A Booker winner, a comedy and Hitler's obsession with Einstein
This week's reviews include a satire on the decline of journalism and the people who struggle to make a living from it (ahem), a new love story from Call Me By Your Name author André Aciman, the chilling wartime story of Albert Einstein's cousin Robert and a rags-to-riches sports memoir.
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Universality
Natasha Brown
Faber, $29.99
Human folly is perhaps the only universal in Natasha Brown's mordant satire on the decline of journalism and the people who struggle to make a living from it. The complexity of storytelling and its indeterminate, ever-shifting power dynamics are both at play in this unravelling of fact and fiction, which begins with a 'long read' written by the uninspiring Hannah. Her article is an exposé which goes viral and causes catastrophe for its subject. Can Hannah be trusted, though? And is her delinquency worse than opinion columnist Miriam Leonard, aka 'Lenny'? Lenny has sniffed the wind, and her hack-and-slashery becomes more ideologically promiscuous as she changes mastheads. Universality is a courageous, entertaining and deliciously sardonic indictment of the flaws and failings of contemporary media. Brown delights in brutal social satire and in skewering her hideous characters, and the plot unfolds with a twisting relationship to the truth that reads, in the end, like a black comic thriller.
Room on the Sea
André Aciman
Faber, $26.99
From the author of Call Me By Your Name – adapted into the 2017 film starring Timothée Chalamet – comes a different kind of love story. The lovers in this slender novella aren't brimming with youth like Oliver and Elio. They're grey-haired paramours who meet while waiting to be selected for jury duty in New York. Paul is a retired lawyer, Catherine a psychiatrist and both have partners who aren't meeting their needs. They pursue an affair but must decide the dicier question of whether to turn fleeting pleasure into something more lasting. The matter-of-fact narration in Room on the Sea disguises ephemerality. Where the characters in Call Me By Your Name reflect on future selves that they're too passionately in the process of becoming to fully imagine, this romance is suffused by memory and nostalgia and the regret of roads-not-taken. Delight taken in the present is also a theme, and Aciman achieves a depth of affection – to genuinely like someone is in some ways a more profound and elusive thing than to love them – in this crisp, meditative romance.
The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains
Sarah Clutton
Allen & Unwin, $34.99
A precocious almost 10-year-old boy discovers a family he never knew he had in this quirky charmer from Sarah Clutton. Raised by his mum Emilia, Alfie Bains has only ever known Ireland, but when crisis strikes, he learns his mum has lied to him. It seems Alfie has relatives halfway across the world and – thrust into the small town of Beggars Rock in Tasmania – he's determined to find his father. No one seems keen to talk about this family secret – not his grandmother Penny, nor Cynthia (the woman Alfie suspects of being his other grandma), nor Cynthia's son Noah (who isn't Alfie's dad but could know who is). The story shifts between events that led to Alfie's obscure origin story a decade before, and his adventures trying to sleuth out the truth about where he came from. The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is a warm and poignant and funny mystery of the self, featuring a loveable, whip-smart kid, and a portrait of a close-knit rural community full of dark secrets and memorable characters.
Twelve Post-War Tales
Graham Swift
Scribner $35
This suite of short fiction from Graham Swift is unified by the shadows and ghosts of World War II, though the stories in it are otherwise immensely various. An elderly woman whose memory is failing muses on a moment she has never recalled – the day her mother died in the Blitz when she was only three years old. A British soldier journeys to Germany in the early 1960s and has a sinister encounter with an official as he tries to find out what happened to a lost Jewish relative. A father is determined for his daughter's wedding to not be derailed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a young woman touched by domestic violence meets a black G.I. with affecting consequence. Twelve Post-War Tales is a subtle, empathic collection written with tenderness and gentle humour, offering diverse portraits of ordinary lives touched by the unfeeling hand of history.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Einstein Vendetta
Thomas Harding
Michael Joseph, $36.99
Just before the liberation of Florence in August 1944, a small unit of German soldiers broke into a villa not far from Florence intending to arrest Robert Einstein (cousin of Albert) who lived there with his family. Sticking to a pre-arranged plan should this happen, Robert hid in the nearby woods, while his non-Jewish wife and two daughters stayed in the villa. The Germans shot them, and Robert heard the shots. Harding, whose family knew the Einsteins, grippingly details events which unfold like a dark thriller. A war crime, it remains a cold case, but this much is clear, the order came from the top. Hitler was obsessed with Albert Einstein and put a price on his head, but Albert was out of reach in the US. And when they couldn't capture Robert, they killed the next best thing – his family. Chilling and sad. Robert took his own life a year later.
