‘Published or Not’ live to air and streaming Thursday at 11.30am
Podcasts at 3cr.org.au/publishedornot

Jan Goldsmith and David McLean chat with authors each Thursday at 11.30am. 

‘Published or Not’  podcasts available at 3cr.org.au/Publishedornot

Family stories set in other times and other places

- Can one person be a model citizen as well as a feared monster? After 20 years a small rural community hasn’t solved the disappearance of a young girl. ‘The Silent Listener’ by Lyn Yeowart is so much more than just a crime novel. Pick of the year!  

- In these days of social media, significant hurt can come if your sex life or hoarding habit becomes public knowledge as it does in ‘Love Objects’ by Emily Maguire.

- Melissa Manning has created resilient characters who live in small communities of southern Tasmania in the linked stories of ‘Smokehouse”.

- Hannah Kent’s ‘Devotion’ in part tells how devout Lutherans emigrated to South Australia but more so about two young woman who find friendship and committed love that follows them beyond the grave.

- Alison Gibbs, ‘Repentance’ is a town in northern NSW  set in 1970’s, the divided community is deciding whether it will be known for logging or rainforest tourism.

- 10 year old Rae and next door neighbour Lettie have secrets and houses but not homes. Emily Spurr has written about isolation Splinter the dog and love in ‘A Million Things’.

- A young man runs from Melbourne into the excess of capitalism in New York and contrast of rural Ohio. Along with lions and tigers, will he find what his is looking for in Emily Bitto’s novel ‘Wild Abandon’.

- ‘The Night Letter’ by Denise Leith –set in Afghanistan. An Australian doctor learns of the secrets, friendships and loves of a wealth of characters living around her square.

- Japanese life is steeped in traditions, here four interconnected characters tell of how a different life can be lived in ‘The Shut Ins’ by Katherine Brabon.

                                                      …and family stories with a laugh

- Grandmothers may live on the periphery of a family’s life but when Shirley and Beth suspect their grand daughter is being abused, they abduct her, and the great grandmother comes too, in ‘The Unusual Abduction of Avery Conifer’ by Ilsa Evans

- Jacquie Byron has created a feisty 65 year old woman getting older but perhaps not wiser. Friends had become unwelcome until new neighbours, breach her fortress and heart in the humorous ‘Happy Hour’. 

Historical fiction based on truth – 

- Poland in 1939, with the background of anti-Semitism and the imminent Nazi invasion, Maria is absorbed in finding the whereabouts of her mother in ‘Secrets My Father Kept’ by Rachel Givney.

- ‘The Imitator’ by Rebecca Starford is loosely based on the real life events of a MI5 female agent based in London in the 1930’s and 40’. A page turning WW2 spy thriller. 

- A French resistance writer and a murderer find themselves together in prison and a slave factory in WW2. ‘The French Gift’ is another historical fiction by Kirsty Manning.

                                                      Crime is always a good read – and some of the best 

- Ellie has a popular true crime podcast and her investigation into a cold case serial killer leads to more murders happening in this thriller ‘Girl 11’ by Amy Suiter Clarke

- A step-mother, younger than the groom’s daughters, creates uncertainty in the family with secrets and lies being revealed. Sally Hepworth has written another page-turner in ‘The Younger Wife’, which starts with the wedding and a murder.

David’s choices - Any one of those five would make for good holiday reading.

 - I have to admit that ‘Sincerely, Ethel Malley’ by Stephen Orr was amongst my favourites this year. It fictionalized the Ern Malley affair (a factual event) in a most intriguing and original way making us question who or what makes for truth in fiction. 

- Max Barry’s, ‘The 22 Murders of Madison May’, gave us the notion of a serial killer in multiple parallel universes. 

- J. P. Pomare was at his unsettling best in ‘The Last Guests’ showing just how pervasive voyeurism is in our society. 

- Robert Gott bases many of his works on historical fact so the Nunawading Messiah in ‘The Orchard Murders’ has its foundation in unsettling real life scenarios. 

-  And Mark Brandi narrates from the perspective of an adolescent who realizes the world is not as his father wants him to believe in, ‘The Others’. 

Jan Goldsmith, David McLean and Euan Mitchell chat with authors each Thursday at 11.30am.

‘Published or Not’ podcasts at 3cr.org.au/Publishedornot

These were the authors Jan chatted with in 2020

Domestic noir – relationship stories with a dark reality

Sally Hepworth – the Good Sister – everybody has a dark side

Kirsten Alexander – Riptides – every action has a reaction especially a car crash

Margaret Bearman – We were never friends – the choice of an artist’s model

Fiona Lowe – Just as Ordinary Family – parenting takes you to unintended places

Suzanne Daniel – Allegra in Three Parts – growing up with grandmothers

Imbi Neeme – The Spill – complex relationship of sisters with different lifestyles

Christie Nieman – Where we Begin – mother full of shame, daughter full of anger

Ewa Ramsey – The Morbids- how different strategies can help with anxiety

Monica McInerney – The Godmothers – will they help to find her father?

