A melancholy family saga, a year of mudlarking and other new books
By cameron woodhead and steven carroll December 24, 2024 — 12.00amNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeFICTION PICK OF THE WEEKThe Son’s StoryMarie-Helene LafonMountain Leopard, $22.99The first of Marie-Helene Lafon’s novels translated into English, The Son’s Story kaleidoscopes across a century from 1908 to 2008, each scene a day in the life of two families. The Lachalmes and the Léotys hail from a picturesque Cantal village, Chanterelle, in which old ways of life cannot go on forever. Lafon almost makes time stop altogether in the opening scene. It discloses a haunting, gorgeously described tragedy involving a child, before swirling across generations and continents and social classes in a delicately wrought family saga that connects in emotional rather than narrative time. Lafon’s beautiful prose can be charged with the fullness of time or its radical incompleteness, it can trace the furtive emotional trails of secret assignations, or the wisps of a loss never fully appreciated at the time. Certainly, Lafon is a sharp, moody writer whose emotional intelligence makes this family saga a rich and melancholy enchantment.The Furphy Anthology 2024 Hardie Grant, $35If it’s been a while since you’ve been told a decent furphy, the annual anthology of entries from the Furphy Literary Award is here for you. The award is bankrolled by the descendants of Joseph Furphy, author of the classic shaggy dog novel Such Is Life. (You know the one. Begins with “Unemployed at last!” ) The Furphy encourages yarns of every stripe, and this is the fifth anthology of works to be published since the award went national in 2019. This year’s winner, Kathryn Lomer for Nothing About Kissing, has created a cute flirtation set at a MONA-like gallery, where behind-the-scenes shenanigans illuminate and satirise the contemporary art scene. Second and third prizes went to, respectively, Jane Dowling’s Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, God (a warm and witty riff off Judy Blume’s teen angst fiction, refocused on loneliness and ageing) and Paulette Gittins’ layered suburban tale Should’ve, Could’ve, Would’ve. Readers continue to reap rewards from this freestyle short fiction competition in the spirit of Furphy’s rebellious literary inventiveness.Finding Joy in Oyster BaySusan DuncanAllen & Unwin, $32.99Featuring returning characters from her previous novel Sleepless in Stringybark Bay, Susan Duncan’s latest revisits the close-knit community of Cook’s Basin, accessible only by boat. Bargeman Sam is left in a fix when his partner, former journalist turned cafe-owner Kate Jackson, abandons their six-month-old baby and disappears without a word. The domestic crisis threatens the local cafe, an important hub in a town this small. A gang of outspoken seniors are soon pitching in to help. It does take a village, after all, even if it seems like the motley band of retirees will cause more scrapes than they fix. When it is discovered that Kate is still living in the area, the community comes together without judgement to navigate the crisis. Despite its heavy plot hook, Finding Joy in Oyster Bay relies on colourful, affectionately drawn characters and no small degree of small-town intrigue and charm.AdvertisementFire John BoyneDoubleday, $29.99John Boyne’s Fire is the third of a quartet of short novels based on the elements, each dealing unexpectedly with trauma. Dr Freya Petrus is an emergency doctor specialising in skin grafts and burns victims. She’s skilled, attractive, well-off, but spent her childhood in poverty and neglect. In alternate chapters, we follow Freya as a doctor in a busy English hospital, training interns and treating patients whose lives are changed forever, then as a girl abandoned by her teen mum to the care of her grandmother, before being bullied horribly by teenage boys (the sons of one of her mum’s better boyfriends). The not-so-submerged twist is that the remarkable Dr Petrus, when she’s not saving lives as a medico, seduces underage boys. Nature vs nurture is raised but not in a way that works as more than a plot point in a genre mystery. Boyne’s suite of novellas embraces brevity, but it works against him here – the nightmare isn’t fleshed out emotionally and psychologically with sufficient gravity.NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEKA Mudlarking YearLara MaiklemBloomsbury, $44.99Mudlarking: scavenging river banks for valuable or interesting objects. British writer Lara Maiklem has been mudlarking on the banks of the Thames since 2012, and it’s astonishing what the river bank throws up. This, her second book on the subject, covers a year. But, more than a record of her finds, it’s also a history of London reflected in the objects – Maiklem also incorporates perfectly plausible, inventive speculations on why the objects wound up on the river bank, as well as glimpses of her own story. Roman artefacts, old coins, pottery, Samian bowl fragments, 18th-century shoe soles, shells and gold are just some of the finds her mudlarking hands dig up. Whether it’s the pain of her freezing fingers in January or describing the beauty of the “blue hour” in spring, Maiklem has a rare talent for making you feel you’re there right alongside her.My CountryDavid MarrBlack Inc, $39.99Most readers will be familiar with David Marr’s unflinching political journalism – especially his scathing assessment of John Howard during the “children overboard” scandal. What this updated collection of his writing life reveals, however, is the well-rounded nature of his oeuvre. His reconstruction of the night Ben Chifley died in Canberra in 1951, for example, both engrossing and poignant, is as perfectly judged a piece of non-fiction storytelling as you’re likely to come across. Likewise, his reflections on his Christian youth, coming to terms with his sexuality, the demise of his marriage and entering into the writing life – as well as the way, like Patrick White, he looks his country in the eye, both hopeful and despairing. But, above all, what comes through is the fact that Marr, with deceptive simplicity and poise, is a superb writer.Crimes Against HumanityGeoffrey Robertson KC, Penguin, $45The whole notion of crimes against humanity (acts so heinous they diminish everybody) may have come from the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials (which spawned the ICC), but Robertson, in this fifth edition, takes the history of humanitarian crimes back to the English civil war and the reign of Charles 1. He concentrates mostly, though, on the post-WWII era – paying special attention to GW Bush’s invasion of Iraq on the basis of “pre-emptive self-defence”, how the same argument was used by Putin to invade Ukraine (to stop them joining NATO and becoming a potential invader), right up to the current war in the Middle East. He points to the Hague’s successes – Milosevic, Gaddafi (posthumously) and, potentially, Putin and Netanyahu. A vast, exceptionally relevant subject, argued with engaging clarity, with the odd dash of gallows humour.The 7 Deadly Sins of SportTitus O’ReilyPenguin, $36.99As often as not, sport is spoken of in religious terms – sportspeople not uncommonly seen as saints, sinners or sinning saints. Taking his cue from this, sports commentator Titus O’Reily examines the flawed careers of a range of sporting figures, according to which of the seven deadly sins they have committed. The downfall of blessed soccer freak George Best – who famously said, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered” – is almost Shakespearean, his fatal flaw, lust, leading him to squander his talent as well. Whether it be Tiger Woods, Michael Jordon or Donald Trump (whose envy of anyone who owned a team led to all sorts of dubious dealings), they all fall victim to, or are characterised by, one of the biblical sins in the amusing account of strange but true sporting tales.The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.Most Viewed in Culture
