19 new books to read if you’re stuck inside
Nothing passes time like a good book. We’ve found 19 of the best new releases to read over the next few weeks if you’re stuck at home.
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Looking for a new novel, a look at our criminal history or a cracking autobiography?
These are the pick of the new book releases for 2020 as reviewed by the Herald Sun.
TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU
KELLY RIMMER
With the devastating and overwhelming topic of post-partum depression at its heart, this is no cheery read. Australian author Kelly Rimmer (above) draws out emotion as she follows two new mothers from one family coming to terms with debilitating depression. With four children under four, Grace Walsh’s only outlet from her despair in 1959 is to jot down her dark thoughts in letters, particularly after a doctor declares she just needs to tough it out. With contraception a sin and abortion illegal, Grace’s most agonising note comes when she realises she cannot face another pregnancy. Fast-forward almost 40 years and Grace’s psychologist daughter Beth struggles to rationalise her own battle to bond with her long-awaited son. Cleaning out the family home, she finds a stash of letters that help unlock her own secret — along with shocking truths that force Beth and her siblings to reassess their family memories. Rimmer’s tale implores us to recognise and respond to this condition that has been a weight across generations of women.
Reviewed by Carina Bruce
TEN ROGUES
PETER GROSE
With such a short history you would think that there would be few stories not told about Australia’s colonial past. But veteran journalist and writer Peter Grose has managed to find one that should have already found a distinguished place among the tall tales about scoundrels (well, criminals) bucking authority that the country is so fond of. At its heart is the story of 10 convicts, including ringleader Jimmy Porter, who steal a ship — which they helped to build — from a Tasmanian penal colony and sail it across the pacific to Chile and (short-lived) freedom. That they managed this feat of navigation without charts is a fireside yarn in itself. But the book is also the story of the privatisation of transportation after the arrival of the First Fleet a fact that angered the author and led him to “share some of my fury at the sheer cruelty and injustice of the whole convict system”. But what will keep you reading beyond the “fury” is Porter’s life of courage in the face of his extremely poor life choices and his ability to escape the noose on numerous occasions.
Reviewed by Barry Reynolds
TEN FEET TALL AND NOT QUITE BULLETPROOF
CAMERON HARDIMAN
For most of this book, Cameron Hardiman goes back and forth between recalling how he got into the Air Wing of the Victoria Police Force, and a fateful day in February 2005. A happy, cheeky young man, he was attracted to the lights, sirens and camaraderie of police life while, like most coppers, always found it difficult to deal with the trauma of seeing lives torn apart by accidents and violence. But he learnt to cope. Confronting the seeming injustice of the legal system, where he watched violent criminals often walk free, was another matter. So was working within a bureaucracy sometimes more intent on protecting its assets than supporting the officers who were risking their lives. Hardiman’s story climaxes in a dangerous rescue over Bass Strait in2005, and the after-events that saw the proud and passionate police pilot battling PTSD. Despite the ominous foreboding that pervades, he’s able to recount the events of his career in a relaxed, conversational manner, which not only makes the book an enjoyable read, but serves to underscore how people in high-risk jobs face dangers that go way beyond the physical.
Reviewed by Jeff Maynard
ACTRESS
ANNE ENRIGHT
Katherine O’Dell was, in her day, a true star of stage and screen. Even when the gloss faded, and scandal and health issues diminished her, people still remembered her with fondness. Years after her death, her daughter Nora decides it’s time to find out, if she can, who her mysterious father was. It was something Katherine was never prepared to discuss, despite the otherwise strong bond between the two. In retracing her mother’s steps, Nora discovers some of the hidden truths about her mother’s life — the people who betrayed her, the secrets of her past — but this final detail remains frustratingly elusive. The relationship between mother and daughter is the core of the story, and Anne Enright explores it with intensity and insight. The Irish author is best known for her Booker Prize-winning book The Gathering, and this shares with it an almost claustrophobic approach to the pain of family secrets. The story meanders a bit, but Enright has a way of drawing readers in and never overdoing it. There are things she won’t reveal, and readers will have to work it out for themselves.