Petronella McGovern – The Good Teacher – kindness and betrayal

Craig Silvey – Honeybee – coming to terms with transgender choices

Georgina Young – Loner – her identity - shopping trolley collector or artist

Historical fiction

Kirsty Manning – The Lost Jewels – craftsmanship, loss and love based around London’s Cheapside hoard of 500 pieces of jewellery unearthed in 1912

Christine Bell – No Small Shame – from Ireland to the Wonthagi coal mine and Melbourne around WW1, the lack of understanding of mental health problems

Kate Grenville – A Room of Leaves – Elizabeth Macarthur seemed to be a demure woman, was she!

Pip Williams – The Dictionary of Lost Words – How the Oxford Dictionary was compiled with the help but lack of acknowledgment of woman.

Fin J Ross – Billings Better Bookstore and Brasserie – Melbourne in 1880s and in competition to Coles Book Arcade

Deborah Challinor – The Jacaranda house – King’s Cross in the 1960’s

Dani Powell – Return to Dust – How death is undertaken in aboriginal communities teaches a volunteer worker how to grieve for her brother

Caroline Miley – Artist on Campaign – painting generals during Napoleonic wars

Kate Murdock – the Orange Grove –set in the French Court

Pandemic novels

Laura Jean McKay – The Animals in that Country – imagine a flu that if you caught it you could understand what animals were saying!

Meg Mundell – The Trespassers – fleeing London a ship load of people must stop at the Port Nepean quarantine station and this is set in the future!

Biography

Darleen Bungey – Daddy Cool – her father was a very big name as a singer in America so why did he come to Australia and change his name

Alex Miller – Max – Alex’s unlikely connections help with his search into finding the facts about his friend Max Blatt

Crime

Anne Buist – The Long Shadow – a psychologist moves to a country town and needs to solve an historical murder before another baby is killed

Kyle Perry – The Bluffs – teenage girls go missing in the Tasmanian wilderness

Jane Harper – The Survivors – a fatal storm in a Tasmanian holiday town and 12 years later another death, are they connected

Benjamin Stevenson – Either Side of Midnight – Sex, money, drugs, revenge could be a TV Promo or the reason why TV viewers witnessed a suicide

Sandi Wallace – Black Cloud –a tragedy becomes a crime and police and journalists are personally involved

Humour

Fiona Harris and Mike McCleish- The Drop Off – Parents becoming friends because they have children at school together also a Web series – very good

Paul Dargarno - Poly – polygamy – a not so normal modern family

Rawah Arja – The F Team –can sport teach boys how to be responsible

Rosalie Ham – The Dressmaker’s Secret – What happened to Tilly Dunnage after she burnt down the very best dressed town of Dungatar.

Asheg Brom- Chicken Same Duck Talk – teaching English in China

Romance/sex

Leonie Kelsall – The Farm at Peppertree crossing – unexpected inheritance

Jessie Tu – A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing – proficient at violin and now sex

Rita Therese - Come – what does an escort keep in her handbag?

Fiona Palmer – Tiny White Lies – a holiday removing kids from screens and phones has unexpected outcomes

And from co-presenter David McLean

This year has been a Covid muddle though we have managed to keep the show alive through digital prestidigitation. My diary has reminded me of some of the interesting volumes -

Luke Arnold’s, The Last Smile of Sunder City, was futuristic detective noir – an interesting combination.

J P Pomare’s, ‘In the Clearing’, looked at cult survivors.

Katherine Kovacic continued her art oriented detective series with ‘The Shifting Landscape’  

K M Kruimink laid bare the colonial past in her award winning, A Treacherous Country’.

Chris Flynn’s eccentric tale told by a mammoth, suitably entitled, ‘Mammoth’  brought a pachyderm back from extinction to scrutinise mankind’s role and effect on the landscape.

All and each made lockdown a little more endurable.

