A novel about being cancelled, an escape from Manus and more new books to read

Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll have cast their eyes over a batch of recently released fiction and non-fiction books. Here, they share their recaps and reviews.

FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Wingmaker, Mette Jakobsen, Text, $27.99

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Readers of Mette Jakobsen will have come to admire the impressive poise of her writing. Her previous novels, The Vanishing Act and What the Light Hides, possessed it in spades and so does her latest, The Wingmaker, which begins with the jewel-like intensity of a short story.

Art restorer Vega seeks solitude at a Seafarer’s Hotel near the beach. Her passion for restoration has alighted on a marble angel statue of rare beauty, and she is determined to finish the job. The angel isn’t the only thing with wear and tear: Vega herself has emotional scars and continues to suffer the after-effects of a heart attack. Her search for tranquillity might be harder than she thinks – there’s a naked man sprinting from the hotel as she arrives – but there’s consolation in the absurdities she encounters. Jakobsen is a quiet writer by inclination, yet here, her sharp internal landscapes are balanced by the flamboyant whimsy of life pressing on, regardless of trauma or the weight of the past.

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Double Deal, John M. Green, Pantera, $29.99

If spy thrillers are your thing, John M. Green’s Tori Swyft series offers a sophisticated and distinctly 21st-century take on the genre. In Double Deal, the former spy is in Barcelona, holding top-secret talks with Beijing to secure a landmark Arctic deal.

The following morning, she wakes next to two corpses and has no memory of what happened. An anonymous phone call directs her to a horrific video that appears to show Tori herself as the murderer, and she is soon on the run from Spanish police, desperate to uncover the identity of the caller and prove her innocence.

Green writes with a breathless sense of pace and suspense and delivers everything you want in a thriller, but his most distinctive quality is the way he imagines the domain of international espionage intersecting with novel technology. The series feels totally up-to-the-minute and continues to be energised by the author’s knowledge of everything from deep fakes to cyberwarfare.

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We Play Ourselves, Jen Silverman, Atlantic, $27.99

When queer New York playwright Cass wins a prestigious emerging-dramatist’s prize, her career and profile surge. But it all comes unstuck after – in an impulsive response to an extravagantly negative review of her work – she assaults a fellow playwright (lauded for an experimental play portraying childhood sexual abuse), whose success she envies.

Suddenly cancelled in New York, Cass moves to LA to start anew. There, she falls in with Caroline, a documentary-maker of questionable ethics, and starts to film a highly exploitative doco about teenage girls, before finding herself face to face once more with the victim of her assault.

Jen Silverman is a playwright herself and this debut novel is most effective as a penetrating exploration of the skewed values of the theatre industry, how they affect artistic development and esteem, and the perils of the lust for acclaim.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Escape From Manus, Jaivet Ealom, Viking, $34.99

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This is not only a compelling refugee’s tale, it’s an amazing escape story. Jaivet Ealom, a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar, fled genocide in his homeland in 2013, and, after nearly drowning at sea, washed up on Manus Island.

His fantasy of being welcomed by Australia soon turned to the brutal, violent reality of what he refers as the prison of Manus. Up to this point the story is sadly familiar, what follows is anything but.

By a combination of ingenuity, outside help and breath-taking chutzpah he plotted his way off the island to fly (posing as an interpreter) across the Pacific and on to Canada, where the kindness of his reception was the total opposite of his Australian experience. The plan could have fallen apart at any time, but he’s now studying at Toronto University.

Last Shot, Jock Zonfrillo, Simon & Schuster, $45

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You know you’re talking about a tough town when your childhood friend is killed in a brawl and nobody goes to the cops. This was the Glasgow of MasterChef’s Jock Zonfrillo. Born into a Scottish/Italian family – one side revering food, the other functional eaters – he was caught at an early age trying to steal cars, lost his virginity at 12 (to an older French girl), got in brawls and gradually into drugs, which led to heroin addiction.

Along the way he trained as a chef, worked in some of the best restaurants in London, survived the tantrums of Gordon Ramsay and even got to kick Madonna’s dog, before emigration to Oz, marriages, children, and fetching up on MasterChef.

His memoir is laced with the reality and shame of addiction, but there’s also humour and a touch of the picaresque novel that really gets you in.

Labor People, Chris Bowen, Monash University Publishing, $29.95

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A portrait of Gertrude Melville, Labor’s first woman to sit in the NSW Legislative Assembly, that gathered dust in a basement for years is emblematic of the footnote status lesser political lights often end up with. A group portrait of such figures by ASLP MP Chris Bowen may not seem like inviting reading, but it’s an intriguing study of the machinery of power and the unsung work of most of the cogs.

Cameos include Ken Wriedt, a sea-faring Buddhist, like someone out of a Conrad novel, who wound up being one of Whitlam’s most solid ministers, and Frank Tudor, who inherited the leadership after Billy Hughes and held the party together when it could have disintegrated.

Suffragist Lilian Locke, first deputy leader Gregor McGregor and John Dedman, righthand man for both Curtin and Chifley, complete the sextet. Melville’s portrait is now on display.

Title Fight, Paul Cleary, Black Inc., $32.99

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This is an epic tale involving the struggle between Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s giant, global mining company Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) and the Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara region where the FMG has been mining without the approval of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC).

It’s an ongoing tussle (despite a YAC High Court victory) that goes back years and Paul Cleary’s study of the case inevitably involves a highly complex legal, paper and cultural trail – all against the backdrop of the multi-billion dollar iron-ore industry and the rights of the people whose custodianship of the land reaches back thousands of years.

As the title suggests it involves heavyweight characters. This is pertinent and important extended investigative journalism, clearly and passionately written.

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