Reviewed by Corinna Hente
DEAR EDWARD
ANN NAPOLITANO
Twelve-year-old Eddie is the only survivor of a plane crash that killed 191 people, including his parents and brother. He’s dragged from the crumpled wreck to live with his aunt and uncle, sifting through the literal wreckage of his life in a new house in a new state. His aunt is bereft at both the loss of her family, and the fact she’s been unable to have children of her own. His uncle takes refuge in secretly compiling every detail of the crash and its aftermath as a strange way of silently supporting Eddie. The only thing that brings Eddie comfort is the unjudging support of his next-door neighbour, Shay, and the discovery of a cache of letters from relatives of the other passengers. Their touching friendship — and how they deal with the letters his uncle has secretly kept — forms the basis of every alternate chapter of Dear Edward. The chapters between detail each stage in the ill-fated plane crash, and the lives of selected passengers on it. It sounds maudlin, but this is actually a moving reflection on friendship and carrying on after unimaginable loss.
Reviewed by Claire Sutherland
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES
KARINA KILMORE
The crusading journalist who’ll stop at nothing to get to the truth is a well-exercised crime fiction genre. But in her debut novel Karina Kilmore injects so much more into the stereotypical old newshound we often read about. For a start Chrissie O’Brian is under 40 and a gifted investigative journalist with enormous drive to succeed and a career still on the rise. But she’s also hiding a dark past, self-medicating with alcohol and painkillers to leave it behind. Chrissie works at The Argus in Melbourne and is handed the keys to a great story involving a bitter standoff between big business and unions on Melbourne’s troubled docks. The story quickly escalates into an unravelling mess of murder, drugs and corruption, with Chrissie caught in the middle. Like her main protagonist, Kilmore was born in New Zealand and is also a journalist, including a stint at this newspaper. On familiar ground, she’s filled The Argus with an entertaining list of the usual suspects, including the volatile and cantankerous old editor who resents Chrissie’s appointment to his shrinking team. Chrissie’s desperate race to uncover the truth will have you hooked and hoping she gets there in one piece.
Reviewed by Paul Hunter
BELOW DECK
SOPHIE HARDCASTLE
This story is divided into three parts of Olivia’s life – her early 20s when she’s introduced to the beauty of sailing, her mid-20s where she suffers a serious trauma at sea, and her late 20s where she’s left to deal with the ripple effect that horrific experience set in motion. Olivia has synaesthesia (she see sounds as colours) which makes for rich and evocative scenes that can jump off the page. But Below Deck will also disturb you and shows how one drop-in-the-ocean moment can have a deep impact on a life. It’s a story that tries to cover a lot of big issues all at once – body dysmorphia, climate change, toxic relationships and sexual assault. And its conclusion, while pacifying, suddenly sailed too fast into a neat wrap up of the problems that had plagued Olivia chapter after chapter.
Reviewed by Elouise Tynan
THE CLERGYMAN’S WIFE
MOLLY GREELEY
This novel is bound to polarise dedicated fans of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Some will love and others will hate the fact that US author Molly Greeley has taken the liberty of delving into the heart and mind of Charlotte Collins (nee Lucas), a favourite character from Austen’s classic. In Austen’s work, Charlotte avoids dreaded spinsterhood by giving her hand in marriage to socially awkward clergyman William Collins. They move away to Kent, leaving readers wondering about Charlotte’s lot in life. But Greeley steps up to take the story quite a few steps further, following the new Mrs Collins as she tackles her marital and parish duties. It’s an ordinary, somewhat uninspiring and even frustrating life, until Charlotte lays eyes on unmarried farmer Robby Travis, who has been recruited to plant and tend her husband’s rose garden. Suddenly, Charlotte’s heart and head feel different and she begins to wonder about the existence and possibility of true love. This is a thought-provoking addition to a literary world crowded with potential Austen sequels.
Reviewed by Carina Bruce
THE SISTERS OF AUSCHWITZ
ROXANE VAN IPEREN
When Roxane Van Iperen bought a new house in a remote area of The Netherlands, she discovered it had a secret — it had been used as a safe house to hide Jewish families fleeing the Nazi advance in World War II. Van Iperen set about researching the house’s story and discovered Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, two sisters who hid dozens of Jewish people from the Nazi hunters before they were caught and sent to Auschwitz. The book is complicated and hard to follow, with the author trying to track a vast array of the Brilleslijper sisters’ friends, families and resistance associates. It’s difficult to keep track of the connections and as a result, becomes a bit of a slog. And yet, there’s something that keeps you turning the pages, wanting to know how it ends. The book sheds light on some of the lesser-known experiences of the Jewish people of The Netherlands and how they were persecuted. And once the families are settled into the home, it becomes easier to follow their lives, hopes and dreams, and their abject terror of being separated and sent to the camps. It’s a real insight into their lives, in hiding and before the war, and stays with the reader long after the final page has been reached.