Saving Dragons
Dianne Dempsey
Arcadia, $49.95
Russell Goldfield Jack. Not your average middle name, but Russell Jack, who was born into the Bendigo Chinese community in 1935, is not your average person – as this lively, informed biography demonstrates. But it's also a timely case study – running from the gold rush years to the present day – of the Chinese/Australian experience. The White Australia Policy was in place for much of the time, and this is also a record of racism. When Jack married his Catholic-born wife, for instance, there was significant community disapproval of the 'mixed' marriage. But it's also an inspiring tale of adversity and triumph that covers Jack's sporting achievements (he carried the torch in the 1956 Olympics), and, with his wife, his pivotal role in establishing the world-famous Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo. An uplifting tale that roars.
Battle of the Banks
Bob Crawshaw
Australian Scholarly publishing, $49.95
In August 1947, Prime Minister Ben Chifley issued a 42-word press statement saying the government had set in motion plans to nationalise the banking system. The impact was immediate. It was war. Chifley was convinced that to affect a smooth transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime one, control of the banks was essential. Robert Menzies, who immediately saw his chance to return from the political wilderness, hit the communist/socialist fear button (Chifley was a well-known anti-communist). The battle lines were drawn: the government against an opposition aligned with the banks and wealthy, vested private interests. The campaign was heated, intense and, in the case of Jack Lang and Chifley, got quite personal. A scrupulously detailed study of a big picture moment in Australian politics and the forces it unleashed.
Legends and Soles
Sonny Vaccaro (with Armen Keteyian)
Harper Collins, $22.99
Sonny Vaccaro was once described by a major US sports magazine as 'the man responsible for the most points, rebounds, assists and highlight plays in NBA history'. You might be forgiven for thinking he's the greatest player of all time you've never heard of, but, in fact, he's a marketing guru for shoe companies such as Nike, and had a crucial role in launching some of the greatest basketball players of all time – like Michael Jordon. His memoir is essentially an Italian kid's rags-to-riches tale, beginning in steel town Pennsylvania, incorporating stories of his father's bootlegging days, Sonny's time in gambling, and then cracking a marketing job at Nike and becoming well-known enough for a film, Air, to feature him. It's easy enough reading, but I suspect you've really got to be a big basketball fan to get into it.
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The Advertiser
2 days ago
- The Advertiser
Movie star opens up about the accident that nearly killed him
What's new: Adelaide's Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, while Australian journalist John Lyons details the "extraordinary efforts of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Jeremy Renner. Simon & Schuster. $34.99. On New Year's Day, 2023, actor Jeremy Renner needed to clear mountains of snow from his Nevada driveway to enable his visiting family to go skiing. So the star of The Hurt Locker fired up a snowcat to bulldoze the road. The accident that followed should have killed him. Renner was run over by the six-tonne machine, and his account of the calamity is bloodcurdling. "I can promise you this much at least: The sounds of being crushed are just as terrifying as the visual," he writes. Renner's injuries were catastrophic. This is the story of his survival and recovery. Candice Chung. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. "A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings." At 35, when a 13-year relationship with her first love ends, food journalist Candice Chung must decide if she wants her retired Cantonese parents to join her as she reviews restaurants. Will they eat together in polite silence as the children of immigrants might traditionally expect? Or will this be her opportunity to finally broach the reasons they have drifted so profoundly apart over the years? This tender, intimate but brave memoir has a meditative tone and structure and should delight lovers of food who treasure its sacred place in family and culture. John Lyons. ABC Books. $34.99. Australian journalist John Lyons has made three trips to wartime Ukraine. The first two were on assignment with the ABC. The third was on his holidays, which allowed him to absorb what was happening in the country without the need to file daily news. It was on this trip that he learned the most, doing what regular Ukrainians do and, most importantly, taking the time to talk to everyday people. He found that resourceful civilians from every walk of life are doing their part. This is a story about the "extraordinary efforts ... of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Mark Lilla. Hurst Publishers. $44.99. Humans are driven by the need to know, right? We are curious, we want to discover, look around the corner, explore over the horizon. Or do we? Mark Lilla examines the opposite compulsion: "the will not to know, the will to ignorance". This is not about those who are indifferent to learning, who simply don't want to expend the energy. This is about people who have "developed a particular antipathy toward the search for knowledge, whose inner doors are fastened tight against anything that might cast doubt on what they believe they already know". Starting to sound familiar to anyone? Sinead Stubbins. Affirm Press. $34.99. Apparently work doesn't have to define your life and corporate programs to build team bonds and boost employee engagement might not always deliver healthy outcomes - especially for those of us with messy bits in our personalities