October Favourites
A Woman’s Battles and Transformations by Edouard Louis – This a delicate love letter from son to mother. Louis has not understood his mother throughout his life. He only begins to truly see who she is and who she has been when she finally escapes the disfiguring force of the men around her – both her ex-husbands and her sons. She finally arrives in Paris and finds some hint of the bourgeois freedom her gendered, working class life has revoked. Louis effects a beautiful turn around from a quite sad opening to a glorious happy blossoming. Really, a short book about love, freedom and understanding. – Jonathon
Bolla – Pajtim Statovci writes as if breathing on embers, kindling small moments of grace and levity out of an immense darkness. This is true of his moving third novel Bolla, which paints in exquisite detail a relationship between two men, a Serb and an Albanian, against the backdrop of the Kosovan war in
the 1990s. Interweaving moments of cruelty and humanity, and delineating the visceral effects of shame,
fear, and trauma on our most intimate relationships, Bolla is a powerful and haunting novel about our
capacity to heal or destroy one another. – Zac
Her Fidelity– Katharine Pollock – Kate works in a record shop amongst predominantly male co-workers. “To fit in”, she puts up with a lot, at work in the pub but not without a nagging feeling that things should be different. Told with humour and framed by references to pop songs and culture. Lots of those went over my head but that did not deter my enjoyment. The friendship amongst the female characters see you through with rage and laughter.Lots has changed for girls growing up and plenty has stayed the same. The struggle to work out what sort of human I am and how to stay true to yourself, is depicted in this novel. A timeless tale with a backdrop of a workspace that has already become a rarity. – Anna
Limberlost – Robbie Arnott. A staggeringly beautiful story of a young boy in northern Tasmania who immerses himself in the renovation of a sailing boat while his father and sister are painfully distracted by the absence of his two brothers (it is nearing the end of World War Two). I was blindsided by how profoundly moving this book is – Arnott’s previous novels have assuredly used magical realism, but I fancy this ‘straight’ historical novel will mark his arrival as one of a handful of Australia’s very best novelists. – Andrew
The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings – Match report: Geoff Dyer tosses the ball high, hits it cross court to Federer’s forehand – it’s the essay collection Dyer has been waiting to serve for ten years. Federer, surprised by its finesse, steps forward, wonders if he has the game to outwit Dyer’s dazzling range and lobs a return. Dyer anticipates it (he sees everything) and whips his racket into an overhead smash…and it’s game, set and match to the reader. Unmissable. – Jack
The Sun Walks Down – Fiona McFarlane– This is a wonderful novel which seems to me to live lightly, honestly as a kind of myth. It takes on the Australian colonial story of the lost child. The characters who inhabit this piece of Aboriginal land move across the landscape like pieces in a game for almost the entire arc of the story. Every character, every interaction offers yet more insight into power around ownership of the land. There are no characters you don’t care about. The storytelling is masterful, and the effect it had on this reader still reverberates. – Judy
Sayaka Murata – Life Ceremony “I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.” All things are beautiful and horrifying in Murata’s latest collection of short stories. She plays with themes of alienation to reflect the idiosyncrasies and injustices of modern life. She is deeply intentional, truly provocative and intriguing. Grotesque, fascinating, transcendent. – Tilda