Top reads this week include a biography of a boxer, the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and a crime novel set in a boarding school
A BIOGRAPHY of a boxer, a new story from the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and a crime novel set in an elite boarding school are among this week’s top reads.
Books & Magazines
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Fiction
NOW AND AGAIN
Charlotte Rogan
Virago, $29.99
A fatalist believes the future has already been decided and that nothing can change it. But what if you try?
That’s what Rogan ponders in this engrossing tale that is occasionally lightly humorous, sometimes savage, and ultimately both uplifting and sad.
So Maggie Rayburn elects to turn whistleblower when she finds evidence that the munitions company she works for in a small town in America is poisoning people. And Army Captain Penn Sinclair tries to atone for a disastrous mission he commanded in Iraq.
The pair are only loosely connected but both soon find they have affected many lives, although not always for the good.
There’s a large cast of characters, each distinctively and affectionately drawn, who will keep you turning the pages to find out if they can change destiny.
IAN ORCHARD ****
Biography
THE FIGHTER
Arnold Zable
Text, $27.99
This is a truly inspiring slice-of-life tale about an Australian Jewish boxer, Henry Nissen, now 68. He and his twin brother Leon spent much of their youth in Melbourne’s children’s homes or on the mean streets because their mother was suffering from mental illness linked to a tortured Eastern European wartime past.
Bullied Henry and equally skinny Leon learned to box. Henry won the flyweight Commonwealth belt and rose to No. 3 in the world but didn’t take a shot at a global title. But it is the champ’s work of the past 35 years tirelessly helping street kids while stevedoring on the docks at night that is the really inspiring part of this yarn by fine storyteller Arnold Zable, who skilfully peels back the layers of Henry’s troubled mum Sonia and the effect it has had on the family.
NICK HOPTON ****
Crime
DIFFERENT CLASS
Joanne Harris
Doubleday, $32.99
The setting is an elite English school; the plot a lesson in menace and murder. Latin master Roy Straitley is a fixture at St Oswald’s, an old-fashioned teacher set in his ways. Change threatens when a new principal sweeps in with a broom and PC agenda. And Johnny Harrington — one of the few former students he actively disliked — comes with the baggage of old scandal and unexplained deaths.
The split narrative employs chess figures as chapter headings — a clever device echoed by Straitley’s belief he is an old king with little power. But there are a couple of overlooked pawns on his side.
Harris is a wonderfully literate author, both profound and entertaining. This is sprinkled with Latin tags and it’s not over until obesa cantavit (the fat lady has sung).
SHELLEY ORCHARD ****
Fiction
RETURN TO THE LITTLE COFFEE SHOP OF KABUL
Deborah Rodriguez
Bantam Australia, $32.99
Rodriguez has seamlessly picked up the threads of those lives she so memorable brought to life in the The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. This time, Sunny, the coffee shop’s owner, is struggling to acclimatise to being home in America after years immersed in the conflicting grip of Kabul’s vibrant city life and living under the heavy hand of the Taliban. Together, Sunny and the young Afghani women she helps come to terms with their innate love for a country that can cruelly crush their dreams.
This is an easy read and will be a hit with fans of Rodriguez’s last novel. Her skill is in engaging with the humanity inside a war zone. Her six leading women are brave and Ahmet, the orthodox son of the coffee shop’s owner, whose open heart is constantly battling with his strict Muslim mind, gives us hope for the future.
BELINDA WILLIS ****
Junior fiction
WICKED’S WAY
Anna Fienberg
Allen & Unwin, $16.99
Anna Fienberg’s new novel weaves a long, satisfying story around the edges of her much loved Horrendo’s Curse. While Horrendo was cursed with niceness and a concern for others that often manifests in delicious healthy meals, Will Wetherto, when captured by the same pirates under their terrible, apparently indestructible Captain, gives in to despair and fully inhabits his new name of Wicked. His tightrope-walking mother has vanished, he has been snatched away from his second home and his beloved Treasure, and betrayed by his one friend among the pirate boys.
Typically Fienberg has designed a wealth of unusual adventures for Wicked, all couched in imaginative, energetic prose and culminating in a series cliffhanger climaxes that eventually tie up all the loose ends and restore Wicked to his original pleasant Will personality. Clear sizeable print makes it appropriate for individual reading, but the curly piratical language lends itself even more to reading aloud.
KATHARINE ENGLAND ****
Originally published as Top reads this week include a biography of a boxer, the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and a crime novel set in a boarding school