Avid Reader Magazine April 2010 Issue

April 2010 1. Original fiction

by Maile Meloy 2. UQP books we love 3. Indie bookshops of New York 4. Best books from around the world 5. Around the world in a cinema 6. Debut Fiction by Amber Fresh

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

DVDs and CDs

Ten Hail Marys Kate Howarth, UQP, $34.95 PB A story of courage, survival and hope, Ten Hail Marys is Kate Howarth’s remarkable account of her struggle against family, society and the church to keep her baby.

Ten Hail Marys follows the first seventeen years of Kate Howarth’s life in Sydney and country New South Wales. Raised by various indigenous relatives, she was abandoned by her mother and then her grandmother and expected to grow up fast.

At the age of fifteen, she became pregnant and was sent to St Margaret’s Home for Unwed Mothers in Sydney, where she had to resist intense pressure to give up her son for adoption. Almost 100,000 babies born to unwed mothers between 1950 and 1998 were adopted.

Kate became one of the few women to ever leave the institution with her baby.

While at times shocking in her frankness, Kate is never selfpitying or bitter. Her natural gift for storytelling and her cast of largerthan-life characters, combine with Kate’s vivid sense of place and dark understated humour to make Ten Hail Marys one of the most compelling memoirs of the year.

Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker in Training

The Hard Light of Day

Tom Jokinen, UQP, $32.95 PB

The Hard Light of Day is a candidly brutal and ground breaking account of blackfella – whitefella friendships.

At 44, Tom Jokinen quit his government job to work at a funeral home and crematorium as a trainee undertaker. This drastic change gave him an amazing opportunity to explore first-hand our Western culture’s relationship with death and the rituals of passing on.

Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker in Training is a hair-raising and hilarious first-person account of Jokinen’s adventures. Outside of his work, which includes embalming, dressing bodies and cleaning corpses down to their fingernails, he learns that in cremation the heart and head are the last parts to burn and that purple lipstick looks best on a dead man.

Jokinen also investigates the ecofriendly or ‘green’ burial: no casket, no embalming chemicals, nothing but a hole in the ground, in a forest, to let nature unfold. Some of the new customs are absurd, but all raise the key issue of ‘What is an appropriate response to death?’

Rod Moss, UQP, $39.95 PB

The Hard Light of Day offers a rare insight into the reality of life in the Centre of Australia, from the contours of the MacDonnell Ranges and the textures and sounds of Arrernte culture, to the endemic violence, alcoholism and ill-health that continue to plague many Aboriginal communities. In recalling the relationships and experiences that have shaped his life and work in Alice Springs, Moss unsentimentally reveals the human face behind the statistics and celebrates the enriching, transformative power of friendship.

Illustrated with Moss’s evocative paintings and photographs, The Hard Light of Day is a rare insight into the reality of life in the Centre, and an artist’s chronicle of the moments that have inspired him.

Enlightening, funny anda full of life in the midst of death, Curtains lifts the veil on the death and funeral industry in the 21st century.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings — I Learned the Hard Way CD RRP $24.95 Avid Price During April: $22.45 Sharon Jones has long been an Avid favourite, and we are very excited about her new album. Sharon’s raw power, rhythmic swagger, moaning soulfulness, and melodic command set her firmly alongside Tina Turner, James Brown, Mavis Staples, and Aretha as a fixture in the canon of soul music. An absolute must for lovers of great voices, and great music.

The IT Crowd: The Complete Third Series DVD RRP $29.95 Avid Price During April: $26.95 If you haven’t ever seen the nerdy wonder that is The IT Crowd, now is your time. From the wonderfully deranged minds that brought you Father Ted and Black Books comes the absurd adventures of IT Technicians Roy and Moss, and their long-suffering boss Jen. British comedy at its finest.

Our Favourite University of Queensland Press Books 1. The China Garden Kristina Olsson 2. Brown Skin Blue Belinda Jeffrey 3. The Birth Wars Mary Rose MacColl 4. The True Green of Hope N A Bourke 5. After January Nick Earls 6. Smoke Encrypted Whispers Samuel Wagan Watson 7. Pig City Andrew Stafford

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Aria Sarah Holland-Batt Omega Park Amy Barker Sister Girl Jackie Huggins Home Larissa Behrendt Learning How To Breathe Linda Neil 13. Anonymous Premonition Yvette Holt 14. Anatomy of Wings Karen Foxlee

15. Schuman the Shoeman John and Stella Danalis 16. Talkin’ up to the White Woman Aileen Moreton-Robinson 17. The Comfort of Figs Simon Cleary 18. The Umbrella Club David Brooks 19. Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley Paul Memmott 20. Typewriter Music David Malouf

Reviews

Reviews

Fiona Stager

Christopher Currie

Anna Hood

Kasia Janczewski

Paul Landymore

Verdi Guy

Helen Bernhagen

Trent Jamieson

The Still Point

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Hearts And Minds

Hotel Iris

Glissando

Tulip Virus

The Eerie Silence

Amanda Craig, $25 PB

Yoko Ogawa, $27.95 PB

David Musgrave, $27.95 PB

Will Grayson Will Grayson

Daniëlle Hermans, $33 PB

Paul Davies, $49.95 HB

The London featured in Amanda Craig’s new novel Hearts And Minds is anything but the grand, historic city so many people believe it is. Delving below the dignified, austere surface we see a society surviving on the misfortune and mistreatment of others.

The senses are seduced, indulged and taunted by this confronting but compelling new novel by Japanese author, Yoko Ogawa.

This book veers far from the gentle, lyrical nature of The Housekeeper and the Professor that won Avid Reader’s heart last year but delves deep into disturbing corners of sexual violence that give its character’s comfort and pleasure.

This is the debut novel by Sydney based poet and critic David Musgrave and an impressive start to his prose career it is.

John Green and David Levithan $19.95, PB

In 1636 Holland the brutally slaughtered body of respected tulip-trader Wouter Winckel is found in the bar room of his inn, an anti-religious pamphlet stuffed in his mouth. Why did he have to die and who wanted him dead?

On the 50th Anniversary of SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Paul Davies has written a book detailing SETI’s history, and asking why, after fifty years of listening to the stars, we haven’t heard anything yet.

The first Will Grayson goes through life trying not to draw attention to himself. This is challenging seeing as his best friend is the flamboyant and larger than life Tiny Cooper. Will describes Tiny as the “world’s largest person who is really really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really really large.”

Throughout the novel Tiny is trying to create an autobiographical musical entitled Tiny Dancer which draws attention to himself and everyone around him.

In 2007 London, history seems to be repeating itself. Dutchman Frank Schoeller is found in his home by his nephew, Alec. Severely wounded, he is holding a 17th-century book about tulips, seemingly a reference to the reason for his death moments later.

The answer may just be that nobody’s out there, or we’re looking in the wrong place or the wrong way, or that life really is quite rare in the Universe and intelligent life rarer. We just don’t know. Regardless, by the time you finish this book you’ll have a greater appreciation of just how precious life on earth is.

The other Will Grayson is a much darker character whose life appears to revolve around his internet lover Isaac. will and Isaac arrange to meet up on a street in down town Chicago. Instead, will meets Will Grayson and their lives collide and intertwine.

The Tulip Virus is a fast-paced, fascinating mystery based on the real-life events surrounding the collapse of the tulip bubble in 17th century Holland. The story will plunge you deeply into questions of free will, science, and religion, while showing the dark fruits of greed, pride, and arrogance.

Amy Sackville, $30 PB I was reading through the Orange Prize for Women Writers Long List 2010 (this is what booksellers call a good time), when I came across a title and author that jumped out at me. The novel is called The Still Point by first time British author Amy Sackville.

In 1901, explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young bride, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood.

A hundred years later, Edwards’s great-grand-niece Julia has inherited the family house rich with history and the discarded remnants of Edward’s adventures.

On a sweltering mid-summer’s day Julia moves through the old home and garden attempting to impose some order on the clutter. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long-held image of Edward and Emily’s romance. The past reverberates in the present with Julia’s husband Simon also facing a choice that will decide the future of their relationship.

With its omniscient narrator, shifting timelines, the radical individualism of Mackley and the acute consciousness of Julia’s mundane life, this book harks to a Modernist tradition. I’m loathe to say this but I felt like I was reading Virginia Woolf.

The Still Point is about emotional distance, the loss of hope, fear and abandonment, love and longing.

History, especially family history is always with us. To paraphrase T.S Eliot’s poem at the front, the still point…where past and future are gathered.

This is for readers of Woolf and anybody who liked Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.

David Mitchell, $33 PB, June David Mitchell is notorious for making each book markedly different from the last, and Thousand Autumns is no exception.

A work of stupendous imaginative skill, the story starts at the turn of the 19th century, on the tiny Japanese island of Dejima, a Japanese-controlled outpost of the Dutch East India Company, whose employees are virtually imprisoned, restricted from travelling to the mainland, or practicing any form of Christian religion.

It is into this strange world that our title character is thrown as an assistant clerk, whose express instructions are to clean up the island’s deeply embedded corruption. Jacob’s faith is tested by the company’s reculcitrant culture of greed, and his fidelity to his betrothed is tested by the beauty of a Japanese midwife working for the island’s doctor.

This book is a staggering piece of research and narrative, flinging us into a wonderfully strange slice of a wonderfully strange period of history, from the culture-clash of Dejima to a darkly sinister nunnery, to the machinations of a British frigate and its captain laying uncertain seige to the tiny harbour.

Set against the backdrop of a radically changing world, Thousand Autumns is an exceptional piece fiction, and full of Mitchell’s unsurpassed skill with language. As the success of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall proved, the public still has an appetite for historical stories, well-told, and this is definitely another.

