Here are 10 new books for your bedside reading pile

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

This week's books include a romcom, a story examining politics of race, wealth and masculinity and a gothic imposter story, a biography of indie legends Oasis, a history of Turkey and a guide to organising your finances.
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Revisionists
Michelle Johnston
4th Estate, $34.99
The knotty ethics of storytelling, both in fiction and in journalism, are woven through Michelle Johnston's literary psychological mystery. Former Manhattan-based journalist Christine Campbell has fame, success, money and mixed feelings about a documentary praising the war coverage that made her career. Christine travelled to the Northern Caucasus in 1999, following in the footsteps of her NGO worker friend Frankie Pearson, as the Russians invaded Dagestan and the Second Chechnyan War erupted. She was driven by ambition and altruism – to make a name for herself and to give voice to women silenced in war. When the doco prompts Frankie to reappear in Christine's life after decades of estrangement, these erstwhile friends must confront potentially unreliable memories to excavate the truth of what happened. Johnston reflects on uncomfortable truths about trauma, bias and privilege that play into the complexities of 'authenticity' in storytelling, and the fine line between giving victims a voice and misappropriating their stories.
With a nod to E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, the drama in Sameer Pandya's Our Beautiful Boys proceeds from shadows in a cave. At an elite school in southern California, three high-school football stars with bright futures ahead of them face disaster after a night of violence. A confrontation in an ancient cave between MJ, Vikram and Diego and the bully and drug dealer Stanley Kincaid ends with Kincaid so badly beaten he's taken to hospital. The three boys are suspended, and we're swept into the world of the boys and their families, as the school and authorities investigate. Pandya's novel reminded me a little of Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap, in that the repercussions of a violent act bleed onto a social battleground. As we learn more about the Latino, Indian-American and privileged white families the boys grew up in, the novel becomes an elegant springboard for an examination – as meticulous as it is clear-eyed – of the psychology and politics of race, wealth and masculinity in contemporary American education.
Mistaken identity and miscommunication can be central to the tension in romance plots, and Moira MacDonald's Storybook Ending embeds the trope into a cute frame perfect for bookworms. Lonely heart April has become isolated working from home so much. Determined to bust out of her funk, she leaves an amorous note in a book at her local bookstore, hoping the dishy clerk Wesley, whom she fancies, will see it. Fate has other plans, and single mum Laura, widowed for five years and constantly run off her feet, gets the note instead, believing it to be a flirty missive from the hot guy who just served her at the bookstore. What follows is an artsy romcom in which two women court each other unawares, as a clueless love interest blithely ignores them both. That farcical situation yields some memorable comedic set-ups, though it's a slow burn of a novel until the plot begins to unwind. Ultimately, it's a romance of fresh starts, and the importance of disrupting the deadening routines that set these three characters up to be lonelier than they might be.
Receiving an email from her best friend Tess might not be so unusual, were it not for the fact that Tess died 20 years ago from ovarian cancer. Forty-something Margot has a husband and son and a steady middle-aged life, having long abandoned the dreams she entertained when she was young, and Tess was still alive. The unlikely message from beyond the grave offers an adventure – Tess' estate will pay for Margot to go on the Europe trip that she and Tess never got to take together as young women. (Margot fell for a boy, and their plans were scuppered.) There are several catches to the bequest, including having to travel with Tess' stepbrother Leo, and performing set tasks such as scattering Tess' ashes. Despite its intriguing premise, Jessica Dettmann's Your Friend and Mine only sporadically achieves the author's typical wit and comes across as a rather formulaic tear-jerker in which Margot reflects on her choices, and whether they've made her happy, in the sobering light of a friend who died young. It is a celebration of friendship and a song of innocence and experience, though a certain grimness and mawkishness accompany the painful task of self-examination in middle life.
