Looking for something to read? Here are 10 new books
This week's book reviews range from a fictionalised account of a cult leader and cosy crime, to Tasmania's Indigenous past and a history (and possible future) of artificial intelligence. Happy reading!
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
This Is Not a Game
Kelly Mullen
Century, $34.99
You already know a book called This Is Not a Game will totally be a game, right? If you're not sleuth enough to work that out, sight unseen, Kelly Mullen's clever murder mystery might not be for you. It's a blackly funny take on the locked-room subgenre – the locked room in this case being a palatial abode on an island on Lake Huron (complete with drawbridge and moat), the guests trapped there in the middle of an epic snowstorm. Lusty, super-rich widow Jane Ireland has invited a diverse company for a charity auction, and she's stabbed to death before the night is out. Two of the guests – crotchety grandmother Mimi, and her granddaughter Addie – transform into an unlikely detective duo, unravelling a sordid web of taboo sex, intrigue and blackmail, sifting through an overabundance of suspects as clues and corpses mount. Mullen has created a ludic play on classic Agatha Christie-style crime fiction, more fun for being gossipy and backbiting and full of witty one-liners.
The Bearcat delves into the formative years of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who led the Family, a cabal that followed a hodge-podge of Eastern religion and Christianity and believed Anne's claim to be the reincarnation of Jesus. Nonfiction accounts and documentaries have laid bare lurid details of child abuse – Anne illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s, dyed their hair peroxide blonde like hers and some were administered LSD as part of their indoctrination. Georgia Rose Phillips focuses on Anne – born Evelyn – as a girl and young woman, her own childhood in the 1920s and the traumatic experiences that drew her to harm others later in life. Phillips does have a gift for striking phrases and imagery, but there are gaps and inconsistencies in this reimagining that jar with what we know of the history. As a result, The Bearcat isn't entirely persuasive either as historical fiction or as a psychological portrait, though its subject is a fascinating and deeply disturbing figure.
Everything Lost, Everything Found
Matthew Hooton
4th Estate, $34.99
Memory rises and ebbs in this poignant novel spanning almost a century. Everything Lost, Everything Found follows Jack through an unusual childhood and seven decades later in old age. As a youth, he's drawn into the Brazilian Amazon during the rubber boom, following his parents to Henry Ford's rubber-tree plantation, where his mother dies in a tragic accident and Jack is forced to find his father in the jungle. Recollections of that time resurface unbidden when he's elderly and living in the rust belt in Michigan, Jack swimming in a surfeit of memories as his wife succumbs to dementia. Hooton's novel is an emotive and richly told tale of grief and loss, of family and the haunted halls of memory. I've spent time in the Brazilian Amazon myself, and the evocation of its wild beauty and perils, and the dark industrial history now half-swallowed by nature, is vivid and accurate, adding an exotic layer to this free-flowing and immersive book.
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran
Shida Bazyar (trans. Ruth Martin)
Scribe, $29.99
Set over four decades – with sections in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution, and every 10 years until the Green Movement protests in 2009 – this novel portrays an Iranian family forced to leave their homeland, capturing a spirit of political resistance as much as the struggle to adapt to life as refugees. It begins with Behsad, an idealistic young communist revolutionary who wants the Shah deposed as much as anyone. He fights for his beliefs and falls in love with the intelligent, equally brave Nahid. Ten years later, Nahid takes up the story from West Germany, having fled when the mullahs seized power. A return to Tehran in 1999 focuses on Nahid's daughter Laleh, her reconnection with a birthplace she misremembers and a family history full of secrets, and finally, there's Laleh's brother, Mo, energised by witnessing the wave of Iranian protests a decade later. Shida Bazyar captures the contradictions of her characters and their predicament with clarity and poise, giving complex and emotionally layered perspectives on exile and return.