Did someone say Booker Prize?

A single mum lawyer, barely surviving the demands of her job, willingly exploits a never-ending supply of illegal immigrants to clean her house and play mother to her children for a pittance of a wage. An American journalist too caught up in her own life’s trivialities fails to notice a sex slave prostitution ring running out of her ground floor apartment.

An illegal Zimbabwean mini-cab driver and an idealistic South African teacher, both striving to make a difference, try in vain to stop the troubled, marauding youths caught in the cycle of violence, poverty and the widening class system, especially between the middle class and the migrant community. My obsession with this novel was not just because it is an expertly crafted novel, or that it is also a thrilling mystery that keeps you up late reading into the early hours. What I found most poignant is the fact that at its core it’s a biting work of social commentary on how the Western world survives by turning a blind eye to the injustice of others for the sake of their own comfort. So it’s not lighthearted, it’s certainly not feelgood, but it’ll make you think and have you questioning the shifting values of modern society.

Read it if you are a fan of The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

The Hotel Iris is a shoddy establishment positioned across from a fish processing plant that caters to the tourists of a beach side town. Its proprietor is a widow who enlists her timid but pretty 17 year old daughter to tend to the front desk and share the burden of running the business.

Mari is afraid of her controlling mother who obsesses over her appearance; still combing and tightly pulling back her hair under pins every morning.

One day this suffocating world is ruptured by the disturbance of an elderly male guest that is evicted from the hotel due to the screaming abuses of the prostitute he has solicited. Mari is mesmerized by his voice and can not resist following him when she accidentally spots him in town. The old man or ‘the translator’ and young girl then fall into a strange courtship of tender conversation and extreme sexual practices that see Mari enjoy the pain and humiliation that unleash her erotic pleasure.

Ogawa unfurls this disturbing and erotic story in beautiful prose that titillates the senses of the reader as they descend into its darkness.

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

Subtitled ‘a melodrama’ it has a playful Victorian tone and is full of plot twists and incident.

It tells the story of Archie and his (un)fortunate brother Reggie, ostensibly orphans after their father and respective mothers abscond, ménage-a-trois, leaving them in the care of the enigmatic Madame Octave and her cabal of avant-garde theatre folk. It is also the story of their grandfather, German émigré Heinrich and his persistent dream to build the perfect home.

Set in the early decades of the C20th and the mid-1800s it is lush with detail of the Australian bush, strange architectures and coloured by an array of colourful, well drawn characters. The prose is deceptively simple and phrases and ideas leap from the page demanding your attention.

It is a strong Australian story but one that is told in a lyrical, not quite pastoral, not quite picaresque fashion.

In a way, it put me in mind of the earlier novels of two Peters: Ackroyd and Carey and if your looking for a rich, deeply satisfying read I would highly recommend Glissando.

Will Grayson Will Grayson explores the “great teenage question of identity” through the eyes of two different people both called Will Grayson.

John Green and David Levithan have created an insightful and humorous novel about love, appreciation, friendship and acceptance. The book is told in alternating chapters, with Green writing from the perspective of one Will and Levithan the other.

Interestingly, they never saw each other’s work during the process.

They agreed on only one plot point – that the two Will’s would meet halfway through the story. This is surprising as the novel is coherent and flows beautifully. The writing is quite subtle but makes strong comments on homosexuality, trust, happiness and the teenage world.

With the help of his friend Damien Vanlint, an antique dealer from Amsterdam, Alec tries to solve the mystery, but soon comes to realise that he and his friend’s own lives are now in danger.

Although somewhat a standard exciting thriller, the tulip connection to seventeenth century Holland adds a fresh spin. Sure to appeal to fans of contemporary mysteries with historical backdrops.

And while we may not have heard anything yet, Davies explores how first contact could go down – quietly but with broader consequences than you might suspect. And how, perhaps, biological intelligence may be merely be a prelude to machine intelligence.

If you’re after any firm conclusions to just why the sky is so silent this book won’t answer it for you. But if you want a glimpse at some cutting edge speculation about the nature of life on other worlds, and this one, then The Eerie Silence is for you.

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

e From the Editor

Staff Picks

In 2007 I went for a 3 week motorcycle ride alongside my father. We started in Brisbane, rode down through Sydney then across country to the Great Ocean Road.

Krissy Kneen

Sophie Weston

Nellie Godwin-Welch

Stuart Carrier

The Shaking Woman

John the Revelator

The Piper’s Son

Siri Hustvedt, $35 HB

Peter Murphy, $24 PB

Melina Marchetta, $24.95 PB

Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim

Siri Hustvedt is best known for her novel What I Loved but I came to her work through her treatise on art, The Mysteries of the Rectangle. I was expecting another very personal response to a real life situation with her new book The Shaking Woman which is billed as a memoir. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book is very much a science book, a study in neurology as fascinating as anything by Oliver Sacks, Norman Doige or VS Ramachandra.

John is a small town Irish boy whose fascination with parasites was born when his mother used to shine a torch up his bum looking for worms. The main figures in his life are the nosy neighbour Mrs Nagle (who was never married) and his single mother who quotes the bible, and smokes like a chimney. But when John is fifteen he meets Jamey Corboy hanging out in the market square and it is Jamey, the more artistic, trendy and experienced of the two, who kick starts John’s coming of age journey until he eventually lets go of his past and becomes a young man.

Once again Melina Marchetta has written a beautiful story, The Piper’s Son, which delves into the complexity, frailty and strength of human relationships and the effect that death can have on loved ones. In The Piper’s Son Marchetta takes up the story of Thomas Mackee from Saving Francesca, five years on and severely depressed, and of his aunt, Georgie Finch, single and pregnant. Their family is broken and disintegrated, living states apart, trying to come to terms with the death of Uncle Joe who was killed on his way to work in London, two years previously.

Tom has dropped out of uni, deserted his friends, living on the dole and full of regrets. It is the year when he and his family try to piece together the shattered glass that has become their lives.

By David Sedaris, $25 PB

Marchetta’s latest novel is darker than her others, yet once again her characters draw you in and make you laugh, cry and feel with them.

Finishing the book is, like always, a disappointment. However, while this is an intricately woven book, and reflects the maturity of the years that she has been writing, it comes nowhere close to topping her masterpiece On the Jellicoe Road.

Read this book if you are a gay man or if you are not. Read it if you love Armistead Maupin or more recently, Simon Doonan (whose novel Beautiful People has been made into a successful BBC television series).

Hustvedt was very close to her father when he died but she did not cry or grieve. A couple of years later she was giving a speech about her father and her body began to shake. It seemed like an epileptic fit except her voice was unaffected and she continued to speak even as her limbs were flailing.

Hustvedt searches for the answer to this phenomenon. She looks at neurology and psychology to find out if this is what was once known as ‘Hysteria’, or if it is something like epilepsy. Is there really any difference between the mind and the body? Is it all just organic and tied up in our neurological pathways? Either way, the fits keep happening and she wants to find a way to control them.

This book has the heart of a poet and the mind of a scientist.

A fascinating and mind-expanding read.

Murphy’s prose is rich and sophisticated, embroidered with dark humour and strong imagery.

The characters are fully realised, including figures from around the town of Kilcody such as the gang leader Gunter, policeman Canavan and the flirty Maggie. Feelings of friendship and compassion for the characters become a crucial part of the reading experience.

Newspaper clippings, short stories and letters are used to demonstrate the intricacy of the web of relationships between characters and the dream interludes between chapters are beautiful and symbolic, eventually merging with the story in its emotional and spiritual climax. In contrast, the dialogue is at times cliché but it doesn’t take away from the fact that John the Revelator is a great insight into the adolescent mind in all its daggy-ness and darkness, a book that connects instantly to your understanding of the love and friendship between mother and child. In short, an intriguing, bizarre and heart-felt novel.

I need to be honest with you. I don’t read a lot, as my darling Avid colleagues would attest to. Every once in a while I find a book that stirs my imagination and gets me excited about reading.

The Spirit of Tasmania took us across the Tasman Sea. Three weeks later I rode back to Brisbane alone, leaving my Father and his broken bike somewhere in Northern NSW. It rained pretty much the entire time.

My father and I sniped at each other for much of the first week. On the final run back from Port Melbourne (a trip which stupidly took less than 48 hours in torrential rain) I realised I needed glasses to help me interpret road signs. It was a journey that did not take me far away from home but it was a journey that changed my life in so

Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a laugh-out-loud autobiographical account charting Sedaris’ journey from self-assured and opinionated child living in North Carolina to self-assured and opinionated man living in the French countryside culling everything in his way with his caustic tongue. The laughs come thick and fast, each anecdote more outrageous than the last.

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

Why do we travel? What are we searching for? Why is my trip to Tasmania more significant to me than my overseas trips?

Reading Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel goes some way towards answering these questions with the help of philosophers past and present. Sometimes, like with my Tasmanian father/daughter bonding experience, it is important to go on the journey, but sometimes, de Botton suggests, staying home with a good book can satisfy our need for adventure without the disappointments and hardships that physical travel can thow at us.

This month, the Avid staff have stayed on the couch but we have travelled all

The stories in the collection seem to be going in one direction but ease away from their trajectory, finding a different place to rest, and often this leads to a sense of authenticity that was unexpected. Is this a conscious decision?

I don’t know who said this first, but the writer Richard Ford said to me, when I was first trying to write fiction, that stories should have endings that feel both surprising and inevitable. I never know where a story is going when I start it, so while every decision is a conscious decision, I usually feel like I’m fumbling along in the dark, feeling for the walls, until I get to the right place.

