And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini – A Review from Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

Bestselling author Khaled Hosseini returns to our shelves with his hugely anticipated third novel. On the eve of its release, Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach casts an eye over it.

Maya Angelou once said “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise”. Whether Khaled Hosseini has heard that sage advice is unlikely. That he shares the same view, however, is all but certain. His new novel And The Mountains Echoed shares the same heartbeat as his previous works, but instead of reaching for the stars he appears to have developed through regression, at least from an emotional standpoint. His latest offering, while boasting a globe hopping narrative and an array of multi-generational characters, is a measured, tender, and still powerful exploration of what makes us tick.

Hosseini is one of the world’s most celebrated writers, with a body of work that includes the worldwide best seller The Kite Runner and the acclaimed 2007 book A Thousand Splendid Suns. Both books examined the inner workings of the human condition. Powerful themes of loss, love, power, redemption, all set against the turbulent backdrop of Afghan history. Spanning generations, both books came with heart-wrenching emotional conflict, epic in every sense of the word.

While And The Mountains Echoed is a weave of incredibly powerful tales, Hosseini skilfully pulls back the reigns on an all out emotional roller coaster, allowing the story to unravel bit by bit. We begin in 1952, as Kaboor, is telling his 10-year-old son, Abdullah, and little girl, Pari, a fantastical tale about a child taken from its family under wrenching circumstances. The father makes a brutal pilgrimage to mountains to rescue his son, only to find the boy is being raised in paradise. He leaves him there.

It sets the scene, as much of the book chronicles the agonizing choices we all make in extraordinary circumstances around the people we love.

Young Pari is swiftly cut away from her poor family to join an upwardly mobile one, triggering the novel’s slingshot trajectory between Afghanistan, France, Greece and California and back and forth across the decades up to the present.

Pari may be the book’s protagonist but she is not its obvious star. Between an alcoholic poet married to a closeted gay man, a surly but heroic nurse, a sentimental man-servant, a selfless plastic surgeon, and others variously introduced via posthumous letters, media interviews and sweeping recollections, Pari barely makes a peep once the novel gets a move on.

I won’t go any further, but it’s not as chaotic as it sounds. The ball keeps rolling and each character enters and leaves at the perfect time, never halting the pace and progress of the novel.

Many have questioned if Khaled Hosseini could continue his impossibly high standards after his previous two works. And incredibly he has, with a beautiful, confident novel told by a true master. The Kite Runner might have been a fluke, A Thousand Splendid Suns a coincidence, but And The Mountains Echoed will surely solidify Hosseini as one of the greatest novelists in the world today.

Click here to buy And The Mountains Echoed from Booktopia,
Australia’s Local Bookstore

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Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to The Booktopia Blog and was shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize. He enjoys reading, writing and sleeping though finds it difficult to do them all at once.

You can read his other posts here, and follow his ramblings on twitter at @andrew__cat.

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Inferno by Dan Brown – A Review from Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach has thrown himself into Dan Brown’s latest blockbuster. Read what he thought of all the hype .

(Scroll to the bottom to see the three lucky people receiving copies signed by Dan Brown).

How peculiar a world that seems content to throw billions of dollars at Adam Sandler dressing up as a woman to play his twin sister, yet derides an author because they offer more substance than style.

As an author Dan Brown has made no secret of being an excellent maths teacher. Where other writers of similar ilk go on speaking tours and blog about their genius, Dan Brown has chosen a life away from his millions of fans. To the outsider he appears nearly embarrassed at the juggernaut he’s created, one of the few authors without the names “E.L” and “James” to constantly be a hot topic of mainstream media everywhere.

While criticism of some of his peccadillos are warranted, Brown’s prose is one of necessity rather than sheer beauty. He trades in twists and turns, not poetry. But therein lies his greatest strength. He knows his limitations and builds a story with the discipline that few writers possess. Certainly not me, as I so often find what I once thought was a moving, transcendental passage I’ve written one day, to be pretentious gibberish the next. This passage is starting to become a prime example.

With Dan Brown, the story is everything. He prefers to be heard, but not seen.