and our personal lives (you know, the bits that make us individuals). This wicked little satire of white-collar workplace culture follows Edith and a select group of her co-workers at ad agency Winked as they are sent to an elite three-day work retreat in the remote mountains, run by an outfit called Consequi. She hopes to impress her bosses and escape a looming restructure. But so do her, um, work friends. Madeleine Cleary. Affirm Press. $34.99. Inspired by what she has described as her own family's secret, salacious past - "my great-great-great grandmother was a colonial 'common prostitute'" - Melbourne-raised former Canberra diplomat Madeleine Cleary threads fictional mystery and romance into a grim but fascinating chapter of Australia's hardscrabble past, bringing to richly detailed life the women so often overlooked by history. It's 1863 and a serial killer stalks the notorious red-light district of the goldrush-rich city of Melbourne, endangering poor Irishwoman Johanna Callaghan who hopes to make a living at the glamorous Papillon brothel, and respectable journalist Harriett Gardiner who is intent on unmasking the murderer. Cynthia Timoti. Macmillan. $22.99. Think Crazy Rich Asians meets Always Be My Maybe and you'll get the Asian rom-com gist of this sweetly flirty debut novel about Ellie Pang, a young woman fed up with the meddling of her overbearing parents after she is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Ellie sets out on her own to open her dream bakery - selling sugar-free treats, of course - but needs help to renovate. The man for the job is none other than Alec, the childhood crush who broke her heart - and it just so happens he needs a fake girlfriend to seal a business deal. But can they fake that they're in love? Georgia Rose Phillips. Picador. $34.99. Family is everything to Anne. And Anne demands everything from her family. That's because Anne knows how devastatingly easy it is to lose your family. The debut novel from Adelaide-based Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of Anne Hamilton-Byrne, notorious founder and leader of the cult known as The Family. What formative traumas during her 1920s childhood shaped her later abuse of illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s at Lake Eildon in Victoria? Where the author's imagined psychological portrait of Hamilton-Byrne and the disturbing facts of The Family diverge may require further reader research. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark it so you can find our latest books content with ease. What's new: Adelaide's Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, while Australian journalist John Lyons details the "extraordinary efforts of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Jeremy Renner. Simon & Schuster. $34.99. On New Year's Day, 2023, actor Jeremy Renner needed to clear mountains of snow from his Nevada driveway to enable his visiting family to go skiing. So the star of The Hurt Locker fired up a snowcat to bulldoze the road. The accident that followed should have killed him. Renner was run over by the six-tonne machine, and his account of the calamity is bloodcurdling. "I can promise you this much at least: The sounds of being crushed are just as terrifying as the visual," he writes. Renner's injuries were catastrophic. This is the story of his survival and recovery. Candice Chung. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. "A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings." At 35, when a 13-year relationship with her first love ends, food journalist Candice Chung must decide if she wants her retired Cantonese parents to join her as she reviews restaurants. Will they eat together in polite silence as the children of immigrants might traditionally expect? Or will this be her opportunity to finally broach the reasons they have drifted so profoundly apart over the years? This tender, intimate but brave memoir has a meditative tone and structure and should delight lovers of food who treasure its sacred place in family and culture. John Lyons. ABC Books. $34.99. Australian journalist John Lyons has made three trips to wartime Ukraine. The first two were on assignment with the ABC. The third was on his holidays, which allowed him to absorb what was happening in the country without the need to file daily news. It was on this trip that he learned the most, doing what regular Ukrainians do and, most importantly, taking the time to talk to everyday people. He found that resourceful civilians from every walk of life are doing their part. This is a story about the "extraordinary efforts ... of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Mark Lilla. Hurst Publishers. $44.99. Humans are driven by the need to know, right? We are curious, we want to discover, look around the corner, explore over the horizon. Or do we? Mark Lilla examines the opposite compulsion: "the will not to know, the will to ignorance". This is not about those who are indifferent to learning, who simply don't want to expend the energy. This is about people who have "developed a particular antipathy toward the search for knowledge, whose inner doors are fastened tight against anything that might cast doubt on what they believe they already know". Starting to sound familiar to anyone? Sinead Stubbins. Affirm Press. $34.99. Apparently work doesn't have to define your life and corporate programs to build team bonds and boost employee engagement might not always deliver healthy outcomes - especially for those of us with messy bits in our personalities and our personal lives (you know, the bits that make us individuals). This wicked little satire of white-collar workplace culture follows Edith and a select group of her co-workers at ad agency Winked as they are sent to an elite three-day work retreat in the remote mountains, run by an outfit called Consequi. She hopes