The Last Garden, by Eva Hornung

Tags

dog boy, prime minister's literary award

Eva Hornung writes unusual and powerful books, with an amazing affinity for animals.

Benedict Orion comes home from boarding school – excited to get away from books and into the everyday work of the family farm – to find his parents dead in a murder-suicide.

In deep shock, he retreats, unable anymore to step foot into the home he loved.

He finds refuge in the barn, in close quarters with the old mare Melba, and the young feisty stallion Fell.

His neighbours in Wahrheit, a close-knit Germanic religious farming community in South Australia, are patiently waiting for the second coming of the Messiah.

Benedict – now living in the barn, never leaving the farm – remains withdrawn from the horrors of the past or thoughts of the future, existing solely through the horses and the needs of the farm and the passing seasons.

Wahrheit’s pastor keeps watch, visiting and bringing food from the community, seeing the gawky teenager slowly rediscover himself. But there are other pressures building in Wahrheit, and the pastor has to find his own way through doubts and trauma.

Hornung won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for her last book, Dog Boy, which explored some similar territory in the close bonds between boy and animal.

Full of symbolism but not overpowered by it, this is a powerful and wonderful book, and the writing is mesmerising.

This book was published in may 2017. The review was printed in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine.

Hello Goodbye, by Emile Brewin

Tags

conscription, Vietnam War

Welcome exploration of what feels like an underexplored part of Melbourne’s past.

May Callaghan is a good Catholic girl who is barely surviving the boredom of the small Victorian country town where she is finishing high school in 1968.

In the background, the Vietnam War and conscription is a constant threat to the young men she knows, and talk of it rattles her father, who has terrible war memories of his own.

May falls for Sam, who has an itch to get out of town that’s even bigger than her own; her cousin Lucy has her own ways of stretching the town’s moral strait-jacket.

Sam heads to Melbourne, landing in a share house in Carlton. When May follows, she’s confronted by a different world, one with draft dodgers and anti-war activists, and plenty of confrontations and excitement.

Her new circumstances transform her life, bringing condemnation from family and authorities, but she has Sam and her new housemates – indigenous student Clancy and bohemian Ruby – and that has to be enough.

Brewin’s debut is an engaging coming-of-age novel that explores a volatile and colourful part of Melbourne’s history.

She has received an Australian Society of Authors Emerging Writers and Illustrators mentorship.

This book was published in June 2017. The review appeared in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine, 

Dear Reflection: I never meant to be a Rebel, by Jessica Bell

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vine leaves press

Small stories are sometimes the most powerful.

Jessica Bell was brought up in a fairly chaotic household that included her mother and her partner Demetri – a  “semi-famous” indie duo who played Melbourne pubs – and her younger brother.

Her mother, Erika Bach, was also a heavy user of pills and alcohol, and was increasingly anxious, making the confusion of growing up even more difficult and isolated.

By her mid teens, Jessica was becoming a rebel herself – drinking and playing hard, finding herself in frightening situations – as depression took hold of her thinking.

But she found her way through, via some searching self-reflection and considerable help from music, particularly writing her own songs and playing with her band, spAnk.

The life she has now made for herself is powerfully crafted from that chaotic upbringing.

She co-founded the small publisher Vine Leaves Press, is a singer with the band Keep Shelly in Athens, has written extensively and lives in Greece.

It’s a story of a troubled upbringing – full of the kind of pain and hard choices young people face every day – that will resonate strongly with teenagers trying to find their own way to a creative and authentic life.

Six Tudor Queens: Anne Boleyn, A King’s Obsession, by Alison Weir

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Katherine of Aragon, Six Tudor Queens, the fall of anne boleyn, the lady in the tower

Interesting instalment in the series on the wives of Henry VIII by the respected historian.

I thought there wasn’t much more you could say about the most notorious and most written about of Henry VIII’s six wives, Anne Boleyn.

At least 24 books plus a couple of plays and TV series have featured her just in the past decade, ranging from the serious to the slightly silly (the vampire version).

But I was wrong. Historian Alison Weir here turns her extensive academic research into a popular novel, tracing Anne’s life from her earliest years – an area often ignored by writers in favour of her dramatic and tragic later years.