A Shipwreck in Fiji
Nilima Rao
Echo, $32.99
A Shipwreck in Fiji is the second in Nilima Rao's series of historical mystery novels set in Fiji in the early 20th century. It follows Sergeant Akal Singh, an unwilling Indian transplant, on his latest adventure. He's been dragooned into investigating reports of Germans – a very long way from the battlefields of World War I – on the island of Ovalau, accompanied by Constable Taviti Tukana, who'll be visiting his uncle, a powerful tribal chief. They're to act as chaperone to two venturesome European sightseers, Mary and Katherine, while checking in on Ovalau's only cop – a teenage recruit with a dramatic temperament. Nothing goes according to plan, and Akal is soon drawn into the apparent murder of a deeply unpopular merchant, and the problem of a group of European sailors held captive by Taviti's uncle. Amid all that clamour, one of the ladies accompanying them has her own agenda to pursue. Rao's novel is a retro delight, with an endearing detective (and sidekick) navigating a web of cultures and trying to resolve island trouble.
Fearless Beatrice Faust: Sex, Feminism & Body Politics
Judith Brett
Text, $36.99
She was a motherless child with a 'visceral hunger for love' who grew up to be a political advocate for the body's appetites and pleasures. A woman dogged by physical ailments who struggled with feelings of worthlessness while projecting a public persona of sexual assurance and intellectual independence. As a 'sceptical feminist' who enjoyed feminine glamour, she found herself at odds with the women's liberation movement even as she campaigned for abortion rights and founded the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1972. This nuanced and, at times, poignant biography of Beatrice Faust captures its subject in all her contradictions, illuminating how some of Faust's more perplexing views – on pornography and paedophilia in particular – were shaped by childhood experiences and her supreme sexual confidence. 'She had no trouble saying no, and she didn't always see why other women might.' While clear-sighted about Faust's blind spots and idiosyncrasies, Judith Brett pays tender tribute to the bravery of 'this frail, super-smart woman'.
Trouwerner: A Tasmanian Elder's Story of Ancient Wisdom and Hope
Aunty Patsy Cameron & Martin Flanagan
Magabala Books, $34.99
'Walking through the bush with Patsy is like entering a crowded room when you're a stranger and your companion seems to know everyone.' This classically Flanaganesque observation distils perfectly the spirit of this singular book. Journalist and author Martin Flanagan, a Tasmanian of convict Irish descent, grew up on the myth that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were extinct. In a searching tale that wends its way through the rugged landscape of Tasmania's past, Indigenous elder and historian Patsy Cameron is his guide. Woven into their conversation is previous Tasmanian governor Kate Warner and the story of her journey into a fuller understanding of Tasmania's Indigenous heritage. At the centre of this quest is the story of Mannalargenna, the warrior leader of Cameron's clan, and his fraught negotiations with George Robinson, the preacher whose mission forced Aboriginal Tasmanians into exile. After contemplating a portrait of Mannalargenna, Flanagan asks, 'He knows who he is. Who are we?'
The Shortest History of AI
Toby Walsh
Black Inc, $27.99
If your brain tends to seize up with fear or incomprehension at the mention of AI, this concise and entertaining history is for you. Right from the playful opening lines, 'Artificial Intelligence began on 18 June 1956. It was a Monday' you know you are in the hands of an assured storyteller. Toby Walsh, an Australian professor of AI and world-leading researcher, is also a sci-fi nerd who's not afraid to judiciously insert himself into the narrative to add personal commentary and underscore just how recent this history is. He acknowledges Alan Turing as the father of modern computing and AI but also pays due to the 19th-century mathematical whizz Ada Lovelace, who was the world's first computer programmer. This history is delivered through the six key ideas that encapsulate how AI has evolved and where it might be heading. The thinking behind these ideas is made accessible through easy-to-follow examples and some amusing 'conversations' with ChatGPT that highlight both its astonishing range and its capacity for bullshit.
For Socrates, the unexamined life was not worth living. Freud insisted that we will always be strangers to ourselves. We are, says historian Mark Lilla, in a constant state of hide and seek, torn between the desire to know and the fear of what we might find. Religious injunctions against rule-breaking and curiosity – Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, for example – enact this inner conflict. 'Like all successful bureaucrats, we have learnt to kick the hard problem upstairs,' says Lilla, whose punchy way with words is integral to the pleasure of this work. While he describes his narrative as a ramble rather than a journey with a fixed destination, he has clear polemical targets, as evident in his caricature of mysticism. Even so, his overall contention that 'the harder the truth, the greater the temptation to escape it' rings powerfully true. By exposing the machinery of this inner tug-of-war, Lilla challenges us to confront these impulses in ourselves.
Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight
David A. Kessler
Text, $36.99
David Kessler has struggled with his weight all his life and is now benefiting from the new anti-obesity drugs. But as a medical practitioner and former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner, he is at pains to stress that these medications are not a silver bullet. They come with side effects, are helpful for only as long as they are being used and do not address underlying causes. Obesity and its attendant health issues, Kessler says, are on the rise because of highly processed foods that have 'quietly commandeered the reward centres of our brains' and encouraged a form of addiction. In this thorough and educative work, he sets out why it is vital for those in the grip of this addiction to employ a range of methods such as a balanced diet, behavioural therapies and physical activity, as well as weight-loss drugs. He also addresses the potentially harmful messaging of the body-positivity movement, which questions the health benefits of weight reduction. Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine is a sensible and sober guide to lasting change.
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Major wing of New York's famed Met reopens with work by First Nations artists
New York: When an institution as large and prestigious as the Metropolitan Museum of Art embarks upon a major project, it takes time. The remaking of its Michael C. Rockefeller wing, which houses the Met's enviable collection of 650 works from Oceania, began 10 years ago at a planning retreat outside the city. Shuttered since the pandemic, the wing reopened last weekend, including new works by Aboriginal Australian artists at a time when Indigenous art is earning a growing following in the finely tuned and highly competitive New York art world. 'There's a lot of interest and patronage,' says Maia Nuku, the Met's curator for Oceanic art. 'There are particular collectors who have been really invested in making sure these works of art come to major US institutions … It's been ticking away.' Some of those people, including American actor Steve Martin and gallerist D'Lan Davidson, gathered at the Asia Society's head office in Manhattan last week for a conversation about the ethics and resonance of collecting Australian Indigenous art. But there are swings and roundabouts. A major Sotheby's auction of Indigenous Australian art on May 20 was a fizzer, with just 24 of 65 lots sold. It was the first such auction in New York since the prominent Indigenous art champion and consultant Tim Klingender died in a freak boating accident on Sydney Harbour in July 2023. There is a degree of macabre symmetry with Michael Rockefeller, the member of the storied Rockefeller family for whom the Met's wing is named. He was believed to have died when his boat capsized off the coast of then Dutch New Guinea in 1961 – although there has long been a sense of mystery hanging over his disappearance. Unlike Klingender, his body was never found. The Australian section of the Rockefeller wing is modest, but in a prominent location. It features two newly acquired bark cloth paintings by the late Yolŋu artist Nonggirrnga Marawili from her series Baratjala, including a bright work from late in her career when she began experimenting with vibrant pinks extracted from discarded magenta printer cartridges, mixed with natural clay and ochres. 'She didn't want to limit herself to the ochres and the browns,' says Nuku.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
‘Tactful disharmony': An interior designer's offbeat path to success
This story is part of the June 7 edition of Good Weekend. See all 14 stories. Tamsin Johnson is perched on a white sofa, sipping ginger and lemongrass tea beneath a 19th-century French crystal chandelier in her Darling Point home in Sydney's east. Before her, roses nestle in a vase on a marble coffee table next to a pair of oak armchairs by Frank Lloyd Wright. Looming behind, a large religious icon, painted by the Indigenous-Australian artist Dan Boyd, is half obscured by an antique console laden with coffee-table books with titles like Equestrian Life in the Hamptons and Haute Bohemians: Greece. Every detail in the room is a quiet signifier of cultural erudition and taste. Indeed, there's so much to admire, the harbour view feels like a distraction. At 40, Johnson has become one of Australia's most sought-after interior designers. Locally, her work ranges from the Byron Bay hotel, Raes on Wategos, to the Bondi store of jewellery designer Lucy Folk, while international jobs include a Dubai members club and Frank Sinatra's former Hollywood office. In 2021, publisher Rizzoli New York released her first book, Tamsin Johnson: Spaces for Living, while a second is now in the works. 'Tamsin is a true artist,' says Nick Smart, the fragrance entrepreneur behind the Libertine Parfumerie boutiques. He enlisted her to design his Paddington flagship store, which includes parquetry flooring and antique marble basins from France. The cost of decorating the 200-square-metre space exceeded $1 million, but Smart is keen to use Johnson again. 