A new novel from Julian Barnes and a memoir of childhood lived in the shadow of a bipolar father

A NEW novel from Julian Barnes and a memoir of childhood lived in the shadow of a bipolar father.

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1. FictionTHE NOISE OF TIME Julian Barnes Jonathan Cape, $32.99

WRITTEN in the genre of fact-as-fiction, the story of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich was always going to be tough to pin down. He was a prominent figure in 20th Century music whose career was at the pleasure of the Communist regime, primarily Joseph Stalin during his rule of terror. “They always came for you in the middle of the night,” Barnes writes. Shostakovich would go to bed clothed, lying on top of the blankets with a small bag packed ready to go.

The book is sunless, as though it takes place underground where life goes on without light or pleasure. He fights to keep his integrity, but how can he? Even with Khrushchev in power, the insults continue, as Shostakovich is forced to denounce others to curry favour. It’s a sad book, necessarily so.

PENNY DEBELLEêêêê

2. Memoir FAREWELL TO THE FATHER Tim Elliott Pan Macmillan, $34.99

ELLIOTT’S Sydney childhood looked picture perfect: three older siblings, nice house on the harbour, private school education, fishing, surfing, a devoted mum and a giant for a father. Max Elliott was an eminent doctor and had played rugby for Australia, but he also suffered from bipolar disorder. In the 1970s, that sort of thing was kept a family secret. Max could be generous and funny, but he was also violent, destructive and vicious, and the cocktail of alcohol and drugs he took didn’t help.

Elliott’s description of his own adolescent anger and impotence is beautifully told, and your heart aches for the boy’s endless anxiety for his dad, teetering at the edge of self-destruction. Elliott’s adulthood is lived under this shadow, and he is frank about the depression which he has inherited. It is a story which many, many people will recognise and salute.

ROBYN DOUGLASS êêêê

3. Military History THE FAIR DINKUMS Glenn McFarlane Macmillan Australia, $34.99

FAIR dinkum, this is a readable account of the 152 men of the 8th Reinforcements of the 7th Battalion who enlisted despite knowing they were heading for the chaos of Gallipoli. Rather than an analysis of military tactics or political machinations, McFarlane has written a poignant account of the individuals and their families derived from letters, diaries, newspapers and war archives.

Among the men who trained in Egypt and fought at Gallipoli and later in France was Bill Scurry, who came up with the idea of the time delay “drip rifle” to cover the ANZAC’s evacuation, the author’s grand uncle Alf Layfield who was known as the Smiling Boy, and Frenchman Auguste Lafargues, who was wounded at Fromelles but ended up knocking on the door of his family home and embracing his mother.

The book is well-illustrated and referenced, as you would expect from a journalist of 26 years and author of nine books.

DAVID BRADBURY êêê

4. Biography A GIRL FROM OZ Lyndall Hobbs Hardie Grant, $35

A PROMISING junior sprinter who switched to journalism and later film directing, Melbourne-born Lyndall Hobbs has set a cracking career pace. Working with Molly Meldrum at pop paper Go-Set in the late 1960s, and fending off advances from a smitten Dudley Moore, she soon found herself in England.

Hobbs became one of the UK’s youngest TV reporters, interviewing and befriending Andy Warhol, while beginning a relationship with Rocky Horror Picture Show producer Michael White, that opened a door to mixing with celebs such as Jack Nicholson and Mick Jagger. Moving to the US, she began a volatile affair with Al Pacino and became friends with Madonna, launching a directing career and enduring dreadful sexism in Hollywood.

Hobbs’s insights into the movie world’s male domination are the most powerful of an entertaining memoir redolent with honest Aussie spirit.

NICK HOPTON êêê

5. Graphic novel ROCKHOPPING Trace Balla Allen & Unwin, $24.99

THIS companion to the gentle, atmospheric Rivertime (2014) finds Clancy and Uncle Egg camping and climbing in Gariwerd (the Grampians) to find the source of the river they canoed on their first adventure. There is more action in this 80-page comic-style book and more suspense when the pair become separated and Clancy very competently braves what looks like being a lonely night, but the highlights are still Clancy’s growing appreciation of solitude — of just being himself in the world, a barefoot boy hopping among the rocks, observing the minutiae of his surroundings and imagining those who might have been there before him.

The book is again teeming with Balla’s amazingly recognisable little scrawls of local flora and fauna, all with their names appended in a tiny but perfectly legible hand, and again the endpapers act as a pictorial glossary — animals and birds at the front opening, insects, amphibians and plants at the rear: a book to inspire delight in the natural world and respect for the nation’s first peoples.

KATHARINE ENGLAND êêêê