to impress her bosses and escape a looming restructure. But so do her, um, work friends. Madeleine Cleary. Affirm Press. $34.99. Inspired by what she has described as her own family's secret, salacious past - "my great-great-great grandmother was a colonial 'common prostitute'" - Melbourne-raised former Canberra diplomat Madeleine Cleary threads fictional mystery and romance into a grim but fascinating chapter of Australia's hardscrabble past, bringing to richly detailed life the women so often overlooked by history. It's 1863 and a serial killer stalks the notorious red-light district of the goldrush-rich city of Melbourne, endangering poor Irishwoman Johanna Callaghan who hopes to make a living at the glamorous Papillon brothel, and respectable journalist Harriett Gardiner who is intent on unmasking the murderer. Cynthia Timoti. Macmillan. $22.99. Think Crazy Rich Asians meets Always Be My Maybe and you'll get the Asian rom-com gist of this sweetly flirty debut novel about Ellie Pang, a young woman fed up with the meddling of her overbearing parents after she is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Ellie sets out on her own to open her dream bakery - selling sugar-free treats, of course - but needs help to renovate. The man for the job is none other than Alec, the childhood crush who broke her heart - and it just so happens he needs a fake girlfriend to seal a business deal. But can they fake that they're in love? Georgia Rose Phillips. Picador. $34.99. Family is everything to Anne. And Anne demands everything from her family. That's because Anne knows how devastatingly easy it is to lose your family. The debut novel from Adelaide-based Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of Anne Hamilton-Byrne, notorious founder and leader of the cult known as The Family. What formative traumas during her 1920s childhood shaped her later abuse of illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s at Lake Eildon in Victoria? Where the author's imagined psychological portrait of Hamilton-Byrne and the disturbing facts of The Family diverge may require further reader research. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark it so you can find our latest books content with ease. What's new: Adelaide's Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, while Australian journalist John Lyons details the "extraordinary efforts of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Jeremy Renner. Simon & Schuster. $34.99. On New Year's Day, 2023, actor Jeremy Renner needed to clear mountains of snow from his Nevada driveway to enable his visiting family to go skiing. So the star of The Hurt Locker fired up a snowcat to bulldoze the road. The accident that followed should have killed him. Renner was run over by the six-tonne machine, and his account of the calamity is bloodcurdling. "I can promise you this much at least: The sounds of being crushed are just as terrifying as the visual," he writes. Renner's injuries were catastrophic. This is the story of his survival and recovery. Candice Chung. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. "A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings." At 35, when a 13-year relationship with her first love ends, food journalist Candice Chung must decide if she wants her retired Cantonese parents to join her as she reviews restaurants. Will they eat together in polite silence as the children of immigrants might traditionally expect? Or will this be her opportunity to finally broach the reasons they have drifted so profoundly apart over the years? This tender, intimate but brave memoir has a meditative tone and structure and should delight lovers of food who treasure its sacred place in family and culture. John Lyons. ABC Books. $34.99. Australian journalist John Lyons has made three trips to wartime Ukraine. The first two were on assignment with the ABC. The third was on his holidays, which allowed him to absorb what was happening in the country without the need to file daily news. It was on this trip that he learned the most, doing what regular Ukrainians do and, most importantly, taking the time to talk to everyday people. He found that resourceful civilians from every walk of life are doing their part. This is a story about the "extraordinary efforts ... of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Mark Lilla. Hurst Publishers. $44.99. Humans are driven by the need to know, right? We are curious, we want to discover, look around the corner, explore over the horizon. Or do we? Mark Lilla examines the opposite compulsion: "the will not to know, the will to ignorance". This is not about those who are indifferent to learning, who simply don't want to expend the energy. This is about people who have "developed a particular antipathy toward the search for knowledge, whose inner doors are fastened tight against anything that might cast doubt on what they believe they already know". Starting to sound familiar to anyone? Sinead Stubbins. Affirm Press. $34.99. Apparently work doesn't have to define your life and corporate programs to build team bonds and boost employee engagement might not always deliver healthy outcomes - especially for those of us with messy bits in our personalities and our personal lives (you know, the bits that make us individuals). This wicked little satire of white-collar workplace culture follows Edith and a select group of her co-workers at ad agency Winked as they are sent to an elite three-day work retreat in the remote mountains, run by an outfit called Consequi. She hopes to impress her bosses and escape a looming restructure. But so do her, um, work friends. Madeleine Cleary. Affirm Press. $34.99. Inspired by what she has described as her own family's secret, salacious past - "my great-great-great grandmother was a colonial 'common prostitute'" - Melbourne-raised former Canberra