FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK The Sleepwalkers Scarlett Thomas, Scribner, $34.99 This black comic mystery is masterfully crafted. Newlyweds Evelyn and Richard are honeymooning on a Greek island.
Disaster looms. Their companions are Richard’s best friend, Paul, a poshly educated London trader whom Evelyn lusts after, and Paul’s Insta-perfect girlfriend, Beth. They’re all staying at the Villa Rosa, a getaway run by the mysterious and manipulative Isabella.
Menace lurks beneath the idyllic veneer of the resort. There’s a refugee camp on the other side of the island, the resort workers seem to know more than they let on, and a macabre story emerges about the tragic fate of the villa’s previous occupants. The narrative unfolds through spiky letters from Evelyn and other scraps of evidence.
Scarlett Thomas’ unnerving black comic mystery boasts masterfully crafted unreliable narration that keeps you in suspense. It skewers the blitheness of the privileged, while transforming their paradise into a hellscape from which only dark truths may release them. In the Margins Gail Holmes, Ultimo Press, $34.
99 Book collector Frances Wolfreston is retrieved from the margins of history. We know who preserved the sole extant copy of the 1593 edition of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, only because she wrote her name on the books she owned. Frances Wolfreston (1607-77) was a rector’s wife, living through the turbulence of the English Civil War and the wave of Puritanism that it unleashed.
She was also an avid book collector. Gail Holmes retrieves her from the margins of history in this accessible and richly imagined novel, in which Frances must walk a tightrope between her duties as an informer to religious authorities and her loyalty to women, including her secretly Catholic mother, who might fall foul of them. It’s unflinching on the realities of non-aristocratic women’s lives in 17th-century England – a society largely run by increasingly paranoid and intolerant men – while filling with quiet heroism the gaps left by history.
The Life Impossible Matt Haig, Canongate, $32.99 Haig’s latest novel is full of memorable set-pieces. Grace Winters, a grumpy retired maths teacher from the UK, rarely feels happiness, though bodily aches and pains and the gnawing remorse of having lost a child plague her more than she cares to think about.
When her long-ago act of kindness to a colleague, Christina, leads to an unexpected bequest, Grace finds herself on the island of Ibiza. On a boat trip there, the rather drab naturalism of Grace’s life leaps into the supernatural. She develops psychic powers – telekinesis, mind-reading – and together with her mathematical knowledge, she begins to discover mysterious, often whimsical connections, and to unravel the rather less serendipitous story of Christina’s drowning.
Following his bestselling The Midnight Library , Matt Haig has produced an odyssey full of memorable set-pieces, in which “magical realism” is code for a distinctive brand of philosophical tragicomedy. A Great Marriage Frances Mayes, Penguin, $34.99 A warm and well-written intergenerational family saga.
Cupid strikes in a New York art gallery for Dara Willcox and Austin Clarke. He’s British and working in the US temporarily, she’s from a wealthy family in North Carolina, headed to law school. Although they have different life trajectories and ambitions, the couple’s whirlwind romance leads to a swift engagement.
And there, the wheels come off – Austin is recalled to London to face life-changing responsibilities; Dara nixes the wedding without telling her family the reason. Dara’s grandmother, moneyed matriarch Charlotte, has had an epic marriage, but it is from events involving Dara’s mother, Lee, that a second chance for the young pair may spring. Frances Mayes (author of Under the Tuscan Sun ) front-loads a profusion of narrative angles and characters but settles into a warm and well-written intergenerational family saga.
Enjoyable genre fiction, assuming reading about the travails of the rich presses your escapist buttons. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Jilya Tracy Westerman, UQP, $34.99 Westerman writes of the Pilbara and her profound work as a psychologist.
Tracy Westerman was leading a support group of Aboriginal parents who had lost children to suicide when one mother spoke of wearing a mask to protect her husband and kids from her pain. Gently, Westerman urged her to drop the mask. “These are the days I remember why I became a psychologist – to hold someone in pain and feel as though you have had a role in walking them through to the other side.
” A trailblazer in culturally informed therapy for her own mob, Westerman’s commitment and insights, along with her work fostering Indigenous psychologists, show how suffering can be transmuted into growth and how therapy can empower Indigenous people to deal with systemic racism. She writes movingly of her upbringing in the Pilbara, her evolution as a psychologist and the realisation that her experiences of racism and disadvantage were her greatest strength in helping others. Jilya is a heart-wrenching yet hopeful work of the profoundest importance.
Cowpuppy Gregory Berns, Text Publishing, $36.99 A scientist’s insights into cows’ personalities, play and emotional range. A first kiss with a cow might seem like an odd thing to relish but for Gregory Berns it was a milestone in charting cows’ capacity for trust and love.
As a neuroscientist and academic, Berns was experienced in studying dogs, but he knew next to nothing about cows when he bought a farm in Georgia, USA. Soulful and charming, Cowpuppy tells of his gradual acceptance as one of the herd, his insights into their distinct personalities, their love of play, their emotional range and their body language as demonstrated by his affectionate bull that puts his head in his lap. Bringing both head and heart to his narrative, Berns shows how scientific insight need not preclude emotional engagement.
His cows are like beloved pets whose company he seeks out every afternoon, often finding himself drifting into a meditative state as he sits with them scratching their necks and giving belly rubs. The Secret History of Sharks John Long, Quercus, $34.99 Don’t judge by the cover: a serious, lively account of the history of sharks.
From inside a cage, palaeontologist John Long watches white sharks in their natural habitat and is filled with awe. These are not monsters, as often presented in our media, he says. They are intelligent and sentient creatures that, over 450 million years, “have used natural selection to continuously improve their body design and are now once again at the top of their game”.
This impassioned plea for understanding sits oddly with the book’s lurid cover featuring a classic Jaws - style fin cutting through the water. Sadly, the publishers have not done justice to their author. Readers expecting a shock-horror tale will be disappointed, and those with a genuine interest in sharks may assume it to be sensationalist.
Which is a shame because this is a serious and lively, if somewhat lengthy, history of the evolution of sharks as revealed through the dedicated detective work of palaeontologists. You don’t have to have a dream Tim Minchin, Penguin, $36.99 There’s scepticism and unvarnished truth in Minchin’s speeches.
As you would expect from a performer such as Tim Minchin, his advice in these three graduation speeches is rich in scepticism, edginess and unvarnished truth. Here’s a sample: “Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the veranda and hit them with a cricket bat.
” “We carry our shit. And if we’re smart, and lucky enough to be artists, we can use our shit as fertiliser. Maybe grow something beautiful.
” But don’t imagine, he warns, that success or fame will smooth out the “relentless waves of self-confidence and self-loathing”. And one for social media: “Take time to hone your opinions, then take pride in how you express them.” Being kind rates highly in Minchin’s scale of values, as does authenticity and humility.
There are lessons for everyone in this mordant antidote to that dubious injunction “Live the Dream!” The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday . Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later.
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