New Edition

“…it’s not sophisticated, what happens here. There’s too much blood for good literature.”

It seems a pity to compare Ministry of Utmost Happiness to anything; its been a 20 year wait for Arundhati Roy’s next novel and for those of us who enjoyed the Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things, its a huge event. So I won’t compare it. But I will say it made me feel certain things, like other books – like the tension of the narrative in Louis de Berniere’s Birds Without Wings, where a huge cast of characters moved in a setting of peril and violence. Familiar too, the slapstick absurdity of Catch 22 with its comedy of war, and the beauty and horror and violence of stirring human enterprise in grim times with Cormac McCarthy’s malevolent ciphers. It felt similar to The God of Small Things too, in that it had characters I liked and understood and characters who were cold, traumatized, unknowable devices. Its a novel in which the author aimed ‘to write a book in which the story was like the streets of a great city…I wanted even the smallest character to have a story.’

I was so TAKEN by this book. You can surrender to the prose as though its a place with and textures and moods and a rich appalling history, and observe it all flow around you. Unmissable.

Bad Boy Boogie

James Quinton

We’ve got plenty of copies in stock of James Quinton’s book in stock. A novel about homegrown legend Bon Scott by a Fremantle author – books don’t get more local than this!

$19.99

A loving, faithful animal

Josephine Rowe

This short, intensely lyrical novel begins with Ru, the youngest and most watchful in the family. A violent act among many violent acts has shattered apart the household in A loving, faithful animal, and they must all take stock and decide how to go on. A few long days over Christmas and new years eve have them subject to toxic regret, judgment, psychological trauma and wavering between what is known to be Good and what will preserve them. Ru’s father returned from the Vietnam War irrevocably changed and his wife and daughters navigate his unpredictable moods in different ways – Evelyn bitterly nostalgic for their youthful love, Lani throwing herself out of his orbit, Ru carefully observing the damage and maimed Uncle Tetch trying gently to make amends. Unseen harm and anger simmer through this little book – it has jagged edges and haunted characters. I liked the thread of wildness running through all the people – they suffer but not pathetically, in circumstances too snarled and uncertain to escape.

The writing is tense and evocative, the atmosphere of their setting is skillful and its a compelling story about a group of damaged and wary people.

The Poison Principle

Gail Bell

A compelling brew of memoir, true crime, botany and psychological investigation, The Poison Principle is a fascinating family history as well as a toxicology almanac. Gail Bell’s grandfather William Macbeth was said to have poisoned two of his sons with strychnine, and this horrible secret was family lore. A travelling patent-medicine salesman, the sharply dressed Macbeth toured small country towns posing as a man of medicine-cum-miracle worker, dazzling Bell’s grandmother into marriage on the way. But the family’ s fortunes soured, two little boys were lost and he died estranged from them all. What could have led a man to kill two of his children?

The author’s occupation as a chemist is an accidental connection with her grandfather, who she knew little about as a child. A few accoutrements with an alchemical whiff about them – a wooden treasure chest full of cures and curses, a monogrammed handkerchief case, and a bitter tale of regret. Fascinated with poisons from a young age, her knowledge of arcane medicines and healing plants as well as murder cases and poisonings in literature like Madame Bovary, make this book a really interesting one. As well as case histories and true crime cuttings, Gail Bell’s reflections on the idea of poisoning within caregiving and the connection with the feminine are part of a considered, consuming and elegant memoir.

Idaho

Emily Ruskovich

A genuinely compelling novel like Idaho is a rare beast. There is good storytelling and interesting writing and keenly observed characters, but when they’re all strengths of a good work of fiction it’s so enthralling. Idaho moves back and forth in time and is (mostly) through the eyes of Ann, a music teacher in the small town who becomes almost obsessed with knowing the family and their tragedy, and in a way, adopting the event and maintaining it. It reminded me of Emma Cline’s 2016 novel The Girls. Both Idaho and The Girls feature a violent act and its repercussions, and both are fascinating insights into human character when it is subject to trauma. One of the most memorable novels I’ve read in months.

Known and Strange Things

Teju Cole

Known and Strange Things is a collection of essays and articles that continue Teju Cole’s preoccupations with place and identity. The book looks broadly at three themes: literature, photography and travel. As with Cole’s previous novels, Open City and Every Day is for the Thief, the writing here is perceptive and considered, sending the reader off to exploring other areas. In this case to writers such as Derek Walcott, or reassessing Virginia Woolf, to photographers such as Saul Leiter and the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. In more autobiographical essays he recounts the night of Obama’s election, his life split between Lagos and the US, his various travels and his interest in photography. Known and Strange Things is excellent collection of thoughts and meditations.

Westerly 61.1

Various authors

The latest issue of Westerly, guest edited by Steve Kinnane, reminds readers of the power and importance of stories in maintaining and renewing culture. A celebration of Indigenous writing, 61.1 includes new writing across all genres and from a variety of known and little-known writers. Proud in its cover art by Bella Kelly, Westerly 61.1 asserts its place in Western Australian literary culture.