First it was Roald Dahl’s The Magic Finger, then it was Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series and now I have discovered David Sedaris.

There were lots of times I caught myself laughing on the train reading this book. If you haven’t laughed lately please read this book!

many ways. Despite some trying times, those three weeks were some of the most memorable in my entire life.

Interview with Maile Meloy, Author of the short story collection Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it and our featured story Travis, B. You have written short stories and novels. Do you have a preference? Why do you do both?

I like going back and forth between the two, as a writer and a reader. Flannery O’Connor said that writing short stories after a novel is like a vacation in the mountains, and I know what she meant. It’s nice to have a novel there reliably every morning, to have one set of characters and know exactly what you’re working on, but with short stories you always have something fresh and new. I started out writing short stories, so in a way that length feels the most comfortable to me. I think my tendency, in writing a novel, is to write chapters that have a story-like shape to them.

What is the most difficult part in the writing of a novel / short story? Do you struggle with different things in different forms?

Endings and titles are the hardest thing about both short stories and novels. The stakes might be higher with a novel, but you have to do them more often with short stories.

Do you do readings / festivals / events? It seems a contemporary writer needs to be both a performer and a writer. How do you deal with this?

It’s true, that you have to perform, and I think it takes one kind of personality to sit alone for a long time writing books, and another kind to go out and put on a show and sell them. It’s rare that people naturally do both. When I first started doing readings, I was completely terrified. But people do much harder things, and it’s gotten a lot easier now, just from practice. You spend so much time alone with a book that it’s really nice to talk to people who’ve read it, and have had their own experience with it.

Can you talk us through the journey of “Travis, B.” as a story? This is the one we are publishing and I would love to give our readers a sense of this story as a living, growing thing.

It began as a story about isolation and distance, about a young woman who’s just finished law

around the world, from Egypt, to New York, we have read our way across continents and brought a little piece of them back to share with you. Let’s start in the USA where we have discovered an author who has brought us many moral twists and turns in both urban and rural settings. Maile Meloy is our new favourite discovery and we have paired her up with an emerging author from all the way over in WA. Amber Fresh came to our attention at the 2009 Newcastle Young Writer’s Festival and we were so enamoured of her work that we have brought a collection of her poems and prose into the store. We hope you will enjoy our itinerary and trust that you will return, a little wiser, a little more world weary, but buzzing with the excitement of the ride.

Krissy Kneen

school driving across the state to a second job, where she meets a cowboy who spends most of his time alone. Even though they both live in Montana, they might as well come from different worlds, and I wanted to write about that. The kernel of it was true: my stepmother had a job once that had her driving across the state twice a week, and she’d taken it because she didn’t know where the town was. That seemed like a great beginning for a story. But something had to happen—the character had to encounter someone there. So she meets a cowboy, who’s had polio and has a bad hip from being thrown by unbroken horses, whose mother grew up on an Indian reservation. I tend to have ideas at the same moment the characters do. I needed him to make an impression on this distracted, exhausted girl, so he saddles up a horse, and rides into town, because that’s where he’s comfortable, and he doesn’t feel impaired by his limp. And then I move forward from there.

Can you talk us through the journey of this book? When did you know you were going to put together a collection of stories? How do you go about structuring this?

I had a few stories that had been published in magazines, but nowhere near enough for a book. I was working on a novel when Granta magazine called and said they were doing their list of best young American novelists. They had done it ten years earlier, and I remembered the issue really well. I had read it without any sense that I could ever be in such a thing. So I was thrilled to be on the list, but I didn’t have any stories, and they needed one within a month.

It seemed a little unfair that the novelists had to have a short story, but I got out the drafts of five or six that I’d abandoned for some reason, that never worked, and started working on them. I finished one for Granta, but by then I was interested again in the others. Time had passed, and I saw ways to fix them. I stopped writing

the novel, and got used to the short-story pace again, and wrote some new ones, and I realized I might have a book. I felt anxious about it for a while because it was made up of so many stories that I’d struggled with, and nearly abandoned, but I think the fact that they were difficult stories for me turned out to be a good thing in the end.

I spent a lot of time on the sequence. With both collections, it felt like I was solving a puzzle that had only one answer, and I just needed to find it. There are stories that need to go early and stories that need to go late, and stories that make sense next to each other, and others that don’t. I put the titles of the stories on pieces of sticky note and moved them around until it felt right.

You have an interest in flawed individuals, it seems. In fact, there are moral questions in your stories, like “Lovely Rita,” that lead the audience to feel slightly shocked by the protagonists’ reasons and choices. Again, is this something you are conscious of when you write?

I don’t think I know any flawless individuals, and flaws make people interesting, create conflict, and generate stories and surprising insights. I’m not thinking about that when I write, exactly—I’m just trying to tell a story. But what happens between imperfect people is interesting to me.

Are you ever tempted to rework stories once they have been published, or do you let go of them once they are released into the world?

I rework them obsessively until the very last minute before publication, driving the copy editors a little crazy. But maybe because of that, I don’t want to rework them later. I just went to a class that was reading my first collection, Half in Love. I read the stories to prepare, and I hadn’t read them in years. It was a little like being in a time machine, but not in a bad way.

Are you influenced by other writers? Do you have different influences for your novel writing and your short story writing?

Yes. I try to read different kinds of books so the influence will be varied. And the influences have been different for each book. For my first novel, Liars and Saints, it was Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall for the beautiful three-part structure, Merce Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves for the voice of innocence during wartime, and Cheever’s The Wapshot Chronicle because it was a novel in third person told—chapter by chapter—from the alternating points of view of different members of a family. For Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, it was J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, Sherwood Anderson’s Death in the Woods, and Ivan Bunin’s story The Gentleman from San Francisco. I wish I’d been more influenced by that amazing story.

Travis, B. BY

MAILE MELOY

CHET MORAN GREW UP in Logan, Montana, at a time when kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore. In Logan, they still did, and he had it before he was two. He recovered, but his right hip never fit in the socket, and his mother always thought he would die young.

When he was fourteen, he started riding spoiled and unbroke horses, to prove to her that he was invincible. They bucked and kicked and piled up on him, again and again. He developed a theory that horses didn’t kick or shy because they were wild; they kicked and shied because for millions of years they’d had the instinct to move fast or be lion meat.

“You mean because they’re wild,” his father had said when Chet advanced this theory.

He couldn’t explain, but he thought his father was wrong. He thought there was a difference, and that what people meant when they called a thing “wild” was not what he saw in the green horses at all.

He was small and wiry, but his hip made it hard for him to scramble out from under the horses, and he broke his right kneecap, his right foot, and his left femur before he was eighteen.

His father drove him to Great Falls, where the doctors put a steel rod in his good leg from hip to knee. From then on, he walked as though he were turning to himself to ask a question.

His size came from his mother, who was three-quarters Cheyenne; his father was Irish and bullheaded. They had vague dreams of improvement for their sons, but no ideas about how to achieve them. His older brother joined the army. Watching him board an eastbound train, handsome and straight-limbed in his uniform, Chet wondered why God or fate had so favored his brother. Why had the cards

been so unevenly dealt?

He left home at twenty and moved up north to the highline. He got a job outside Havre feeding cows through the winter, while the rancher’s family lived in town and the kids were in school. Whenever the roads were clear, he rode to the nearest neighbors’ for a game of pinochle, but mostly he was snowed in and alone. He had plenty of food, and good TV reception. He had some girlie magazines that he got to know better than he’d ever known an actual person. He spent his twenty-first birthday wearing long johns under two flannel shirts and his winter coat, warming up soup on the stove.

He got afraid of himself that winter; he sensed something dangerous that would break free if he kept so much alone.

In the spring, he got a job in Billings, in an office with friendly secretaries and coffee breaks spent talking about rodeos and sports.

They liked him there, and offered to send him to the main office in Chicago. He went home to his rented room and walked around on his stiff hip, and guessed he’d be stove up in a wheelchair in three years if he kept sitting around an office. He quit the job and bucked bales all summer, for hardly any money, and the pain went out of his hip, unless he stepped wrong.

That winter, he took another feeding job, outside Glendive, on the North Dakota border.

He thought if he went east instead of north, there might not be so much snow. He lived in an insulated room built into the barn, with a TV, a couch, a hot plate, and an icebox, and he fed the cows with a team and sled. He bought some new magazines, in which the girls were strangers to him, and he watched Starsky and Hutch and the local news. At night, he could

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they were clean from walking through snow. hear the horses moving in their stalls. But he’d “We should have gotten a high school room,” been wrong about the snow; by October it had one of the men said. already started. He made it through Christmas, A lady—a girl—stood at the teacher’s desk at with packages and letters from his mother, but the front of the room, taking papers from a in January he got afraid of himself again. The briefcase. She had curly lightcolored hair and fear was not particular. It began as a buzzing wore a gray wool skirt and a blue sweater, and feeling around his spine, a restlessness without glasses with wire rims. She was thin, and looked a specific aim. tired and nervous. Everyone grew quiet and The rancher had left him a truck, with a waited for her to speak. headbolt heater on an extension cord, and “I’ve never done this before,” she said. “I’m not he warmed it up one night and drove the snowy sure how to start. Do you want to introduce road into town. The café was open, but he yourselves?” wasn’t hungry. The gas pumps stood in an “We all know each other,” a gray-haired island of bluish light, but the truck’s tank was full. woman said.

He knew no pinochle players here, to help him “Well, she doesn’t,” another woman protested. pass the time. He turned off the main street to “You could tell me what you know about loop through town, and he drove by the school. school law,” the young teacher said.