'People emulate Tamsin's style, but they don't make it look good,' he says. 'She puts together pieces from different eras in a breathtaking way.' 'Tactful disharmony' is how Johnson describes her mix-and-match approach. 'It's about finding the balance of elements that might not have necessarily worked together – the old and the new, the pristine and the slightly messy, the weird and the super polished.' She points above her fireplace to a contemporary mirror whose jagged edges counter the curves of an antique bronze nude. Similarly, offbeat notes pepper Johnson's own look. Tall and slender in a floaty, pinstripe shirt and cream slacks, she sports a jumble of accessories, including a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso watch in burgundy, a diamond tennis bracelet, and a mishmash of rings that includes vintage sapphires and a dark-green bloodstone. Her husband, Patrick Johnson, is also a tastemaker. In 2009, the 44-year-old launched his P. Johnson tailoring brand that today also encompasses womenswear, and has expanded to 10 shops as far afield as London and New York. The couple have two children, Arthur, 8, and Bunny, 7, but parenthood hasn't curbed their panache. Damien Woolnough, fashion editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, believes the pair's aspirational image – the holidays in Tuscany, the artworks, the clothes – feeds into P. Johnson's appeal. 'You so want to be them, and that lifestyle justifies the price as much as the cut and fabrics.' In one showroom, an antique chandelier beams onto a portrait of André the Giant. Johnson decorates her husband's showrooms to evoke a refined but playful mood of relaxed hospitality. In the Windsor location in Melbourne, for example, an antique chandelier beams onto a portrait of the late pro wrestler, André the Giant. 'I never wanted spaces that were all old wood and leather, like a traditional English tailoring shop,' Patrick says. 'I wanted the interiors to be an extension of our lives and the things we found beautiful. I wanted people to feel like they're coming into our home.' Johnson's eye for an art-deco sideboard also started at home. Her parents, Edward and Peta Clark, were successful antique dealers, and she grew up in Melbourne playing beneath Louis XV sofas and Venetian gilt mirrors. Her father's big break had come in 1974, when he negotiated a huge sale from the Maharajah of Mysore that included a lavish collection of royal carriages. 'I made a few bob and I've lived on that ever since, really,' Clark admits. The proceeds bought the family's former home, the converted Golden Crust bakery in Armadale, that Domain describes as one of 'Melbourne's truly great homes'. From a young age, Johnson and her sister Tess accompanied their parents on buying trips to Paris markets and Rome galleries. 'Subconsciously, I was learning, not just about furniture and antiques, but about selling as well,' Johnson reflects. She instinctively mastered the latter. When she was eight, her father recalls taking her to Camberwell market, where Johnson bought a gold bracelet for $5. 'An hour later, she resold it from my stall to a lady for $15.' Lauren Kozica, a high-school friend from Wesley College, remembers Johnson constantly hurling herself into extracurricular projects. 'Tamsin's always had the energy and stamina most people search for in a tablet.' As a teen, Johnson took sewing classes and began tie-dying petticoats and making her own clothes. By 18, she'd sold a line of beaded necklaces to Scanlan Theodore. That early win encouraged her to study fashion at RMIT; she then clinched an internship in London at Stella McCartney. After-wards, Johnson got a job with a London PR firm and during that period, she met her future husband in a pub. 'She just radiated this energy, this brightness,' Patrick says of his first impression. Raised on a 4000-hectare farm north of Adelaide, Patrick had already been in London for six years and was working for Robert Emmett, a high-end shirtmaker on Jermyn Street. Tamsin, meanwhile, was turning away from fashion. Recognising her sartorial taste would never be sufficiently edgy to stand out, she enrolled in a course at Inchbald School of Design in Chelsea: 'The minute I walked in, I was like: 'This is absolutely my field.' ' In 2009, the pair returned to Australia. While Patrick set up his tailoring business, Johnson got an interior design job at Sydney practice, Meacham Nockles McQualter. 'When Tam arrived she was well-travelled, with a broad knowledge of the history of art, design and architecture, which enabled her to develop designs with a distinctive language,' says her former boss, Don McQualter. Johnson credits her four-year stint with teaching her the fundamentals of her profession. But in 2013, she resigned to go out on her own. 