Reviewed by Ellen Whinnett
MR NOBODY
CATHERINE STEADMAN
Actor Catherine Steadman, of Downtown Abbey fame, shows her versatility with a cracking second psychological thriller. Dr Emma Lewis, a rising star in the field of neuropsychiatry, jumps at the chance to tackle the case of a nameless man with no memory found on a beach. Dubbed Mr Nobody, he baffles doctors and draws global attention. There lies a problem for Emma because she has kept a low profile for years after a family tragedy forced her to change her identity and flee her hometown. It’s the same place Mr Nobody was found. Desperate to crack the case and prove her doubters wrong, Emma puts aside her fears to establish a professional and personal rapport with her mystery patient. But as she delves deeper, not everything adds up and then she defies advice to walk away before she loses everything. Steadman (above) has a knack to keep readers thinking and guessing throughout. And it’s more than welcome that her key character is not a crazy woman, as occurs in so many thrillers.
Reviewed by Carina Bruce
MIX TAPE
JANE SANDERSON
As you might expect, this book comes with an evocative soundtrack –— and you can listen in as you read via a Spotify playlist. Alison is a Sheffield teenager, coping with an impossibly difficult home life. When she meets Dan, she keeps the mess to herself, but is grateful for their shared love of music and for being able to escape into his perfectly ordinary, wonderful family. When her precarious home situation explodes, she runs — never wanting to return. But one day, decades later in Adelaide, she receives a contact from Dan — a single song, no note. Dan, like Alison, has made a happy life, and both are married with grown-up children. But their first love remains unfinished business and neither can let go of the memories. As they swap songs, it becomes a conversation that will shape their future. This is a well-written and enjoyable musical stroll through lost (and found) love. The morality of adultery will bother some — neither partner is portrayed as a monster — but the romantic warmth of the story is undeniable.
Reviewed by Corinna Hente
LONG BRIGHT RIVER
LIZ MOORE
Hard-bitten and hard to put down, Long Bright River follows single mum Mickey, a cop in one of Philadelphia’s toughest and most drug-affected suburbs. She could try for a promotion to detective, but staying a beat cop means she can keep one eye out for her sister Kacey, a drug addict and sex worker long-lost to Mickey but still in her heart. When the bodies of down-and-out young women start piling up in Mickey’s region, she fights a losing battle to get her superiors to care, but the fact that she hasn’t managed to spot Kacey for a month makes Mickey all the more determined to pursue it, in the face of her boss’ disinterest and the fact it’s not actually her job. Liz Moore has imbued this story with the toughness and authenticity of The Wire, and although the final chapters are a rush of exposition and unlikely explanations, what comes before is solid enough to make this a worthy addition to the crime genre.
Reviewed by Claire Sutherland
THE 24-HOUR CAFE
LIBBY PAGE
At first glance, the plot might seem a tad simple with one setting over 24 hours, but don’t under estimate the power of this little gem. The Stella cafe offers more than coffee and food. To its eclectic patrons and committed staff it is a part-time home, the source of friendships and the fountain of dreams – past and future. As each hour ticks over, it delivers a story about Stella’s random customers from Dan, the engineering student struggling to deal with his mother’s death, to Joe and Haziq who contemplate a life-changing decision. Woven through the chapters is the friendship between co-workers and housemates Mona and Hannah. They juggle shifts to support their first love, which is dancing and singing, but it is their interaction with the customers that harness the reader and expose the frailties of human behaviour. The girls also have their own issues and the friendship is tested quite severely. Londoner Libby Page shows the importance of relationships, honesty and often the need for empathy when we communicate, regardless of how fleeting it might be.
Reviewed by Wendy Mason
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING
DELIA OWENS
There’s a trace of a good novel here, but it’s obliterated by characters who make inexplicable choices, a saccharine love story and a portrayal of black American characters that wouldn’t be out of place in Gone With the Wind. Kya is a child fending for herself in a North Carolina marsh after her parents and siblings abandon her. It’s 1952, and the authorities’ efforts to force her into school are cursory. She instead spends her days selling oysters to Jumpin, the black man who runs the wharf tackle shop. An encounter with fisherman’s son Tate sees a love story take root. But when Tate goes to college he breaks his promise to return for her, and she falls for Chase, a local football star who promises marriage but then makes a sudden and ill-explained lurch into villainy. When Chase shows up dead in the swamp, Kya’s suspected. Few of the characters’ actions in this novel stand up to any scrutiny. They act to advance the plot, even if it makes no sense.