Notable contributions include Tara June Winch’s story ‘The Yield’, Kim Scott’s non-fiction piece ‘Both Hands Full’ and the poem ‘Sap Clot’ by Alison Whittaker ( Tender! Horror! // Thrice upon the shore comes the violence ). The Katinka Smit’s debut story ‘Behind the Line’ is similarly impressive in its portrayal of cultural ambivalence.

But in a way it is the personal stories of less well-known writers that point up the strengths of Indigenous voices and the personal challenges that have been surmounted. Two joyous vignettes by young boys from Mulan in the Tanami desert, Bella Kelly’s daughters recounting their mother’s life and art, and Doris Eaton’s ‘Giveaway’ story are three such examples.

Now in its 60th year, this latest Westerly must be among its most notable. A collection of stories, reviews and essays that reminds all readers that the west of Australia has a long indigenous past, a continuing present, and a future.

One

Patrick Holland

Patrick Holland is the critically acclaimed author of The Mary Smokes Boys and Riding Trains in Japan.

One is a cold, grim novel based on the true story of the Kenniff gang – Australia’s ‘last bushrangers’ – as they are pursued on horseback by trooper Sergeant Nixon. Set at the beginning of the 20^th century, the novel also documents a point of change in the country’s psyche as it grapples with notions of nationhood and increasing modernisation.

Narrated largely through the perspective of Sergeant Nixon, the trooper’s moral compass begins to waver the longer the chase continues. Kenniff’s legendary decisiveness also begins to crumble as the novel moves toward its final throes. Often compared to Cormac McCarthy’s westerns, one of the pleasures of One is the muscularity and sparseness of Holland’s prose.

Where the Trees Were

Inga Simpson

I finished Inga Simpson’s latest novel over the weekend in about three absorbed sittings. Evocative of childhood summers, Where the Trees Were is a beautifully written coming-of-age story. A friend suggested it may be the next Great Australian Novel, and he may be right.

Jay grows up on a farm, her world shaped by her landscape and her family. Languorous days spent swimming and climbing trees with her three close friends unwind on the river. When they find a grove of trees decorated with arborglyphs (pictures carved into the bark; I love a book which teaches me new words) the group decide it will be their secret, sacred place.

Years later, Jay works in the National Museum, and is unable to shake her preoccupation with her own past. The parallel narratives of Jay’s child and adulthood help to build the tension in the story, and the artful management of the main characters day to day activities with the reflections on the past is really well done. I loved Simpson’s descriptions of the birds and animals in Jay’s part of the world, and I loved seeing how her problems resolved.

Mothering Sunday

Graham Swift

Graham Swift’s new novella, Mothering Sunday, is narrated by elderly writer Jane, looking back to an event that occurred on one day in 1924 when she was just 22 and working as a house servant. We know much of what happens in the end very early in the story, but the pleasure of this novel is in Swift’s brilliant telling.

Mothering Sunday is a holiday given for servants to visit their mothers. However Jane, an orphan, uses her day off to meet with upper class neighbour Paul with whom she is having an affair. The detail with which Jane recounts this day, which will ultimately change the direction of her life, seems to slowly stretch out time and imbues the short novel with poignancy. Drenched in warm tones and late summer stillness, Swift unfurls the story with a sensual languor.

M TRAIN

Patti Smith

For those of us who consumed Just Kids with the enthusiasm that we usually reserve for a bowl of spaghetti, I can promise that you will not be disappointed by Smith’s latest memoir. M Train is a powerful book that documents an undeniably isolated period in the life of one of the most remarkable multi-platform artists at work today. The timeline shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations. We are taken on a journey to Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer’s society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway; and to the graves of the great Plath, Rimbaud and Mishima. M Train braids despair with hope and consolation with the memories of Smith’s later life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. The episode where Smith arrives at her local coffee shop to find another customer in her regular seat and states that “if this were an episode of Midsomer Murders she would surely be found strangled in a wild ravine behind an abandoned vicarage” is just one reason why I highly recommend this book.

The Days of Abandonment

Elena Ferrante

The Days of Abandonment is a brilliant novel. It is quite short, and all the more gutting for it. As in a Muriel Spark novel, you might go completely mad along with the protagonist, as her despair gets into your own mind, and hammers on its walls. You will be trapped, like her, in an apartment (which grows smaller and smaller), and won’t be able to leave until the narrative has lived itself out. Unlike Spark, Ferrante’s writing is almost completely humourless. This is somehow not a failing for her; it only serves to demonstrate the true height and awfulness of the stakes. You may think that I have made this book sound horrible. It is, as in the subject matter, the communicated emotion, the little blows administered to this woman, are very horrible, in a banal way. But it is a work of perfection. It is a perfect short novel, and I really think you should read it immediately. Whatever it is you are currently reading, it is almost certainly not as good as The Days of Abandonment.