_______________________

Jan Goldsmith’s best books for 2019 books
- Elsie is not a typical farmer’s wife. Is it the unacceptance of the town or the harshness of the Mallee, causing her the problems that so embarrass her daughter?  Marjorie is the narrator of Wearing Paper Dresses. Anne Brisden has written characters and incidents in a story you will remember.
- Maybe the Horse Will Talk has the seriousness of sexual harassment and corporate corruption, but Elliot Perlman also has humour, mixed with love, family and friendship and the delight of a bully getting his just desserts.
-Budapest 1938, two friends, linked through their mathematical potential, but will this be enough to save them?  Miriam Sved’s A Universe of Sufficient Size is a book of satisfying surprises
-Nate knows his family life is not ideal in This is How We Change the Ending.
Vikki Wakefield has been shortlisted in the Premiers Prize for Literature for this powerful coming-of–age story
-We revisit 1980’s Melbourne through the eyes of a Russian immigrant. We learn the historical and personal difficulties her Jewish family faced. Andrea Goldsmith writes about why her character, Galina changed countries and how she changed the lives of those she meets in Invented Lives.
And one for book groups -
-The Subjects by Sarah Hopkins is the story of teenagers in a justice system. Daniel tells the story of what happened, could it be a reality? Anyone interested in education or ideas that could become reality should read and discuss.

David McLean’s interesting reads for 2019 books
We jumped time zones and even conventional story telling structures in Alex Langradin’s, Crossings, where the spirit of an individual passed into a newer body.
Delving into the history of the film industry in Dominic Smith’s, The Electric Hotel, was illuminating.
Claire Coleman taught us that nothing changes. Though ‘The Old Lie’ is set in the future the personal and political concerns faced by the protagonist are those confronting the indigenous today.
New light was cast on timeless topics by Christos Tsiolkas in ‘Damascus’ and by Wayne Macauley in ‘Simpson Returns’.
And where would we be without a good murder or two. Garry Disher, Chris Hammer, Lucy Treloar all kept us in suspense in one way or another.

But there were also children’s books and unique offerings from so many others making 2019 quite an eclectic mix of styles, genres, characters and entertaining authors.   Keep reading for more books read by Jan through 2019.
 
Jan Goldsmith, David McLean and Euan Mitchell chat with authors each Thursday at 11.30am.
‘Published or Not’ is on podcasts at 3cr.org.au/publishedornot
2019 books

Book club suggestions
The Subjects by Sarah Hopkins is the story of teenagers in a justice system. Daniel tells the story of what happened, could it be a reality? Anyone interested in education or ideas that could become reality should read and discuss.
Maybe the Horse Will Talk has the seriousness of sexual harassment and corporate corruption, but Elliot Perlman also has humour, mixed with love, family and friendship and the delight of a bully getting his just desserts.
Elsie is not a typical farmer’s wife, which embarrasses her daughter Marjorie. Is it the unacceptance from the town’s people or from the Mallee itself, that causes her problems? Anne Brisden has characters and a story you will remember in Wearing Paper Dresses
Or something different
Instead of books, members are given a discussion question, have time to reflect and then talk about it as it relates to their life. Some of these stories are collated by Doris Brett and Kerry Cue in The Sunday Story Club. They also explain how to set one up.

Historical Fiction
A lost child, a big reward, media interest and the outcome! Kirsten Alexander has set Half Moon Lake around 1850’s in a southern American state – racism too!
The Librarian of Auschwitz, translated by Lilit Thwaites tells about a 14 yo girl who sneaks books around in the camp, she survives in this book that relies on true experiences and rich imagination.
Budapest 1938, two friends, linked through their mathematical potential, will this be enough to save them?  Miriam Sved’s A universe of Sufficient Size is a book of satisfying surprises.
Suez conflict with the world at the brink of war, Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios writes about politically conspiring archaeologists competing in a race for an ancient treasure The Emerald Tablet  
In 1920, there were many things that could disgrace a person, pregnancy before marriage, divorce and being placed in a mental asylum.  Lilly Campbells Secret by Jennifer Bryce touches on them all.
Set in Victorian times and the gem dealers in London, diamonds are the connection between an English heiress and a Zulu warrior in The Diamond Hunter by Fiona McIntosh
Not fiction but interesting facts in Robyn Annear’s Nothing new; a history of second hand, with the stigma attached to it and the business it continues to be

Dysfunctional families
‘Investments and decisions making were made for men. Women were destined to serve’. ‘The Orchardist’s Daughter’, is home-schooled and very much protected in rural Tasmania.  Logging and conservation are also issues.
Melbourne during the 1980’s welcomed Russian immigrants. Invented Lives by Andrea Goldsmith has one, changing the life of a family she meets.
Trails in the Dust can stand alone as a story but it is also the final installment of the Woody Creek series by Joy Dettman.
Ender Baskan has flipped James Joyce’s title and has written about travelling working with words and finding a confidence within yourself in A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man.
Nate knows his family life is not ideal in This is How We Change the Ending.
Vikki Wakefield has been shortlisted in the Premiers Prize for Literature for this powerful coming-of–age story.
And not dysfuntcional..The Accidental Tour Guide is Mary Moody’s memoir of  the death of her husband after 43 years of marriage and how she found her place in the world again.