Reviewed by Claire Sutherland
PIP DRYSDALE
Actor Charlie Carter Buchanan’s wedded bliss is shattered the night she catches a glimpse of husband Oliver on a dating app. While she tries to convince herself it’s just a handsome lookalike, she knows it will be near impossible for her marriage to recover. After all, Oliver’s business activities increasingly drag him away from home — and worse, his profile photo is out of their honeymoon album. As the signs of betrayal create a snowball effect in her life, Charlie confides in friends she knows she can trust. Or can she? And when there’s a suspicious death, suddenly Charlie discovers police have her in the frame. Author Pip Drysdale follows her impressive debut The Sunday Girl with another busy, mind-bending tale guaranteed to make readers doubt almost everything and everyone they hold close. And with reliance on social media prominent throughout, it should be thought-provoking for a generation of digital networkers.
Reviewed by Carina Bruce
WILD FEARLESS CHESTS
MANDY BEAUMONT
Melbourne-based author Mandy Beaumont brings a clear, poetry-honed voice to 21 depictions of loneliness, survival and self-discovery in this debut collection.
While many of the short stories take place in unidentified places, mostly urban or suburban, elsewhere the cavernous blue skies and persistent heat of her home town Brisbane magnify the emptiness that her characters — mostly women and many unnamed — confront. And like a Brisbane summer, the tone can be relentless: motifs repeating; narratives unbroken by dialogue; the stories — often brooding vignettes of time and place — blending into a melancholic haze heavy with unhealthy relationships and damaged families. Drowning in Thick Air and the title story are among the standouts. One of the longest, Bright Light and All Brilliance, offers a refreshing break as it plays with form and rhythm. Similarly, He Tells Her of the Beautiful Lines, and elsewhere, speculative brushes aim for fresh perspective, but sadly for the characters in their honestly drawn and sometimes brutal misery, there is little escape in here.
Reviewed By Jason Nahrung
SUCH A FUN AGE
KILEY REID
This is a refreshing and insightful story that will creep up on you. Emira, a mid-20s African-American woman and part-time babysitter, is in a supermarket when she’s accused of abducting the white toddler in her care. Kelley, a white man in his early 30s, records the incident while Emira’s employer, white mum Alix, is determined to show their black babysitter just how culturally aware she is. It’s a tough plot to describe in a
way that does the story justice. But it’s the sign of a good book when you have a physical
reaction as you read. I felt the tension of that supermarket scene tight in my chest.
The stress Emira felt had me chewing on the inside of my cheek. And the injustice of it had
me frantically turning page after page. Kiley Reid writes with such calm surety, what you
expect to be an overt, in-your-face dive into racial prejudice turns out to be a subtle trip filled
with heart and ultimate self-awareness. At least for Emira.
Reviewed by Elouise Tynan
DEEP STATE
CHRIS HAUTY
Hayley Chill is a US Army boxing champ when she flukes an internship at the White House. Her straight, no-nonsense style brings her to the attention of newly elected Richard Monroe, a
president who appears to be undermining democracy and dividing the country with his extremist views and soft stance on America’s enemies. Then Chill finds the White House chief of staff, who disagreed with Monroe, dead. The death is declared a heart attack, but Chill believes it was murder and begins to investigate clandestinely. The premise is encapsulated in a scene when Chill meets a journalist who declares, “The Deep State is the US Government”. It’s no surprise when, a day later, the journalist turns up dead. With more than a nod to current US politics, Deep State is an action novel with Chill cast as a kind of female Jack Reacher. As the lone hero, she battles an unseen enemy who always seems to be one step ahead of the plot.
Reviewed By Jeff Maynard
THIS IS HAPPINESS
NIALL WILLIAMS
This is the coming-of-age story of Noel Crowe and his grandparents’ village, Faha, in County Kerry, Ireland, in the mid-20th century. While the 17-year-old Noel gains some knowledge and a little wisdom as workers and equipment arrive in the village to hook up this rural backwater to the electricity, it is not certain that Faha needs any more light shed on its inhabitants. From the safe distance of his older age, Crowe tells the story of staying with his grandparents after losing his faith and leaving the seminary, of his first loves, and his first drinks alongside Christy McMahon, a worker for the electricity board who has also taken a room with his grandparents. This beautifully written book has wonderful turns of phrase that has you reading in an Irish accent, and slowing your pace as you become attuned to a vanished world of little money but a wealth of welcome and humour — as well as all the enmities of any isolated village.
Reviewed by Barry Reynolds
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