Tag: book review

Book review: Devotion by Hannah Kent

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It is rare for a novel to draw tears, but Devotion by Hannah Kent was one such story. At its heart Devotion is a love story, but it is also an exploration of devotion in its many forms – human bonds, faith, and nature.

In 1930s Prussia two young girls who don’t fit in find one another and forge a friendship that blossoms into love. Hanne, who can ‘hear’ nature like music and is finding the changes in her adolescent body challenging doesn’t share the same dream of marriage as her peers. Hanne meets fellow outsider and newcomer, Thea in the woods and the two form an instant friendship, discovering unconditional acceptance in one another.  

Somewhere in the press of time, I was caught, and now I remain here, like a flower turned to paper, untethered to the soil.

They are from the Old Lutheran community that is being subjected to Calvinist reform including the closing of their Lutheran church and the banishment of its priest. The congregation meet in secret while they petition the government for permission to leave so they can find a home where their faith is accepted.

Eventually permission is granted to emigrate to South Australia and the community decide to flee Prussia. Both girls families board the claustrophobic ship to begin the torturous six month journey across the ocean. Hanne dies from illness but becomes stuck in the world, an almost invisible presence in Thea’s life.

Dying is unlike living. The smooth running of time is for the beating heart only. The dead stutter. The hands on my clock do not turn to numbers but to each other.

Emotion spills from the pages of Devotion – love, loss, yearning, joy, beauty and heartbreak. Kent’s writing is beautifully poetic as it traverses Prussia’s magical forests, the wild ocean crossing and the dry bush of South Australia. Devotion is a beautifully vivid mesmerising story.

Book review: Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton

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Trent Dalton is a divisive author – people seem to either love or hate him. I have had a crush since hearing him interviewed for Adelaide Writers Festival back in 2019. He was so earnest, sentimental and open. Lola in the Mirror is Daltons latest novel and has a good dose of his signature magical realism, which I love. The story takes place in the lead up, during, and after massive floods in Brisbane.

Mum never told me where she was born or how, or who her parents were. The past is dangerous for girls on the lam. I think she was born from a rock fertilised by a rainbow. 

The protagonist is a 17 year old girl with no name, living homeless with her mother since she left her partner with a paring knife in his neck to escape a domestic violence situation. They live in a 1987 Toyota HiAce van with flat tyres parked in a scrapyard besides the Brisbane river surrounded by a community of other homeless people. The girl is a talented drawer and dreams of becoming a famous artist exhibiting in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She said my father was a good man on the outside, but it had taken her too long to see his insides. She said you gotta be married to a man at least five years before you really see his insides. She said sometimes you can find a light inside a feller that burns so bright that it starts to burn inside you, too. But all my mum found inside my dad was black monster blood. 

The magical realism comes in when the girl looks into an old mirror she picked up from a kerbside rubbish collection and sees the reflection of an older woman. Sometimes the woman is glamorous, sometimes bruised and broken, but the girl finds solace in her presence.

Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what’s my future? What’s my past?

Themes include homelessness, friendship, domestic violence, family dynamics, addiction, crime, and the impact of natural disasters. A whimsical, sometimes sentimental tale of good prevailing over evil, and the transformative power of art.

Book review: The Night in Question by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

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The Night in Question is book 2 of young adult series, The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson.

That underneath all her cattiness, the bragging she would do about stupid Hollywood events she wormed her way into, her obsession with being an actress, she had a decent heart.

While snooping around the castle where the school dance is being held, Alice Ogilvie stumbles across one of her classmates, Rebecca Kennedy, lying in a pool of blood with another, Helen Park, standing over her holding a bloody knife. The clumsy coppers think it’s an open and shut case, but Alice and her friend Iris believe there’s more to the incident that first impressions.

“This is so Agatha Christie: a secret passage, a hidden staircase, sneaking around in the dark with a storm raging outside. A shiver of pleasure runs through me.”

The ghost of Agatha Christie is sprinkled through The Night in Question as the story unfolds from the perspectives of misfit friends and polar opposites, Iris and Alice. Using their expert mystery solving skills learnt mainly from reading Christie novels, they realise the incident may be connected to events that took place in the castle in the 1940s. They set out to solve the puzzle and save Helen Park.

