Staff Reviews
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.
MichelleSmoke in the Room, Emily Maguire : Macmillan $29.99
This is a deeply psychological and powerful contemporary Australian novel. The characters are profoundly flawed and the plot is compelling. Katie, who suffers from Bipolar, spins wildly out of control, and her new housemates, the grieving Adam and the world weary Graeme, try to bring her back from the brink as they each battle their own demons. It is beautifully told and the tension builds from the very first page.
Michelle
Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby : Picador $32.95
Nick Hornby is back on form with his latest novel
Juliet, Naked. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker Crowe, a popular muscian who retired suddenly at the height of his stardom and has not been seen or heard of since. Duncan's long term girlfriend Annie is getting sick of playing second fiddle to the reclusive rock star. When a record arrives out of the blue, an acoustic version of Tucker's seminal album 'Juliet', Annie commits the sin of listening to the album before Duncan even knows it exists. They each have a different reaction to 'Juliet, Naked' - Duncan sure it is the best album ever released in the history of the world while Annie can hear the flaws. When each put their opinions out on the internet, Annie is shocked to receive an email from Tucker himself. And so begins a correspondance through which they ruminate on relationships and parenthood, the nature of fame and fandom. All this and Hornby's signature sweet, funny and heartfelt prose.
Kate
The Infinities, John Banville : Picador $32.95
This curious, luminous new work of extraordinary prose from 2005 Man Booker prize winner, John Banville, The Infinities is set on a summer's day between first light and night's fall in an alternative future or parallel Ireland (thanks to cold fusion, steam engines and cars run on salt water).
As the Godley family gather at their country seat around the bedside of their stroke-stricken father; Adam Godley senior, a curious possession is taking place. A former physicist, Godley senior's theorem of an infinity of infinities has changed science as radically and as irradicably as prior shifts in human consciousness away from the flat earth and the heliocentric world. But here in this twilight of humanity and although forgotten, the classical gods still hold sway and our omniscient narrator is none other than Hermes (son of Zeus and the cavewoman, Maia), who is able - without consent or their knowledge - to enter the bodies of the Godleys, their servants, neighbours and unexpected guests, influencing their inner thoughts and worldy actions.
Weird - yes, but beautiful, mischievous, funny and lyrical. And I don't know how he pulls it off but he does.
Michael
Paradise Updated, Mic Looby : Affirm $29.95
The hilarious first novel from Mic Looby. All on the same day, Mithra, lowly copy editor at SmallWorld travel publishing, is fired and then promoted to what she believes is her dream job - that of travel writer. Her first assignment sees Mithra jetting off to update SmallWorld's flagship travel bible to the island paradise of Maganda (think Bali or Kho Phi Phi, only with Fiji's simmering military unrest). But before she can begin updating the guide, Mithra must find and serve notice on the oldest surviving SmallWorld employee - baby boomer travel writer and Maganda specialist Robert Rind. In an escalating comedy of errors, pursued by Mithra, Rind disappears into the dark heart of Maganda, and Mithra must not only acclimatise to monsoon season, survive on a diet of dugong noses and orientate herself with a travel guide of badly drawn maps, out of date, and just plain wrong information. With each chapter parodying the title of a travel guide subsection, the format of
Paradise Updated allows for both interesting insights into the exotic culture of the fabled island of Maganda, but also the delivery of some excoriating rants agains the world domination aspirations, mean management style and exploitative practices of SmallWorld.
Michael
Hollywood Endings, Kathy Charles : Text $32.95
Wisecracking Hilda and her gothic best-friend Benji, are ghouls. They tour the gruesome murder, suicide, death by misadventure sites of Hollywood’s famous and posthumously notorious. On a mission to gain entrance to the Hollywood flat of a former Hollywood silent movie star (who failed to make the transition to sound and committed suicide on his bathroom floor with a pair of scissors), they meet the flat’s current occupant, the cranky, foul mouthed octogenarian, Hank. Hollywood Ending is a page turner, bristling with sassy dialogue, blackly humourous and great fun and while aimed at a YA audience crosses over to 20-somethings, 30-somethings and 40-somethings. Richly immersed in the psychogeography of Hollywood, Catherine Charles’ makes popcultural references from Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust, through almost a century of Hollywood cinema to the irascible curmudgeonly, Charles Bukowksi, this is a love letter to the living and the dead of Los Angeles.
Michael
Document Z, Andrew Croome : Allen & Unwin $23.99
This is a novelisation of the Petrov affair, Australia 1954. Although derived from exemplary archival research, including eyewitness reportage and official documents (including ASIO files), Croome has invested his mature, literary-telling with artful writing, sharp dialogue, cinematic observation and suspenseful plotting. Most of all, the driver of this original approach to the public record is his empathic eye for the flawed psyches of all the major players – spies, spooks, double agents all – but especially Evdokia Petrova, wife of the feckless alcoholic, Vladimir P. When Vladimir Petrov makes his sudden and undisclosed defection to the West, Evdokia must walk the knife-edge of her loyalties – choosing between, on the one hand, exile in a seemingly intellectually and culturally bereft and backwards country or return to Moscow where her daughter awaits but so does interrogation, demotion, humiliation and capital punishment by the communist regime.
Michael
This is How, M.J. Hyland : Text $32.95
In 1960s England Patrick Oxtobov, and estranged nineteen year old, accepts a job as a junior motor mechanic in a coastal town and moves into the local bed and breakfast. There he does something accidental but irreversible and pays for it by losing everything. Rendered in measure - and sometimes excruciating - detail, Hyland is a great storyteller and master of the minutiae of scene.
Michael
The True Story of Butterfish, Nick Earls: Random House $32.95
The newest book from Nick Earls is a winner! Curtis is back in Australia after his hugely successful rock band Butterfish released their third album and it tanked completely. On top of that, his marriage has busted up. LA is just not the place for him anymore. Back in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, Curtis is trying to reconnect with his brother Patrick, working on an album for a Norweigian band trying to break into a wider market and occasionally dabbling in some songs for himself. However, his new neighbours - the almost-woman Annaliese, her emo-goth brother Mark and their harried but friendly single mother Kate - make Curtis' normal life just that little bit more interesting.
Kate
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann : Bloomsbury $32.99
I love Colum McCann. He is a genius of a writer and this is him at his best. Set in New York with a fictionalised accound of Petit's tightrope walk between the two towers as an uniting event between a varied cast of characters. The separate threads of his novel are pulled together in an achingly beautiful way.
Michelle
