Looking for a new book? Here are 10 recent releases

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

This week's book reviews range from magical realism and Australian grunge to a study of WWII's aftermath and a guide to talking your way out of trouble from a criminal defence lawyer. Happy reading!
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen
Shokoofeh Azar
Europa Editions, $49.99
Shokoofeh Azar fled Iran for Australia after several arrests and the translator of this novel, composed in Farsi, has chosen to remain anonymous, citing security concerns. Azar's forced exile has sparked her creative fire, and The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen blends fabulism, romantic and supernatural elements with a gimlet-eyed view of the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath. It follows a family from Iran's Zoroastrian minority, with Shokoofeh narrating her story beginning as a teen in an opulent mansion, closed and cloistered (the mansion was sealed by her aunt, in one of the novel's many vivid digressions). Shokoofeh comes of age and encounters the world just before the Shah is deposed, and a love triangle emerges – one suitor a communist, another a Revolutionary Guard – as the saga unfolds over decades. It's a vast and vastly ambitious novel that merges the reality of the political situation in Iran with overt magical realism – as grand and strange and humane as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, though sourced from different cultural wellsprings – the spirituality and myth of Zoroastrianism, and the elaborate narrative weave of Persian storytelling.
A fresh and sparkling modern literary romance from Jessica Stanley, Consider Yourself Kissed begins with a classic 'meet-cute'. Coralie – a 29-year-old Australian copywriter finding her feet in London – and Adam – a dashing, Colin Firth-like single dad – swap homes for a night. It's a way to get to know someone intimately without them being there – Coralie studies Adam's library minutely, drinks in every detail of his domestic life – and it's a prelude to a courtship between two well-spoken, educated people with endearing quirks. Adam pursues a career as a political commentator; Coralie wants to have children and be a writer herself. The shadow of inequality and eventual discontent grows despite their best efforts, and as Coralie returns to Australia, she comes to view her life as perfect in every respect, except that it doesn't feel truly hers. Stanley writes in a tradition that runs from Jane Austen to Nancy Mitford, and this charming literary romance queries the endgame in romance fiction, the happily-ever-after, in a way that lingers.
Rise and Shine
Kimberley Allsopp
HarperCollins, $34.99
Following her debut novel Love and Other Puzzles (2022), Brisbane-based author Kimberley Allsopp has written a love story that starts at the end. August and Noah have been married for 10 years. They've begun to drift apart, taking each other for granted, falling into routines that evade problems and short-circuit intimacy. With relationship breakdown imminent, will the couple remain a couple? Will they embrace singledom? Or learn to cope with the disappointments and irritations of life? Or rediscover a way of loving that fictional romance rarely broaches? Rise and Shine is a refreshingly adult book about long-term relationships. It probes the internal landscapes of two partners who question whether their relationship's working (and what to do about it), but it's outward-looking too. No couple is an island, and the book opens to broader family and community, taking in art and music, divorce, friendship, loss, footy, and a dog – all in sweltering Brisbane heat. Wise with wisecracks, poignant but without soppiness and sentiment, its textured authenticity will appeal to grown-up readers left cold by the more escapist impulses of romance and its subgenres.
The seeds of this queer feminist medieval romantasy were sown during the pandemic, when the authors were separated from each other, stranded on different continents. For the two maidens in Lady's Knight, Gwen and Lady Isobelle, it isn't pandemic so much as patriarchy that stands in the way of their union. Gwen has blacksmithing skills, loves damsels, and has always dreamt of being a knight. Isobelle, on the other hand, has everything a lady could want – except her freedom. Promised in marriage to the victor of the coming Tournament of Dragonslayers, she can't seem to find a way to avoid or delay her fate … until she meets Gwen, falls wildly in love, and they concoct a bold scheme to pursue their forbidden desires. Lady's Knight is an unabashedly anachronistic and entertaining sapphic romp. It's cheesy but fun, delighting in hordes of tropes from swords and sorcery, while taking up arms against a world of men (and dragons).
New Skin
Miranda Nation
Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Grunge lit makes a comeback in Miranda Nation's debut, New Skin. It's a heady and intense time warp to 1990s Melbourne, where two university students, Alex and Leah, meet at medical school, beginning a relationship that careens between idealism and cynicism, from exploring who they are and might become, to relieving themselves (of the burden of their own potential) through destructive hedonism. When they meet again years after they've drifted apart, will their passion for each other resurface? Should it? In many ways Nation's novel is a literary throwback, a Gen X love story charting the throes of youth during the years in which 'heroin chic' was a thing. The precise, unsentimental portrait of Melbourne youth culture at the time will immediately seduce and appal anyone who lived through it (raises hand), and for others, it serves as a welcome addition to the contemporary Australian grunge literature from that epoch – Luke Davies' Candy or Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded, say – which tended to be male-dominated.
