of Grand Designs
Australia continues to follow
the structural, financial and
emotional journeys of people
building their own homes over the course of
many months.
New ebooks
Ghost Wife
Michelle Dicinoski
PB $24.99
Animal Wise
Virginia Morell
PB $29.99
Good News,
Bad News
Maggie Groff
PB $27.99
Girl Defective
Simmone Howell
PB $16.99
Quarterly Essay 49:
Not Dead Yet
Mark Latham
PB $19.95
Love with a Chance
of Drowning
Torre DeRoche
PB $29.99
ebook $12.99
ebook $14.99
ebook $9.99
ebook $9.99
ebook $6.99
ebook $9.99
AUSTRALIA’S OWN SINCE 1969
ebooks.readings.com.au
17
18
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
cd
of the
month
Old Yellow Moon
Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
Was $24.95
Special price $21.95
Review: Long-time friends and musical
compadres Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell
have finally got round to making a proper album
together. Harris signed Crowell up as a member
of her band in 1975 after hearing a demo.
Together, they would go on to make some very
influential country rock recordings in the 70s
before Crowell began to make a name for himself
as a songwriter. This album certainly harks back
to the sound of Californian country rock, with its
acoustic rhythm guitar, pedal steel, fiddle and
mandolin and, of course, Harris dueting with
Crowell. This is a collection of tunes that gets
better with every listen and features a skilful set of
covers. It’s no surprise that the songs feature
heartbreak and love-gone-wrong as themes. The
cover of Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Chase the Feeling’
and a bluesy take on ‘Black Caffeine’ by Hank
DeVito and Donivan Cowart are stand-outs for
me. We also have some limited signed prints to
give away with purchase of the album.
Paul Barr is from Readings Carltonn
Pop/Rock
The Messenger
Johnny Marr
Was $24.95
Special price $21.95
Vinyl $29.95
Review: After his
legendary guitar and
songwriting work for bands
such as The The, The Smiths,
Electronic, The Pretenders,
Modest Mouse and The Cribs, Johnny Marr has
released his debut solo album, The Messenger,
which was predominantly written and recorded
in his hometown of Manchester. Marr/Smiths
fans like myself will no doubt be extremely
curious to see how he moves to the front of
stage as a solo artist, and I think they will be
very much content. Marr has an influential
musical sound and style that is revered by many
(in 2010, he was voted the fourth best guitarist
of the last 30 years in a poll conducted by the
BBC) and, in listening to The Messenger, it’s
wonderful to discover that it’s still vibrantly alive
and kicking.
Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda
Amok
Atoms For Peace
$21.95
Vinyl $29.95
Review: Some have
likened Thom Yorke’s newest
project, Atoms For Peace, to a
supergroup (the band’s
members include Flea from
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead producer Nigel
Godrich and Beck’s drummer Joey Waronker). Yet
their debut, Amok, feels rather like Yorke’s second
solo album; it’s not quite Eraser part two, but feels
closer to that than a Radiohead album. Of course,
it is hard not to think of how it all fits within this
famous band’s discography, whose records are
obviously less guitar-driven now that electronics
Stories of Ghosts
Deborah Conway & Willy Zygier
$24.95
are at the fore. Yorke seems more willing to be
pigeonholed and I suspect greatly enjoys the
freedom of projects such as this, in which he can
work without baggage. Those going in with their
eyes (and ears) open will find much to like here.
Dave Clarke is from Readings Carlton
The Next Day
David Bowie
Was $26.95
Special price $21.95
Released 15 March
Vinyl $34.95
Review: A while back,
word had spread that a new
David Bowie single had hit
YouTube. Was this a one-off?
Was an album on the way? I
knew he had suffered a heart attack a while
back and had ‘retired’ from music, only to be
seen walking around New York as an interested
observer. Well, you can’t keep a rock god down,
or so they say. Over the last two years Bowie
has written and demoed many songs and the
result is The Next Day. The single ‘Where Are We
Now?’ is a journey to the places and images of
his past (accompanied by a wonderful film clip).
This song, though, is the only one that really
looks back. All the others are observations or
inspired by books; the title track is one such
song, influenced by medieval English history.
The mix of fast and slow tempos is exactly what
you want from a Bowie album, and that voice is
as haunting and commanding as ever. The Next
Day sees the Thin White Duke as far from spent.