A light was on at a side door and people were The adults in the small desks looked at each leaving their cars in the lot and going inside. other. “I don’t think we know anything,” He slowed, parked on the street, and watched someone said. them. He ran a hand around the steering wheel “That’s why we’re here.” and tugged at a loose thread on its worn leather The girl looked helpless for a second and grip. Finally he got out of the truck, turned his then turned to the chalkboard. Her bottom was collar up against the cold, and followed the a smooth curve in the wool skirt. She wrote people inside.

“Adult Ed 302” and her name, Beth Travis, One classroom had its lights on, and the and the chalk squeaked on the h and the r. people he had followed were sitting in the The men and women in the desks flinched. too-small desks, saying hello as if they all knew each other. Construction-paper signs and “If you hold it straight up,” an older woman pictures covered the walls, and the cursive said, demonstrating with a pencil, “with your alphabet ran along the top of the chalkboard. thumb along the side, it won’t do that.”

Most of the people were about his parents’ age, Beth Travis blushed, and changed her grip, though their faces were softer, and they dressed and began to talk about state and federal law as though they lived in town, in thin shoes and as it applied to the public school system. Chet clean bright jackets. He went to the back of the found a pencil in his desk and held it like the room and took a seat. He left his coat on, a big woman had said to hold the chalk. He old sheepskin-lined denim, and he checked his wondered why no one had ever showed him boots to see what he might have dragged in, but that in his school days.

The class took notes, and he sat in the back and listened. Beth Travis was a lawyer, it seemed. Chet’s father told jokes about lawyers, but the lawyers were never girls. The class was full of teachers, who asked things he’d never thought of, about students’ rights and parents’ rights. He’d never imagined a student had any rights. His mother had grown up in the mission school in St. Xavier, where the Indian kids were beaten for not speaking English, or for no reason. He’d been luckier. An English teacher had once struck him on the head with a dictionary, and a math teacher had splintered a yardstick on his desk. But in general they had been no trouble.

Once, Beth Travis seemed about to ask him something, but one of the teachers raised a hand, and he was saved.

At nine o’clock the class was over, and the teachers thanked Miss Travis and said she’d done well. They talked to each other about going someplace for a beer. He felt he should stay and explain himself, so he stayed in his desk. His hip was starting to stiffen from sitting so long.

Miss Travis packed up her briefcase and put on her puffy red coat, which made her look like a balloon. “Are you staying?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.” He levered himself out from behind the desk.

“Are you registered for the class?”

“No, ma’am. I just saw people coming in.”

“Are you interested in school law?”

He thought about how to answer that.

“I wasn’t before tonight.”

She looked at her watch, which was thin and goldcolored. “Is there somewhere to get food?” she asked. “I have to drive back to Missoula.”

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The interstate ran straight across Montana, from the edge of North Dakota, where they were, west through Billings and Bozeman and past Logan, where he had grown up, over the mountains to Missoula, near the Idaho border.

“That’s an awful long drive,” he said.

She shook her head, not in disagreement but in amazement. “I took this job before I finished law school,” she said. “I wanted any job, I was so afraid of my loans coming due. I didn’t know where Glendive was. It looks like Belgrade, the word does I mean, which is closer to Missoula—I must have gotten them confused. Then I got a real job, and they’re letting me do this because they think it’s funny. But it took me nine and a half hours to get here. And now I have to drive nine and a half hours back, and I have to work in the morning. I’ve never done anything so stupid in my life.”

“I can show you where the café is,” he said.

She looked like she was wondering whether to fear him, and then she nodded. “Okay,” she said.

In the parking lot, he was self-conscious about his gait, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She got into a yellow Datsun and followed his truck to the café on the main drag. He guessed she could have found it herself, but he wanted more time with her. He went in and sat opposite her in a booth. She ordered coffee and a turkey sandwich and a brownie sundae, and asked the waitress to bring it all at once. He didn’t want anything. The waitress left, and Beth Travis took off her glasses and set them on the table. She rubbed her eyes until they were red.

“Did you grow up here?” she asked. “Do you know those teachers?”

“No, ma’am.”

She put her glasses back on. “I’m only twenty-five,” she said. “Don’t call me that.”

He didn’t say anything. She was three years older than he was. Her hair in the overhead light was the color of honey. She wasn’t wearing any rings.

“Did you tell me how you ended up in that class?” she asked.

“I just saw people going in.”

She studied him and seemed to wonder again if she should be afraid. But the room was bright, and he tried to look harmless. He was harmless, he was pretty sure. Being with someone helped—he didn’t feel so wound up and restless.

“Did I make a fool of myself ?” she asked.

“No.” “Are you going to come back?”

“When’s it next?”

“Thursday,” she said. “Every Tuesday and Thursday for nine weeks. Oh, God.” She put her hands over her eyes again. “What have I done?”

He tried to think how he could help her. He had to stay with the cows, and driving to pick her up in Missoula didn’t make any sense. It was so far away, and they’d just have to drive back again.

“I’m not signed up,” he finally said.

She shrugged. “They’re not going to check.”

Her food came, and she started on the sandwich.

“I don’t even know school law,” she said. “I’ll have to learn enough to teach every time.” She wiped a spot of mustard from her chin. “Where do you work?”

“Out on the Hayden ranch, feeding cattle.

It’s just a winter job.”

“Do you want the other half of this sandwich?”

He shook his head, and she pushed the plate aside and took a bite of the melting sundae.

“I’d show you if you could stay longer,” he said.

“Show me what?”

“The ranch,” he said. “The cows.”

“I have to get back,” she said. “I have to work in the morning.”

“Sure,” he said.

She checked her watch. “Jesus, it’s quarter to ten.” She took a few quick bites of sundae and finished her coffee. “I have to go.”

He watched as the low lights of the Datsun disappeared out of town, then he drove home in the other direction. Thursday was not very far from Tuesday, and it was almost Wednesday now. He was suddenly starving, when sitting across from her he hadn’t been hungry. He wished he’d taken the other half of the sandwich, but he had been too shy.

THURSDAY NIGHT, he was at the school before anyone else, and he waited in the truck, watching. One of the teachers showed up with a key, unlocked the side door, and turned on the light. When more people had arrived, Chet went to his seat in the back of the classroom. Beth Travis came in looking tired, took off her coat, and pulled a sheaf of paper from her briefcase.

She was wearing a green sweater with a turtleneck collar, jeans, and black snow boots.

She walked around with the handouts and nodded to him. She looked good in jeans. “key supreme court decisions affecting school law,” the handout said across the top.

The class started, and hands went up to ask questions. He sat in the back and watched, and tried to imagine his old teachers here, but he couldn’t. A man not much older than Chet asked about salary increases, and Beth Travis said she wasn’t a labor organizer, but he should talk to the union. The older women in the class laughed and teased the man about rabblerousing. At nine o’clock the class left for beers, and he was alone again with Beth Travis.

“I have to lock up,” she said.

He had assumed, for forty-eight hours, that he would go to dinner with her, but now he didn’t know how to make that happen. He had never asked any girl anywhere. There had been girls in high school who had felt sorry for him, but he had been too shy or too proud to take advantage of it. He stood there for an awkward moment.

“Are you going to the café?” he finally asked.

“For about five minutes,” she said.

In the café, she asked the waitress for the fastest thing on the menu. The waitress brought her a bowl of soup with bread, coffee to go, and the check. When the waitress left, she said, “I

don’t even know your name.”

“Chet Moran.”

She nodded, as if that were the right answer.

“Do you know anyone in town who could teach this class?”

“I don’t know anyone at all.”

“Can I ask what happened to your leg?”

He was surprised by the question, but he thought she could ask him just about anything.

He told her the simplest version: the polio, the horses, the broken bones.

“And you still ride?”

He said that if he didn’t ride, he’d end up in a wheelchair or a loony bin or both.

She nodded, as if that were the right answer, too, and looked out the window at the dark street. “I was so afraid I’d finish law school and be selling shoes,” she said. “I’m sorry to keep talking about it. All I can think about is that drive.”

THAT WEEKEND was the longest one he’d had. He fed the cows and cleaned the tack for the team. He curried the horses until they gleamed and stamped, watching him, suspicious of what he intended.

Inside, he sat on the couch, flipped through the channels, and finally turned the TV off.

He wondered how he might court a girl who was older, and a lawyer, a girl who lived clear across the state and couldn’t think about anything but that distance. He felt a strange sensation in his chest, but it wasn’t the restlessness he had felt before.

On Tuesday, he saddled one of the horses and rode it into town, leaving the truck. There was a chinook wind, and the night was warm, for January, and the sky clear. The plains spread out dark and flat in every direction, except where the lights glowed from town. He watched the stars as he rode. At the school, he tethered the horse to the bike rack, out of sight of the side door and the lot where the teachers would park.

He took the fat plastic bag of oats from his jacket pocket and held it open. The horse sniffed at it, then worked the oats out of the bag with his lips.

“That’s all I got,” he said, shoving the empty plastic bag back in his pocket.

The horse lifted its head to sniff at the strange town smells.

“Don’t get yourself stolen,” Chet said.

When half the teachers had arrived, he went in and took his seat. Everyone sat in the same seat as they had the week before. They talked about the chinook and whether it would melt the snow. Finally Beth Travis came in, with her puffy coat and her briefcase. He was even happier to see her than he had expected, and she was wearing jeans again, which was good.

He’d been afraid she might wear the narrow wool skirt. She looked harassed and unhappy to be there. The teachers chattered on.

When the class was over and the teachers had cleared out, he asked, “Can I give you a ride to the café?”

“Oh—” she said, and she looked away.

“Not in the truck,” he said quickly, and he

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wondered why a truck might seem more dangerous to a woman. He guessed because it was like a room. “Come outside,” he said.

