Australian Literature The Orchardist’s Daughter by Karen Viggers
16 year-old Mikaela has grown up isolated & homeschooled on an apple orchard in southeastern Tasmania, until an unexpected event shatters her family. 18 months later, she & her older brother Kurt are running a small business in a timber town. Miki is kept a virtual prisoner by Kurt, who leads a secret life of his own. When Miki meets Leon, another outsider, things slowly begin to change—and Miki has to fight to uncover the truth of her past. Set in the oldgrowth eucalypt forests & vast rugged mountains of southern Tasmania, Karen Viggers’ book is an uplifting story about friendship, resilience and finding the courage to break free. ($30, PB)
ISINGLASS by Martin Edmond ($27, PB)
An unknown man comes ashore at a remote beach on the NSW coast. He is taken into detention & sent, ultimately, to Darwin. His captors call him Thursday after the day upon which he was found. Thursday doesn’t speak, but instead paints an enigmatic mural on the wall of his donga in the detention centre. It is a city, a dream city, and when he finishes he says a single word: Isinglass. This latest offering from author Martin Edmond is a beautifully written portrayal of the shameful practices of the Australian gulag archipelago, and a compelling story of a man adrift in an unkind world.
Southerly 78–1: Festschrift: David Brooks
This issue of Southerly pays tribute to David Brooks, who is retiring as editor after 2 decades’ stewardship. It includes poetry, fiction, essays & memoir that interweave readings of David’s work with accounts of the various literary communities that David has worked in over 4 decades from Canberra to North America, Perth, Slovenia, Sydney & now, Katoomba. This is a tribute shows a remarkable textual practice that weaves through the literary page & daily life to community & culture, including this journal. ($26.95, PB)
The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth ($30, PB)
From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm’s length. Diana is exquisitely polite, but Lucy knows, even after marrying Oliver, that they’ll never have the closeness she’d been hoping for. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law. That was 10 years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something.
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l l i H ’ D n O
Oh dear—it’s all over isn’t it? I’m not bemoaning the passing of the Festive season so much as the lovely long summer holidays that follow—for some! I had two weeks off during which I saw some fantastic movies, watched the final season of The Americans, went to the beach a few times, joined the decluttering frenzy (one linen closet!), got bitten by a dog and read some great books. I love nothing more than discovering a new writer—new to me, anyway—and was bowled over by Valeria Luiselli, a Mexican writer who lives in New York and whose latest book is the utterly astonishing Lost Children Archive. In it Luiselli counterpoints two journeys—that of a couple, both sound archivists who, with their two precocious but funny and lovable children, drive from New York City to Arizona. The husband and father (no-one is named for reasons that don’t escape me but do annoy me) is researching the last of the Apache (much interesting history here) while the woman, a Mexican like the author, is trying to find her way in to a project about the thousands of children who travel alone, through dreadful hardship and uncertainty, from Central America through Mexico to the United States. A deeply intelligent, politically prescient and topical book, it is also one in which the prose swoops and soars and holds you in its thrall. In her skewering of the human condition, Luiselli reminds me of Siri Hustvedt, that other brainiac New Yorker. Lost Children Archive is out this month and I can’t wait for you all to read it. Also out this month and highly recommended is the sixth and last book in Steven Carroll’s Glenroy series which chronicle a suburban Melbourne family from the early 20th, to the early 21st Century. In The Year of the Beast, WW1 and the rise of the suffragette movement provide the background to the story of the brave and resilient Maryanne who defies social mores to keep her illegitimate baby Vic—father of Michael, who the central character of the rest of the Glenroy series. Beautifully written, the book circles back and around the other novels and characters in the series but can be read on its own. The six books in the Glenroy series, along with his four books based on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, is a remarkable body of work—which, despite several literary awards and shortlistings, has not wide enough a readership. Let’s remedy that this year. This February it is my great pleasure to introduce you to the new children’s buyer at Dulwich Hill. Naomi Mamolis will be known to many of you as she has been the Director of the Dulwich Hill preschool for many years. Serendipitously, Naomi was looking for a new challenge (and challenge it will be) just as we needed to fill Mandy’s shoes, and so we snapped her up. All of us at gleebooks are looking forward to working with Naomi and I’m sure you’ll join us in making her welcome. See you on D’Hill, Morgan
Half Moon Lake by Kirsten Alexander ($33, PB) NEW COURSE Electric Words with Pip Smith 10am – 4pm, Saturday 9 March 2019 NOW OPEN FOR BOOKING: The Secret Life of Getting Published with Annette Barlow 10am – 4pm, Saturday 6 April 2019
For more information: Talk to us: (02) 8425 0171 Email us: faberwritingacademy@allenandunwin.com.au Visit us: www.faberwritingacademy.com.au
In 1913, on a summer’s day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, 14-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods & never returns. His parents are wealthy & influential, and will do anything to find their son. For 2 years, they search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards & struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp. But is he truly Sonny Davenport? And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports’ own friends, take sides. As the tramp’s kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they’d ever dreamed.
Fusion by Kate Richards ($33, PB)
Forever entwined, Sea & Serene live isolated in the Australian alpine wilderness, together with Wren—the young man who helps care for them. Each have found peace in this wild, fierce landscape, and they live in harmony, largely self-sufficient. One day Wren discovers a woman on the road nearby, badly injured & unconscious. He brings her back to the cottage, and he & the twins nurse her back to health. But the arrival of this outsider shatters the dynamic within, with unforeseen consequences. Richards’ debut novel is a haunting modern-gothic tale about selfhood, dependency & love.
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