Chloe Groom: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill—It’s very rare, in my frantic life, that I re-read a book, but Dept. of Speculation is an exception. My most recent reading of Jenny Offill’s thin gem of a book was probably my sixth, and I’ll be very happy to go back and read it again. It’s quite simply the clearest depiction of the constant compromise of adult life I’ve ever read. That makes it sound depressing, but it’s also one of the funniest, self-deprecating novels I know. It has none of the annoying cockiness that so many self-referential authors display (Franzen; Safran Foer; other people whose names aren’t Jonathan) and yet there is clearly so much of Jenny Offill in this book. In the first part, the protagonist speaks in the first person and through a series of very short, unconnected but overall chronological vignettes we learn about her life as a creative writing teacher, her marriage to the host of an obscure music show, and her hilarious, very realistic struggles with parenthood. (She also offers tit-bits of general knowledge that you’ll find yourself wasting hours trying to verify. In part two the protagonist has become ‘the wife’ and the narrative switches to the third person. A family emergency, which for mystery’s sake I won’t describe, has driven her at least partly towards madness. Whereas in part one, she was so much more than a wife, in part two she feels defined and depressed by that role—this second half is a deconstruction and reconstruction of a family in a beautiful, complicated way. I first read it close to five years ago when I was in the very early stages of parenthood. Every moment of love and pain rang true. Yet this is not just a book for parents. Offill’s understanding of relationships of all kinds is spot-on, and her images will stay with you forever. Please read this book. It’s very short, it’s truly wonderful, and you won’t regret it. (Offill has a new book coming out in 2020 called American Weather which tells the story of a librarian-cum-fake-shrink who finds herself drawn into the polarised world of left-wingers worried about extreme weather and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilisation.)
4 thumbs up for Ocean
what we're reading
Stef: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong—Ocean Vuong is a celebrated young American poet and this discipline shines through when reading this, his first novel. His prose is so perfectly nuanced, capturing our often conflicted emotions, especially when it comes to love, love of our family, friends and lovers. The book is written as a letter from a son to a mother who can’t read. The letter writer, Little Dog, is in his late twenties and his epistle unearths a family history that begins in Vietnam before he was born and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known. Vuong draws on his family’s migrant experience, his difference in a new land. He explores his sexuality and the barriers he must break down. His observations of the passing of time, change in seasons and of life and death are truly poetic. If you only read one book this year, make it this one—it is so raw, so powerful and so beautiful. Andrew: This debut novel from the author of the acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds is wonderful. Narrated by a young Vietnamese immigrant to the USA, Little Dog, written as a letter to his mother Rose. Whether it is napalm and gasoline infused descriptions of seventies Saigon or the heady acetone drenched backdrop of a nail bar in middle American—(the work that Rose scrapes by on) Vuong’s writing is immediate and raw, startling and corrosive. Definitely worth checking out, and absolutely a writer to watch.
Roger: Prompted by the release of Big Sky ( Kate Atkinson’s new novel in the eccentrically brilliant series featuring ex soldier, ex cop, now nearly ex private eye, Jackson Brodie) I took advantage of a recent holiday at son’s family’s house in beautiful Bermagui to get stuck into the backlist of Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series of novels. I first fell in love with Atkinson’s writing when I laughed out loud at her first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and I had read and loved the first Brodie book, Case Histories, when it came out in 2004. But somehow work and personal pressures had kept me away from the three subsequent books featuring the lovable Jackson, victim (or Influencer?) of fate. And now there was this fifth coming out—so I had to catch up. And what an exciting ride it is. Good characters, irony and comedy galore combined with tragedy on steroids in fast moving, zanily coincidental but emphatically believable plots, ( What is the plural of ‘Deus ex machina’?). What more could you want in the modern British novel. They stand alone, but the best way to read them is in order as Jackson struggles and sails through adversity and good fortune adapting himself to the changes of life and society. We need someone to publish a book The Jackson Brodie Novels and Philosophy.) If you want to catch up we have two early books in the series: Case Histories and Started Early, Took My Dog in stock at the special price of $12. And of course Big Sky in stock at the special price fo $29.99.