She waited in the parking lot while he untied the horse and mounted up. He rode it around from the bike rack—aware that he could seem like a fool, but elated with the feeling of sitting a horse as well as anyone did—to where Beth Travis stood hugging her briefcase.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

“Don’t think about it,” he said. “Give me your briefcase. Now give me your hand. Left foot in the stirrup. Now swing the other leg over.” She did it, awkwardly, and he pulled her up behind him. He held her briefcase against the pommel, and she held tightly to his jacket, her legs against his. He couldn’t think of anything except how warm she was, pressed against the base of his spine. He rode the back way, through the dark streets, before cutting out toward the main drag and stopping short of it, behind the café. He helped her down, swung to the ground after her, gave her the briefcase, and tied the horse. She looked at him and laughed, and he realized he hadn’t seen her laugh before. Her eyebrows went up and her eyes got wide, instead of crinkling up like most people’s did. She looked amazed.

In the café, the waitress slid a burger and fries in front of Beth Travis and said, “The cook wants to know if that’s your horse out back.”

Chet said it was.

“Can he give it some water?”

He said he’d appreciate it.

“Truck break down?” the waitress asked.

He said no, his truck was all right, and the waitress went away.

Beth Travis turned the long end of the oval plate in his direction, and took up the burger.

“Have some fries,” she said. “How come you never eat anything?”

He wanted to say that he wasn’t hungry when he was around her, but he feared the look on her face if he said it, the way she would shy away.

“Why were you afraid of selling shoes?” he asked.

“Have you ever sold shoes? It’s hell.”

“I mean, why were you afraid you couldn’t get anything else?”

She looked at the burger as if the answer was in there. Her eyes were almost the same color as her hair, and ringed with pale lashes. He wondered if she thought of him as an Indian boy, with his mother’s dark hair. “I don’t know,” she said. “Yes, I do know. Because my mother works in a school cafeteria, and my sister works in a hospital laundry, and selling shoes is the nicest job a girl from my family is supposed to get.”

“What about your father?”

“I don’t know him.”

“That’s a sad story.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s a happy story. I’m a lawyer, see, with a wonderful job driving to fucking Glendive every fifteen minutes until I lose my mind.” She put down the burger and pressed the backs of her hands into her eyes. Her fingers were greasy and one had ketchup on it. She took

her hands away from her face and looked at her came in and stood behind the teacher’s desk. watch. “It’s ten o’clock,” she said. “I won’t get “Miss Travis,” he said, “found the drive from home before seven-thirty in the morning. There Missoula too arduous, so I will take over the are deer on the road, and there’s black ice class for the rest of the term. I practice law outside of Three Forks along the river. If I make it here in town. As some of you know, and the past there, I get to take a shower and go to work rest of you would find out soon enough, I’m at eight, and do all the crap no one else wants to recently divorced and have some time on my do. Then learn more school law tomorrow night, hands. That’s why I’m here.” then leave work the next day before lunch and While the man talked on, Chet got up from drive back here with my eyes twitching. It’s better his seat and made his way up the aisle to the than a hospital laundry, maybe, but it’s not a door. Outside he stood breathing the cold air whole fucking lot better.” into his lungs. He let the lights of town swim in “I’m from near Three Forks,” he said. his eyes until he blinked them clear again and “So you know the ice.” climbed into the rancher’s truck. He gave it He nodded. enough gas so the engine wouldn’t quit, and it She dipped her napkin in her water glass and coughed and steadied itself and ran. washed off her fingers, then finished her coffee.

He knew Beth Travis lived in Missoula, six “It was nice of you, to bring the horse,” she said. hundred miles west, over the mountains, but “Will you take me back to my car?” he didn’t know where. He didn’t know where Outside, he swung her up onto the horse she worked, or if she was listed in the phone again, and she put her arms around his waist. book. He didn’t know if it was he who had She seemed to fit to his body like a puzzle piece. scared her off or the drive. He didn’t know if He rode slowly back to the school parking lot, the truck would make it all that way, or what not wanting to let her go. Next to the yellow the rancher would do when he found out he’d Datsun, he held her hand tight while she gone. climbed down, and then he dismounted, too.

But he put the truck in gear and pulled out of She tugged her puffy coat where it had ridden town in the direction he had three times up from sliding off the horse, and they stood watched the yellow Datsun go. The road was looking at each other. flat and straight and seemed to roll underneath “Thank you,” she said. the truck, dark and silent, through a dark and He nodded. He wanted to kiss her but silent expanse of snow-covered land. He couldn’t see any clear path to that happening. stopped outside of Miles City, and again outside He wished he had practiced, with the high of Billings, to hobble around on his stiffened-up school girls or the friendly secretaries, just to be leg until he could drive again. Near Big Timber, ready for this moment. the plains ended and the mountains began, She started to say something, but in his black shapes rising up against the stars. He nervousness he cut her off. “See you Thursday,” stopped in Bozeman for coffee and gas, and he said. drove the white line on the empty road past She paused before nodding, and he took this Three Forks and Logan, to stay out of the ice for encouragement. He caught up her hand that spread from the shoulder in black sheets. again and kissed it, because he had wanted to Somewhere off to his right in the dark, his do that, and it was soft and cold. Then he leaned parents were sleeping. over and kissed her cheek, because he had It was still dark when he reached Missoula, wanted to do that, too. She didn’t move, not an and he stopped at a gas station and looked up inch, and he was about to kiss her for real when “Travis” in the phone book. There was a “Travis, she seemed to snap out of a trance, and B.” with a phone number, but no address. He stepped away from him. She took her hand wrote down the number, but didn’t call it. He back. “I have to go,” she said, and she went asked the kid at the cash register where the around to the driver’s side of the Datsun. law offices were in town, and the kid shrugged He held the horse while she drove out of the and said, “Maybe downtown.” parking lot, and he kicked at the snow. The “Where’s that?” horse sidestepped away. He felt like jumping up The kid stared at him. “It’s downtown,” he and down, in excitement and anxiety and said, and he pointed off to his left. anguish. He had run her off. He shouldn’t have Downtown, Chet found himself in dawn light kissed her. He should have kissed her more. He among shops and old brick buildings and should have let her say what she wanted to say. one-way streets. He parked and got out to He mounted up and rode home. stretch his hip. The mountains were so close they made him feel claustrophobic. When he THURSDAY NIGHT he drove the truck in, no found a carved wooden sign saying “Attorneys cowboy antics; he was on a serious mission. at Law,” he asked the secretary who came to He was going to answer her questions honestly, open the office if she knew a lawyer named such as the one about why he didn’t eat. He was going to let her say the things she intended to say. Beth Travis.

The secretary looked at his twisted leg, his He didn’t wait for the crowd to arrive before going boots, and his coat and shook her head. into the classroom; he went in early and took his In the next law office, the secretary was seat in the back. The class filled up, and then a friendlier. She called the law school and asked tall man in a gray suit with a bowling-ball gut

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where Beth Travis had gone to work, then cupped her hand over the receiver. “She took a teaching job in Glendive.”

“She has another job, too. Here.”

The secretary relayed this information on the phone, then wrote something down on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

“Down by the old railroad depot,” she said, pointing toward the window with her pencil.

He pulled up at the address on the piece of paper at eight-thirty, just as Beth Travis’s yellow Datsun pulled into the same parking lot. He got out of the truck, feeling jittery. She was rummaging in her briefcase and didn’t see him right away. Then she looked up. She looked at the truck behind him, then back at him again.

“I drove over,” he said.

“I thought I was in the wrong place,” she said.

She let the briefcase hang at her side. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

She nodded, slowly. He stood as straight as he could. She lived in another world from him. You could fly to Hawaii or France in less time than it took to do that drive. Her world had lawyers, downtowns, and mountains in it. His world had horses that woke hungry, and cows waiting in the snow, and it was going to be ten hours before he could get back to get them fed.

“I was sorry you stopped teaching the class,” he said. “I looked forward to it, those nights.”

“It wasn’t because—” she said. “I meant to tell you on Tuesday. I’d already asked for a replacement, because of the drive. They found one yesterday.”

“Okay,” he said. “That drive is pretty bad.”

“You see?”

A man in a dark suit got out of a silver car and looked over at them, sizing Chet up. Beth Travis waved and smiled. The man nodded, looked at Chet again, and went into the building; the door closed. Chet suddenly wished that she had quit teaching the class because of him, that he’d had any effect on her at all. He shifted his weight. She pushed her hair back and he thought he could step forward and touch her hand, touch the back of her neck where the hair grew darker. Instead he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. She seemed to scan the parking lot before looking at him again.

“I don’t mean any harm,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I have to go feed now,” he said. “I just knew that if I didn’t start driving, I wasn’t going to see you again, and I didn’t want that. That’s all.”

She nodded. He stood there waiting, thinking she might say something, meet him halfway. He wanted to hear her voice again. He wanted to touch her, any part of her, just her arms maybe, just her waist. She stood out of reach, waiting for him to go.

Finally he climbed up into the truck and started the engine. She was still watching him from the parking lot as he drove away, and he got on the freeway and left town. For the first half hour he gripped the steering wheel so hard his

knuckles turned white, and glared at the road as the truck swallowed it up. Then he was too tired to be angry, and his eyes started to close and jerk open. He nearly drove off the road. In Butte he bought a cup of black coffee, and drank it standing next to the truck. He wished he hadn’t seen her right away, in the parking lot. He wished he’d had a minute to prepare. He crushed the paper coffee cup and threw it away.