'It wasn't a surprise,' says McQualter. Loading Her first job as a sole practitioner was with one of Patrick's tailoring clients, and in a business where social cachet matters, it proved to be heaven-sent. The Bondi home belonged to James Packer. Johnson turned the opportunity into a springboard. Her three-women team currently has 20 jobs on the go that range from overhauling a seven-bedroom home in Vaucluse to fitting new wardrobes in a child's bedroom. Johnson also runs a Paddington antiques shop that she opened in 2015. Each year she trawls the antique fairs in France, Italy and Spain for stock, shipping back five 12-metre-long containers laden with new (old) treasures. Sitting with her, I get the same pang of unease you get from too much Instagram, when you inadvertently compare your own reality to glimpses of the unattainable. It's not just her jet-set lifestyle. My kids are the same age as Johnson's, and we've twice had to get our sofa reupholstered due to peanut-butter stains and worse. How is her white sofa so pristine? 'We've always made sure the covers can be slipped off and cleaned,' she shrugs. What about the juggle of raising two children while running an internationally successful business? The family has help on Mondays and Tuesdays, when a nanny collects the kids from school, but Johnson admits to being pathologically efficient: 'If I've got something on my to-do list, I need to get it done. On holidays, I'll write an itinerary that Patch [Patrick] jokes is down to the minute.' As if to validate her working-mum credentials, Johnson's phone rings. It's her daughter's school: Bunny has a tummy-ache and needs collecting. Apologising, Johnson dashes out, urging me to finish my tea and try a piece of shortbread. Cut into heart shapes, even her biscuits are charmingly photogenic. Loading A week later, we chat on the phone. Johnson is driving to Melbourne Airport after seeing clients in the Otways who want an American ranch-style interior. I'm curious to know what her next chapter holds. She's already living the dream: where does she go from here? 'I've got a small, personal business and that's the way I like it,' she insists. 'I'm not trying to set up an office in London or New York. I like that we can still deliver amazing outcomes for clients that are super personal. Also, I want to raise my own kids.' She mentions how her signet ring, a gift from Patrick, is engraved with a turtle. 'I think it was to remind me to slow down.' Suddenly, I'm reminded of a recurring detail from her house. Beside the Bill Henson in the hallway, on the antique Spanish dining table, by the custom-made sofa, there were vases of mixed roses everywhere. Are they a visual cue, like that ring – a literal reminder to stop and smell the roses? 'Well, they are my favourites,' Johnson laughs. 'But maybe subconsciously, yeah.'
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Major wing of New York's famed Met reopens with work by First Nations artists
New York: When an institution as large and prestigious as the Metropolitan Museum of Art embarks upon a major project, it takes time. The remaking of its Michael C. Rockefeller wing, which houses the Met's enviable collection of 650 works from Oceania, began 10 years ago at a planning retreat outside the city. Shuttered since the pandemic, the wing reopened last weekend, including new works by Aboriginal Australian artists at a time when Indigenous art is earning a growing following in the finely tuned and highly competitive New York art world. 'There's a lot of interest and patronage,' says Maia Nuku, the Met's curator for Oceanic art. 'There are particular collectors who have been really invested in making sure these works of art come to major US institutions … It's been ticking away.' Some of those people, including American actor Steve Martin and gallerist D'Lan Davidson, gathered at the Asia Society's head office in Manhattan last week for a conversation about the ethics and resonance of collecting Australian Indigenous art. But there are swings and roundabouts. A major Sotheby's auction of Indigenous Australian art on May 20 was a fizzer, with just 24 of 65 lots sold. It was the first such auction in New York since the prominent Indigenous art champion and consultant Tim Klingender died in a freak boating accident on Sydney Harbour in July 2023. There is a degree of macabre symmetry with Michael Rockefeller, the member of the storied Rockefeller family for whom the Met's wing is named. He was believed to have died when his boat capsized off the coast of then Dutch New Guinea in 1961 – although there has long been a sense of mystery hanging over his disappearance. Unlike Klingender, his body was never found. The Australian section of the Rockefeller wing is modest, but in a prominent location. It features two newly acquired bark cloth paintings by the late Yolŋu artist Nonggirrnga Marawili from her series Baratjala, including a bright work from late in her career when she began experimenting with vibrant pinks extracted from discarded magenta printer cartridges, mixed with natural clay and ochres. 'She didn't want to limit herself to the ochres and the browns,' says Nuku.