It makes a good companion piece to the serious history Weir wrote some years ago about Anne, The Lady in the Tower, which focuses on the final stages of her life. In making the switch from history to popular writing, Weir has modernised the language, sometimes going too far into the jarringly modern (“Orders is orders,” Sir Edmund barked).

This is the second in Weir’s comprehensive series The Six Tudor Queens, each installment told with a fair degree of sympathy from that queen’s point of view.

The result is a portrait of a doomed queen that feels both accurate and very human, in a book that is enjoyably engrossing.

My review of book 1 in this series: Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, the True Queen, by Alison Weir

https://corinna1blog.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/six-tudor-queens-katherine-of-aragon-the-true-queen-by-alison-weir/

My (brief) published review of the precursor to this book: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

Popular British historian Alison Weir concentrates on Tudor queen Anne Boleyn’s downfall, from the time she first suspects she’s in trouble to her death on the scaffold – just four months – and the aftermath. Weir sets the record straight on a number of myths in this awesomely thorough account, with the rare (for a history) result that these feel like real people caught in a real tragedy. However, that incredible depth on a narrow subject can feel like too much detail. A must for fans of Tudor history.

Release, by Patrick Ness

 

I haven’t read a bad book by this writer, and this is no exception. It’s a book to read in one sitting.

Adam Thorn, 17, is about to have a day that will change almost everything.

The son of a pastor, he’s pretty sure his parents love him, but he hides his sexuality at home anyway.

This day is leading towards a farewell party for his ex, Enzo – his first love and the one who broke his heart.

But first he will have to cope with a range of major shocks – from his best friend, his work manager, his parents, his boyfriend, and his brother.

But that’s not the only unsettling aspect of what’s going on. By the lake, where the party will take place, something else is stirring.

The tormented soul of a drowned girl rises, merged with a powerful spirit who can give that torment shape and function.

She roams the town, looking for answers. This book specifically references two others – Judy Blume’s Forever, about losing your virginity, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, which similarly takes place over one day.

Ness deals with young love and sex, and all the issues that go with that, with all the power and respect you’d expect from this multi-award winning YA writer.

The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age novel that is both dark and compelling.

Alan Carter: Marlborough Man; Prime Cut; Getting Warmer; Bad Seed

His fourth book is a triumphant return to form for Alan Carter, who has established himself as a powerful Antipodean crime writer. 

A remote farmhouse in New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds is a handy hiding place for Sgt Nick Chester and his family.

It would be even better if he could be sure that it was far enough away from a very bad man he put in jail in England, and his particularly nasty henchmen.

As his paranoia grows, he keeps a low profile at the local police station, mostly on traffic duty.

But when a child goes missing, he calls on his old skills to find a predator before he can strike again.

In the small community around him, Nick discovers there are some less than pleasant characters, and his investigations stir up some nasty secrets, often hidden by tense inter-cultural relationships.

The rising pressure also adds to the stress on his already-struggling marriage. Carter won the Ned Kelly Award for best first fiction for his first book, Prime Cut.

The hero of that book, Cato Kwong, is a great addition to local crime literature, though the most recent (book three in that series) seemed to have lost some of its mojo.

The good news is, Carter is back to his best in this. He jokes that it is a “temporary conscious uncoupling” from Cato, but hopefully that means he’ll go back to that series in the future. Meanwhile, this is an excellent alternative.

This book was published in June 2017

Prime Cut, by Alan Carter (2011)

Disgraced detective Phillip “Cato” Kwong gets called back into action after being exiled to the Stock Squad.

A headless body has been found on a beach at Hopetoun, a booming WA mining town, and there’s no one else available to investigate.

As Kwong digs, what he finds are shocking conditions for migrant workers, which puts him on a collision course with business interests associated with the mine.

But there are other crimes being hidden in the remote community and the more Kwong stirs the pot the more dangerous the situation becomes.

Helping him sort out the mess are Kwong’s ex, local senior-sergeant Tess Maguire, and a young part-Aboriginal policeman – the surprising Greg Fisher. On the fringes is a long-retired Sunderland copper still on the tail of a brutal killer he first encountered more than 30 years before.

