From a gothic ghost story to a titillating memoir: eight new books

This week’s reviews traverse everything from domestic drama, climate fiction, parenting neurodivergent kids and an ironically observed history of France. Happy reading!

FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy
Penguin, $34.99

Set on a remote subantarctic island, Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore draws the reader into a storm-tossed cli-fi that marries elements of survival adventure, romance and gothic ghost story. The laconic, grieving Dominic and his three children – teenagers Raff and Fen, and nine-year-old brainiac Orly – have lived for eight years as lighthouse keepers on Shearwater Island. Research scientists have been recently evacuated, leaving them as the lone inhabitants on an island wilderness facing severe sea-level rise. Due to be picked up in months, with a vital seed bank they’re tasked with saving, the last thing they expect is a visitor. When Rowan is shipwrecked, and rescued from drowning by Fen, her unexpected arrival will reveal a dark secret the family is keeping from her, and deliberate sabotage which threatens everyone’s survival. The haunted story unfolds amid grim paranoia – the island thrives despite the shadow of historical ecocide; the characters face more personal ghosts – and McConaghy ratchets up psychological suspense through the clever use of perspective. You might not be wild about the ending, but it’s a literary page-turner you won’t soon forget.

The Surgeon of Royaumont
Susan Neuhaus
HQ, $34.99

Having served as a military surgeon herself, Susan Neuhaus is well-qualified to write historical fiction set in a hospital tending soldiers wounded on the Western Front during WWI. Clara Heywood is one of the few young Australian women studying medicine in Sydney, in the years before the Great War breaks out. Her dashing fiancé Edward, also a doctor, enlists in the army, but despite her desire to serve, neither the Australian nor the British armies will take women doctors. She defies both armies and her father, a colonel, to join the Scottish Women’s Hospital at Royaumont Abbey. It’s an institution run entirely by women, where Clara will make new friends and face formidable professional challenges, learning surgery on the job under the strict but wise tutelage of the chief surgeon Miss Ivens, as the grim tide of war rises. Neuhaus has researched the book meticulously and the excitement and horror of performing war surgery during this period is vividly conveyed. It’s a compelling, unsentimental tale of courage and heroism, of pioneering women fighting a war on two fronts – against a constant stream of casualties coming from the trenches, and the entrenched medical misogyny of the age.

Better Days
Claire Zorn
Atlantic, $34.99

Award-winning YA author Claire Zorn turns her hand to adult fiction, in a novel that boomerangs between Sydney, the Blue Mountains and London, between rebellious youth in the early 2000s and the cusp of middle-age 20 years later. Grace has retreated from a glamorous career in London’s music industry and a seemingly perfect marriage to Ed. Returning to her mother Dorothy with two kids and a dog in tow, she runs into her childhood sweetheart, Trent, and reflects on the sliding door moments which have shaped her life. Grace’s university years will be a nostalgia trip for late Gen X and early millennial readers, and there’s a lively comic touch to those sections of the novel that most resemble YA fiction. A chaotic melancholy hangs over the exploration of motherhood and postpartum depression, though the portrayal of how Grace changes, and doesn’t change, as she matures remains complex and assured, deepened as it is by contrasting perspectives. Better Days is a reflective, funny and acutely observed novel that blends coming of age story, backstage music industry satire, romance, and character-driven domestic drama.

Catching the Light
Joanna Horton
Ultimo, $34.99

Credit: Ultimo Press

Following her debut Between You and Me, Joanna Horton’s Catching the Light delves into a turbulent relationship between mother and daughter. Worn down by single motherhood, Sylvie decides suddenly to move to an artist colony with her teen daughter Alice, lured by a relationship with Michael, a famous painter. At first, the colony seems to offer the creativity and freedom that will allow them to thrive, but as Alice grows more distant from her mother, an act of adolescent defiance will change both of their lives. A third strand, set years later, sees Alice, now a PhD student, encountering an art historian who is researching Michael’s years in the colony for a retrospective, with buried memories emerging as she revisits her past. Horton unspools tangled threads of motherhood, art and desire in a story that weaves the utopian aspirations of an artist colony into the inevitable reality of being unable to live up to them. Horton sets up a dramatic contrast between Sylvie and Alice’s perspectives, underscoring the intricate flaws in their relationship, layering love with the guilt and betrayal they each harbour.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

The Shortest History of France
Colin Jones
Black Inc, $27.99

Mindful of the lurch to the alt-right in much of Europe, with its “xenophobic … white supremacist” posturing, French history expert Colin Jones emphasises the point that France has always been a multicultural melting pot; the baguette invented by an Austrian, the croissant Middle Eastern. With confident ease, he takes us on a fast ride through the country’s key moments – from the Romans, Charlemagne, medieval wars, the emergence of the French language, the philosophers and the elevation of science and reason, the revolution, Napoleon’s coup and world wars, to the current state of play. Not to mention cultural history. A brilliantly condensed, often ironically observed telling of a highly complex tale. We might speak of something being so French, but Jones reminds us that it most likely came from outside the country.

Parenting Different
Sarah Hayden
Murdoch Books, $34.99

When social worker and psychotherapist Sarah Hayden (who was diagnosed with ADHD at forty-eight) learned her daughter, Chloe, was autistic, she cried. This, her guide to parenting neurodivergent children, is also a record of her own journey, from tears to joy. The emphasis is on parents empowering their neurodivergent kids to live their lives and not have imposed upon them some mainstream notion of “normal”. It is shot through with down-to-earth dos and don’ts, advice on such crucial matters as choosing the right school (her daughter was bullied at school, before doing home-schooling), the impact on family dynamics, and key phases in life such as puberty. Along the way she’s not short of supplying affirmative, neurodivergent role models – like Mozart! Upbeat, informed, no nonsense, positive and often humorous.

Care and Feeding
Laurie Woolever
Affirm, $34.99

“Most human beings have more desires than opportunities, those whom the gods will destroy are provided with desire and opportunity in equal measure.” This was a reviewer’s response to the biography of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain – who took his own life. By contrast, Laurie Woolever’s warts-and-all memoir of her time in the culinary food trade (she was Bourdain’s assistant for nine years) is a record of someone who stepped back from a manic lifestyle just in time. Set mostly in New York from the early 2000s, it’s a record of the kind of excess – binge-drinking (she eventually identified as an alcoholic), drugs and sex that ranges from the random to the violent and dangerous – that usually ends badly. All the tacky decadence can get repetitious, but it’s carried off in a detached, bemused way as if looking back on someone else’s life.

Listening
Ross Judd
Team Focus Plus, $34.99

Consultant Ross Judd was working in his office one day when his then nine-year-old daughter came and sat down on the floor. She was troubled, and he joined her on the floor. Gradually she told him about getting the cold shoulder from friends at school and feeling excluded. His impulse was to advise and solve. Instead, he listened and what emerged was a deeper issue troubling the child. At crucial moments in relationships and friendships, he says, we need to not just hear but listen and make people feel that they are being heard. And it’s a skill – involving some daunting sounding concepts such as the Integrated Values Iceberg (which, among other things, helps you understand how the unconscious informs the conscious) – that he delves into in what could be described as a series of talks, in this easy reading, self-help guide.

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