As he drove past Logan, he thought about stopping, but he didn’t need to. He knew what his parents would say. His mother would worry about his health, driving all night, her sickly son, risking his life. “You don’t even know this white girl,” she’d say. His father would say, “Jesus, Chet, you left the horses without water all day?”

Back at the Hayden place, he fed and watered the horses, and they seemed all right.

None of them had kicked through their stalls.

He rigged them up in the harness, and loaded the sled with hay, and they dragged it out of the barn. He cut the orange twine on each bale with a knife and pitched the hay off the sled for the cows. The horses trudged uncomplainingly, and he thought about the skittery two-year-olds who’d kicked him every where there was to kick, when he was fourteen. The ache in his stomach felt like that. But he hadn’t been treated unfairly

by Beth Travis; he didn’t know what he had expected. If she had asked him to stay, he would have had to leave anyway. It was the finality of the conversation, and the protective look the man in the dark suit had given her, that left him feeling sore and bruised.

In the barn, he talked to the horses, and kept close to their hind legs when he moved behind them. They were sensible horses, immune to surprise, but he had left them without water all day. He gave them each another coffee canful of grain, which slid yellow over itself into their buckets.

He walked back outside, into the dark, and looked out over the flat stretch of land beyond the fences. The moon was up, and the fields were shadowy blue, dotted with cows. His hip was stiff and sore. He had to pee, and he walked away from the barn and watched the small steaming crater form in the snow. He wondered if maybe he had planted a seed, with Beth Travis, by demonstrating his seriousness to her. She wouldn’t come back—it was impossible to imagine her doing that drive again, for any reason. But she knew where he was. She was a lawyer. She could find him if she wanted.

But she wouldn’t. That was the thing that made him ache. He buttoned his jeans and shifted his hip. He had wanted practice, with girls, and now he had gotten it, but he wished it had felt more like practice. It was getting colder, and he would have to go inside soon. He fished her phone number out of his pocket and studied it a while in the moonlight, until he knew it by heart, and wouldn’t forget it. Then he did what he knew he should do, and rolled it into a ball, and threw it away.

Casual as

Where in the world will I go today?

by Amber Fresh (From the book Between You & Me) While you were at the bar trying to organise some casual sex I was in my room writing a melancholy song for you and drawing a comic about how we met and getting through a few more chapters of the copy of The Slaughterhouse Five your dad gave you

But that’s because I didn’t know then that you were at a bar making other arrangements

If I’d known I think the song might have turned out a little differently.

Between me and him

by Amber Fresh there’s just a thin little thread between me and him and o how i’m tempted to reach my hand through it to touch his arm to push my lips through it to brush his cheek

except i know what’s dangling from that thread the whole, intact beating heart of Another the one who’s not sitting here next to me with fresh washed hair

Fiona Stager

Krissy Kneen

Kate Lee

Christopher Currie

Lunch in Paris: a delicious love story, with recipes

In a Strange Room

The Great Railway Bazaar

Destination Saigon: Adventures in Vietnam

Elizabeth Bard, $35 PB The world seems to have an endless appetite for books in what we call the “running away” genre; whether it’s becoming a seachanger, a tree-changer, escaping to Naples or walking the Camino.

Nothing beats a story about somebody fulfilling the dream to change their world.

So I went to Lunch in Paris with my usual bookseller scepticism but I must admit to being pleasantly surprised.

Elizabeth Bard was an American student starting a Masters in Art History in London when she meets a Frenchman with the most tantalising of names. He’s finishing a PhD in Computer Science and they meet at a most unromantic sounding conference: Digital Resources in the Humanities.

Part love story, part winesplattered cookbook this is a story about falling in love with a Frenchman named Gwendal and moving to the world’s most romantic city, not the Hollywood version, but the real Paris with the reality of life with irregular verbs and a very French mother-in-law.

Elizabeth writes so well, in a manner that’s full of her personality but without triteness and the recipes are really to die for.

Think Gwendal’s Quick and Dirty Chocolate Soufflé Cake, Gateau au Yaourt and Tagine Boulettes Apricots.

Delicious and romantic.

Damon Galgut, $30 PB If you have not yet discovered Galgut, then you should immediately rush out and buy the Mann Booker nominated The Good Doctor. This was the novel that fuelled my obsession with this very skilled South African writer. Galgut always tackles the most difficult subjects.

His complicated relationship with apartheid is never far from the surface of his many wonderful books.

In his new work In a Strange Room, Galgut begins his journey in Greece. Our South African protagonist, Damon, is sometimes spoken about in the first person, and sometimes referred to in third person. Is this the author himself? Or is this a character Damon Galgut has invented?

This ambiguity is reminiscent of the work of Paul Auster and the resemblance does not end there.

The prose is beautiful, sparse and enigmatic – very Austeresque. This book reminded me of Auster’s latest work Invisible.

This is a book that teeters on the edge of philosophy. It is an exploration of travelling and travellers, the friendships that are made and then abandoned, the cruelties exhibited whilst travelling, the dangers, the pain and the pleasures experienced on the road. A fascinating and unsettling read.

Paul Theroux, $25.95 PB Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar is a classic for good reason.

Theroux sets out on his four-month railway trip through Europe and Asia with the mission to tell travel how it is: uncertain and incredibly uncomfortable (not to mention the trial of being chased by hunger throughout most of Asia). The resulting memoir is an entertaining account of the trains (bullet proofed carriages in Vietnam, Iranian trains with prayer mats, carriages for Buddhist monks in Ceylon, samovar’s in Russia) and the people who travelled them.

Theroux’s omnipresent narration, his subtle bluntness and satirical tone mixed with self-effacement, lend his tales a humorous quality that anyone who’s ‘done it rough’ will recognise. Mind you, you don’t need to have done it rough to appreciate his writing. His snap shot views from the railway reveal more insight than many guidebooks I’ve set my hands on. Theroux doesn’t pretend he’s going to get the whole picture and nor does he try. I’m not sure if his reaction is as much against the status quo of romanticising foreign cultures as it is against the idea of romantic travel writing and travel itself.

Walter Mason, $25 PB Walter fell in love with Vietnam because he had fallen in love with a Vietnamese-Australian man, Thang. He’s quickly seduced by the power of the country and all its contrarian beauty.

Walter is a larger than life man who finds humour and insight in so many places.

After spending long periods studying Buddhism and meditation throughout Asia, Walter is firmly committed to the idea of Interfaith spirituality.

He’s also incredibly generous and this includes sharing Vietnam with us, his readers. From the crazy heat and colour of Saigon to the quieter splendor of Hanoi, to far-flung villages and behindthe-scenes visits to Buddhist monasteries this is a rare, joyous and at times hilarious insight into 21st century Vietnam.

Destination Saigon is an unusual but highly readable combination of spirituality, travel, humour and cultural exploration of a fascinating country.

Check out Walter’s blog at www.waltermason.com.au

But Theroux somehow, from the inside of a train carriage, gives the reader a wonderful picture of strikingly different cultures and politics across the globe. The Great Railway Bazaar is an engaging, humorous and beautifully written account of the art (if there is one) of travel.

and brown hands and a very warm jumper

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

Kasia’s New York

The best SF

Best of the Independent Presses

Book Thug Nation, Williamsburg A very cool second-hand bookstore started in October 2009 by some street booksellers.

Literature abounds as well as freaky masks that guard the shelves. I found a really interesting journal/zine called Cometbus and the guy running the store was the friendliest bookseller we came across. We were very impressed by the table in the corner adorned with an electric kettle and masked bust offering free tea and coffee.

This bookstore also has regular interesting events with the likes of hipster, Tao Lin. Spoonbill & Sugartown, Williamsburg

Complimentary tea and coffee at Book Thug Nation

One would think that two people who work in independent bookstores 5 days a week might not make visiting them a priority during a holiday in New York City. Well, like moths to a flame we couldn’t help ourselves from huddling in between shelves of new and old books and combing through sale tables on footpaths. Here is a brief tour of the best indie bookstores we found in the city that never sleeps (but reads under the covers).

McNally Jackson, NoLita

East Village Books, East Village

Snowflake paper cut-outs adorned the windows of this two level bookstore with an attached café.

This was a classy indie bookstore (no visible x-rated material!) with articulate shelf tags of staff recommendations and a literature section classified by global region (70cm for Australia). Our hearts sang when we saw The Boat by Nam Le on the front table of highly recommended new releases and were slightly befuddled by the Paul Auster section guarded behind the staff counter.

We loved the East Village for all its vintage stores and delicious cheap food, but we also loved this bookstore. Sure, the staff were a little surly but what do you expect from a shop with shelf labels that include “AntiThis Establishment”. There were some really interesting collectable books in plastic pockets pinned to the wall facing the counter and some records too. We scored some great finds: short stories by J.D. Salinger, a near-new copy of Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine and a highly recommended film theory book on horror.

This was our favourite indie bookstore in New York. Equipped with a fat cat to warm up your books, there was a great back catalogue and strange but interesting self-published work, including the 2010 Tits and Totes Calendar. We picked up a gem called This is Your Book, This is My Book – a book published by the bookstore celebrating their operation as an independent bookseller for 10 years with photographs of customers, writings by staff, drawings and more!

Community Bookstore, Park Slope We walked into this small, cozy store to witness a familiar scene.

A lady walked in and was telling the bookseller at the counter how much she had loved a book she had bought there and that she had recommended it to all her friends.

Then she proceeded to pick up book after book off the new release table asking the bookseller about each one, and being regretfully informed that the bookseller hadn’t quite managed to read all of them yet! After this we headed further into the bookstore to find a resident rabbit, cat and lizard alongside a comfy couch to peruse your books. It was a little messy too, which was comforting!