“They’re a little flashy. I think I remember my parents kind of joking about them at some point, like they can buy whatever they want, but the one thing they can’t is respect.”

YA can be just as brutal as adult fiction and The Night in Question does not shy away from topics such as domestic violence, class, corruption, betrayal, mental illness, and of course teenage friendship and family dramas. The Night in Question is a well plotted, fast paced, entertaining YA read.

Book review: Cutters End by Margaret Hickey

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Debut outback noir set in South Australian, Cutters End, by author and playwright Margaret Hickey is a dual time line police procedural mystery.

DI Mark Ariti is recalled from long service leave to reinvestigate a cold case in the remote country town of Cutters End. He is aided by the cheerful and detail oriented local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur. Ariti is from the area himself and soon discovers a personal connection to two of the witnesses – an old girlfriend and her best friend from school, who share a long buried secret.

Ingrid laughed. ‘Haven’t done much hitching, have you, Mark? And it would be different for a man. For a woman, there’s always the pressure to entertain, be funny, make them feel like they’re pleased to have picked you up.’

The investigation revolves around a death on New Year’s Eve in 1989, in the scrub off the Stuart Highway 300km south of Cutters End. The incident was initially believed to be due to a car accident. The man who died was something of a local hero due to having saved a girl and her mother from drowning in floodwaters. The girl grew up to be a celebrity and used her influence to initiate a relook at the case, claiming the original investigation was botched.

Ariti’s digging unearths the disappearance of a number of women in the same area around the same time, and soon there are multiple deaths to investigate.

Two hours into the trip, driving in the police lease car on the highway heading east, Mark clipped a roo on his side window. The grey body ramming his car gave a sickening thud and for a split second he thought he’d hit a women wearing a beige suit. The roo jumped wildly into the middle of the road and he braked, heart pumping. Natalie Merchant crooned. The roo stood, stunned, before lurching into a nearby paddock. 

While Ariti investigates, he is also trying to coparent and repair his relationship with his wife following indiscretions by both of them. Revisiting his past gives him pause for much contemplation about life and more broadly, about purpose in work, and ageing.

The outback has a reputation for quirky eccentric characters and Hickey milks the trope in Cutters End. In typical police procedural and cold case style there is a slow build up in Cutter End, as well as plenty of twists, layers and a climatic conclusion.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

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Jodi Picoult is a fascinating author. She’s prolific, and a master of the moral dilemma. Unafraid to tackle any issue in popular fiction her stories have shone a light on racism, abortion rights, gun control, and gay rights. She has also penned several issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series. Picoult is highly popular but has received little critical acclaim, and has even been the subject of book bans in Florida.

My father taught me that beekeeping is both a burden and a privilege. You don’t bother the bees unless they need your help, and you help them when they need it. It’s a feudal relationship: protection in return for a percentage of the fruits of their labors.

Apart from liking the title of Mad Honey, it’s a cleverly written, easy to read suspenseful story packed with subplots and surprise twists. Mad Honey is a collaboration with Jennifer Finley Boylan.

Sometimes, making the world a better place just involves creating space for the people who are already in it.

Olivia McAfee fled her outwardly perfect life with her son after her cardiothoracic surgeon partner’s violence put them at risk. They moved to live back in a small town where Olivia grew up, taking over the family home she inherited and her father’s beekeeping business. Olivia’s son, Asher goes to the local school and life is peaceful until Asher is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Lily. Suddenly Olivia finds herself having to defend her son’s freedom, whilst managing a niggling worry that he could be like his father.

I think there is a reason they call it falling in love. It’s the moment, at the top of the roller coaster, when your heart hangs in your throat. It’s the time between when you jump from the cliff and when you hit the ocean. It’s the realization that there’s no ground beneath your feet when you miss a step on the ladder, when the branch of the tree breaks, when you roll over and run out of mattress.

Here’s what they do not tell you about falling in love: there’s not always a soft landing beneath you.

Mad Honey has great character development and is written in first person between the points of view of Olivia and Lily. It is a story about the impacts of family violence, gender, the fluidity of nature, and the importance of acceptance. And it includes lots of information about bees – I enjoyed learning about beekeeping.