Welcome back – we missed you.
Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn
What The
Brothers Sang
Dawn McCarthy &
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
$21.95
Vinyl $29.95
Review: Bonnie ‘Prince’
Billy (Will Oldham) teams up
with labelmate Dawn
McCarthy of Faun Fables to
pay loving tribute to the music
of the Everly Brothers. This homage gives a
more current sound to the Everly’s songs
without losing their beauty, hopefully bringing
their work to the attention of a whole new
generation of today’s youth.
Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from
Readings Carlton
Forever Endeavour
Ron Sexsmith
$19.95
Review: There are few
songwriters who leave one
scrambling for superlatives,
and Canadian troubadour
Ronald Eldon Sexsmith is one
such musician. Here is a man who apparently
dreams up a couple of genius melodies before
most of us have had our morning coffee, a man
whose melodic gifts see him regularly compared
to such greats as McCartney and Simon (indeed
these are just two of his many famous fans who
know their way around a tune). He’s that good.
Forever Endeavour is his twelfth album and it’s
every bit as good as anything he’s done, which
is to say it’s very fine indeed.
Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda
Heartthrob
Tegan and Sara
$19.95
Vinyl $34.95
Review: Heartthrob is the
perfect pop album. This
seventh release from Tegan
and Sara finds them
funnelling their love of the
80s with large, looping synths and hooky
choruses, along with their penchant for closely
examined relationship trauma. The result is an
album that feels like a natural progression
from the emerging pop sensibilities of their
last release, Sainthood. It’s as fresh and
hopeful as a new crush, while at the same
time imbued with the maturity of remembering.
Tegan and Sara are at their most confident
and controlled in this celebration of how it felt
when you first felt your heartthrob.
Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton
A Concert for
Kirsty MacColl
Various
$24.95
Review: Kirsty MacColl’s
voice graced much of my
80s and 90s, especially her
definitive versions of Ray
Davies’ ‘Days’ and Billy
Bragg’s ‘A New England’. More than 10 years
after her death, she is remembered for being
brave and independent and always willing to
try something new. Paying tribute on this
record are Alison Moyet, Billy Bragg and Ellie
Goulding among others. Also available are
newly expanded and remastered editions of
some of MacColl’s classic albums: Desperate
Character, Electric Landlady, Kite, Titanic
Days. MAS
My True Story
Aaron Neville
$21.95
My True Story is a collection
of songs that the teenage
Aaron Neville grew up with,
singing to himself in the
projects of New Orleans.
Chosen for their significance in an era of R&B
and doo-wop, each track is delicately pared
back, recorded with Neville’s distinct vocals.
Keith Richards and Don Was help cover songs
like ‘This Magic Moment’ and ‘Be My Baby’
and make them fresh again.
People, Hell and
Angels
Jimi Hendrix
Was $24.95
Special price $19.95
Vinyl $29.95
People, Hell and Angels
brings together 12
previously unreleased studio
recordings that Jimi Hendrix
was working on as the
follow-up to Electric Ladyland. Recorded in
1968 and ‘69, primarily with the Buddy Miles
and Band of Gypsys line-up, it paints a
fascinating musical portrait of the direction in
which Hendrix was heading, featuring horns,
keyboards, percussion and second guitar.
Life and musical partners
Deborah and Willy come
together again on a new
album, Stories of Ghosts.
Based on ‘an examination of
the Old Testament from a Jewish perspective’,
they have composed a poetic suite of songs
about life’s highs and lows with beautiful
acoustic layers. Deborah’s voice pushes and
pulls with just the right measure, at times
melancholic and then irreverent and powerful.
The BEAST IN ITS TRACKS
Josh Ritter
$19.95
Review: The term
singer-songwriter is probably
bandied around a little too
loosely these days. Yet one
person who truly deserves the
name is the splendid Josh Ritter, whose sixth
album drops not long after his most recent
Australian tour and the publication of his debut
novel, Bright’s Passage. A real songwriter and
fine performer, Ritter delivers again. Early copies
of The Beast in its Tracks come with an exclusive
lyric book. DC
Blues
First Came
Memphis Minnie
Various
$24.95
Review: Memphis Minnie
was a tough, influential blues
singer and guitarist who had
a three-decade long career
from the late 20s to the late
50s, and who lived life to the full. She would
influence players like Muddy Waters and earn
the respect of guitarists like Big Bill Broonzy.