Current issues – bushfires seem to be a theme!
Home Fires by Fiona Lowe, set in a town on the aftermath of a fire, with its effect on the community, the attraction for new families as government money is spent on new infrastructure secrets that  are finally revealed.
The fire bomb of Black Saturday is the essence of A Constant Hum.  Alice Bishop has written a suite of stories, tender portraits of heartache and snapshots of love, grief and recovery
Different short stories
What were your favourite books as a child? Jane Sullivan rereads and reconsiders why these books were so memorable in Story Time.
Here Until August is a collection of departures with characters on the verge of pivotal decisions by Josephine Rowe
Over a short period of time together and organised by RMIT 20 writers from many countries interconnected with their stories in The Near and Far – 2.
Lucky ticket is a short story collection from a range of story tellers connected by being misplaced in a different country or their own, with insightful writing by Joey Bui.

As well as Car Accidents
Every parents nightmare – the police knocking on your door…
In Life Before, Carmel Reilly has Lori’s life as a teenager affected drastically in a small town and then 20 years later living in Melbourne, having to confront what really occurred back then and why. Part family drama part crime novel.
Chloe Higgins father was driving the car, her two sisters died. The Girls tells about her life since then, drugs, asylums and the effect of writing this memoir.

Crime
A missing girl and her murdered boyfriend are crimes affect a touristy beach town, especially as they are being investigated by an out of town detective with her own personal problems, in Sarah Bailey’s Where the Dead Go.
Emma Viskic’s third book about Caleb Zelic, the deaf investigator. He has to work with his double-crossing partner again to solve the crime in Darkness For Light

Humour
Losing the Plot has plagiarism of manuscripts at its centre, with a successful and beautiful romance writer being brought undone by her barrister husband who chooses to defend a novice author.
Families come in all shapes and sizes as does humour.  RWR McDonald gives us gays, headless bodies and a feisty 11 year old detective in The Nancy’s

Romance
Are men hard wired to find older women unattractive? Does sex appeal come with a use by date? Virginia Duigan has a happily married wife test this in The Age of Discretion.
Echo Springs is a country town where everyone knows each other.  Leisl Leighton is one of four writers in this interconnected novel putting different characters in the romance spotlight.
City life with corporate success or farm life with no privacy? Penny must decide on which would be the most satisfying and with which man, in Wildflower Ridge by Maya Linnell.


Speculative fiction
Katherine Canobi  - will virtual reality be there just for entertainment or will it take over our lives/ Mindcull is a very readable teenager read
The Trespassers is a thought-provoking mystery set on an ill-fated migrant ship heading to Australia in a disturbing future.

Thanks for reading on and listening
 

Jan Goldsmith and David McLean chat with authors each Thursday at 11.30am.
 ‘Published or Not’ is on podcasts at 3cr.org.au/Publishedornot
Recommended books from  2018        from David

And with the end of another year comes the almost impossible task of jotting down some of the more memorable reads. I’d have to put the two volumes of poetry by Clive James – Injury Time and The River in the Sky – because the interview was unusual. Clive wasn’t available so I interviewed Dr James King who is an admirer of the poet and ours was an entertaining, rambling conversation. Stuart Kells made me think with “Shakespeare’s Diary” adding another level of nuance to the great debate about the authorship of the Bard’s works. Craig Sherbourne struck a chord in his novel about a middle aged man and the mistakes he’s made. “Off the Record” pricked the male ego with a failed journalist trying to seek petty revenge on his former wife by using his son as a spy. James Cristino’s, “Antidote to a Curse” had an intriguing structure addressing, as it did, the demise of an AIDs sufferer. And to pick one last work, I’ll add Moreno Giovannoni’s, “The Fireflies of Autumn”. It documented the migrant experience and the displacement of one born in Australia to migrant parents and feeling displaced for not quite being part of either world.
 
            and Jan with others

Book  Group recommendations from Jan
How do you write about yourself or other people? The Book of Ordinary People by Claire Varley questions whether all should be revealed even if it hurts more than heals. Set in a western suburb over a year. Fantastic!
In The Fortress, women are in control. Jonathon knows on entry that he is forbidden to ask questions, to raise his hand in anger and to refuse sex. It is a HOT read but for a purpose. S.A.Jones has the reader reflecting on what is consent and fulfilment when there is a radical reversal in society.