diplomat Madeleine Cleary threads fictional mystery and romance into a grim but fascinating chapter of Australia's hardscrabble past, bringing to richly detailed life the women so often overlooked by history. It's 1863 and a serial killer stalks the notorious red-light district of the goldrush-rich city of Melbourne, endangering poor Irishwoman Johanna Callaghan who hopes to make a living at the glamorous Papillon brothel, and respectable journalist Harriett Gardiner who is intent on unmasking the murderer. Cynthia Timoti. Macmillan. $22.99. Think Crazy Rich Asians meets Always Be My Maybe and you'll get the Asian rom-com gist of this sweetly flirty debut novel about Ellie Pang, a young woman fed up with the meddling of her overbearing parents after she is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Ellie sets out on her own to open her dream bakery - selling sugar-free treats, of course - but needs help to renovate. The man for the job is none other than Alec, the childhood crush who broke her heart - and it just so happens he needs a fake girlfriend to seal a business deal. But can they fake that they're in love? Georgia Rose Phillips. Picador. $34.99. Family is everything to Anne. And Anne demands everything from her family. That's because Anne knows how devastatingly easy it is to lose your family. The debut novel from Adelaide-based Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of Anne Hamilton-Byrne, notorious founder and leader of the cult known as The Family. What formative traumas during her 1920s childhood shaped her later abuse of illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s at Lake Eildon in Victoria? Where the author's imagined psychological portrait of Hamilton-Byrne and the disturbing facts of The Family diverge may require further reader research. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark it so you can find our latest books content with ease. What's new: Adelaide's Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, while Australian journalist John Lyons details the "extraordinary efforts of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Jeremy Renner. Simon & Schuster. $34.99. On New Year's Day, 2023, actor Jeremy Renner needed to clear mountains of snow from his Nevada driveway to enable his visiting family to go skiing. So the star of The Hurt Locker fired up a snowcat to bulldoze the road. The accident that followed should have killed him. Renner was run over by the six-tonne machine, and his account of the calamity is bloodcurdling. "I can promise you this much at least: The sounds of being crushed are just as terrifying as the visual," he writes. Renner's injuries were catastrophic. This is the story of his survival and recovery. Candice Chung. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. "A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings." At 35, when a 13-year relationship with her first love ends, food journalist Candice Chung must decide if she wants her retired Cantonese parents to join her as she reviews restaurants. Will they eat together in polite silence as the children of immigrants might traditionally expect? Or will this be her opportunity to finally broach the reasons they have drifted so profoundly apart over the years? This tender, intimate but brave memoir has a meditative tone and structure and should delight lovers of food who treasure its sacred place in family and culture. John Lyons. ABC Books. $34.99. Australian journalist John Lyons has made three trips to wartime Ukraine. The first two were on assignment with the ABC. The third was on his holidays, which allowed him to absorb what was happening in the country without the need to file daily news. It was on this trip that he learned the most, doing what regular Ukrainians do and, most importantly, taking the time to talk to everyday people. He found that resourceful civilians from every walk of life are doing their part. This is a story about the "extraordinary efforts ... of ordinary Ukrainians" trying to save their country. Mark Lilla. Hurst Publishers. $44.99. Humans are driven by the need to know, right? We are curious, we want to discover, look around the corner, explore over the horizon. Or do we? Mark Lilla examines the opposite compulsion: "the will not to know, the will to ignorance". This is not about those who are indifferent to learning, who simply don't want to expend the energy. This is about people who have "developed a particular antipathy toward the search for knowledge, whose inner doors are fastened tight against anything that might cast doubt on what they believe they already know". Starting to sound familiar to anyone? Sinead Stubbins. Affirm Press. $34.99. Apparently work doesn't have to define your life and corporate programs to build team bonds and boost employee engagement might not always deliver healthy outcomes - especially for those of us with messy bits in our personalities and our personal lives (you know, the bits that make us individuals). This wicked little satire of white-collar workplace culture follows Edith and a select group of her co-workers at ad agency Winked as they are sent to an elite three-day work retreat in the remote mountains, run by an outfit called Consequi. She hopes to impress her bosses and escape a looming restructure. But so do her, um, work friends. Madeleine Cleary. Affirm Press. $34.99. Inspired by what she has described as her own family's secret, salacious past - "my great-great-great grandmother was a colonial 'common prostitute'" - Melbourne-raised former Canberra diplomat Madeleine Cleary threads fictional mystery and romance into a grim but fascinating chapter of Australia's hardscrabble past, bringing to richly detailed life the women so often overlooked by history. It's 1863 and a serial killer stalks the notorious red-light district of the goldrush-rich city of Melbourne, endangering