This is a great debut from the WA writer, introducing a detective with loads of appeal who deserves, and seems destined for, a series. Some minor plot issues aside, it’s a confident, witty, entertaining and gritty tale with an interesting, multicultural cast.

The book was shortlisted for the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award in 2010.

 

Getting Warmer, by Alan Carter (2013)

 

Alan Carter started his crime-writing career with a bang when he won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction with Prime Cut.

Now he’s done the really hard bit – followed up with an even better second book. His hero, Phillip “Cato” Kwong, is a policeman in Fremantle, in boom days that have a Wild West feel.

Cato’s smart and his humour’s dry as a bone; he’s unthreatening, but well able to look after himself.

This time Cato has to try to manage a jailed killer, who’s playing nasty mindgames with the mother of his last victim. The squad’s dealing with the murder of an undercover cop working with a Vietnamese gang and with rumblings from the Apache motorcycle club, which is preparing for a turf war.

And throughout it all, the whiff of corrupt copper. But which one? For starters, co-worker Lara is dodgy, his boss has a secret connection to the killer, and his old mate, the charismatic ring-in from the Gang Squad, seems a bit too slick.

Carter delivers a fast-paced and atmospheric tale, with a lively multicultural cast and an absolute gem in Cato.

Bad Seed, by Alan Carter (2015)

Detective “Cato” Kwong arrives at a horror murder scene – multiple bloody deaths in a family home. The shock is worse because the male victim, property developer Francis Tan, was once his closest friend.

The eldest son, who is missing and a suspect, is Cato’s godson.

The murder inquiry spreads its tentacles into Asia, with links uncovered to major Chinese property developers and underworld figures, who take a keen interest in the investigation, with often violent results.

Meanwhile, Cato’s crusty boss, DI Hutchens, is in trouble, facing an inquiry that looks certain to finish his career and possibly put him on the other side of the law.

Cato Kwong first apeared in 2011 in Prime Cut, with author Alan Carter winning the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and being shortlisted for the international Debut Dagger.

The sequel, Getting Warmer, was even better. Both were quirky, gripping and confident with a strong multi-cultural cast and a highly appealing central character in Cato.

Bad Seed takes a step in a slightly different direction, with a crime story that feels both darker and more conventional that the previous two.

Kwong’s personal life, including his struggling relationship with his son and a lukewarm romance, feel thin and unconvincing. It’s still a strong crime story, but it feels like some of the elements that made the series such a standout have been diluted.

These reviews were first printed in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine. 

New Boy, by Tracy Chevalier

At the start, this connection of Othello and a primary school in the 1970s seemed inspired. By the end I was just really frustrated by it. 

New boy Osei, from Ghana, arrives at a Washington DC primary school late in the year.

It is 1975 and he’s the only black kid in sight. His connection with popular girl Dee is immediate – they bond, standing against the suspicions, envy and curiosity of the rest of the schoolyard.

But Ian is watching very carefully, and looking for an advantage.

Casper, secure as the most popular boy, is friendly, while Mimi and Blanca wait on the fringes. Over the course of this one day, early sunshine descends into tragedy – misunderstandings, evil machinations, racism, and love all play their part.

A central motif is a pink, strawberry-embossed pencil case – it belongs to Osei’s sister, he gives it to Dee, and she misplaces it, allowing it to become a powerful pawn in a much bigger game.

Shakespeare fans may already get some of the references, for this is Othello transformed as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series.

On the plus side, the intense tragedy of this story translates surprisingly effectively into the squabbling of these 11-year-olds, and Chevalier has a highly readable style.

But I was left thinking less of the original play – it lost some of its grand tragedy in the shift to childish players. The grandeur of the language in Shakespeare’s original lifts the story above some of its sillier elements.

And while 11-year-olds might be this sexualised in 2017, they weren’t in 1975. This is something that probably wouldn’t matter to a younger audience (that is, younger than 45 or 50), who have no way of knowing that it was ever different. I can’t know if this is how Chevalier remembers it, or whether she did this as a way of connecting with a younger audience.