The Wrong Daughter
Dandy Smith
Echo, $22.99
A contemporary gothic imposter thriller from Dandy Smith, The Wrong Daughter takes flight from a dramatic child abduction. Sisters Caitlin and Olivia were 10 and 13 when an intruder stole into their bedroom while their parents were at a dinner party. Olivia was kidnapped, never seen again … until 16 years later, when a woman claiming to be Caitlin's long-lost sister returns to a joyous family reunion. But is she who she claims to be? Caitlin begins to have doubts about this 'sister' and her intentions. Meanwhile, a seemingly unconnected manor house plot, with a creepily incestuous relationship and a large inheritance involved, starts to intersect with the story of the missing sister. The Wrong Daughter is solid genre fiction, full of suspense and eeriness and morbid atmospherics, betrayals and human perversity, and the question of which sister to trust, and what really happened that fateful night, should keep readers anxiously turning the pages.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Live ForeverJohn Robb
Harper North, $34.99
Oasis, in many ways, is a classic working-class tale that could have been scripted by Alan Silitoe or John Braine. Traditionally, there were three ways out of the working-class cycle: sport, art or marrying 'up'. From the rough and tumble of a tough family (a drunken father who regularly beat the kids and the mother), and the fairly soulless suburbs of post-punk Manchester, Noel and Liam (William) Gallagher found their oasis in art. Rock journalist John Robb, often in fittingly gritty writing, charts the band's rise, from the musical soup of 1980s Manchester to the world stage – while also incorporating the pivotal influence of the Beatles (so evident in their songs) and the Sex Pistols (so evident in their attitude). The creative tension and the bond between the two brothers (Noel chief songwriter, Liam vocal interpreter) is at the centre of this group portrait, along with some interesting details. Noel, for example, wasn't originally in the band when it was formed – he was a roadie for another band. And the title turns out to be fitting – Oasis is, after all, resurrected and touring.
Ciara Greene & Gillian Murphy
Princeton University Press, $49.99
The title might suggest this is a playful study of how our memory works and – while that element certainly exists, especially in the way Greene and Murphy (both psychologists) engage with the reader – it also leads into the serious and problematic, such as false and 'recovered' memories. While most of us tend to think of memory as a sort of filing cabinet or computer stored data, they insist that memory doesn't work like a computer. Better to think of memory as a neighbourhood that is constantly evolving every time we walk through it. They are very strong on case studies that are intriguing in the way they highlight the flexible and flawed nature of memory – such as speculative thinking becoming a memory or the power of suggestion. In one trial, adult participants were encouraged to think that in childhood they were lost in a shopping mall and were rescued by a kind old lady. By the end of the interviews a sizeable percentage of participants actually believed it. Our memories are imperfect, but, they say, we should celebrate the way they also allow us to forget the painful and negative, not get stuck in the past and move on. The 'hood is always changing and no trip down memory lane is ever the same.
The Shortest History of Turkey
Benjamin C. Fortna
Black Inc, $27.99
The first thing Fortna had to decide on in this concise history of Turkey was the terminology – settling on key terms the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey. It also provides the framework for what emerges as the two major historical phases: the Islamic Ottoman state, which peaked with the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, and disintegrated following WWI – and the post-war secularising age of the Young Turks and the establishment of the republic under Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), a reformist one-party regime that set itself up in direct opposition to the Islamic past. But, says Fortna, it was always ambivalent in its reformist zeal; on one level anti-religious, an another, needing it. What comes across most significantly is what a multicultural melting pot Turkey has been and still is, evident in the return to the authoritarian, Islamist leaning Erdogan government and his Justice and Development Party. Astute combination of the entertaining and informed.
Beyond Difficult
Rachel Samson, Dr Jessie Stern
Affirm Press, $36.99
Once upon a time in 1934 America, there was a little girl who was unwanted, spent time in a home and grew up constantly wary of a mother who drank and who could shift from carefree to cruel in a flash. When she married and had children, her childhood trauma came back and she became a 'difficult person'. She was, in fact, Stern's grandmother and is one of the case stories in this manual for dealing with difficult people in the workplace, family, relationships and in society. Australian Samson and American Stern, both psychologists, base their practical, step-by-step guide to dealing with people we come across and who seem to us 'beyond difficult' on the assumption that understanding them (and ourselves) is the key to better communicating with them. Mind you, they are not talking about extreme cases of violence and abuse (which require specific treatment) but, among other things, everyday interactions with highly sensitive temperaments, insecure types and the neurodivergent. Down-to-earth advice that incorporates years of experience in the field.
Sensible Money
Emily Stewart
ABC Books, $34.99
This guide to keeping track of your finances by business and finance journalist Emily Stewart – aka the ABC's Sensible Emily – might well have been called Cents and Sensibility, in that it's so full of common-sense strategies. A trip to the supermarket, for example, can get out of hand unless you take precautions – like making a list and always getting a receipt because mistakes happen. More broadly, she urges everyone to keep a three-month money diary. Among other things, it gives you a snapshot of the money coming in and going out, and if there's a balance or not. Whether it be breaking down debt into the necessary (rent, mortgage) and unnecessary debt (rip-off buy now, pay later schemes), the need for basics such as insurance or how to get the best out of your super fund (and when to start), Stewart covers the waterfront in an entertaining, no-fuss, and yes, sensible, manual.