And who could forget the radical reworking of
her ‘When the Levee Breaks’ by Led Zeppelin?
Maria Muldaur has lovingly put this tribute album
together. Newer covers have been done by
Bonnie Raitt (who paid for a headstone on
Minnie’s unmarked grave in 1996), Ruthie Foster
and Rory Block, and the album closer by the
great Koko Taylor is the most powerful and
rocking track here. The singing is powerful and
the acoustic and slide guitar playing is extremely
good. Overall a sassy and enjoyable blues
collection. Hopefully listeners will also be
inspired to check out the originals on some of
the great compilations around, like Memphis
Minnie’s Essential Recordings. PB
Also Available
Wonderful, Glorious / Eels
The Magician’s Daughter / Mama Kin
Don’t Know What Happiness Is / Livingstone
Daisies (Liz Stringer & Van Walker)
Girl Who Got Away / Dido
triple j Hottest 100, Vol. 20
Sons of Rogue’s Gallery
Valtari (DVD) / Sigur Ros
Coming Soon
The Blue Room / Madeleine Peyroux,
8 March
Comedown Machine/ The Strokes,
22 March
Tooth & Nail / Billy Bragg, 22 March
Overgrown / James Blake, 5 April
Division Street / Harper Simon, 5 April
Mosquito / Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 12 April
R e a dings M O N T H LY m a r c h 2 0 1 3
Special
of the
month
J.S. Bach: Ouvertüren:
Complete Orchestral
Suites
Freiburger Barockorchester
Harmonia Mundi. HMC90211314. 2CDs.
Was $29.95
Special price $19.95 (for a limited time only)
This month’s classical special is the 2012
Gramophone Award-winner in the Baroque
Instrumental category. The Freiburger Orchestra
give an exhilarating account of all the suites.
As the Financial Times noted, ‘[They] offer no
star soloist, but don’t need one in Bach’s four
orchestral suites, where the entire ensemble
is the soloist. The touchstone of these
performances is their “joie de vivre”: a lively pace,
a rhythmic verve, a stylistic sleight-of-hand that
keeps this music fresh and the listener on his/her
toes.’ This is Bach played the way it should be.
Nielsen: Symphonies
Nos 2 & 3
Sir Colin Davis & London
Symphony Orchestra
LSO Live. LSO0722. $19.95
Review: I don’t know
why Nielsen is not a more
popular composer around
here. Lush and romantic in
style, but with interesting
twentieth-century harmonic ideas, his
symphonies are truly gorgeous. Continuing in
their Nielsen series of recordings, the LSO
now present Symphony No. 2, The Four
Temperaments, and Symphony No 3, Sinfonia
Espansiva. The former is lyrical and often
gentle in its depiction of the four
temperaments of our emotional states, but the
opening of the latter shows a completely
different side of Nielsen as a composer.
Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton
Mussorgsky: Pictures
From An Exhibition
Steven Osborne
Hyperion. CDA67896. $24.95
Review: As someone who
is more familiar with the
orchestrated version of
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition, it was very
interesting listening to the original piano version.
Virtuosic in style, it’s a fascinating insight into
the ideas of Ravel, who orchestrated it, and
Mussorgsky’s original intentions. Following on
from that are Prokofiev’s Five Sarcasms and
Visions Fugitives. Osborne delightfully trips his
way around the keyboard in the Allegro
movements, demonstrating slow restraint yet
maintaining momentum throughout the entire
album. KR
Rachmaninov: The Isle
of the Dead, The Rock,
Symphonic Dances
Andrew Litton & Bergen
Philharmonic Orchestra
BIS. BIS1751. $29.95
Review: This new
recording from Andrew
Litton and the Bergen
Philharmonic is the perfect
introduction to these
wonderful works by Rachmaninov. Beginning
with The Isle of the Dead, a tone poem dating
back to 1909, and inspired by the painting of
the same name by Arnold Bochlin, Litton
builds the tension beautifully and the result is
haunting and powerful. Litton again delivers
the goods on The Rock and Symphonic
Dances. His passion for the music is obvious
and all pieces benefit greatly. This is a must
for all diehard fans of Rachmaninov, and for
music lovers in general.
Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton
Zarebski: Piano
Quintet Op. 34;
Zelenski: Piano
Quartet Op. 61
Jonathan Plowright &
Szymanowski Quartet
Hyperion. CDA67905. $24.95
Review: This recording
from two obscure Polish
composers is another first for
the Hyperion label. Both
works are excellent examples
of chamber music from the Romantic period
and wouldn’t be out of place beside
Schumann, Mendelssohn or even Schubert.
The skill of both composers is obvious from the
opening notes, and they are fortunate that
Jonathan Plowright and the Szymanowski
Quartet play with great passion throughout.
Credit must be given to Hyperion for bringing
these works to the attention of the music
buying public. Highly recommended. PR
You can also browse and buy
at our secure website:
www.readings.com.au
classical
cd of the
month
Joachim Raff:
Symphony No. 2, Four
Shakespeare Preludes
Vivaldi: The Four
Seasons
Orchestre de la Suisse romande
& Neeme Järvi
Recomposed by Max Richter
Chandos. CHSA5117. $24.95
DG. 4810044. Was $26.95
Review: Who is Joachim
Raff? That was my first
question on getting this
recording, but as soon as I
listened to the very first notes, it
didn’t matter. One of the few of Raff’s symphonies
without a programmatic title, it is nonetheless full
of musical descriptions. There is a genuine warmth
in the playing from the Orchestre de la Suisse
romande that I have not heard for some time, and
the delicacy in the slower movements is
overshadowed by the outpourings of phrases in
the faster ones. This CD is a must for any fan of
orchestral music in the style of Beethoven, Brahms
and other such distinguished composers. KR
Special price $21.95 (for a limited time only)
Review: Why on earth would anyone re-write
one of the most endearing and famous works in
the history of classical western music? I'm
assuming that it’s because you have such a strong
musical concept that you must express it. And
what a world Max Richter creates! Vivaldi is clearly
present – his genius is not muddied – but Richter’s
is built around it. This is a truly beautiful reimagining of a classic in a totally unexpected way.
Give this one a chance – it might just surprise you.
Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton
equals what I thought could never be replicated
in their original performance of Symphony No. 1.
There is just so much depth of character in each
musical idea. The perfect Mahler recordings. KR
Mozart: Keyboard
Music, Vol. 4
Kristian Bezuidenhout
Harmonia Mundi. HMU907528. $24.95
Rachmaninov Rarities
Review: I know a lot of
people are firm in their
opinions whether or not
Mozart (and other such
composers) should only be
played on period instruments, but I have to admit
I’m a fence-sitter on this one. I believe it all comes
down to the individual performer to pull it off. In
Bezuidenhout’s new recording of Mozart piano
works, he commands the period instrument with
superb skill and sounds thoroughly at home on
the difficult fortepiano. At no point did I notice
there was unequal temperament, despite being
so used to hearing equal temperament
instruments. Listening to the slower movements, I
almost felt that the fortepiano was truly the master
of genteel music. KR
Review: One of my
favourite recordings ever is
that of Vladimir Ashkenazy
performing the Bach Partitas.
For his latest, Ashkenazy has
made a comprehensive study of all of
Rachmaninov’s piano and orchestral works. If
anyone was going to get close to what
Rachmaninov truly wanted in his music,
Ashkenazy would be that performer. With 13
different works showing both the prowess and
sensitivity that Rachmaninov had as a composer,
Rarities does not disappoint. KR
Mahler 9
Karajan Adagio
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Decca. 4782939. Was $26.95
Special price $21.95 (for a limited time only)
Gustavo Dudamel & Los Angeles
Philharmonic
Herbert von Karajan
DG. 4790924. Was $26.95
Review: If you’ve ever
heard The Death of Ase by
Grieg and not been moved,
then you need to hear it done
by Karajan. Deutsche
Grammophon have chosen the best adagios from
their vast library and this is a truly gorgeous
selection of music. I know there are those who
dismiss compilation albums, but every work you
see in this list is something that catches your eye
and immediately makes you want to put it on. KR
Special price $21.95 (for a limited time only)
Review: When Gustavo
Dudamel first started with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic,
they performed Mahler’s
Symphony No. 1. This was,
and still is for me, the best performance of
Mahler’s first that I have ever heard. What is so
exciting about this recording of his ninth is that it
DG. 4790540. 2CDs. $29.95
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