Which brings me to Dan Brown’s latest book, the much-anticipated Inferno. Released this week to a typically split audience. While pages are still being turned hurriedly in homes around the world, those who have read it appear to either love it or hate it. Ironically Dan Brown has always buttered his bread on the uncertainty of his characters ultimate intentions save for his constant hero Robert Langdon, and Inferno is no exception.

Langdon wakes groggily from a nightmare in a hospital, with no memory of how he got there. Told by doctors at his bedside he was attacked, they are interrupted by another attempt on his life. He escapes with a blonde (but is she?) doctor (but is she?) who is completely puzzled by all the commotion (but is she?). He finds a small cylindrical object in a hidden compartment in his jacket, and they begin to put the pieces of a doomsday plot together.

From there a sort of Indiana-Jones-meets-Antiques-Roadshow Treasure Hunt commences, the likes of which have captivated audiences for over a decade.

This runs parallel to a subplot involving the shadowy organisation “The Consortium”, which Brown says is a real organisation but has changed their name for secret societal anonymity. The Consortium’s sinister leader Zobrist shows his hand as a classically evil mastermind, intent on destroying the world to help it. Unfortunately, he’s a bit of an overreach as a believable villain, forever one stroke of a white cat away from being sued by the estate of Ian Fleming.

The upside of the character is his reason for world annihilation is actually a clever and original concept. It is much more in line with the themes of Dante’s Inferno than most of the book is (the main allusion seems to be that much of it is set in Florence). Langdon’s recurring nightmares also serve as a hint to what he must save the world from. But will he? You’ll need to follow shootouts, poisonings, shifty looks, secret passages and occasionally turn your book sideways and upside down to find out.

If you were wondering what camp of readers I fall into with Dan Brown, I like him. Yes, I’ve sat in lecture halls and studied the classics, and yes, his writing is far from great. But that’s not his job. Not all reading is about existential discovery. Sometimes people just read for pleasure, guilty or otherwise. And Dan Brown is a big bowl of ice cream in bed with the curtains drawn. Nothing wrong with that.

Why read Inferno? Let me put it this way. My favourite film is Citizen Kane. But sometimes I like to watch Caddyshack II, because I can’t watch Citizen Kane every night. I know Citizen Kane is a better film, but sometimes I just like to see Chevy Chase play golf with hilarious consequences. Because it’s fun. Not better, just fun.

The sooner we stop reading for fun, the sooner we stop reading at all. And we can’t have that now can we?

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UPDATE: Thanks to all the people who pre-ordered a copy of Inferno and went into the draw to win one of three signed copies by Dan Brown. The winners are:

M. Rodriguez, Artarmon, NSW.
P. Duncan, Clermont, QLD.
N. Nolan, Bundoora, VIC.

Keep checking our Twitter and Facebook pages, along with our Blog, for more great competitions and giveaways.

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Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to The Booktopia Blog and was shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize. He enjoys reading, writing and sleeping though finds it difficult to do them all at once.

You can read his other posts here, and see him talk about things like the weather and cheese on twitter at @andrew__cat.

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Farewell Black Caviar

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

The fairytale ended last week as a teary Peter Moody and owners of Black Caviar announced they would be retiring the national icon, with her amazing unbeaten stretch stopping at 25.

I was lucky enough to be at Randwick for her last run, although the 28,000 spectators there didn’t know at the time. Premier Barry O’Farrell had earlier in the week clamboured for headlines with his misjudged quote, “The only thing better than a Black Caviar victory will be if Sydney is known as the place where Black Caviar was beaten by a horse with Jim Cassidy on its back.”

But for a nation where state lines are most divisive in the sporting arena, where the tall poppy syndrome is a celebrated part of our national culture, nobody at Randwick that day wanted to see her lose.

Sure the GFC isn’t The Great Depression, nor the War Against Terror the Great War, but Black Caviar came at just the right time like the preeminent people’s champion Phar Lap. And during these times, everyday people start to believe in fairytales. It’s in our nature.