Crime at its best
An acclaimed writer loses her life and all the copies of her long awaited next book. 50 years later academics are still theorising what happened in The Fragments by Toni Jordan
Jane Harper has a death on a remote cattle station in Queensland. Was it suicide and if so, why? Or was it murder and if so how? The wide horizon is wonderfully described as are the small number of characters in The Lost Man.
Cedar Valley is a small town in NSW.  On the same day a young woman arrives to find out about her dead mother, as well as a stranger, a man who sits on the footpath and dies. Coincidence or planned? Holly Throsby has set this wonderful book in 1993.
An insight into the workings of the family court and children’s court and what protective services and social workers actually do in This I Would Kill For another psychological thriller about a custody dispute by Anne Buist.
A zombie movie being filmed in the streets of Melbourne with the lead actor being killed! Sarah Bailey has Detective Woodstock investigate another murder in into the Night.
School camp, remote location, horrible weather and missing children, Sandi Wallace brings it together in another crime for a journalist and her police friend together to investigate in Into the Fog.
The selling, buying and ‘making’ of antiquities is at the centre of The Honourable Thief by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios, Her knowledge of archaeology is matched by the action in this book.  

And non-fiction
Michelle Scott Tucker has written the biography of an amazing woman Elizabeth Macarthur.  Her husband John is credited with starting the wool industry, but this would not have been possible without her.
Museum curator, Nina Stanton’s biography is told through different artifacts she cherished in Tear in the Glass by Mary Ryllis Clark
In 1876 Melbourne was recorded as The Maddest Place on Earth. Jill Giese has researched the Kew Asylum, tracing its history through a patient and a journalist working as an attendant.
Kirsty Manning has researched another time and place, the Jewish quarter in Shanghai comes alive under her writing: the refugees, Chinese medicine, and the occupation by the Japanese, linking it with and the consequences it brought to a present day Melbourne family in The Jade Lily.
How and why did the mass suicide at Jonestown happen? Beautiful Revolutionary is a fictionalised account of the people at the heart of the decision making under the lure of Jim Jones’s charisma by Laura Elizabeth Woolett .

Other places and other times
Uganda is probably not where you would like your daughter to work especially when she gets abducted. Sarah Myles has written moral thriller with The Wolf Hour.
Australia is divided, the Republic of Cornucopia in northern Queensland is very religious and restricts anybody entering that is affected by a virus. Margaret Morgan has placed The Second Cure in a believable future Australia. Clever.
Sholoofeh Azar came as a refugee from Iran. Her book The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree has the magic realism of classical Persian storytelling mixed with the horror of what happened to her family during the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
When two men arrive in a small town, they cannot voice what they are fleeing from. Lloyd Jones describes realistically how the townspeople’s compassion turns to suspicion then fear and finally cruelty in The Cage.
After Pride and Prejudice did you ever wonder what happened to the two sisters that didn’t get married? Carrie Kablean has given her version in What Kitty Did Next which captures the language and times of Regency England.

Families and Friendships
Do you really know your neighbours? The Family Next Door by Sally Hepworth questions why a single professional woman would move into a family suburb and offer to help. Children bring problems, and parenting isn’t always easy, but how much can you even trust your partner?
Many people have special friends they keep over time and distance, Sometimes proximity and different social agendas can challenge a friendship as it does in The Art of Friendship by Lisa Ireland.
Three friends, retrace their hike that they undertook over 20 years ago and finished in them not speaking to each since that time in The Geography of Friendship by Sally Piper.
The mystery of how boys and brothers love, is at the very core of Markus Zuzak’s Bridge of Clay.  A big book of 5 brothers, 5 pets and beautiful prose.
Jenny Ackland has written Little Gods from the point of view of a child who wants to make and fix her family. The broad and rich use of vocabulary for family members is a highlight.
The Art of Preserving Love by Ada Langton has WW1 history and also Ballarat with the changing times, the coming of the motor car and women’s rights.
Alli Sinclair’s Burning Fields brings families of sugar cane labourers and migrants fleeing Mussolini together in Queensland after the war.  Who is more intolerant?
Domestic violence is at the centre of A Perfect Marriage by Alison Booth, but love, loss, friendship and honesty help to heal the hurt.  
 

2017 books - A year of books reviewed from the Published or Not Team. 

Book  Group recommendations from Jan

 *Award winning author Sofie Laguna has another young character telling unsympathetically about her life growing up on a farm with only her pop and his chooks as company in The Choke.  When did you do the “oh no” moment?

*There are 5 stories in different times and different places but linked by certain characters in Michelle de Kretser’s, The Life to Come.  What each chooses to believe from their own memories allows for wry humour.

*Their father requests, in his will, for his adult children to deliver letters he has written. What will they learn about him, and themselves, makes Parting Words by Cass Moriarty a good discussion book.

*A young girl goes missing – where, why, how are unanswered until she is found many months later. How does she deal with it? How does this affect her family before and after. What is the job of the media? The Way Back by Kylie Ladd

*Another great psychological thriller by Anna George, The Lone Child is written about two very different women coping as single mothers.