Book review: Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar

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The story opens with a man approaching two young girls over the fence at their kindergarten. One girl leaves with the stranger, the other does not. The one who is left is destined to spend her life wondering what happened to her friend who was never seen again.

The long ago man had a sloping walk with deep biting steps and an exaggerated spring that to Till now suggests someone unencumbered by regret and lifted up by small pleasures and anticipations. She has never forgotten it.

Fast forward and Till, the girl left behind is now 23. It is just after the COVID lockdowns, and walking the streets of Brunswick, Till notices how others are watchful and cautious of each other, a state that has existed in her since her friends disappearance. Till decides to leave town with her dog and heads west, driven by her trauma.

At the time Till began her journey to the town that became her home, she didn’t know exactly where she was headed, much less how long it would take.

Till finds herself in a sparsely populated town called Wirowrie and settles there to restore an abandoned railway station. She gradually gets to know the local residents, but a lingering menace hovers in the background as Till struggles with her sense of identity.

Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar is a story about identity, loss and redemption and evokes Gothic fiction as the story slides across time and space, driven by Till’s hyper-vigilance and anxiety.

Book review: The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

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When his family discover that six year old Denny Wallace has become lost in the South Australian Flinder Ranges in September 1883, the farming community join forces to look for him. The story takes place over the seven days of searching, the questions of whether he will be found and in what state permeate. 

Failure is a stooped, pale figure with an open mouth and swollen eyes.

McFarlane introduces a swathe of characters in crisscrossing storylines – the local police officer Robert and his new German wife Minna, Swedish artist and his English wife bess, the well meaning but hapless local priest Mr. Daniels, Aboriginal man Billy Rough, Denny’s tough teenage sister Cissy who insists on joining the search, and Denny himself who’s fear and deteriorating state cause him hallucinations and contribute to him staying lost.

For now he studies what he thinks may be his final true desert sunset. The sky burns and leaps, it gilds and candles—every drenched inch of it, until the sun falls below the ranges. Then the sky darkens. The red returns, stealthy now, with green above and lilac higher still. It deepens into purple. Here’s the strange new cloud, hovering in its own grey light. Then night comes in, black and blue and grey and white, and the moon in its green bag swings heavy over the red nation of the ranges.

As each new character’s perspective is introduced the story deepens and becomes more textured with layers of detail unfolding. The evocative danger and beauty of the outback provides a backdrop to the drama as it unfolds.

Poetically crafted literary fiction with themes including belonging and unbelonging, colonialism, isolation, gender roles.

Book review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

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Apples Never Fall is Liane Moriarty’s ninth adult novel. She’s also known for Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, both adapted for television.

Aging tennis star couple Joy and Stan Delaney have been married for 50 years. The couple have a passionate marriage as well as a few lingering resentments, including that none of their children became tennis stars. Now retired after selling their tennis business the couple lack purpose. Their four adult children – laid back Logan, blue haired Amy, flashy Troy and migraine suffering Brooke – are all independent but childless and Joy really wants to be a grandmother.

Each time she fell out of love with him, he saw it happen and waited it out. He never stopped loving her, even those times when he felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her, even in that bad year when they talked about separating, he’d just gone along with it, waiting for her to come back to him, thanking God and his dad up above each time she did.

When a young woman turns up at their door distressed and bruised, Joy and Stan take her in. Supposedly escaping an abusive boyfriend, Savannah ingratiates herself with the aging couple. Joy’s own children are unsettled by the young woman.

We’re all on our own. Even when you’re surrounded by people, or sharing a bed with a loving lover, you’re alone.

Then the day before her 70th birthday, Joy disappears, her phone is found under the marital bed and Savannah is nowhere to be found. Stan becomes a suspect due to unusual scratches on his face, despite his protestations they were caused by a hedge. Two of their children think Stan is innocent, two are not so sure. The police need to find out what really happened and the family are frustrating to deal with.

She found that the less she thought, the more often she found simple truths appearing right in front of her.

The story gradually unfolds as Moriarty takes the reader back and forth in time revealing the very three dimensional character’s secrets, regrets and hopes. Apples Never Fall is a family saga filled with bickering, alignments, competitiveness, failed expectations and small resentments. An especially good story for tennis fans.

As her grandfather used to say, “Never spoil a good story with the facts.