Black Caviar wasn’t considered much of a horse, from not much of a lineage. She was casually bred, broken, and put up for auction. And as the huge mare circled the pens at auction, she only turned one head. Young, ambitious trainer Peter Moody. He convinced a conglomerate of prospective owners to invest $210,000 to secure the horse with one of them, Pam Hawkes, asking one major question.

“Is she fast?”

“She’s lightening,” Moody replied.

And the rest is history.

And last Saturday in Randwick in her last race, she blew the field away, and the crowd cheered like never before.

We don’t hold the Ashes, we don’t hold the Rugby Union World Cup, or the Rugby League World Cup, or the Football World Cup.

But we had the fastest horse in the world, perhaps the fastest ever. And I’ll never forget the roar of the crowd as that great champion galloped down the straight for one last time.
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Andrew Cattanach is a regular contributor to The Booktopia Blog. You can see other posts from him here, and follow his ramblings on twitter here.

Click here to buy Black Caviar from Booktopia,
Australia’s Local Bookstore

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Margaret Thatcher: An Artist’s Muse

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

muse
1 (noun) a woman, or a force personified as a woman, who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist

The death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been met with the very attitude she maintained until her final day. Black and White. There are those that applaud the courage of her convictions, her attention to a task she felt important to a country that she felt had lost its way.

The rest have drunk from champagne bottles and danced in the streets. Like Thatcher during her leadership, it appears there is no middle ground. Love or hate, cry or sing.

But for those in the arts there is no love, no tears.

And yet Margaret Thatcher remains one of the greatest muses of the last century, if not the greatest. For the 1980s alternative comedy movement she was both the inspiration and butt of its jokes. And for many a post-modern political pop song she was the go-to figure.

Elvis Costello didn’t hide his hatred for her in the song Tramp The Dirt Down, which contains the chilling refrain…

Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey, not one to mince words, also let Margaret know his displeasure in the subtly titled Margaret On The Guillotine, where he asked…

Cause people like you
Make me feel so tired
When will you die?

Bob Dylan had no idea he’d written a track about Margaret Thatcher when his brilliant track Maggie’s Farm from some people’s (my) favourite Dylan record Bringing It All Back Home.

Here’s Bob’s performing it 13 years before Thatcher would take office as Prime Minster of Great Britain.

And here’s The Specials’ cover, aimed at The Iron Lady, from the B-Side of Do Nothing. A song written years before in another country had now become a battle cry for those on the fringes of British society.

The incomparable Billy Bragg called Thatcher his biggest inspiration, following her death the singer has posted a message saying this is not a time for celebration.”The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today.”

While Bragg had the odd vitriolic blast at Thatcher lyrically, his most cutting work was describing the hardship faced by young Britons, the bleakness and isolation many felt during the 1980s. A fine example was this from his incredible 1983 song New England.

People ask when will you grow up to be a man
But all the girls I loved at school
Are already pushing prams

Be it through love or hate, the Thatcher Years brought out a kind-of repressed nationalism amongst Britons. For so much of its existence, Great Britain was a colonial juggernaut, its size and power unrivalled since the age of ancient kingdoms. But the Battle of Britain proved that given the chance, the British Bulldog spirit shone brightest of all with its back against the wall. The rise of British music during the Britpop era will always be traced to one antagonist. Margaret Thatcher.

Of course, it’s not just musicians that used Margaret Thatcher as their creative inspiration. Alan Moore’s Graphic Novel V for Vendetta owes a great deal to the ideas of Thatcherism, an omnipotent, ultra-conservative state. The graphic novel was adapted into the acclaimed film of the same name starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. Alan Moore would hate it, commenting that the film would portray the government with a theatrical flourish of evil. Instead, he didn’t see the government of the day to be so different from that portrayed in his graphic novel, and the horrific events detailed completely possible under the stewardship of Thatcher.

Withnail and I, one of the greatest black comedies of the all time, undoubtedly circled the unforgiving themes of Thatcherism as the primary antagonist of the ribald comedy. While set in 1965, it was made in 1986 and its darkly funny tale of the struggling, oppressed world of the arts was a direct comment on the troubles of the day.