*Mothers of daughters take note! Take three girls is by three YA writers Fiona Wood, Cath Crowley and Simmone Howell. They give voice to three teenagers who are forced into a friendship and learn about each other and themselves.  Every school should have a Wellness Program!

Travelling to different parts of Australia to find yourself seems to have been a theme in many of the books this year

*Tess Evans writes about a close and caring farming community until a new business comes to town and a stranger with romantic interests in The Ballad of Banjo Crossing. Why has Jack McPail come? 

*Alex Miller has written his fictional autobiography. His life as a stockman and farmer, his life as a husband, lover and son but especially his life as an author, makes The Passage of Love an interesting read.

*The town of Mululuk is further on from Cooper Pedy, why did its bridge collapse? Is it the only thing that needs rebuilding? Cassandra Austin writes about broken relationships and a broken bridge in All Fall Down.

*Is the desert in the middle of Australia really dead? Is it a good place for grieving? Or is that where you really find your own heart? A novel of friendship and understanding, The Crying place by Lia Hills.

*When your parents are dysfunctional and too old to continue on the family farm, what does an only son, returning from a professional job in a city overseas, do to cope? In Wedding Bush Road by David Francis.

*Monica McInerney’s The Trip of a Lifetime is about a grandmother who takes her Australian daughter and granddaughter back to Ireland to find herself.

Going back in time there is Australian historical fiction with good research

*Lisa Bigelow writes about how wives cope with their hopes and dreams through WW2 and how they dealt with war’s outcomes in We That Are Left.

*Rachel Leary modelled Bridget Crack on a Tasmanian bush ranger living a mostly unjust life in a brutal landscape 200 year ago.

*2014 Tasmania and 1487 France are linked through two women’s love of herbs in the Midsummer Garden by Kirsty Manning

And a most beautifully illustrated biography by Louise Wilson about her great aunt, Margaret Flockton; Australia’s first botanical artist

The Good girl of Chinatown by Jenevieve Chang is an autobiography about the difficultly of dance, family, marriage and identity especially if the dance is Burlesque.

Some books with a little bit of truth but a lot of fun to read

The Scandalous life of Sasha Torte by Lesley Truffle – a romp of a book set back Tasmania’s past with delectable pastries and incorrigible characters 

A mother/daughter story where the mother whose serious circus attributes were better than her parenting skills in The Trapeze Act by Libby Angel

Sunni Overend wrote a sexy story of love, food and finding a man who knows how to fix a car and make pastry in The Dangers of Truffle Hunting.

Some books are broken up by chapters, Vivienne Kelly has divided her story into the Hawthorn football matches of the 1985 round, matching these with the breakdown of a family in The Starlings.

Crime thriller

Emma Viskic has her deaf investigator following more murder and mayhem in And Fire came Down a follow on from her successful Resurrection Bay

For kids

Maree Coote has cleverly illustrated two books for ‘mind-growing’ kids. The subjects are art, told through the skills of a spider’ Andy Webb: Artist and in architecture with a bird wanting a perfect nest, in Robyn Boid: Architect.

And DAVID’s Books …

And yet another year of reading drifts into memory. I managed to interview the Vogel winner, Maria Pericic,  about The Lost pages and renew acquaintance with A S Patric, the recent Miles Franklin winner anout his latest book, Atlantic Black. Sally Abbott won the Richell Prize for an emerging writer for, Closing Down. This contrasts with self- published authors, Klaas Kalma – Distant Echoes and Rebecca Rosengrave - Gumtree Gargoyles. Smaller publishing houses were also represented; Wilkinson Publishing for Phillip Adams – Insights and Reflections, The Slattery Group for Konrad Marshall’s Yellow and Black, Finlay-Lloyd for Phil Day’s, A Chink in the Daisy Chain and the media teachers’ association for Judith Buckrish’s, Acland Street. I even talked to Frank Moorhouse about his essay on the writer’s life in Meanjin and discussed the Melbourne Writers’ Festival with one of the organizers, Jessica Alice.

There were dark tales; Jock Serong’s, On the Java Ridge, The Girl in Kellers Way by Megan Goldin, The Dark Lake by Sarah Bailey, Down The Hume by Peter Polites and City of Crows by Chris Womersley.

There were personal accounts. Ouyan Yu used the experience of his Chinese forebears in Billy Sing. Jenevieve Chang recounted elements of her life in the world of burlesque. Bram Presser traced family history in The Book of Dirt and Mark Baker’s, Thirty Days, was an insight into mourning.

Adolescent fiction found voice in Bren MacDibble’s, How to Bee, Steph Bowe’s, Night Swimming, Vicki Wakefield’s, Ballad for a Mad Girl and Gabrielle William’s, My Life as Hashtag.