Bowie

Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley’s collection of personal essays on what David Bowie meant to him, is, as reviewed by Rick Moody at Salon, “a magnificent and deceptively slim book, in which no essay takes longer to read than it would take to listen to a David Bowie song, but in which there is a cumulative sense of revelation as regards what makes Bowie special, and why it is that his work seems to yield more, the more time you spend there. The book is delightful, highly readable, with bits of Nietzsche, Ruskin, Roland Barthes and Deleuze rising up like wisps of cloud in its funny, moving and passionate field of inquiry.”

A Bone of Fact

David Walsh

The enigmatic owner of world-class art museum MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) unleashes his autobiography upon the world.

David Walsh lets us into his family background, along with his formative years as a maths- genius turned uni-dropout/public servant, turned gambler – come art collector. This is an engaging read, and while you won’t get any tips on how to win millions on horses, you will get a sense of the currents which grip Walsh’s mind. His energy and verve, tenacity and precociousness make for some funny stories, and his love of literature and philosophy will make your own mind wonder. A great book for art collectors and anyone who might want to visit Tasmania.

(Quote from David Walsh on Bone of Fact): “By some great good fortune (mine, not yours) you hold in your hands my story, credible I think, but not extraordinary (despite what those avaricious publishers might have you believe). I have captured your attention: maybe you have some resonance with Mona, or maybe good graphical design partly seized your day. To extract 55 bucks from you I need to say something clever, but I can’t think of anything.”

Picador, RRP $55

Astragal

Albertine Sarrazin

At the age of twenty-one, a sad and hungry Patti Smith walked into a bookshop in Greenwich Village and decided to spend her last 99 cents on a novel that would change her life forever. The book was Astragal, by Albertine Sarrazin.

Astragal tells the story of Anne, a young woman who breaks her ankle in a daring escape from prison. She makes it to a highway where she’s picked up by a motorcyclist, Julien, who’s also on the run. As they travel through nights and days together, they fall in love and must do whatever they can to survive, living their lives always on the edge of danger. A bewitching and timeless novel of youthful rebellion and romance, this new edition of Patsy Southgate’s original translation includes an introduction by Patti Smith.

Stoner

John Williams

This novel, written in 1965, has become something of a ‘sleeper hit’ as contemporary authors have re-discovered it and pronounced it as one of the great, lost American novels of the twentieth century.

It reads as the life story – from birth until death – of a man who lives his life with the best of intent through all of his life’s struggles. His guiding light through the stress of existence is his profound love of literature and its ability to transform his soul and exhaust his worldly fears. The story is tender, heartbreaking, and you can feel the love that Williams has for his central character. An amazing novel, highly recommended.

RRP $19.99, VINTAGE

She Came To Stay

Simone de Beauvoir

Published in 1943, ‘She Came to Stay’ is Simone de Beauvoir’s first novel. Written as an act of revenge against the woman who nearly destroyed her now legendary, unorthodox relationship with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it fictionalises the events of 1935, when Sartre became infatuated with seventeen-year-old Olga Bost, a pupil and devotee of de Beauvoir’s. Passionately eloquent, coolly and devastatingly ironic, ‘She Came to Stay’ is one of the most extraordinary and powerful pieces of fictional autobiography of the twentieth century.

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman

Alan Moore

At last, the original two LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN epics are collected in a single volume!

In this amazingly imaginative tale, Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man unite to defeat a deadly menace to London and all Britons!

Then, one month later, the skies over England are filled with flaming rockets as Mars launches the first salvo of an invasion. Only our stalwart adventurers can save mother England and the Earth itself.

RRP $ 39.99, Vertigo Comics

To The Beach

Thor Kerr

TO THE BEACH: COMMUNITY CONSERVATION AND ITS ROLE IN ‘SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT’

RRP $40.00

When property developers, politicians and a vocal community debate how local land should be used, with the media intent on exposing conflicting interests and incompatible ideologies, it is only a matter of time before plans change and careers take new paths.Written as an engaging account of politics and coastal property development in Fremantle, To the Beach is an account of the politics of ecological crisis in Australia. Through this book, Thor Kerr encourages readers to reflect on perceptions of environmental threats and solutions and describes how environmental movements form around a shared desire to live a local experience – in this case, the experience is ‘our’ beaches.Drawing on PhD research, this topical book is a useful scholarly resource and an engaging study for readers with an interest in Australian politics and culture, particularly at the nexus of property development and environmental activism.

PRAISE FOR TO THE BEACH:

“To the Beach rethinks our relationships to the environment… and to larger questions around neoliberalism, democracy, civic participation, politics and resistance.”

DR VIJAY DEVADAS, OTAGO UNIVERSITY

FATALE

Jean-Patrick Manchete

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL

This noir-crime novel is a ‘sleeper’ awaiting your discovery. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch.

Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there’s no question that Aimée is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion.

New Edition

New Edition, Fremantle

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