The brilliant Mike Leigh also found his calling directing tough, gut-wrenching stories of working-class struggles under the Conservative government. His 1983 film Meantime (which starred a young Gary Oldman) is extraordinary, and his 1988 comedy-drama High Hopes is just as good. Both dealing directly with the dissolution of young people in inner-city London in the 1980s.

And obviously there’s the recent The Iron Lady, which gifted Meryl Streep her third Academy Award. Her performance was praised, the film well-received, but takings in England were disappointing and views on the subject matter were divided. Her family called it a ‘left-wing fantasy’ while others like Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian newspaper commented it overlooked the “rage about what Thatcher, economy destroyer and warmonger, was doing to Britain” in favour of an “exclusive focus on Thatcher as a woman triumphing against the odds.”

The art world, always on the tightrope when it comes to government support, felt the full force of Thatcher’s funding cuts and attempted stifling of creativity. But, like all the above, this worked in the opposite direction giving artists the pain and anger to comment on the state of the world. Divisive conceptual artist Damien Hirst, responsible for the still art-or-not pickled shark debate, has claimed to be indebted to Margaret Thatcher. Her funding cuts made artists think of new ways to capture the public’s imagination, while her dismissive attitude towards their work lit a fire under them creatively. Her comments about his hero Francis Bacon as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures” were like a red rag to a bull.

Whatever your political views, Margaret Thatcher will cast an immeasurable shadow across British society for a long time to come. On Sunday it is forecast that the Wizard of Oz tune ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” will be named the bestselling single on the UK charts, 74 years after it was released due to an iTunes downloads campaign to celebrate Thatcher’s death.

Margaret Thatcher may be gone, but it appears it will be a long time until she is forgotten.

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Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to The Booktopia Blog. You can see other posts from him here, and his ramblings on twitter here.

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The 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist announced

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

The longlist for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced, and with Australia’s M.L. Stedman and Carrie Tiffany being joined by New Zealand’s Emily Perkins, the diversity of the list has been applauded the world over.

Formerly The Orange Prize for Fiction, the longlist for The Women’s Prize for Fiction will be cut down to a shortlist at the London Book Fair on April 16, ahead of the winner’s announcement on June 5. This year’s winner will receive a cash prize of £30,000 (A$43,355).

Familiar names like Hilary Mantel and past winners Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver are joined by bright up and comers like Shani Boianjiu,  Bonnie Nadzam and debut novelist Francesca Segal.

Booktopia has profiled the books up for the award, as well as each author nominated, so you don’t skip a beat in the follow up to the winner being announced in June. Don’t miss out on reading these wonderful books with Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore.

The Light Between Oceans

by M.L. Stedman

A bestseller around the world reaching no.4 on the New York Times fiction list.

They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens next will break yours.

1926. Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western Australia. The only inhabitants of Janus Rock, he and his wife Isabel live a quiet life, cocooned from the rest of the world.

Then one April morning a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying infant – and the path of the couple’s lives hits an unthinkable crossroads.

Only years later do they discover the devastating consequences of the decision they made that day – as the baby’s real story unfolds …

About the Author

M. L. Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia, and now lives in London. The Light Between Oceans is her first novel published by Random House Australia, and has so far been translated into nearly thirty languages. It has been a bestselling book around the world, including Australia, Italy, Denmark and America. It was recently voted Best Historical Novel of 2012 by members of Goodreads.

Click here to buy The Light Between Oceans from Booktopia,
Australia’s Local Bookstore

Mateship with Birds

by Carrie Tiffany

On the outskirts of an Australian country town in the 1950s, a lonely farmer trains his binoculars on a family of kookaburras that roost in a tree near his house. Harry observes the kookaburras through a year of feast, famine, birth, death, war, romance and song. As Harry watches the birds, his next door neighbour has her own set of binoculars trained on him. Ardent, hard-working Betty has escaped to the country with her two fatherless children. Betty is pleased that her son, Michael, wants to spend time with the gentle farmer next door. But when Harry decides to teach Michael about the opposite sex, perilous boundaries are crossed.

Mateship with Birds is a novel about young lust and mature love. It is a hymn to the rhythm of country life – to vicious birds, virginal cows, adored dogs and ill-used sheep. On one small farm in a vast, ancient landscape, a collection of misfits question the nature of what a family can be.