poor Irishwoman Johanna Callaghan who hopes to make a living at the glamorous Papillon brothel, and respectable journalist Harriett Gardiner who is intent on unmasking the murderer. Cynthia Timoti. Macmillan. $22.99. Think Crazy Rich Asians meets Always Be My Maybe and you'll get the Asian rom-com gist of this sweetly flirty debut novel about Ellie Pang, a young woman fed up with the meddling of her overbearing parents after she is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Ellie sets out on her own to open her dream bakery - selling sugar-free treats, of course - but needs help to renovate. The man for the job is none other than Alec, the childhood crush who broke her heart - and it just so happens he needs a fake girlfriend to seal a business deal. But can they fake that they're in love? Georgia Rose Phillips. Picador. $34.99. Family is everything to Anne. And Anne demands everything from her family. That's because Anne knows how devastatingly easy it is to lose your family. The debut novel from Adelaide-based Georgia Rose Phillips dares to fictionalise the early life of Anne Hamilton-Byrne, notorious founder and leader of the cult known as The Family. What formative traumas during her 1920s childhood shaped her later abuse of illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s at Lake Eildon in Victoria? Where the author's imagined psychological portrait of Hamilton-Byrne and the disturbing facts of The Family diverge may require further reader research. Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark it so you can find our latest books content with ease.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Estranged sisters and a curious gift: 14 new books to get stuck into this month
It may be the start of winter and things outside are cooling down, but there's no loss of heat in the book world, with a bumper crop of books being published this month. This selection includes an astonishing memoir, speculative fiction, love and other disasters in the `90s and so much more. Salvage Jennifer Mills Picador, $34.99 In her fifth, speculative novel, the always imaginative Jennifer Mills plunges us into the lives of sisters Jude and Celeste. Jude is on an Earth plagued by climate disaster, war and antagonism, struggling to survive in the Freelands. Celeste, meanwhile, is trapped on some sort of spacecraft designed to help plutocrats escape the benighted world. But when something falls from the sky, we learn the full, human story of the estranged sisters. The War Within Me Tracy Ryan Transit Lounge, $34.99 In the second of her Queens of Navarre series, poet and novelist Tracy Ryan turns her focus from Marguerite of Navarre to her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret. It's a story of royal and religious conflict as Jeanne escapes an arranged marriage to find love with Antoine, with whom she reigned before the Counter-Reformation pitted them on opposing sides of the long-running French wars of religion. Ryan is working on a third instalment, To Share His Fortune. A Beautiful Family Jennifer Trevelyan Allen & Unwin, $32.99 There's an irony in the title of New Zealand writer Jennifer Trevelyan's much-anticipated coming-of-age debut as the narrator, 10-year-old Alix, discovers much more about her family and its secrets during a summer holiday in 1985. From Kahu, a boy she meets on the beach, she learns the story of Charlotte, a girl who drowned two years earlier and whose body has never been found. Together, they try to find out the truth of her death, which reveals truths not bargained for. A Different Kind of Power Jacinda Ardern Penguin, $55 Jacinda Ardern became prime minister of New Zealand at the age of 37, and the way she dealt with the travails of high office along with the many major crises in NZ won her international admiration. Just think of her humane response to the appalling attack on the Christchurch mosques. Is there really a different way for politicians − and others − to lead? She argues forcefully that kindness and empathy are crucial. Let's hope other leaders take note of her methods. Our New Gods Thomas Vowles UQP, $34.99 Whether Thomas Vowles becomes a new god of literature remains to be seen, but judging by this debut novel set in the queer world of Melbourne he can certainly write gripping fiction. Ash is new to town and has quickly been befriended by James, who takes him to a party where his boyfriend, the charismatic and mysterious Raf, is DJing. But when Ash decides to leave, he stumbles across Raf outside and what he witnesses him doing is unsettling. Soon Ash is mixed up in something he really doesn't understand. The Death of Stalin Sheila Fitzpatrick Black Inc., $27.99 Black Inc. has made a point of publishing crisply written short books and essays that dissect global and local issues. In The Death of Stalin − not to be confused with Armando Iannucci's satirical film − Australia's pre-eminent Soviet historian tells us about the immediate change of direction after March 5, 1953, that was driven largely by the appalling director of the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria. In the simultaneously published Bombard the Headquarters, Linda Jaivin chronicles the disasters of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Aftertaste Daria Lavelle Bloomsbury, $32.99 Daria Lavelle's first novel is a bit bonkers really. Kostya's beloved dad is dead, but suddenly he tastes his father's favourite Ukrainian dish, pechonka. Over the years, aftertastes of food appear 'in his mouth like messages', until he discovers that by preparing specific foods or drinks he can bring the dead back from the purgatorial food hall where they are marooned. So, Kostya opens a restaurant to ease them to their next stage of death – but then things go a bit berserk. Foreign Country Marija Pericic Utimo Press, $34.99 Another pair of estranged