Staff Reviews
Freedom Jonathan Franzen : Fourth Estate $32.95
I cannot rave enough about ‘Freedom’, it is absolutely brilliant. Franzen has produced another insightful family drama with characters and relationships that continue to resonate long after I turned the last page. Walter Berglund is a bike riding environmental lawyer, and Patty rebels against her high profile Democrat family and chooses to devote herself to her children rather than pursue a career. Both try to create a perfect world for their children but of course mistakes are made. Richard the enigmatic musician and Walter’s best friend is a constant presence (and source of friction) in their lives. At times funny, at times tragic but always totally engaging. ‘Freedom’ is a testament to Franzen’s literary genius and is destined to become a modern classic.
Michelle
Campaign Ruby, Jessica Rudd : Text Publishing $32.95
Ruby loses her job as an investment banker, decides in a drunken moment to head to Australia for a holiday. A chance meeting with the Leader of the Opposition and his chief adviser somehow leads to her being a member of the campaign team when a snap election is called. ‘Campaign Ruby’ is a comic take on the campaign trail and despite a few implausible plot aspects it is a great read. Jessica Rudd is of course Kevin’s daughter and her insight into the inner workings of political campaigns is very apparent. The timing for this book is perfect, arriving just in time for the coming federal election but the coincidences do not stop there. In Rudd’s novel the male PM is deposed by a female colleague who becomes Australia’s first female PM, and the ex PM who had hoped for the foreign affairs portfolio is instead relegated to the backbench. Did she have a crystal ball?
Michelle
Rocks in the Belly, Jon Bauer : Scribe $32.95
This incredible first novel from English ex-pat, now Oz citizen, Jon Bauer, is well worth your time. Robert, 28, returns to his family home where his mother is in the midst of a slow decline into dementia. He has not lived in the same country as his family for many years, keeping a distance from his past. Told in two voices, we learn the young Robert’s story while the older Robert tries to deal with the responsibility of caring for a woman towards who, because of her own mothering of him, he feels great anger. Rocks in the Belly is complex and moving and Bauer is a great talent.
Deb
The Old School, P.M. Newton : Penguin $32.95
Crime fiction in Oz is truly in a golden age. This debut novel by ex-policewoman P.M. Newton is excellent. Set in Sydney when Keating was P.M. and Clinton was President. Nhu , a Vietnamese/Irish female detective becomes deeply and personally involved when the bones of two women are unearthed on a demolition site. A young child when she witnessed the murders of both her parents, this case dredges up a dark and complex past for our driven and troubled heroine. Against the background of a public inquiry into police corruption, Nhu struggles to investigate, treading a minefield littered with ancient secrets, furtive love and racial enmity. Great writing; characters that are instantly recognisable and themes that are as timely today as in the unreconstructed past.
Rinske
Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo, Vanessa Woods : Black Inc $27.95
After a rushed marriage, Vanessa Woods (mad chimp lover) found herself at a sanctuary for a species she'd never heard of- the bonobo. The bonobo is the forgotten cousin of the human race. An evolutionary biologist's nightmare, this species breaks all expectations of ‘appropriate animal behavior’; they’re matriarchal, enjoy sex for fun, fellatio and the missionary position - behavior unheard of in the animal kingdom. This book tells of Vanessa’s experiences in the Congo, where she comes to love the 'make love not war’ hippie ape while trying to make sense of her own history and that of the people of the Congo. Vanessa's account is entertaining and often shocking. Once I had warmed to her voice, I also found her very funny. Her disturbingly voyeuristic approach to horrific war atrocities grated a little, but she made up for it with a scathing view of the West’s role in perpetuating violence and poverty in Africa and she presents the suffering of the bonobo with compassion to the wider suffering of the Congolese. An informative read and engaging adventure, you’ll be fascinated by this obscure species by the end of the book. But don’t just read it for the fabulous bonobos; travel-lit readers and fans of romantic memoirs will also enjoy.
Caroline
The Extinction Club, Jeffrey Moore : Quercus $32.95
When dysfunctional recovering alcoholic, substance abuser, Nile Nightingale decides to buy a church and live in a tiny town in Canada his world is shaken. First by the discovery of a half-dead girl thrown from an SUV, then with his growing knowledge of the illegal business of hunting and trapping bears for medicines and eating in China. He quickly discovers the trappers are not enemies one needs. This is a great dark read, a story of love, environmentalism, greed and redemption.
Deb
Indelible Ink, Fiona McGregor : Scribe Publication $32.95
Indelible Ink peels back the layers and allows us to peer into the lives of its suburban Sydney characters, Marie King and her friends and family, what we see is not pretty but fascinating and sometimes uncomfortably honest. Being billed as Sydney’s ‘Slap’ it has similarities, its honesty and unflinching take on contemporary Australian family life but the characters on the whole are more likeable, flawed but likeable. The main character Marie at 59 has lived a conventional life but when she begins to get tattoos her friends and family are horrified. Her life changes dramatically through the course of the novel and her relationships are put under the microscope and found wanting. I loved Indelible Ink, I think it’s a brilliant novel.