Paul Landymore

Trent Jamieson

Paul Landymore

Krissy Kneen

Krissy Kneen

The New York Trilogy

Seasons of War: Part Two

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Between You and Me

How A Moth Becomes a Boat

The Long Price Quartet

Seth Grahame-Smith, $25 PB

This poet from Perth first came to our attention at the 2009 National Young Writer’s Festival.

She read from her work and her voice was fresh, unpretentious, funny and poignant. Christopher and I immediately purchased her little self-published book and devoured it in one sitting.

Paul Auster, $23.95 PB Could the first novel by Paul Auster possibly be his best?

This taut, enigmatic detective story takes the reader inside the heart of New York City. The city itself is a living breathing character in this story.

The three novels, City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, are interconnected and feature Auster’s trademark surreal style.

In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human.

The twists and turns in the plot include a detective-fiction writer turned detective who descends into madness as he becomes heavily embroiled in a case. ‘Paul Auster’ appears in the novel as a writer and as a detective. Fiction and reality are thrown into disarray.

Everything is potentially true and yet everything is potentially false.

Only Auster could pull off this kind of uncertainty with such a steady hand.

Many of Auster’s books feature the city of New York, including his most accessible Brooklyn Follies, and his latest novel Invisible which takes us around the world in sections divided into first person, second person and third person narratives. Auster is perfect for fans of Murakami and even Ian McEwan. If you haven’t visited New York through Austercoloured-glasses, then now is the time to put them on.

Daniel Abraham, $22 PB One of the most intolerable things about falling in love with any series is the wait between books.

But right now Daniel Abraham’s complete Long Price Quartet is available in two largeish volumes.

So there’s no waiting at all. And you won’t want to – I devoured them in a week.

Imagine a world where wizards are called Poets, and what they master are ideas themselves, called Andat.

An Andat might make stone soft, or it might make cotton seedless.

It is how these Andat are managed that has made the cities of Khaiem wealthy. But Andat possess desires of their own, and even the highest of motives can demand a great price.

The series charts a period of turmoil in the lands of the Khaiem lasting several decades. There are wars and assassinations, and the certainties of youth and love give way to the uncertainties of power, and the agony of dreams unfulfilled.

It’s slow building, but there are some moments that had me on the edge of my seat (and nearly missing my bus-stop). The Price may be long, but the wait certainly isn’t. This superior fantasy series is highly recommended.

With vampire books all the rage thanks to Twilight and the True Blood TV series it would be easy to dismiss a book with such a salacious title. But this one comes to us from the author of Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, which I have not read, but friends who have, assure me is a cutabove and I can now add to this reputation by saying that I found this to be very entertaining.

Simply put, it is a fictional biography of the life of America’s 16th president. The author has done his research, cunningly weaving genuine moments from this great life with a story of America’s hidden and divided society of vampires and the manipulation they exact to further their own desires. Whilst there are moments of ‘vampire action’ their presence is minimal and I learnt a great deal about one of history’s most prominent figures.

Themes of slavery and morality are played with effectively and as Abe reaches Washington his lifelong fight against the supernatural becomes one of national scope as the two vampire sides and the living humans they are allied with come to arms in bloody civil war.

Amber Fresh, $14.95 PB

This is the very best of a new crop of young voices speaking loudly and clearly. There is a strange mix of naïvety and wisdom in this tiny pocket sized book.

Fresh mixes popular culture with philosophy but never seems to take herself too seriously. We predict great things from this emerging writer and have accordingly published a short piece of writing from her in this magazine.

If you like what you see, then purchase this little book and support a strong new voice in Australian writing.

Josephine Rowe, $16.95 PB We featured writer Josephine Rowe in our February/March newsletter. Josephine is a young Melbourne writer who writes short vignettes and poetry and who has collected some of her writing in some very special boutique books that she published herself. These books have been so successful that Hunter Publishing has decided to pick up her latest book How A Moth Becomes a Boat and to republish it under the Hunter imprint.

Joesphine’s work is lyrical and poignant. Her little stories and poems speak of love in all its glory and tragedy and they are presented in the most gorgeous little gift edition with sublime illustrations featuring the author herself.

A father teaches his daughter how to break whiskey bottles. A woman looks for an old lover in a satellite photograph. A man finds the voice of his dead wife on an unlabelled cassette tape. A blind girl dreams about the taste of the moon. These stories take the briefest moments and make them matter.

This collection of minimalist, bittersweet short stories provides a haunting and beautiful vision of everyday life.

If, like me, you can accommodate the modest fantasy element, you’ll find this a most enjoyable historical romp.

Kasia Janczewski and Jason Reed from their blog she talks to me about art and I read her my stories www.herartmystories.com

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

Kasia’ Janczewski’s Art Column

Krissy Kneen

Film news

with the atrocities that scarred his family and continue to happen in different guises across the globe.

The Art of Travel One can travel the world in many ways. We can set out as an individual, in a group, get to our destination by plane, explore on foot, pack lightly, take 6 pairs of shoes, photograph every detail, write in a journal, stroll museums, volunteer in a school…

But the physical experience of traveling the world is not necessarily the best way to delve into the hearts of other cultures. A strange place and its inhabitants may not open itself to us upon our chosen time of arrival.

Artists often give us the privilege of a deeper experience of their culture that transcends the personal, social and political boundaries we may encounter as a traveler.

The enduring wounds of the Holocaust that mark the consciousness and landscape of Europe have been beautifully and poignantly rendered by the French artist Christian Boltanski in many of his installations. His controversial work Menschlich (1995) employed his signature method of assembling black and white photographs of anonymous people; but in this instance he indistinguishably included images of Nazi’s alongside their Jewish victims, murderers, children and many other seemingly conflicting ‘types’ of people. Boltanski who was born in 1944 to Jewish parents, remarkably asserted that the only difference between all the people in these cropped photographs were their circumstances and that “all we can say about these people is that they were human”.1 The title of the work which translates as ‘Humanity’ is his confrontation

Song Dong revealed the complexity of affection and respect within familial relations in China with his video installation, Touching My Father (1997) which beamed a projection of his hand moving across his father’s body. The artist transcended the restrictions of Chinese customs that prevented him from doing this in reality and revealed that “later on we [Song Dong and his father] never talked about this.

But we knew we were closer than before. We feel the love from each other. Since then our relationship is indeed different. This work has changed my life”.

The recent Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) at QAG and GOMA was an amazing opportunity to physically, intellectually and emotionally engage with numerous cultures from this region. Ayaz Jokhio from Pakistan invited us into the serenity and reverence of his architectural installation, a thousand doors and windows too (2009) set afloat in the Watermall. This pristine white structure, reminiscent of an Islamic mosque and inspired by the words of Sindhi Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai provided a sacred space within the secular realm of the gallery. The walkway across the water invited people from any faith to enter this octagonal chamber with its open ceiling and seven alcoves so that anyone could experience a momentary connection to the spirituality that informed its design. Jokhio welcomed contemplation in a space that expressed his feelings about the omnipresence of God in the architectural and religious language of his culture.

So next time you get the urge to detach from your own culture and expose yourself to another, you may get further by seeing it through an artist’s eyes than climbing the Eiffel Tower or walking the Great Wall of China.

Image: Ayaz Jokhio / Pakistan b. 1978 / a thousand doors and windows too… 2009 / Site-specific work for APT6 / Installation at: APT6 / Photograph: Natasha Harth

Jason Reed

Armchair Traveller Have you been yearning to travel the world, but can’t afford the airfares? Have you wanted to walk around the five burroughs, bite into some bratwurst or be consumed by the crowds in Asian markets? Well, now you too can travel the world for the cost of three weekly movies, without having to leave the comfort of your home.

The Family Law Benjamin Law, $27.95 PB Benjamin Law is firmly embedded in the Avid Reader hive. He started with us as a check out chick and has moved on to run the very successful The Young and The Restless bookclub.

Before Benjamin Law, none of the staff read their staff emails too closely, but when Benjamin joined the group email chain, the staff emails became required reading.

We laughed at his risqué jokes and somehow he managed to say something funny about every staff member without actually offending any of us. This warmth and wit is Benjamin’s trademark style and now he has turned his attention inward, gazing at his own family with that same hilarious good will.

This book is entirely scatological, and anyone who is offended by poo jokes should probably stay well clear, but if you, like the rest of our staff are prone to pushing the button on The Spotter’s Guide to Farts and then rolling around laughing at the array of flatulent noises contain therein, then you will enjoy this book. Benjamin’s family migrated to Australia from Hong Kong and some of them, including Ben, were not subsequently deported. This is a great and wonderful thing because Hong Kong’s loss is Australia’s

gain. We squirm with Benjamin as he survives a school play dressed as an ‘Aboriginal piccaninny’, we follow him through auditions for roles in a Bruce Lee action film where he missed out on the role because he couldn’t do an Asian accent. We follow Benjamin’s early days working in his father’s restaurant and living upstairs in a cockroach infested home. We stand with him as he takes the leap and admits to his family that he is gay. Despite some rather awkward attempts at romance, it will be impossible for you to read The Family Law without also falling in love with his life partner Scott.

The Family Law is a hilarious, moving, romantic (and did we say hilarious?) look at life for this very unique and wonderful man. We love Benjamin and we at Avid Reader can honestly say we loved him before he became the sought after journalist and regular contributor for Frankie Magazine and The Monthly. Avid Reader is very proud to host the launch of this book that is destined to become a cult classic. Come along to the launch on Thursday 10th June for the biggest and brightest party of the year. Buy Benjamin’s book and get a couple for friends because we predict that our rising young star will be so famous one day that you will be able to sell these signed copies on Ebay for a mint!

