Book reviews: Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers headlines best new reads
LIANE Moriarty turns her trademark, easy-to-read style onto the wellness industry in her new book Nine Perfect Strangers. But does it live up to the hype? Read all the latest book reviews here.
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ANY Liane Moriarty release is a big literary event.
In Nine Perfect Stranger she turns her trademark, easy-to-read style onto the wellness industry.
MORE BOOKS: THRILLERS, COLD CASES AND FOOTY
The blockbuster release headlines our list of the best new reads, which range from an outback Australian drama and a romance gone wrong to a look inside the minds of murderers.
NINE PERFECT STRANGERS
Liane Moriarty
PUT Liane Moriarty’s name on a book and it’s guaranteed to sell like hot cakes. And her latest offering, which is out today, will not disappoint her diehard fans.
In her trademark, easy-to-read style and with warmth and humour, the best-selling author again hits on a touchstone issue — this time, the wellness industry.
As the title suggests, nine people book in for a 10-day stay in an unconventional health retreat, called Tranquillum House, in regional New South Wales.
Menopausal romance novelist Frances Welty is suffering a crisis. Her career as an author seems to be going down the gurgler and she’s fallen for an online romance scam. Overweight Tony has been wallowing in self-pity and Frances is certain he’s a serial killer.
Ben and Jessica turn up in their Lamborghini. Their marriage took a turn for the worse when they had a lotto windfall and Jessica started pumping herself full of Botox and breast implants — to the delight of her Instagram following and the disgust of her husband.
Chatty schoolteacher Napoleon and wife Heather arrive with daughter Zoe. The family is still reeling from the death three years earlier of Zoe’s twin Zach. Neurotic mum Carmel would do anything to lose weight, having fallen into a pit of self-loathing since her husband left, while Lars loves a regular health retreat to make up for his excesses.
And then there’s Masha, the retreat’s striking and evangelical director. To the shock of everyone, the retreat starts with a period of silence, confiscated contraband and a whispered warning to Frances from a masseuse, “Just don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
To say more would give too much away. Suffice to say this isn’t your ordinary wellness retreat. While not as pacy as Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers is enjoyable and will no doubt be the talk of the town, Nicole Kidman having secured the rights to produce and star in a film adaptation.
Shelley Hadfield
ONLY KILLERS AND THIEVES
Paul Howarth
Welcome to the Australian frontier at its most extreme. It’s late 1800s central Queensland and the McBride family is struggling to eke out a livelihood in this unforgiving drought-ravaged landscape. The miracle downpour finally arrives and with it a little optimism for hardworking teens Tommy and Billy. But the change also brings horrific murders and the brothers are now alone and forced into the lap of a neighbouring landowner, obnoxious and greedy John Sullivan. Believing their Aboriginal farm hand was behind the killings, the boys reluctantly join Sullivan, keen for retribution, and a posse led by the vigilante Queensland Native Police, whose sole purpose is the dispersal (slaughter) of indigenous Australians to protect the rights of settlers. This first novel from Howarth is brutal and heartbreaking. It’s the development of narrator Tommy’s moral compass and caring soul that helps you wade through carnage, and really is a tribute to the part of us that struggles to remain human in the worst of circumstances.
Paul Hunter
FRONT DESK
Kelly Yang
Working at the front desk of a motel, handing out keys to guests, sounds like a fun activity for a 10-year-old. But the novelty wears off for Mia Tang, who mans the desk before and after school while her Chinese migrant parents spend long hours cleaning the California motel for little reward.
Mia is ashamed — of her basic home at the back of the motel, her cheap floral pants that are no match for her classmates’ jeans, and that her mum believes she will never master English. But Mia is also proud — of her parents’ work ethic, the residents from many cultures making up her motel family, and her own determination to make it in her new country.
Tenacious Mia is based on the life of Yang, who defied her motel upbringing to go to college at 13 and graduate from Harvard law school. This story of racism, tolerance, poverty and personal challenges is aimed at young readers but the heartfelt story will appeal to adults too.
Carina Bruce
THE TALL MAN
Phoebe Locke
Sadie has a newborn baby and a partner she loves when she leaves them in the dead of night, only to return 16 years later.
As a child, Sadie was haunted by an urban myth about a child-stealing “tall man” (an obvious nod to the real-life Slender Man murder) and she was unable to shake its effects, even after having her own baby. Miles and Amber have created a life as single dad and daughter, and while Miles is overjoyed at the return of the love of his life, Amber is much more wary. Flash forward two years and Amber is being followed around Los Angeles by a documentary crew that won the rights to her story after a murder that gripped the world.
This is a thriller with an intriguing premise, but a little too much in the way of unnecessary backstory for characters who really don’t matter. Still, the twists are genuinely surprising and the ending creepy enough to justify the journey.
Claire Sutherland
MIND BEHIND THE CRIME
Helen McGrath and Cheryl Critchley
Psychologist McGrath and journalist Critchley combine again to study Australia’s most inconceivable murders. They examine cases where people have killed their children (noting men are responsible for more than 90 per cent of family murders), as well as crimes caused by narcissistic, paranoid, anti-social or autistic behaviour.