Book review: The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia

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Just the title of Sofia Segovia’s novel The Murmur of Bees brings to mind a low hum that evokes the vision of bees flitting around my orange tree blossom.

In life, only potential was free.

An infant is discovered abandoned under a bridge cloaked in a humming blanket of bees. The Morales family take him in and he grows up in the close proximity of his bees to have extraordinary insight. Simonopio never speaks because his cleft palate means no one (except his young brother) can understand his mumbling, but he can see the future and uses this knowledge to help his adopted family.

Without his bees, he could not see or hear beyond the hills. Without them, he could not see behind him or observe the world from above when he chose to do so. In their absence, Simonopio could not smell the exquisite aroma of the pollen, just as the bees did. Without the bees swarming around him, coming and going, the information he received from the world was linear; while with them, from the moment he had begun to feel sensation, he had grown accustomed to perceiving the world as it was: a sphere.

In one instance it is by feigning illness to draw attention to himself and save the Morales from the Spanish flu, in another a handful of orange blossom he presents as a gift save the families agricultural land. When danger comes, he calls on his bees to help him protect those he loves.

Sometimes the soul must be allowed to rest, kept away from the things that hurt it.

The Murmur of Bees, set around the city of Linares in Mexico and translated to English by Simon Bruni is steeped in magical realism. The story offers insight into the political and cultural history of Mexico and the impact of the Spanish flue.

There are class struggles, complex family relations, evil, tragedy, grief and redemption. It is a story to fall gently into and be immersed in Segovia’s beautiful prose and transported to Mexico in 1918

Book review: Goyhood by Reuven Fenton

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As Emerson said, it’s about the journey – not the destination, and there’s something about a road trip that is transformative. They broaden and unwind the mind and soul, and like Australia, the USA is made for long driving adventures.

Reuven Fenton’s debut Goyhood, is a unique and unconventional take on the road trip story. Goyhood is a funny, heartfelt well crafted story that explores an existential crises bought on by the exposure of a family secret.

Marty and his twin brother David grew up poor with their single mother Ida Mae in Moab, Utah.

She also had a weakness for gin, amphetamines and men who smelled like motor oil.

At age 12 when Marty’s mother explained to the boys that they were Jewish after a visit from the local Rabai (Yossi), Marty (now called Mayer) began a journey to become a religious scholar. Soon he moved to New York and married the daughter of a famous Rabai. David pursued a more wayward life smoking dope and chasing women and get rich schemes that inevitably failed until one day he got lucky.

He quit cigarettes, but smoked more weed than Willie Nelson.

When Ida Mae took her own life, the now middle aged men, who have not seen each other for years, return to Moab for her funeral. Yossi hands the brothers a letter left by their mother in which she explains that they are not Jewish.

The thing is this: remember how I said I was Jewish? Don’t get me wrong, I’m Jewish in the sense that my husband was Jewish, all of my friends are Jews, my boss and best friend is a rabbi. I consider myself an honorary member of the tribe. But I know your mother’s got to be a Jew in order for you to be a Jew, and my mother? Not a Jew, Lord no. She hated Jews more than my dad. In fact her dad, Grampa Karl, was a Nazi of some kind. SS I think. Or Gestapo? Anyway, he and his family escaped to Argentina after “Der Krieg” before coming to the USA. Frau Abernathy would’ve flipped a biscuit if she ever found out I’d married a “Judensau.”

For Mayer this means his whole life has been a sham, he’s not Jewish nor is he married. He decides to try and cover up the issue by converting to Judaism so he can continue his life as it was. Yossi helps him and a date is set for the ceremony in a weeks time.

You and me, we’re all we’ve got left.

David suggests they go on a road trip for the intervening week. Mayer reluctantly agrees and the two men, along with their mother’s urn, begin a life changing adventure through the south of the USA to New York in a rented Charger. And in the vein of all good road trips it is transformative – but you’ll have to read the book to find out how.

Listen, see, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s when the going gets tough, the tough get in a car and drive.

Themes include sibling and family dynamics, identity, relationships to faith and religion, belonging, self discovery and search for meaning. Goyhood will be published by Simon and Schuster in May, order your copy now.

Thanks to Reuven for the advance copy, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.