Tag: book review

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.

Book review: Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado

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The English translation of Spanish crime thriller Red Queen by Juan Gómes-Jurado is a fast paced gripping read with an unconventional lead. Antonia Scott is a personally challenged reclusive genius – think Sherlock Holmes/Lisbeth Salander.

Scott was the lead advisor in the shadow crime fighting ‘Red Queen’ unit due to her talents at reconstructing crimes and solving difficult murders. She left when an incident left her husband in a coma, for which she blamed herself.

A sign from the universe outside, meaning whatever Antonia wishes it to mean. Which is why the universe sends them to us, so that we can do what we want with them.

Disgraced detective Jon Gutierrez is given an opportunity for a reprieve – if he can convince Scott to return to work on a bizarre murder case involving the son of a wealthy family.

Jon is still suspended without pay, but the charges against him have been dropped for the moment. And the video showing him planting the junk in the pimp’s car has disappeared as if by magic from the TV and newspapers

The Red Queen is a race against time slightly gruesome thriller with a couple of eccentric lead characters.

Book review: Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor

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Historical fiction novel Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor is a fascinating tale about Iris Webber, a young woman from Glen Innes in NSW who grew up hunting rabbits out bush, then lived in Sydney in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. Iris became known as ‘the most violent woman in Sydney’ having been charged with murder twice.

I was born in Bathurst in the Salvation Army Women’s Home. My mother Marge had been doing a stretch for larceny in Cooma Gaol. She was a servant for a publican, she would’ve known his family ’cause she was born in Adaminaby. They said she stole two rings and five pounds, Ma said they fitted her ’cause the publican’s wife was jealous. My mother was beautiful then she always said, with dark wavy hair that took one hundred strokes to brush, it was that thick and long. She would’ve got knocked up with me just before going inside. They let her out early for the birth.
She went up to Glen Innes after having me ’cause she wanted a fresh start

On arrival at Central Station, Iris is saved from the unwanted attentions of a man by a woman who masquerades as her aunt and offers her a place to stay. This becomes her introduction to a marginalised life of sex worker under the tutelage of Tilly Devine, petty crime, bar work, drug running and busking.

This is how life has always ensued, as a series of events determined by others that rides over her like a tram. All she can do is lie there.

Some of the language is challenging – words and phrases that are not in use now – rozzers, bungers, going Yarra, boree log, bidgee angie, just to name a few.

Detective Mallon started at Iris. She stares back. Powerful reek of pipe on the man, wrinkled suit, shiny face. One of those men who sweat all the time. Get them as a customer there isn’t much you can do, the sweat’s pouring out rank and sticky as soon as they’ve washed.

The story jumps back and forth between Iris’s time in prison for murder and the years leading up to that time. The violent tale and its language evoke Sydney’s underbelly and inhabitants in technicolour, never shying away from the hard life and discrimination dished out on some members of society.

Iris is a great read about a little known Australian character.

Book review: Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

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Have you ever naively read a book at random and come away thinking it was non-fiction, then to be told a friend it was fiction? I confess this is what happened to me when I red Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. I think it is probably a sign of a very well crafted novel.

It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us.

Lucy by the Sea is a sequel to a book called Oh William, that I have neither read, nor was aware of. Perhaps I was just in a general state of vagueness when I picked up Lucy by the Sea! Needless to say it holds up perfectly well as a stand alone novel.

We all live with people — and places — and things — that we have given great weight to. But we are weightless, in the end.

When the pandemic strikes, Lucy’s ex-husband, a scientist, sees what’s coming and takes charge. He rents a house on the coast of Maine and insists that Lucy goes there with him to wait it out for a few weeks. Lucy is grieving the death of her second husband and goes along with Williams demands in a state of detachment bewilderment. William also begs their daughters Becky and Chrissy to leave New York with their husbands – one does, and one doesn’t.

Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.

Lucy is a midlife writer and what follows is her account of the day to day and minute of what we all experienced through the pandemic. Working from home, cancelled events, people dying on ventilators, no funerals, face masks, surgical gloves and hoarding supplies. Lucy and Williams fill their days with walks along the cliffs, trying to work, and to manage familial relations from a distance. Lucy becomes frustrated with their circumstances, she hates Maine and at times cannot stand William. He is endlessly patient and as time passes, they become closer.

What is it like to be you? I need to say: This is the question that has made me a writer; always that deep desire to know what it feels like to be a different person.

Lucy by the Seas is a moving, meandering account of the pandemic that exquisitely captures the frustration, boredom and fears experienced across the globe during the pandemic before vaccines became available. It is an extraordinary story about the ordinary in extraordinary circumstances.