When these cases came to court, often the defence relied on proving the defendant was not responsible for his/her actions. One of the 13 cases examined is that of Arthur Freeman, who unsuccessfully tried to argue he was mentally impaired when he threw his four-year-old daughter off the West Gate Bridge.
Recently, there has been a spate of books looking at Australia’s worst crimes. This one approaches the subject impartially, scientifically and with authority. Little wonder the authors’ previous book has been quoted in court cases. This one probably will be, too.
Jeff Maynard
SOMETHING IN THE WATER
Catherine Steadman
There’s a touch of celebrity attached to Steadman’s first novel. Steadman is an actor, who played a small role in British costume drama Downton Abbey; and Something in the Water has been selected by Hollywood actor and producer Reese Witherspoon for her book club. Witherspoon has also picked up the film rights.
Documentary maker Erin and financial planner Mark are happy and planning their wedding when Mark loses his job. Their perfect world doesn’t come crashing down, instead it’s a slow-motion sequence of tumbles, with each decision they make causing them to fall further.
And that is the genius of Steadman’s plot. She makes this extraordinary story seem plausible and by the final page you’ll be looking at your own life and wondering just how well you know your partner and how far you would go to save your relationship and your home.
Michelle Collins
WILD FIRE
Ann Cleeves
Two things spread like wildfire. One is … wildfire, and the other is gossip, particularly if it is malicious or malevolent.
In the last of Cleeves’ Shetland books featuring Jimmy Perez, readers again take a trip to the islands off Scotland for sightseeing and murder. Everyone there has an intriguing backstory, making for more than a handful of suspects when a nanny is found hanged on a property that has seen a fair amount of grief. The house may have been rebuilt, but the lives of the recent inhabitants have a long way to go to put down solid foundations in a community suspicious of new arrivals.
Add dour Perez and his convoluted relationships for another complex story of island life and the problems of being cut off from other islands and the mainland that no amount of technology can alleviate. Unfortunately, the only way we will meet Perez and his clan again is if the BBC continues its Shetland series, starring Douglas Henshall.
Barry Reynolds
HER PRETTY FACE
Robyn Harding
It’s a tad scary how many troubled female characters are being unleashed in the domestic noir genre. Her Pretty Face adds another two women with hidden pasts to this chilling market. Kate Randolph and Frances Metcalfe, mums weighed down by dark secrets, slip into a convenient friendship when excluded from their private school clique.
For frumpy Frances, it’s a social lifeline, while chic Kate seems content ignoring the snobs. But it’s no surprise that all is not as it seems — one of these mums has been in jail for her part in a murder. When the other mother discovers the news, trust goes out the window as she pursues the truth, while a figure from the murderer mum’s past threatens to blow the secret open too.
Harding, from Vancouver, gives readers shocking cause to think twice about their own friendships as she targets trust, deceit, forgiveness and whether people can ever change.
Carina Bruce
NO FRIEND BUT THE MOUNTAINS: WRITING FROM MANUS PRISON
Behrouz Boochani (Translated by Omid Tofighian)
KURDISH journalist and poet Behrouz Boochani (above) has been on Manus Island for five years, most of those as a prisoner held in the worst of conditions. This book is his first-hand account of what it feels like to be in this hellhole Australia created.
He immerses the reader in Manus’ everyday horrors: the boredom, frustration, violence, obsession and hunger; the petty bureaucratic bullying and the wholesale nastiness; the tragedies and the soul-destroying hopelessness. Its creation was an almost unimaginable task.
This story was sent piece by piece, as phone texts written in Farsi (Persian), and then translated. The poetry and the philosophical underpinnings of the original language shine through in the lyrical prose and sentence structure of the translation, where poetry and text sit side-by-side throughout.
The book starts with Boochani’s terrifying journey by boat from Indonesia and rescue, before transfer to Manus. But it’s his description of life on Manus that will lodge deep in the brain of anyone who reads it. Follow him at @BehrouzBoochani.
Corinna Hente
MY PURPLE SCENTED NOVEL
Ian McEwan
Parker Sparrow has a confession, of sorts, to make. Parker and Jocelyn Tarbet have been close friends for 40 years, since their university days. They both aspired to be famous writers, shared girlfriends and even a dalliance. As their heady days come to an end, family and the need to earn a living get in the way of Parker’s dream, though he does make some heroic efforts.
But the pair remain inextricably linked, as McEwan writes, like the two ends of a seesaw. But when one end of the seesaw rises, the other, necessarily, must fall. And so, the seesaw makes its tilt. Parker admits he stole a life, and he has no intentions of giving it back. Parker gives new meaning to the word frenemy, but master novelist McEwan has vividly yet succinctly painted this likeable character.
This novella spans just 34 pages and was first published in The New Yorker It’s been published to celebrate McEwan’s 70th birthday and is a neat little book.
Shelley Hadfield
SCREW LOOSE
Peter Blazey
Journalist and author Peter Blazey was a homosexual who survived Australia in the era of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke. Many newspapers would not print the word “homosexual”, while same-sex relationships were illegal in some states.
