Conspiracies, mysterious deaths and a surprise guest: 14 new books to read this month

The Age

2 days ago

What's good, what's bad, and what's in between in literature? Here we review the latest titles. See all 51 stories.
There are plenty of good books around for you in August, including memoir, histories, fiction, short stories and forgotten classics. Why not make the most of the last month of winter by hunkering down with a new book − even if you're heading for a spot where the weather isn't too chilly.
Learned Behaviours
Zeynab Gamieldien
Ultimo, $34.99
When Zaid Saban begins at Brookbank Boys High in western Sydney, he feels lost. He soon finds a friend in Hass Abdallah and their lives intertwine. But then those lives diverge: Zaid becomes a lawyer, Hass is charged with murder and takes his own life in jail. Years later, his sister Amira visits Zaid, asking for help with a diary she has found; she's puzzled by things Hass wrote. When his past resurfaces, Zaid knows he has not transcended it and his desire for certainty only leads to unwanted questioning and more uncertainty.
The Visitor
Rebecca Starford
Allen & Unwin, $32.99
This is the second novel from Rebecca Starford, co-founder with Hannah Kent, of the online literary journal Kill Your Darlings. The first was The Imitator, an acclaimed historical spy drama. The Visitor begins with an elderly couple deserting the Brisbane house they've lived in for 50 years. Why haven't they told Laura, their writer daughter, who's been living in Britain for ages? When the couple die in strange circumstances in the outback, Laura and her family return to Queensland to do up that family home. But why is Laura behaving so oddly, and what does a mysterious photograph reveal about events?
Conspiracy Nation
Ariel Bogle & Cam Wilson
Ultimo, $36.99
As the two authors who have long investigated the intersections of technology, culture, politics and the law write, 'It can come as a shock to a lot of Australians to find that their friends, families and workmates … now understand their lives through the prism of plots, cabals and Manichean fights between good versus evil'. Conspiratorial thinking and misinformation abound in Australia, particularly since COVID-19, and Bogle and Wilson explore the origins of a host of conspiracy theories, including those surrounding the Port Arthur massacre, COVID lockdowns and 'the 28″, an alleged cabal of paedophile politicians.
Yilkari
Nicholas Rothwell & Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson
Text, $34.99
It's fair to say that Nicholas Rothwell, winner of two prime minister's literary awards, writes books that are hard to categorise − an appealing thing these days when marketing forces hold such sway in publishing. Yes, he has written two novels, but both contained elements of autobiography, particularly his first, Heaven and Earth. Now he has joined forces with his Indigenous wife, former politician and now painter Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, to write their 'suite' of the Western Desert. The arrival of a surprise guest, someone met 15 years earlier in Berlin, prompts a fascinating journey of awakening and spiritual discovery.
U Want It Darker
Murray Middleton
Picador, $34.99
Murray Middleton made his mark as a short-story writer – he won The Age award and then the Vogel – spent eight years on his first novel, the magnificent No Church in the Wild, and returns just over a year later with a collection of inventive stories that spotlight the angst and joys of the creative life. As our review will say: 'The dramatic situations are characterised by a collision of two irreconcilable desires: the impulse to create art with the spiritual toll and untenable economic realities. These are the lands of the crestfallen bohemian.'
The Last Days of Zane Grey
Vicki Hastrich
Allen & Unwin, $34.99
I knew of Zane Grey only as the legendary, huge-selling and prolific author of Westerns, notably Riders of the Purple Sage, whose work was frequently adapted by Hollywood, but there was more to him than that. Like Hemingway, he loved big-game fishing, and that passion brought him to Australia (with only 166 pieces of luggage) in search of creative inspiration and the chance to snag a giant shark in the sea off Bermagui. He made a film, White Death, and also managed a love affair with the alluring poet Lola Gornall. Vicki Hastrich, author of the acclaimed memoir Night Fishing, tells a fascinating story beautifully.
The Sea In The Metro
Jayne Tuttle
Hardie Grant, $34.99