sisters. When Eva gets a surprise letter from Elisabeta at her new apartment in Berlin she's puzzled to find it contains an airline ticket back to Australia. They've been apart for years, but Eva sets off to the Blue Mountains only to find that Elisabeta is dead and she is left to sort the debris of her life. Tucked into an absorbing narrative about the interaction of past and the present are documents and photos to provide a visual contrast with the emotional discoveries that Eva makes about her sister. The Prime Minister's Potato and Other Essays Anne-Marie Condé Upswell, $29.99 Historian and museum curator Anne-Marie Condé says she meditates on 'how the past can be understood through the interactions of people, places and things'. Her titular essay in this diverse and rather lovely collection tells of a curious 1942 gift from one William Frith to John Curtin as a 'cure for your akes and Pains'. Other essays dwell on the Australian War Memorial, Barry Humphries' character Sandy Stone, and the man who owned the house outside which the school bus would drop Condé each afternoon. The Name of the Sister Gail Jones Text, $34.99 Gail Jones is becoming positively prolific − this is her fourth novel in five years. She has turned away from the literary figures of her previous two books to what might be called literary crime. Who is this 'Jane', found wandering at night on a highway near Broken Hill? Freelance journalist Angie sees a feature in the predicament of the unknown woman, while her detective friend Bev is in charge of the case. Both want to discover the backstory, 'the maw of possibilities, deep down and red'. New Skin Miranda Nation Allen & Unwin, $32.99 Miranda Nation has runs on the board writing and directing the 2018 thriller Undertow and writing the TV series Playing Gracie Darling, due later this year. Which is clearly quite a big one for her as now comes publication of her first novel, one that features an intense first love between two medical students in the '90s, the drugs, the sex, the parties and then flashing years forward to the consequences and emotional hangovers. It's all a question of timing. Things in Nature Merely Grow Yiyun Li Fourth Estate, $32.99, June 4 Yiyun Li's memoir is an account of the death of her two sons, Vincent and James, by suicide six years apart. It is remarkable for its clear-sightedness and sensitivity. The Chinese-born novelist argues that children have to have the space to become fully themselves, and writes: 'I loved them, and I still love them, but more important than loving is understanding and respecting them, and this includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives.' Apple in China Patrick McGee Simon & Schuster, $36.99 June 4 Apple has got itself into something of a jam. As Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee puts it, the tech company's relationship with China 'has become politically untenable, yet the business ties are unbreakable'. Today, 90 per cent of all Apple's production takes place in China. With Apple's future 'inextricably linked to a ruthless authoritarian state', McGee also argues that today's China wouldn't be what it is without the company. Donald Trump may yet have more to say about all this. A Wisdom of Age Jacinta Parsons ABC Books, $34.99, June 6 Following on from A Question of Age, Jacinta Parsons delves into women's 'felt senses' to learn what it means to be human and how this understanding is changed by accumulated years. Through talking to many women around the country, she focuses on the disconnect between the way women who are ageing are treated in society and how they actually feel inside. Ageing, she writes, is not a malady that needs fixing, 'it needs for us to embrace it for what it offers us'.
The Age
4 days ago
- The Age
Estranged sisters and a curious gift: 14 new books to get stuck into this month
It may be the start of winter and things outside are cooling down, but there's no loss of heat in the book world, with a bumper crop of books being published this month. This selection includes an astonishing memoir, speculative fiction, love and other disasters in the `90s and so much more. Salvage Jennifer Mills Picador, $34.99 In her fifth, speculative novel, the always imaginative Jennifer Mills plunges us into the lives of sisters Jude and Celeste. Jude is on an Earth plagued by climate disaster, war and antagonism, struggling to survive in the Freelands. Celeste, meanwhile, is trapped on some sort of spacecraft designed to help plutocrats escape the benighted world. But when something falls from the sky, we learn the full, human story of the estranged sisters. The War Within Me Tracy Ryan Transit Lounge, $34.99 In the second of her Queens of Navarre series, poet and novelist Tracy Ryan turns her focus from Marguerite of Navarre to her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret. It's a story of royal and religious conflict as Jeanne escapes an arranged marriage to find love with Antoine, with whom she reigned before the Counter-Reformation pitted them on opposing sides of the long-running French wars of religion. Ryan is working on a third instalment, To Share His Fortune. A Beautiful Family Jennifer Trevelyan Allen & Unwin, $32.99 There's an irony in the title of New Zealand writer Jennifer Trevelyan's much-anticipated coming-of-age debut as the narrator, 10-year-old Alix, discovers much more about her family and its secrets during a summer holiday in 1985. From Kahu, a boy she meets on the beach, she learns the story of Charlotte, a girl who drowned two years earlier and whose body has never been found. Together, they try to find out the truth of her death, which reveals truths not bargained for. A Different Kind of Power Jacinda Ardern Penguin, $55 Jacinda Ardern became prime minister of New Zealand at the age of 37, and the way she dealt with the travails of high office