While Blazey wrestled with his sexuality and became “addicted more to the sense of danger than the sex”, he worked on the staff of Liberal and Labor politicians, and witnessed key moments in our political history. He charts his rise and fall on the fringes of Australian politics, offering insight into how leaders dealt with LGBT people finding a voice. Blazey tells his inspiring and tragic story with admirable humour and honesty.
This memoir, written from hospital as he lay dying of AIDS, was first published 20 years ago. It has been republished with a foreword by Michael Kirby and is, perhaps, more relevant and fascinating now.
Jeff Maynard
CECIL HEALEY: A BIOGRAPHY
John Devitt and Larry Writer
I interviewed John Devitt a few years ago for an article about Australian swimmers who had won the Olympic 100m freestyle. While happy to recall the circumstances surrounding his controversial win in Rome in 1960, Devitt was determined I should also write the extraordinary story behind the 1912 race in Stockholm and the performance, in and out of the water, of Australia’s Cecil Healy.
At the time, the fastest swimmer in the world was the legendary Duke Kahanamoku. Due to a misunderstanding over scheduling, the Hawaiian missed the event’s semi-final. Healy refused to swim in the final if Kahanamoku was absent. Officials relented. The Duke won gold, Healy silver. Healy, who also won gold in the 200m relay, was killed in World War I.
With noted author Larry Writer, Devitt has produced an emotional and fitting tribute to his sporting and personal hero. His prologue alone is enough to bring a tear to the eye.
Mike Colman
DRESSING THE DEARLOVES
Kelly Doust
Cracking the spine on this book is the literary version of opening a trunk full of vintage clothes.
The second novel by the Sydney author once again takes you into the world of fashion through her protagonist Sylvie Dearlove, a failed fashion designer who returns to the English estate that has been in her family for generations to lick her wounds.
Despite her obvious failings, Sylvie is easy to love and you’ll back her as she struggles to reinvent herself and save the crumbling family home, Bledesford. It may have a predictable ending but it gets you there by way of loveable and unique characters and intriguing references to the treasure trove of vintage finds Sylvie discovers in the attic belonging to generations of women in her family.
With this novel, Doust joins great Aussie authors of historic drama, such as Kate Morton, Belinda Alexandra and Fiona McIntosh, who bring fictional families and places to life, with warmth and a spike of mystery
Mercedes Maguire
THE ONES YOU TRUST
Caroline Overington
Life can be a juggle in a busy household, and miscommunication can often occur. But while it’s one thing to come home without the bread and milk, forgetting to pick up a child is another matter.
As co-host of top-rating morning show Cuppa, Emma Cardwell runs her life by the clock; up at 3am, breakfast by 3.15am and on the way to the studio at 3.45am. She keeps her three children — two at school and one in childcare — organised with the help of her recently retrenched husband Brandon and nanny Lena. So imagine Emma’s panic and anger at returning home to find her husband has forgotten to pick up Fox-Piper, 17 months, from the Crayon and Clay daycare centre, which has been closed for two hours.
But assumptions the child has been locked in turn into a parent’s nightmare — Fox-Piper cannot be found and is presumed kidnapped. Just like that, everyone is a suspect — parents, nanny, relatives and colleagues. The Ones You Trust begins as a whodunit, but it is so much more. Overington (above) also delves into the not-so-glittery side of celebrity — pressure on women to keep their looks, paparazzi, stalkers, the battle for ratings success and social media manipulation for the greater good of the network. Expect the unexpected.
Sashi Thapa-Howard
THE MAP OF SLAT & STATS
Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
In an engaging tale, the author uses two girls centuries apart to shine a light on our troubled times. Nour has lost her father to cancer and relocated from New York to the Syrian city of Homs with her map-maker mother and two older sisters. This is her story, but running parallel is a story her father told her and that she keeps within her to survive as the family is bombed out of Syria.
Refugee life is a troubled one, the family finds, trying to find a haven, in Jordan, then Egypt, across Libya to Algeria and Morocco. The places they seek refuge — Jordan, Egypt and Cueta — are central to the tale of Rawiya, a 16-year-old map-maker’s apprentice in the 12th century. Rawiya, who has also lost her father, pretends to be a boy and joins famous map-maker Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi on a journey to make an accurate map of Syria and Jordan.
Rawiya distinguishes herself as a warrior and, from her tale, Nour finds remarkable resilience.
Lee Howard
HELL SHIP
Michael Veitch
In August 1852, the sailing ship Ticonderoga left England crammed with emigrants seeking a better life in Australia. Normally the three-month voyage was dangerous, but the Ticonderoga’s passengers and crew faced an extra threat: a typhoid outbreak.
As the crowded ship headed to Melbourne, the death toll rose and ports refused to allow the ship to dock and seek medical help. Bodies weren’t cold before they were dumped overboard and even when the ship did reach Victoria, survivors were told to disembark on a lonely beach and fend for themselves.
Veitch’s great-great-grandparents were on board and, until now, the story of the disastrous voyage was little more than family legend. But with the same meticulous research he has put into his books on wartime aviators, Veitch fleshes out a tale of courage and tragedy and brings it to life with drama, passion and detail.
JEFF MAYNARD
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