The topical issue of domestic violence found voice in Rachel Williams’, Siren, while Some Tests by Wayne McCauley used the confusion of the medical world as its basis. Mark Brandi’s, Wimmera addressed sexual abuse and its repercussions.

From the Wreck by Jane Rawson had an historical foundation as did Dennis Glover’s, The Last Man in Europe. Wilder Country by Mark Smith looked at the not too distant future while Lois Murphy’s, Soon, riffed on a well known historical event in Australia’s past.

If that wasn’t enough, there was also the quirky; Daniel Cohn’s, Disappearing off the Face of the Earth and Iain Ryan’s noir novel, The Student, along with short story collection, Sherlock Holmes – the Australian Casebook. There was also Two Steps Forward jointly written by Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist.

All in all, a very full year of reading.

And EUAN’s Books …

This year I joined the Published Or Not team and had the privilege of interviewing more than a dozen authors.

* There were many highlights but the first one that comes to mind is Bernadette Brennan’s book A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work. A highly readable analysis of all the published works (so far) by one of Australia’s great authors.

* For sheer audacity with language, it was hard to overlook Daniel Findlay’s debut novel Year of the Orphan. An Australian dystopian fantasy that rises above the pack.

* Melanie Cheng achieved the near impossible by having a collection of her first short stories published, titled Australia Day. On reading Melanie’s powerful stories, it was obvious why her collection had won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 2016 for best unpublished manuscript.

* Cassie Lane’s tell-all autobiography How to Dress a Dummy was a lively and brutally honest assessment of the world of modelling from an insider who has experienced huge success at an international level.

* Alan Brough’s second novel for younger readers, Charlie and the Karaoke Cockroaches, was filled with humour and fun. Highly recommended for Santa stockings.

* Stuart Kells delivered a compelling book for book lovers about the great libraries of the world, starting from ancient times, aptly titled The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders.

Another feast of books awaits in 2018!

_______________________________________________

2016 books

Jan Goldsmith and David McLean chat with authors each Thursday at 11.30am.

‘Published or Not’ is on podcasts at 3cr.org.au/publishedornot

David’s year in full.

I started with fairy tales. Mary Parker’s ‘Fairy Tales Written by Rabbits’ was one of the self published works with Ken Fox’s ‘Cassocked Savage’ being the other.

Adolescent fiction featured Leanne Hall’s ‘Iris and the Tiger, Kimberley Starr’s ‘The Book of Whispers’ and David Metzenthen’s, ‘Dreaming the Enemy’. Zana Fraillon’s ‘The Bone Sparrow’ was set in a detention centre giving it immediacy. And survival was the key on ‘The Road to Winter’ by Mark Smith. Kate Mildenhall took us back to early Australia in ‘Skylarking’.

There was poetry with Georgia Arnott’s partial biography on Judith Wright and Ellen van Neerven’s collection, ‘Comfort Food’.

Curiosities abounded. Nick Richardson looked at an historical football game in ‘The Game of their Lives’. Barry Jones took on the best of music and literature in ‘The Shock of Recognition’. Our own 3CR projects coordinator, Juliet Fox, talked about a book celebrating 3CR’s 40^th birthday. Lisa Dempster came in again to talk about the Melbourne Writers Festival and Duncan McNab gave us the low done on Roger Rogerson in the book of the same name.

Leigh Hopkinson took us into the world of striptease in ‘Two Decade Naked’ which was just one of the memoirs we looked at. We shouldn’t forget Brett Pierce’s account of his time as an aid worker in ‘Beyond the Vapour Trail’ or Hugo Race’s life as a musician in ‘Road Series’. Ruth Clare’s account of the effect of the Vietnam War on her family was compelling in ‘Enemy’. Catherine de Saint Phalle revealed her unique and curious French upbringing in ‘Poum and Alexandre’. Lee Zachariah’s account of recent political goings on in ‘Double Dissolusion’ was also a means by which he addressed his own marriage break up.

Romance snuck in of both a literary and conventional kind. Mark Lamprell took us to Roem in ‘The Lover’s Guide to Rome’. Luke Devenish was a bit more historical in ‘The Secret Heiress’. C.S.Pacat, of course, continued her homoerotic approach in ‘Princes Gambit’ which was the third installment in the Captive Prince trilogy. Christine Well’s, ‘The Wife’s Tale’, was set in both the present and the past making it an intriguing approach to the genre.

There were some heavy literary hitters. Tom Keneally took on the Catholic Church in ‘Crimes of the Father’.  Hannah Kent spoke about her latest work, ‘The Good People’. Nick Earls had a collection of novellas – Gotham, Vancouver, Venice, Juneau and NoHo. There was, of course, ‘The Last painting of Sara de Vos’ by Dominic Smith and Arnold Zable’s ‘The Fighter’. And ‘We Ate the Road Like Vultures’ by Lynette Lounsbury was intriguing. In the mix was the Vogel award winning ‘The Memory Artist’ by Katherine Brabon.