Michelle
The Grand Hotel, Gregory Day : Random $32.95
This fabulously imaginative book is set in the fictional town of Mangowak on the Great Ocean Road. This is the third of Day's books to be set there and as with the others very funny, magical and totally enjoyable. The town's pub is being destroyed by the city-dwelling developers to build a housing estate called Warathung Heights. The locals - devastated by this turn of events - elect local artist Noel Lea, whose house, is still zoned a public house, to convert his ramshackle home into the new watering hole. Noel, at first dismayed, takes to the idea with Dadaist sensibilities and an array of fabulous characters, Joan Sutherland, the Blonde Maria, the talking urinal. Heady days abound but once the Lazy Tenor arrives the winds change at the Grand, blowing us to an inevitable ending. Touching, funny, wild - I loved
The Grand Hotel.
Deb
The Radleys, Matt Haig : Text Publishing $32.95
The Radleys are an ordinary family quietly going about their business in a small and ordinary village in country England. But wait! They are not ordinary. They are… Vampires! It’s really not as lame as it sounds. Cracks are starting to appear in the elaborately created façade, and while the Radley teens Clara and Rowan don’t know that they are vampires, it would appear that Clara’s decision to go vegan has disagreed with her severely, and when she dismembers a schoolmate parents Helen and Peter are forced to bring into the open a part of themselves they have been denying for nearly twenty years. This was intelligently written with well fleshed out characters, and there was nothing insipid about the abstaining vampires, rather it was an absorbing look into the life of a likeably dysfunctional family with a dark (and bloody) secret.
Clare
The Privileges, Jonathon Dee : Constable and Robinson $29.99
This great novel opens with the wedding of Cynthia and Nick a golden couple who are completely into each other. It follows their lives as they rise and rise up the social ladder. With few morals and no guilt they are strangely likable, as are their children - whose lives take quite different paths. I do not really know why I love this book, but I do.
Deb
So Cold the River, Michael Koryta : Arena $32.99
Michael Koryta is a young American writer with loads of talent. He has already written 5 crime novels - 5 really good crime novels. With this novel he takes a fabulous change of direction. There is still a crime to be solved, yet this book incorporates a believable and scary ghost story. Eric Shaw is a camera man, with a difficult personality, who has lost his wife and his career and is now filming weddings and putting together presentations of people's lives, to try to get by. He is approached by a glamorous and wealthy woman to make a documentary about her father-in-law's life. When Eric heads to the man’s hometown he is beset by visions and stumbles across a mystery that can still affect the present. Koryta, like James Lee Burke or Stephen King, has produced a great spooky page turner.
Deb
Gunshot Road, Adrian Hyland : Text Publishing $32.95
The fabulous Adrian Hyland has produced another fantastic Australian crime novel set in the middle of Australia, where the people can be harsh and the landscape harsher. The no-nonsense heroine of his first great book, Diamond Dove Emily Tempest, has taken a job as liason officer with the local police station. This is surprising, even to her. Before she can even start, Tom - her boss - is attacked and hospitalised and a new young and 'by the book' bloke arrives. When a local miner is murdered, Emily and her new boss disagree on the incident and before she knows it she is on the fringes again trying to solve a crime no one will even admit happened. A cracking good yarn.
Deb
Thrill City, Leigh Redhead : Allen & Unwin $22.99
For those of us who like our crime fiction local and our P.I.s female, sexy, savvy and definitely non P.C. This racy story veers between literary festivals, stripper’s haunts and cop shops. Simone Kirsch runs a dangerous course as she investigates the savage murder of a charismatic writer, whose husband is suspect no.1. Colourful and funny, this book fair rockets along.
Rinske
Mr Rosenblum's List, Natasha Solomons : Sceptre $29.99
Mr Rosenblum’s list is a sweet, heartwarming and at times very funny book of triumph over adversity. Jewish refugee Mr Rosenblum and his wife Sadie arrive in England and he decides to become English. His list comprises all the things that one must achieve to become an English gent. Quite quickly Mr Rosenblum ticks off his achievements only to be stuck on the, tricky, join a golf club item…that is until he thinks of a marvelous solution. I loved this book and really did laugh and cry – it’s a winner.
Deb
The Long Song, Andrea Levy : Headline $32.99
This is a fabulous and engrossing read. July is an old woman whose son can never really be bothered to listen to her stories of slave life on a Jamaican Plantation. Instead he tells her to write them down. He is enthralled and so are we as we read of the hard, hard life she has endured. I really could not put down this great new book from orange prize winner Andrea Levy, highly recommended.
Deb
One Day, David Nicholls : Hachette $32.99
This is a love story with a difference. Emma and Dexter meet at University and they spend a night together after their Graduation party but then go their separate ways. Friendship evolves over the coming years and while there is always something deeper between them that romantic moment is not easily recaptured, particularly because Dexter so often behaves like a cad. We follow the ups and downs of their lives and their relationships over two decades with annual updates on the 15th July (the anniversary of that first night).
One Day is a very, very funny novel but also well written, moving and quietly profound.
Michelle
