By Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
This Kingdom of Dust
David Dyer
Penguin, $34.99
In The Midnight Watch, David Dyer plunged readers into the mystery aboard the SS Californian, a nearby vessel that failed to come to the aid of the Titanic the night it sank.
The author turns from real-life historical disaster to speculative fiction with This Kingdom of Dust, reimagining the Apollo 11 moon landing with a hitch – the lunar module’s engine fails, so the first men to walk on the moon’s surface are also the first to die there.
Shifting between Buzz Aldrin, his wife Joan back on Earth watching helplessly, and Aquarius, a journalist (who seems to be based on Norman Mailer) tasked with writing about it all, Dyer has researched the culture at NASA thoroughly. One eye-opening aspect concerns how astronauts’ wives were treated and expected to conduct themselves. Don’t go expecting a feminist rewrite – Aquarius clearly hasn’t read enough women writers to capture that perspective with any literary depth. Still, there’s a wealth of fascinating period detail in this space odyssey gone wrong, and the unfolding drama is delivered with style, even if its message of stoicism sounds glib in the end.
The Close-up
Pip Drysdale
HarperCollins, $34.99
Darkness lurks under Hollywood glitz in Pip Drysdale’s latest thriller. Young writer Zoe Ann Weiss moved to LA hoping to make it, but her first novel was a thriller no one read and, just as bad, her hot boyfriend, bartender and aspiring actor Zach, ghosted her without a word.
Three years have passed when Zoe – on the slide and facing crushing writer’s block – reconnects with her old flame. Romance reignites in an organic way that makes it feel like no time has passed at all. Trouble is, Zach is now a movie star, gleaming from billboards and chased by paps, and when photos emerge identifying Zoe as his new girlfriend, her life changes forever.
Fame descends as the thriller she wrote becomes a sleeper hit, but she looks set to pay a deadly price. Zach is being stalked by a deranged fan, and they begin to re-enact violent twists from her book. Although The Close Up is intricately plotted, the prose is tossed off with a negligence that lessens suspense and flattens characterisation. Drysdale does more than skim the surface of Hollywood weirdness and depravity in this page-turner, but perhaps not quite enough to make it truly stand out from the genre pack.
The Winds from Further West
Alexander McCall Smith
Polygon, $39.99
Compassionate comedy with a hint of melancholy under the uplift? That has been Alexander McCall Smith’s calling card for decades and the author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series remains true to type, almost frustratingly so, in The Winds from Further West.
In this one, Edinburgh University academic Dr Neil Anderson is prey to chance encounters. He got his job by chance, met his latest partner by chance, and his position at the university becomes untenable by chance, also – a furore erupts after a student misinterprets an innocuous remark and his calculating careerist boss refuses to back him. A personal betrayal is the last straw.
Neil’s life unravels and he retreats to the remote Isle of Mull off Scotland’s west coast, in a sanctuary owned by his gay best friend. There, the rescue of two wolf cubs at sea, chance encounters with quirky Hebrideans, and a blossoming romance with the local vet Jill await. The set-up is more interesting than the autopilot McCall Smith uses to resolve this soft romance, though his fans will find it rippling with gentle observational comedy, as usual.
Matia
Emily Tsokos Purtill
UWAP, $34.99
Matia, blue amulets with concentric circles to ward off the “evil eye”, litter flea markets and tourist traps throughout modern Greece. Emily Tsokos Purtill’s debut novel follows Sia, who immigrates to Perth from Greece in 1945, clutching four such talismans to protect her and her female descendants from misfortune.
We follow her family through four generations – Sia’s Australian-born daughter Koula, raised steeped in Greek tradition; her daughter Athena, rebelling against it, and especially against marriage; and Athena’s daughter Clara, pining for a deeper connection to a cultural legacy of which she remains ignorant.
The ambivalences of migration play out through the tensions of mother-daughter relationships, on a domestic canvas which swims with lingering superstitions, trauma, and the intensely patriarchal treatment of women, but also the delight and pride of Greek culture, family and cuisine. Dialogue isn’t always differentiated enough to sound authentic, but there’s enough magic and domestic peril to ward off dullness in this intergenerational migration saga.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Warra Warra Wai
Darren Rix & Craig Cormick
Scribner, $34.99
Turning the European story of Cook’s arrival on its head, the subtitle of this book says it all: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People.
A rich and often tragic tale, it unfolds through First Nations perspectives of Cook’s Endeavour voyage up the east coast, contrasting the locals’ spiritually embedded place names and deep knowledge of Country with the superficial monikers that Cook plucked from the top of his head.
Smoke signals travelled up the coast as communities warned those further north of the coming of a strange large bird, which the Yuin people feared was the greedy giant pelican, Gurung gabba, returned from the Dreaming “with unknown intent”. As this instructive re-enchantment of the standard “discovery” narrative shows, point of view is everything when it comes to how history is told and understood.
Why Are We Like This?
Zoe Kean
NewSouth, $29.99
Evolution has traditionally been told as a story of conflict, a fight for survival. Every gene for itself. But what of evolutionary paradoxes such as altruism?
“If the aim of the game is passing genes down the generations, why would whales beach themselves when they hear their fellows in distress?” asks Zoe Kean. Making sense of romantic love, consciousness, female orgasm, ageing, sleep, cancer, our thirst for alcohol and other evolutionary conundrums is the project of this bold, scientifically savvy and nuanced work.
Kean doesn’t offer up simple answers. Instead, she expands the reader’s horizons and sense of wonder, examining the latest thinking and debate on these subjects, showing how aspects of evolutionary biology have been driven by dogma and socially conditioned assumptions that overlooked the role of care, pleasure, emotions and connection as driving forces in making us what we are.
Fire Up!
Nedd Brockmann
Simon & Schuster, $34.99
The mantra “you can do anything you want if you want it hard enough” is tossed around a lot. It’s an individualistic creed that disregards social disadvantage.
While endurance runner Nedd Brockmann stresses personal responsibility, pushing through pain and going outside your comfort zone, his motivational philosophy is more old-school and community-minded. He cites the example set by his parents: the long hours on the farm his father put in each day, the values his mother instilled in him to be a “man of my word”.
One of the main factors that kept him running across Australia when his body was screaming at him to stop was his commitment to raising money for the homeless, a track record that gives the 25-year-old’s advice its street cred. This is a practical guide for young people on how they might challenge themselves, build resilience, set goals and overcome their fears.
Our National Crisis: Violence Against Women & Children
Kate Fitz-Gibbon
Monash University Publishing, $19.95
Fatal attacks on women by intimate partners have risen to a 10-year high. Why is it so when there is more focus on this murderous behaviour than ever before?
The answer lies in the glacial pace of social change in the areas of gender equality, the justice system and funding for preventative measures. But as Kate Fitz-Gibbon points out, it’s also up to the community. “Small acts of support can be transformational for victim-survivors.”
Bystanders such as family, co-workers and neighbours are crucial in early intervention, as are the police if they take women’s complaints seriously. At the heart of the crisis is the ingrained sexism that permeates Australian society, she says. This sobering essay provides an instructive overview of the current situation and how it can be addressed if our leaders recognise that women’s and children’s safety is as important as national security.
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