Robert Gott and Zane Lovitt gave us crime in ‘The Serpent’s Sting’ and ‘Black Teeth’. Olga Lorenzo had us intrigued by a child’s disappearance in ‘The Light on the Water’. David Dyer took us on to the deck of the Titanic in ‘The Midnight Watch’. The goings on behind the scenes in The Hotel du Barry by Lesley Truffle amused. Strange things, of course, took place on a ship to Antartica in the satirical, ‘5 Ways to be Famous Now’, by Maurilia Meehan.

We were given an Asian perspective in Isabelle Li’s collection of short stories, ‘A Chinese Affair’ while Michelle Wright’s collection, ‘Fine’, gave us touching insight into the lives of ordinary people.

All in all, it was an exhausting year of reading.

Australian authors  JAN read through 2016.

Do you like a popular read or a challenging read?  Liane Moriarty is continually on the NY best seller lists. She has Big Little Lies being made into a movie by Nicole Kidman.  Truly Madly Guilty takes place in a suburban back yard and you don’t really learn about the ‘incident’ that changed the lives of 3 couples until half way through, but your interest is certainly held. Charlotte Wood has won the Stella Prize and shared the Prime Ministers Prize for The Natural way of things. A much harder read as you may need to discuss the ending and the even the beginning. Why are the women in jail? What is their crime?

Novels that use Melbourne as a setting – and have a bit of crime

Grand Slam by Kathryn Ledson mixes tennis, sponsorship, espionage and humour and takes place during the Australian Open in Melbourne. Is grandfatherly George’s action of kidnapping 5year old Rory a crime?  Mercy Street is a story of love and consequences by Tess Evans.  Our Magic Houris the lit up rainbow in Richmond and also the title of Jennifer Down’s book about the grief associated with suicide.      

Tania Chandler’s, Please Don’t leave me Here was set in Melbourne but her follow up thriller Dead in the water has isolation as a factor in the Gippsland Lakes area.

Other books set further away than Melbourne, but still a bit of crime!

When the murder victim is young and beautiful there is a lot more media attention and how does this affect her not so young or innocent sister. Emily Maguire tells a story of unreliable media coverage, outcomes and grief in An Isolated Incident.  On a university campus in the country, before mobile phones, some students have murder on the curriculum in All Those Perfect Strangers by Aoife Clifford. Sue Williams has her fish and chip shop owner and detective solving another murder in Dead Men Don’t Order Flake.  Holly Throsby has written about Goodwood, a small town where everybody knows each other but nobody knows why two people disappeared. 

Fiction….with some well researched facts….

From Palm Springs to outback NSW in A Distant Journey gives Di Morrissey the ability to spin a yarn with the wool industry at its heart. The Science of Appearances moves from Kyneton in the 1950’s to Melbourne and its artist scene around St Kilda.  How is life different for twins and why are they apart? Jacinta Halloran mixes a little genetics with a little history. Fiona McIntosh has based her book in York, the home of chocolate making and written about The Chocolate Tin which was sent to an English soldier and the intrigue and romance that evolved from finding it.  Australian writer Kristel Thornell fictionalised what may have happened with Agatha Christie when she went missing for 10 day in On the Blue Train.

More fact than fiction

While Hannah Kent was researching Burial Rites she came across the trial of another woman in Ireland in 1825, more poverty and cold in The Good People.  David Carlin spoke about 2 very different books – The Abyssinian Contortionist a true story about an Ethiopian performer who ran away from the circus to seek asylum in Melbourne.

Short stories

David Carlin also coedited The Near and Far a collection of writing from 21 Asia-Pacific authors. Why did 17 Australian women, with culturally diverse backgrounds, all defy the dutiful daughter tradition? Their stories make upRebellious Daughters.  True crime is mixed with creative fiction in the 12 mini biographies by Laura Elizabeth Woollett in The Love of a Bad Man. The High Places by Fiona McFarlane has characters questioning the mystery of their life with great opening lines, for example “When I began my study of the colossal squid, I still believed in God”

And something very different

The Museum of Modern Love is a fictionalised account of the people who came to watch the performance artist Marina Abramovic by Heather Rose.  A second hand bookshop where people are encouraged to write in the books is the setting for Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley. Meditation needs practice and Rebecca Ryan gives short exercises for achieving this inMindfulness for Mothers…and a good laugh with Our Tiny, Useless Hearts which has farcical humour in the suburbs.  Toni Jordan has wonderfully written a comedy about love and marriage with people in the wrong beds.