along with the many major crises in NZ won her international admiration. Just think of her humane response to the appalling attack on the Christchurch mosques. Is there really a different way for politicians − and others − to lead? She argues forcefully that kindness and empathy are crucial. Let's hope other leaders take note of her methods. Our New Gods Thomas Vowles UQP, $34.99 Whether Thomas Vowles becomes a new god of literature remains to be seen, but judging by this debut novel set in the queer world of Melbourne he can certainly write gripping fiction. Ash is new to town and has quickly been befriended by James, who takes him to a party where his boyfriend, the charismatic and mysterious Raf, is DJing. But when Ash decides to leave, he stumbles across Raf outside and what he witnesses him doing is unsettling. Soon Ash is mixed up in something he really doesn't understand. The Death of Stalin Sheila Fitzpatrick Black Inc., $27.99 Black Inc. has made a point of publishing crisply written short books and essays that dissect global and local issues. In The Death of Stalin − not to be confused with Armando Iannucci's satirical film − Australia's pre-eminent Soviet historian tells us about the immediate change of direction after March 5, 1953, that was driven largely by the appalling director of the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria. In the simultaneously published Bombard the Headquarters, Linda Jaivin chronicles the disasters of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Aftertaste Daria Lavelle Bloomsbury, $32.99 Daria Lavelle's first novel is a bit bonkers really. Kostya's beloved dad is dead, but suddenly he tastes his father's favourite Ukrainian dish, pechonka. Over the years, aftertastes of food appear 'in his mouth like messages', until he discovers that by preparing specific foods or drinks he can bring the dead back from the purgatorial food hall where they are marooned. So, Kostya opens a restaurant to ease them to their next stage of death – but then things go a bit berserk. Foreign Country Marija Pericic Utimo Press, $34.99 Another pair of estranged sisters. When Eva gets a surprise letter from Elisabeta at her new apartment in Berlin she's puzzled to find it contains an airline ticket back to Australia. They've been apart for years, but Eva sets off to the Blue Mountains only to find that Elisabeta is dead and she is left to sort the debris of her life. Tucked into an absorbing narrative about the interaction of past and the present are documents and photos to provide a visual contrast with the emotional discoveries that Eva makes about her sister. The Prime Minister's Potato and Other Essays Anne-Marie Condé Upswell, $29.99 Historian and museum curator Anne-Marie Condé says she meditates on 'how the past can be understood through the interactions of people, places and things'. Her titular essay in this diverse and rather lovely collection tells of a curious 1942 gift from one William Frith to John Curtin as a 'cure for your akes and Pains'. Other essays dwell on the Australian War Memorial, Barry Humphries' character Sandy Stone, and the man who owned the house outside which the school bus would drop Condé each afternoon. The Name of the Sister Gail Jones Text, $34.99 Gail Jones is becoming positively prolific − this is her fourth novel in five years. She has turned away from the literary figures of her previous two books to what might be called literary crime. Who is this 'Jane', found wandering at night on a highway near Broken Hill? Freelance journalist Angie sees a feature in the predicament of the unknown woman, while her detective friend Bev is in charge of the case. Both want to discover the backstory, 'the maw of possibilities, deep down and red'. New Skin Miranda Nation Allen & Unwin, $32.99 Miranda Nation has runs on the board writing and directing the 2018 thriller Undertow and writing the TV series Playing Gracie Darling, due later this year. Which is clearly quite a big one for her as now comes publication of her first novel, one that features an intense first love between two medical students in the '90s, the drugs, the sex, the parties and then flashing years forward to the consequences and emotional hangovers. It's all a question of timing. Things in Nature Merely Grow Yiyun Li Fourth Estate, $32.99, June 4 Yiyun Li's memoir is an account of the death of her two sons, Vincent and James, by suicide six years apart. It is remarkable for its clear-sightedness and sensitivity. The Chinese-born novelist argues that children have to have the space to become fully themselves, and writes: 'I loved them, and I still love them, but more important than loving is understanding and respecting them, and this includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives.' Apple in China Patrick McGee Simon & Schuster, $36.99 June 4 Apple has got itself into something of a jam. As Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee puts it, the tech company's relationship with China 'has become politically untenable, yet the business ties are unbreakable'. Today, 90 per cent of all Apple's production takes place in China. With Apple's future 'inextricably linked to a ruthless authoritarian state', McGee also argues that today's China wouldn't be what it is without the company. Donald Trump may yet have more to say about all this. A Wisdom of Age Jacinta Parsons ABC Books, $34.99, June 6 Following on from A Question of Age, Jacinta Parsons delves into women's 'felt senses' to learn what it means to be human and how this understanding is changed by accumulated years. Through talking to many women around the country, she focuses on the disconnect between the way women who are ageing are treated in society and how they actually feel inside. Ageing, she writes, is not a malady that needs fixing, 'it needs for us to embrace it for what it offers us'.