Book review: Seven Sisters by Katherine Kovacic

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Beware the vengeful sisters! Katherine Kovacic’s novel Seven Sisters is a crime thriller about women who take the law into their own hands, doing what some fantasise about, but few act on.

Naomi is referred to a support group by her therapist to help her with her grief after the murder of her sister. She joins six other women at the Pleiades, and despite thinking they couldn’t possibly have anything in common, she bonds with them over their shared trauma and rage.

In Seven Sisters misogyny becomes misandry when the women of the therapeutic support group on Sydney’s northern beaches make a plan with their therapist to take the law into their own hands and dish out some karma.

These men don’t change. The police try – well some of them do – but again and again the system lets the women down. Someone has to take care of the problem. Why not us?’

Meanwhile, Detective Fiona Ulbrick, a seasoned on-the-ball cop with an interest in domestic violence cases gets suspicious when perps she has cases on start turning up dead.

It is a conflicting tale to read about a group of delusional women traumatised by domestic abuse and the failure of the justice system to apply appropriate punishment. If you like fast paced revenge thrillers, this vigilante story is for you. The ending will leave you wondering.

Book review: Cat Lady by Dawn O’Porter

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Everyone has heard of the archetype of the crazy cat lady…the sometimes humorous, sometimes affectionate, label for a cat hoarding spinster. Dawn O’Porter has taken the concept and blown it up large in her rom-com novel Cat Lady.

People who hate cats are like atheists, they cannot get through a conversation without telling you their views. There is such a righteousness that comes with it. You tell someone you have a cat, and they tell you, to your face, that they hate the thing you love. There are so few instances in life where this is acceptable.

Mia is a successful businesswoman in her forties working for a boutique jewellery designer. She is married to Tristan and step mother to his son from a previous marriage and goes out of her way to make sure their life runs like clockwork. Tristan and Mia retain separate bedrooms due to Mia’s devotion to her cat Pigeon and Tristan’s aversion to said cat. Tristan’s ex-wife, with whom he still attends regular counselling is a constant in their lives.

There is no such thing as ‘just’ a pet. They are family, our heart and soul. It’s not fair that their lives are so short, and even worse when their lives are cut shorter than they should be. I wrote this book because pet grief is real, and it deserves to be written about. Be there for your friends when this happens, they really need you.

Mia is complex in ways that unfold with the story. She joins a pet bereavement group, despite Pigeon being very much alive. The bereavement group becomes critical to Mia’s wellbeing as her life starts to fall apart after she catches her husband having sex with his ex-wife in their kitchen and she loses her job. Mia is forced to make decisions about how she really wants to live and we, the reader, get to go along for the hilarious, tragic ride.

If you can’t scratch your itchy bush in a doctor’s waiting room, then where can you scratch it?

I’m more of a dog person myself, but I found Cat Lady to be both amusing, tragically sad, and cringe worthily politically incorrect.

Book review: The Maid by Nita Prose

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The hotel maid is invisible. They enter your room while you are out and when you return the room is spotless and the bed is made. You never think about how it happened. The Maid, part cozy crime, part dark comedic thriller is Canadian Nita Prose’s debut, due for film release this year starring Florence Pugh.

There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley…The crisp little packages of delicately wrapped soaps that smell of orange blossom, the tiny Crabtree and Evelyn shampoo bottles, the squat tissue boxes…And last but not least, the cleaning kit, which includes a feather duster, lemon furniture polish, lightly scented antiseptic garbage bags, as well as an impressive array of spray bottles of solvents and disinfectants, all lined up and ready to combat any stain, be it coffee rings, vomit — or even blood.

Molly doesn’t have much in the world, but she is proud of her job at the Regency Grand Hotel and gets great pleasure from returning occupied hotel rooms to ‘a state of perfection’. Molly also has some limitations. She struggles with understanding social cues and navigating human relationships, which make her vulnerable to exploitation. Her grandmother who she was closest to and who helped her to navigate the world died recently, and she is treated as an outcast by her coworkers.

The longer you live, the more you learn. People are a mystery that can never be solved.

One afternoon she goes to clean the penthouse suite and finds its wealthy guest, Mr Black dead in his bed. Black has been murdered and Molly soon finds herself a key suspect.

One thing I’ve learned in my business is that you can hide dirt for a while, but at some point, it all comes to the surface.

The Maid has had a mixed reception, I suspect because some readers found they could not identify/sympathise with the main character. I found Molly to be endearing and delightful, and the story was a charming, quirky, fun light read, about a socially awkward working class young woman finding resilience in adversity. Molly has been crafted as a unique character and the story has many layers and twists.