By Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll
Sparrow by James Hynes
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Sparrow
James Hynes, Picador, $34.99
James Hynes’ Sparrow is a sordid and savage ancient historical novel that gives voice to the last of the Romans in Britain. The man is Jacob, writing from a library in the 4th-century AD, and though he has been called many things in his eventful life, many have known him as a cinaedus – a Roman sex slave. From his childhood in Carthago Nova, Hispania, he was raised amid prostitutes named after the Muses. The city has a thriving slave trade and the boy was bought by mistake: everyone thought him a girl. We get an intimate perspective on the workings of the brothel, overseen by the bullying pimp Audo, and as the boy grows, his effeminacy attracts the scorn of his peers, the disgust of the city’s Christians, and increasingly severe abuse from Audo – all of which pales in comparison to the fate contemplated by the nobleman who owns him. Historians know much about the Roman sex trade, and Hynes uses it to animate a secret history that teems with the brutality, sensuality, and frailty of life in a decaying empire.
After the Rain
Aisling Smith, Hachette, $32.99
Winner of the 2020 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, Aisling Smith’s After the Rain weaves complex and textured domestic fiction that spans two cultures and generations.
After the Rain by Aisling Smith
Malti Fortune has left her homeland of Fiji to make a new life in Melbourne. We meet her when she first discovers she is pregnant, but before she tells her linguist husband Benjamin the news. Nerves collide with memories and myths from another place; superstition about cannibalism from her island childhood, a feeling of being cursed, of unbelonging. As we move forward in time, the marriage frays, Benjamin becomes distant, and as their children Verona and Ellery grow into young adults, each daughter approaches his presence and absence differently, though as a father he remains reliably unreliable. It’s an intricate, subtly shaded exploration of the role disillusionment plays in shaping families – whether in love, between cultures, or through realising your parents are flawed human beings.
Home Before Night by JP Pomare
Home Before Night
JP Pomare, Hachette, $32.99
A Melbourne lockdown thriller. Is it still too soon? Well, maybe Melburnians won’t want to be reminded of the third COVID lockdown. It was the one that introduced a draconian 8pm curfew, complete with police choppers flying overheard (in dystopian fashion) to enforce it. Readers from elsewhere, however, may get vicarious pleasure from the baseline tension of a real-life situation they managed to escape. For her part, Lou worked in airport security when airports were a thing, and she prides herself on her finely tuned bullshit detector. She’ll need it. With her estranged ex Marko, she has a now 18-year-old son, Sam – and Sam hasn’t made it home by curfew. He isn’t answering messages; his social media accounts are inert. Frantic, Lou can’t call the police without giving secrets away. So, she prepares to break the COVID rules and track him down. Home Before Night is JP Pomare’s sixth novel. The prose could be tightened at the start, but it soon ratchets up psychological suspense with a cleverly constructed plot that can be devoured in one go.
We Could Be Something by Will Kostakis
We Could Be Something
Will Kostakis, Allen & Unwin, $19.99
Suddenly transplanted from Perth to Sydney after his dad’s relationship breaks down, 17-year-old Harvey is thrust into a Greek family who live atop the cafe they run. It’s a lively and hardworking environment, though tragic news isn’t far away. Also 17, Sotiris has busted a gut to achieve his dream of becoming an author at an early age, only to find it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Soon love beckons in the form of Jeremy – a hot bookseller with a sharp wit – and another road begins to take shape before him. When Harvey and Sotiris meet, their stories converge in an unexpected way. Alternating between the two main characters, Will Kostakis’ We Could Be Something combines romance, grief, coming-out story, and the domestic dramedy of an extended Greek family to produce a queer YA novel full of heart and humour.
The Red Hotel by Alan Philps.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Red Hotel
Alan Philps, Headline, $34.99
When I stayed at Moscow’s Metropol Hotel in 1975 I had no knowledge of its colourful-cum-shady past, or that the rooms were bugged.
Alan Philps’ engaging study creates a portrait of an establishment that, like a grand dame, has seen it all. Especially the 1940s, which he focuses on, when foreign reporters were housed there to report faithfully on Russia’s war to the outside world. But Stalin had other ideas, and the truth had nothing to do with it. It’s a fascinating gallery of reporters, spies, prostitutes and more, cooped up in the hotel, not only being fed caviar and vodka but the party line as well. There was the occasional visit to the front, but orchestrated. Often drawing on the memoirs of the reporters, Philps creates a vivid picture of an intense time, of the seedy and the well- intentioned, true believers and conflicted loyalties.
Honey, Baby, Mine
Laura Dern & Diane Ladd, Coronet, $32.99
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In 2018, actress Diane Ladd’s lungs were severely damaged by pesticide sprays from nearby farms. She was given six months to live. Her actress daughter Laura Dern refused to accept that. She forced Ladd to go on walks to exercise her lungs. And, like “a Santa Monica Scheherazade”, distracted her mother from her pain with stories – the book being an extended dialogue that covers the light, dark, guilt and deep bond of love between them. There are a few too many anecdotes about acting and films, and at times the exchanges can feel a bit stilted. But, like a good film, it gathers and becomes dramatically moving when they broach the accidental death of Dern’s sister while visiting the old family home, the scene of divorce, happiness and tragedy. Ultimately though, an uplifting record of coming through.
Our King
Robert Jobson, John Blake Publishing, $34.99
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The title notwithstanding, it’s debatable whether most Australians see Charles III as “our” king. All the same this is a chatty, detailed and sympathetic portrait of the man who waited, and waited, for the top job. Robert Jobson casts him as a man of destiny, but one who hears the clock ticking. He covers key points in his life, from the formality, even coldness, of his relations with mum and dad, to the trauma of being packed off to Gordonstoun, first loves, meeting Camilla, the ill-fated marriage to Diana and the fabricated media stories that grate with him even now. The more interesting aspects of the portrait cover the progressive nature of Charles’ politics, especially his opposition to the second Gulf War. Less interesting are Jobson’s “world exclusives” on, say, Charles and Camilla’s engagement. Easy reading introduction to “the” king.
Vegemite
Jamie Callister, with Rod Howard, Murdoch Books, $32.99
In 1923 a Melbourne factory launched a national competition to name the food product they had just invented. The identity of the winning entrant is not known, not so the name of the product – Vegemite, invented by Cyril Callister, the author’s grandfather.
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First published in 2012, this updated version released to coincide with Vegemite’s centenary is also a family and social history, focusing on Cyril – his early aptitude for chemistry, Melbourne University and time in Britain during WWI working on munitions. But it was his time in the early 1920s that was crucial, converting foul-smelling yeast goo into the spread that defined a nation and baffles the outside world. It’s an easy reading story with poignant moments about the product that, with the Lamington, can lay claim to be among Australia’s great culinary innovations.
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