Performing Arts
Malcolm Young: The man who made AC/DC by Jeff Apter ($33, PB)
Malcolm Young was always destined for a life in rock & roll: his elder brother George was a key member of The Easybeats & was also a vital early mentor of AC/DC. Malcolm lived hard & fast, enduring incredible hardship when the band started out in the mid-1970s, surviving the terrible loss of Bon Scott in 1980, and suffering numerous personal demons, including alcoholism. Yet without Malcolm Young, there would have been no AC/DC. As the band’s former bassist, Mark Evans, wrote of Malcolm: ‘He was the driven one, the planner, the schemer, the behind the scenes guy, ruthless & astute.’ Brent Heavener tells the story of his remarkable rise from working-class Glasgow&and the Villawood migrant hostel in Sydney to the biggest stages in the world.
Mad as Hell and Back: A Silver Jubilee of Sketches by Shaun Micallef and Gary McCaffrie ($35, PB) To mark the 10th season of Mad as Hell and Shaun Micallef’s 21st year in comedy this is a comprehensive collection of the funniest scripts & scenes from Micallef’s long TV career? The book feature the highlights of Mad as Hell, and also favourites from Full Frontal, The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) and Newstopiä. Micallef & his co-writer Gary McCaffrie usher us behind the scenes with hilarious footnotes to their most loved sketches.
Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons by Ben Folds ($35, PB) From growing up in working class North Carolina amid the race and class tensions that shaped his early songwriting, to painful life lessons he learned the hard way, Ben Folds also ruminates on music in the digital age, the absurdity of life on the road, and the challenges of sustaining a multi-decade, multi-faceted career in the music business. He opens up about finding his voice as a musician, becoming a rock anti-hero, and hauling a baby grand piano on and off stage for every performance—a funny and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller.
50 Years of Glastonbury: Music and Mud at the Ultimate Festival ($50, HB)
50 Years of Glastonbury celebrates the mud and mayhem that makes the festival one of the most popular musical events in the world, for fans and for artists, alike. Packed with incredible photographs and stories of the acts and attendees who have made Glastonbury a phenomenon, this is a visual feast showing lineups from each festival and outstanding photographs of headliners and cult acts from the festival’s extraordinary history.
Revenge of the She-Punks : A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot by Vivien Goldman ($32, PB)
Vivien Goldman blends interviews, history & her personal experience as one of Britain’s first female music writers in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by dismantling boundaries. A discussion of the Patti Smith song Free Money, for example, opens with Goldman on a shopping spree with Smith. Tamar-Kali, whose name pays homage to a Hindu goddess, describes the influence of her Gullah ancestors on her music, while the late Poly Styrene’s daughter reflects on why her Somali-ScotsIrish mother wrote the 1978 punk anthem Identity, with the refrain ‘Identity is the crisis you can’t see’. Other strands feature artists from farther afield (including Colombia & Indonesia) and genre-busting revolutionaries such as Grace Jones, who influenced the movement while absorbing its liberating audacity. From punk’s Euro origins to its international reach, this is an exhilarating world tour.
Bob Dylan’s Poetics: How the Songs Work by Timothy Hampton ($54, HB)
Focusing on the interplay of music & lyric, Hampton traces Dylan’s innovative use of musical form, his complex manipulation of poetic diction, and his dialogues with other artists, from Woody Guthrie to Arthur Rimbaud. Moving from Dylan’s earliest experiments with the blues through his mastery of rock & country to his densely allusive more recent recordings, Hampton offers a detailed account of Dylan’s achievement. Locating Dylan in the long history of artistic modernism, he examines the relationships among form, genre & the political & social themes that crisscross Dylan’s work.
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