Helen Garner described the writing in Jayne Tuttle's two memoirs about her life as an actor and more in Paris as 'joltingly alive, beautiful and terrifying'. The Sea in the Metro completes her trilogy, with Tuttle reassessing her life there and the intricacies of her relationship with her musician husband, M, giving birth to 'the Chunk', writing ads, meeting up again with her friend Sophie, in whose building she had the accident that nearly killed her, and the remarkable 'Balkans Doctor' with his 'bioregulatory medicine'. There is a great immediacy and candour here.
My Father Bryce
Adam Courtenay
Hachette, $34.99
Never let the facts get in the way of a story. It's a saying that epitomises the life of the late Bryce Courtenay, who burst onto the bestseller lists with The Power of One in 1989 and was a fixture there with his regular offerings of stonking great novels such as Jessica and Tommo & Hawk. Adam Courtenay reveals that his father was a wonderful dad to his three sons, but one whose loose relationship with the truth of his own life – 'Dad facts' – and addiction to success, fame, and being the best, challenged their connection.
Annie Magdalene
Barbara Hanrahan
Pink Shorts Press, $32.99
Barbara Hanrahan was known as a printmaker and painter, and then as a writer of novels that were unashamedly domestic and feminist. As The Australian Dictionary of Biograph y puts it, Hanrahan saw these creative forms as complementary: 'printmaking was instinctive and writing was intellectual'. First published 40 years ago, Annie Magdalene is the story of a woman looking back on her life. The prose is simple and direct, the sentiments profound. As Hanrahan writes, 'You must never talk loud to the bees, you must talk softly'.
The Leap
Paul Daley
Summit, $34.99
Paul Daley has followed his acclaimed Jesustown with a sort of Wake in Fright for the 2020s. Traumatised British diplomat Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill is parachuted into The Leap, an outback town far from anywhere, to plead for the lives of two women accused of killing the daughter of local bigwig Cecil Sloper. Daley's novel exposes the years of appalling treatment of the Indigenous population and the worst of outback life. But there are saving graces for Benedict, and thrills for the reader right to the end.
Arboresence
Rhett Davis
Hachette, $32.99
Rhett Davis won an influential Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2020 for an unpublished manuscript and when it was published, Hovering was described as 'immediately striking on both a conceptual and a formal level'. There were distinctly strange elements to it that continue in his second novel, in which a dissatisfied couple, Bren and Caelyn, find themselves drifting apart as Caelyn is attracted to the idea of the eponymous title – people turning themselves into trees. As our review says, Davis uses 'his distinctive creativity to interrogate, mock but ultimately affirm humanity'.
Nazis in Australia
Graham Blewitt & Mark Aarons
Schwartz, $39.99
August 11
This comprehensive book examines the history of the special investigations unit charged with finding the '841 alleged war criminals' who had escaped Europe to Australia after World War II. It was set up in 1987 and resulted in three prosecutions, none of which led to a conviction, and significant effort towards other potential charges. Here, essays examine the unit from various perspectives, including those of prosecution, defence and historians, and consider its legacy. As former deputy director Graham Blewitt writes, 'for a brief period in our legal history, we stood up and did the right thing'.
A Fair Day's Work
Sean Scalmer
MUP, $34.99
August 13
As the Albanese government prepares for its summit on productivity, the question to be asked is whether working Australians will come under pressure to give up some of the gains they have made since the advent of the eight-hour working day in the second half of the 19th century. Work-life balance remains crucial to all Australians and Sean Scalmer's assessment of the long quest for a 'fair day's work' rightly asks the timely question of whether productivity is increasingly associated 'with more time at work, not with more efficient performance of duties'.
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Fathering
Alistair Thomson et al
MUP, $39.99
August 13
The five authors of this extensive book say fathers and fathering 'are central to pressing concerns in contemporary Australia', concerns that include poor contribution to child care and domestic work; parental leave and family-friendly work; domestic violence, and the changes to the family structure. They look at individual fathers as case studies and also provide a historical survey of how the idea of being a father and the actuality of it has changed over the past century. A perfect gift for Father's Day?