This book was published in May 2017. 

The Starlings, by Vivienne Kelly

A good read, though it felt like it took a long time to get going. 

Nicky Starling, 8, loves his family, even if (secretly) he doesn’t share his dad’s passion for Hawthorn Football Club.

It’s 1985, the season is just beginning, and nothing less than the premiership cup – his holy grail – will be good enough.

But Nicky’s keener on that other holy grail, the one that occupies the minds and hearts of King Arthur and his legendary nights.

Or perhaps Shakespeare will do just as well, as Nicky repurposes his own action figures and his sister’s discarded dolls to act out his own versions of these great stories.

But behind the scenes, Nicky’s family is falling apart. Secrets, lies, illicit romance, an affair and a family death all pull at the ties that have bound this family together.

Nicky’s innocent observations of what he hears and sees one by one set off detonations way beyond his understanding, affecting his parents, grandfather, sister Pippa, and his grandmother’s nurse, Rose, whom he adores.

Sydney-based Kelly, recently appointed editor of Mumbrella, has a readable style and Nicky makes for an entertaining narrator. His pastiche plays, rewriting Shakespeare and King Arthur, are often hilarious, though there are quite a lot of them, and I’m not sure they were all needed.

The story takes a while to get going, but the scene-setting Kelly does makes each of the later revelations more powerful.

Into the White: Scott’s Antarctic Journey, by Joanna Grochowicz

Tags

scott's last expedition

It’s one of the great adventure stories, and this is a good introduction for all ages.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s hunt for the South Pole is one of the great, tragic stories of exploration and adventure.

From the day his ship, the Terra Nova, left New Zealand on November 26, 1910, to his death after encountering temperatures of  -40C, it was a tale both of extraordinary achievement and suffering.

Serious scientific research accompanied Scott’s aim of being the first to the South Pole, but he was beaten in that international race by Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s group by just a few weeks.

On his journey back to base, his small group encountered unexpectedly severe weather, and failed by just 11 miles to get to their next food source, only a relatively short distance from base.

It was an extraordinary trip, in circumstances that are almost impossible to imagine.

Grochowicz tells the story simply and vividly, giving life to the crew and fellow explorers who went with Scott so far into those appalling conditions, with just the support of a bunch of long-suffering ponies and sled dogs.

This is a great entry into what is a truly epic story, with a great collection of photographs.

And then go find a copy of Scott’s Last Expedition: The Personal Journals of Captain R.F. Scott – still widely available more than a century after publication in 1913 – for what is the incredible first-hand account.

This book was published in April 2017. The review was also published in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine.

The Night Guest, By Fiona McFarlane

Tags

dylan thomas prize, the high places

Australian writer Fiona McFarlane has just won the world’s richest literary prize for young writers, The Dylan Thomas Prize, for her second book, a collection of short stories. This was her first, and it was fabulous. 

Ruth wakes in the night at her seaside home certain there’s a tiger in the house, prowling through her lounge room.

By the time she tells her son her fears over the phone, she realises she just sounds old and confused.

Then Frida arrives, sent by the government, she says, to care for Ruth. What starts as an hour a day of cleaning and personal help gradually encroaches on Ruth’s whole life.

She’s worried at times at what Frida is doing, but also grateful. How would she get by without her large, sometimes fierce, carer? Particularly when the tiger comes again.

As Ruth becomes less certain about the things she thought she knew, her childhood life in Fiji becomes more real and old memories come flooding back.

She makes contact with her youthful crush, a doctor, and the flame is kindled again.

But what is Frida really up to, and can she be trusted?

This startling debut novel from Sydney-based McFarlane is a disturbing and unsettling slow burn of a psychological thriller about love and dependence.

McFarlane places the reader claustrophobically inside Ruth’s increasing confusion, so we can see and fear what’s coming but can’t do anything about it.

The book has already sold around the world.

Update in 2017: The Night Guest ended up being shortlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2014 and for the Guardian first book award in the UK. It also won the inaugural Voss Literary prize.

It was in my 2013 list of best books I’d read that year.

Her new book is titled the The High Places. 

This book was published in 2013.