1945 The Reckoning
Phil Craig
Hodder & Stoughton, $34.99
The title notwithstanding, much of Phil Craig's study of World War II and its aftermath deals with the war years leading up to 1945. And necessarily so. For what he is examining is the way in which, even as the war was being fought (and his descriptions of the action bring home just how bloody and violent it was), the peace was being planned. It's an epic canvas, ambitious, in some ways even Tolstoy-esque, taking in Europe, the Asia/Pacific and the quiet English countryside. There are many moving parts (possibly too many), but his main focus is on India and the ultimate establishment of the post-colonial state. Two figures loom large: the problematic Subhas Chandra Bose, who spent much of the war in exile in Nazi Germany and was leader of the Indian National Army (which fought with the Japanese), and Colonel Kodandera Subayya 'Timmy' Thimayya, who decided to fight with the British, defeat the Japanese, then negotiate the peace. Two divergent paths, same goal – independence. Along the way he incorporates the tales of ordinary people – such as a very astute English nurse – caught up in extraordinary times. On both a narrative and thematic level, this is skilfully told history for the general reader.
The better sporting tales tend to be about more than just sport, and this is the case with Katrina Gorry's record of a sporting life that has taken her to the world stage as a member of the Matildas and current captain of West Ham United. It starts in a Brisbane backyard where 'Mini' (she is five foot one) played no-prisoners-taken soccer against her brothers, played in a boy's side when she joined a club and copped regular sprays on and off the field for being the only girl on the ground. All of which made her more determined. And this is not just a story about talent, dreaming big and success, but grit too. Plus the setbacks, the constant pressure of competing at the elite level and the effect on both her mental and physical health. But woven into this is the unfolding tale of her sexuality, choosing to have an IVF baby by herself and falling in love on Gotland. Not to mention going on strike to get better pay and conditions for the Matildas. Her family looms large, as does the concept of the team. An inspiring tale, tempered by realism.
On Democracies and Death Cults
Douglas Murray
Harper Collins, $34.99
A key contention by British neo-conservative Douglas Murray in this study of the October 7 attack in Israel is that the region, and the West for that matter, is caught up at present in a Manichean struggle between good and evil – terms he endows with a kind of metaphysical truth – between countries such as Israel that stand for Life, and Hamas, which stands for the cult of Death and martyrdom. Not that he hasn't got extensive, boots-on-the-ground knowledge of the complexities of the situation. He's a seasoned journalist who went to Israel and Gaza after the attack and interviewed both victims and terrorists, citing examples – and it's deeply disturbing – of how exultant the Hamas attackers were. But the result is an emphatically one-sided assessment that excuses the horrifying, ongoing slaughter in Gaza of thousands of Palestinian civilians as a necessary war of survival between Life and the cult of Death. And Netanyahu, whom he interviewed, emerges as a dedicated war leader – never mind that the ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest as a war criminal. Highly contentious.
Often as not, this jaunty, serious and funny description of life as a criminal defence lawyer reads like dispatches from the law zone. Kalantar, an advocate and public speaker, recalls the day he decided to become a lawyer. He was seven, wrongly accused of making a face to his teacher and betrayed by a classmate, the injustice staying with him. Mind you, he initially took a wrong turn into banking, before an inspiring lecturer guided him into law. It's shot through with lessons from the coalface, especially in regard to making assumptions about accused clients – one, in particular, whom he dubs Genghis Khan, whose responses (through an interpreter) to questioning he completely misread. In another poignant episode, he outlines the way two close brothers fell out over the contents of their mother's will. In many ways, his subject is the human comedy in all its shades of dark and light. Not to mention courtroom stuff-ups and confessional moments such as his ADHD. Serious matters, but told with an ironic eye.
In 1802, the father of the smallpox vaccine, Englishman Edward Jenner, was satirised in the papers, one cartoon depicting him injecting a terrified woman who is turning into a cow (the vaccine coming from cowpox). The scaremongering and pseudoscience surrounding vaccination, as epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre shows in this clear-sighted, plain-speaking study, goes back that far. And, after COVID, it has resurfaced again with the rise of anti-vaxxers. Astonishing, when we consider that vaccinations over the last 200 years have virtually eradicated deadly diseases such as smallpox and polio, which are particularly dangerous for children – infant mortality rates plummeting. Pseudoscience is in danger of destabilising the gains of science since Jenner's day, and this is both a reminder of the massive health achievements of the modern era and a timely wake-up call.