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

First stop: New York and Dave Chapelle’s Block Party. As many will know, Dave Chapelle comes from a comedy background, hosting his own show of racially charged sketch comedy and musical guests. A few years ago, he decided to get all of his favourite R&B and hip hop performers together to put on the ultimate block party for the people of Brooklyn.

Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fame directs this fantastic documentary as Dave introduces us to a variety of characters he meets on the street, whilst preparing for the party. We also meet the people from his local neighbourhood, including two best friends who are very excited to go to the party and a high school marching band that he invites to play. The film is bursting with great music from artists such as Mos Def, Erykah Badu, The Roots and Jill Scott and is very much grounded in its location. Most of the artists grew up in New York and talk about the neighbourhood as they remember it. It’s funny, entertaining and most of all has a great heart as it celebrates bringing people together to celebrate the music and place that they love.

Next Stop: Germany and Run Lola Run. This was the breakout film for our flame-red haired protagonist Lola, played by Franka Potente, who went on to star in films like

Anatomie, Blow, Romulus, My Father and the Bourne films. Here she plays a feisty young woman who isn’t afraid to break a few rules to get what she needs, but all for a good cause.

Lola’s boyfriend Manni has been doing jobs for the Mob and has lost a small fortune that he was supposed to deliver. After a frantic phone call to Lola, she sets off at high speed to do whatever she can to help him. Written and Directed by Tom Tykwer, who also composed and performed the music, this is a high paced and thrilling story. The music keeps pace with Lola’s heart, beating frantically as she races through the streets of Germany before it’s too late. The premise sounds simple, however, it’s the original storytelling, and innovative editing and structure that make it stand out as such a fantastic film. To reveal too much about how this film works would ruin the experience, suffice to say that things don’t always turn out the way they seem.

Final Stop: Hong Kong and 2046.

This film is not strictly Hong Kong as we know it, as this film is interspersed with a futuristic version of the city. Writer/director Wong Kar Wai sweeps you into a journey through time, through a man’s unrequited love and tells it all through his highly stylised and unique mode. The story is fragmented, moving in and out of reality and into the fantasy world of the future. However, the film flows along easily, sustained by the poignant soundtrack and gorgeous cinematography. This film really is a visual feast for the senses. Take a trip to this exotic part of the world and through time, you won’t be sorry you did.

These films are just suggestions of travel destinations, there are

countless other places to visit.

A great place to start would be the foreign section of your local video store. For around ten dollars, you’ll be jet setting in no time at all.

heart of Brisbane’s independent theatre. With two galleries, rehearsal space, artists and creative businesses upstairs, Metro Arts supports Brisbane’s growing talent from the roots up.

Win one of 20 double passes to The Concert, a film by Radu Mihaileanu (Live and Become, Train of Life.) Starring Alexei Guskov, Melanie Laurent, Dmitry Nazarov and Miou Miou

Metro has two key performance programs: the Independents Program and Freerange. The Independents Program runs for a year and hosts local independent theatre makers. They are given a three-week season and rehearsal space (a highly sought and rarely found commodity in Brisbane) to create work. In this program, the talented staff at Metro mentor theatre makers/companies, either from scratch or in second or third development phases, through the production process. Everything from producing, to audience development and marketing, to dramaturgical advice and technical support is given. There is always a dramaturgical eye on call, advice, and a shoulder to cry on when performance anxiety sets in. It is these out of hours phone calls and check-in texts that really make the staff and support of Metro Arts remarkable.

During the Brezhnev era, Andrei Filipov was a prodigy - the greatest conductor in the Soviet Union and he directed the famous Bolshoi Orchestra. But after refusing to expel his Jewish musicians, including his best friend Sacha, he was fired at the height of his glory. Thirty years later, he is still working at the Bolshoi, but… as a cleaner.

When Andrei intercepts a fax from the Theatre du Chatelet inviting the Bolshoi Orchestra to Paris, he comes up with a crazy idea: he’ll gather up his old musician friends (now working rag-tag jobs), head to Paris and pretend to be the famed orchestra to play Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto.”

The long-awaited dream to deliver one final performance!

IN CINEMAS APRIL 29, 2010 Email Avid Reader on books@avidreader.com.au for your chance to win one of 20 double passes.

Theatre

In the middle of the year the Freerange creative development festival sees Metro Arts open its doors to artists for a month, to experiment with seeds of ideas, and link them with professional advice.

Some works are open to the public whilst some (respectfully) need a bit more time to germinate.

Thank god we have Metro Arts.

Brisbane has a small but vibrant and incredibly talented theatre and performing arts community.

Through the support of places like Metro and her generous audiences, we can look forward to some really unique and exciting work coming out of Brisbane.

Kate Lee Theatre directors and performers are always going to struggle to show their work. But places like Metro Arts in the city give voice to our bursting emerging artists. Let’s take our hats off to the amazing people at Metro Arts. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the venue, Metro is in the heart of the city and is the

Right now Tammy Weller’s outrageous comedy Single Admissions is taking centre stage. Directed by the king of pop himself, Dan Evans, and back from Adelaide Fringe, Single Admissions is a hilarious take on single women (and their slut bus – you’ll know what I mean) in Brisbane.

Metro Arts, 109 Edward Street Brisbane. Get down there and see something. ANYTHING!

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU

Events April/May/June

Opening Hours Monday 8:30 am – 8:30 pm Tuesday 8:30 am – 8:30 pm

Matthew Evans Real Food Companion

Peter Carnavas The Important Things

Karen Leibovitch Two Years To Normal

Tues April 27th 6pm for a 6.30 start, Tickets $5.00

Sunday May 16th, 10.30am sharp Free Event

Friday 4th June 6pm for a 6.30 start Free Event

In The Real Food Companion, renowned food writer Matthew Evans shows us how to ethically source, cook and eat real food.

This gorgeous children´s picture book reminds us to always respect each other´s inner emotional world, as a mother realises that her plan to forget has completely contradicted her son´s plan to remember.

Karen Leibovitch, a counsellor, who was diagnosed with mouth cancer after a routine visit to her GP. Written from the counsellor and the personal perspective, she has written this book about the two years it took her to return to a somewhat normal life.

Jim McKinnon Sex & Driving Thurs 29th April 6pm for a 6.30pm start, Free Event Sex & Driving, is aimed at providing drivers of all ages and experience with valuable information and secrets to give them the confidence to drive safely in any situation on the road.

Carole Wilkinson Sugar Sugar Friday 30th April, Tickets $5.00 For all the millions of readers all over the world who have loved Carole Wilkinson’s multi-awardwinning Dragonkeeper series, Sugar Sugar (aimed at 14+) is exactly what they will want next.

Shelley Argent Opening the Door - A Mother’s Journey When Her Son Comes Out Friday May 14th 6pm for a 6.30pm start Free Event Opening the door is about one mother’s efforts to understand her son’s life and be part of his world.

It will inform readers of how family values can be shaken, the confusion about feelings and the unexpected reactions that can tip a family off balance when your child tells you they’re gay.

For more information about any of our events or bookclubs go to www.avidreader.com.au

Anna Haebich Murdering Stepmothers Wednesday 19th May, 6pm for a 6.30pm start, Free event Anna Haebich brings to life the people of Perth and the entangled mesh of self-righteous bigotry, slander and unbridled revenge they invoke to propel the trial of Martha Rendell to its inevitable end.

Raj Patel The Value of Nothing Bill McKibben Eaarth Monday 24th May 6pm for a 6.30pm start Tickets $5.00 Join two of the leading thinkers and writers on the subject of sustainability as they come together to discuss their new books and the issues that face the planet today.

Anthony Cooper HMAS Bataan 1952 Thursday 3rd June 6pm for a 6.30pm start Free Event Based on first-hand accounts, and told through the perspectives of a ‘lower deck’ seaman and the ship’s ‘upper deck’ commander, HMAS Bataan, 1952 details key episodes and events of the naval war in Korea.

Benjamin Law The Family Law th

Thurs 10 June 6pm for a 6.30pm start, Free event.

Why won’t his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will Benjamin’s childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? Read one of these stories and you will inevitably want to read more.

Don’t forget our popular bookclubs Fiona’s Open Bookclub First Wednesday night of each month at 7pm, then the first Thursday morning of each month at 9.30am

Wednesday 8:30 am – 8:30 pm Thursday 8:30 am – 8:30 pm Friday 8:30 am – 8:30 pm Saturday 8:30 am – 6:00 pm Sunday 8:30 am – 5:00 pm Open most public holidays

Mailing list Keen for the latest news in books? Want to know which authors will be coming to town next? Interested in free movie passes and preview tickets?

Then subscribe to Avid Reader’s e-newsletter mailing list. E-news subscribers are also invited to our famous, members-only 20%-offthe-entire-store sales (which include wine and cheese!), and the first to know about our special offers. Subscribe via our website www.avidreader.com.au Click subscribe and follow the prompts. Become our Facebook friend as well and you will get very special offers exclusive to Facebook friends.

Fiona’s Crime Bookclub First Saturday of each month at 2pm

The Young and the Restless Bookclub For 18-35yr olds. First Thursday of each month at 7pm

Adaptation Bookclub About books that have been made into films. Last Monday of each month at 7pm

Overlords Fiona Stager & Kevin Guy Bookish Underlings Krissy, Anna, Christopher, Kasia, Verdi, Paul, Trent, Emily, Nellie-Mae, Helen Café Stuart, Sophie, Melina, Verdi, Michael

193 BOUNDARY STREET, WEST END, QUEENSLAND 4101 | (07) 3846 3422 | BOOKS @ AVIDREADER.COM.AU | AVIDREADER.COM.AU