About the Author

Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in the Red Centre and now lives in Melbourne, where she works as an agricultural journalist. Her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005) was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and won the Dobbie Award for Best First Book (2006) and the 2006 Western Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction. Mateship with Birds is her second novel.

Click here to buy Mateship with Birds from Booktopia,
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The Forrests

by Emily Perkins

Evelyn and Dorothy – the twins – are seven when the Forrests move from New York City, the hub of the world, to Westmere, New Zealand. The Forrest Trust Fund now cut out of their lives, the family live under a cloudless sky, in the dust and the heat, outdoors and running wild. Their father – who they would only call Frank – works for a cab company over the weekends but is really an actor. Michael, the eldest, has a friend called Daniel whose father lives in a half-way house. He starts to live with them, punches Dorothy on the shoulder to stop her crying when she starts school, and becomes family.

Lee, their mother, takes them to a commune when she needs to get away from Frank. The memory of that place – the freedom, the dirty richness of the landscape, the stolen kisses – their chaotic childhood, undulates beneath the surface of all their lives, and brings them together in flickering moments when they grow far apart.

The passing of time happens quickly. Evelyn and Dorothee grow older, discover sex, love, have babies, and watch as they too grow old. Their youngest sister moves away and their parents decrease in importance in their lives. Daniel, like a shadow, is always in the back of their minds. Death changes everything, but somehow life remains the same.

In a narrative that shifts and moves, growing as wild as the characters, The Forrests is an extraordinary literary achievement. A novel that sings with color and memory, it speaks of family and time, dysfunction, aging and loneliness, about lethargy, heat, youth, and how there is always something inaccessible and secretive, lying just out of reach.

About the Author

Emily Perkins is a writer of contemporary fiction, and the success of her first collection of stories, not her real name and other stories, established her early on as an important writer of her generation. Perkins has written novels, as well as short fiction, and her writing has won and been shortlisted for a number of significant awards and prizes. She was the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, and she used the fellowship to work on her book, Novel About My Wife, published in 2008. She is an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award winner (2011).

Click here to buy The Forrests from Booktopia,
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A Trick I Learned From Dead Men

by Kitty Aldridge

What’s it like then, a dead body? I always hesitate, but if I were forced to describe it, at gunpoint so to speak, a dead person is like a newborn, weird, other-worldly, but. Familiar as your own face in the mirror. After the disappearance of their father and the sudden death of their mother, Lee Hart and his deaf brother, Ned, imagine all is lost until Lee lands a traineeship at their local funeral home and discovers there is life after death. Here, in the company of a crooning ex-publican, a closet pole vaulter, a terminally-ill hearse driver, and the dead of their local town, old wounds begin to heal and love arrives as a beautiful florist aboard a ‘Fleurtations’ delivery van.

But death is closer than Lee Hart thinks. Somewhere among the quiet lanes and sleepy farms something else is waiting. And it is closing in. Don’t bring your work home with you, that’s what they say. Too late.

Sometimes sad, often hilarious and ultimately tragic and deeply moving, A Trick I Learned From Dead Men is a pitch perfect small masterpiece from a writer described by Richard Ford as having ‘a moral grasp upon life that is grave, knowing, melancholy, often extremely funny and ultimately optimistic’.

About the Author

After training as an actress at the Drama Centre London, Aldridge worked in film, theatre and television as an actress. Her first novel Pop was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002 and shortlisted for the Pendleton May First Novel Award 2002.

Aldridge’s short story, Arrivederci Les, won the Bridport Short Story Prize 2011.

Click here to buy  A Trick I Learned From Dead Men from Booktopia,
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Life After Life

by Kate Atkinson

In 1910, Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England, but two parallel scenarios occur – in one, she dies immediately. In the other, she lives to tell the tale. As the possibility of having a second chance at life opens up, the novel unfolds, following Ursula as she lives through the events of the twentieth century again and again. What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here is Kate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

About the Author

Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and has been a critically acclaimed international bestselling author ever since.

She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World, and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird, Case Histories, and One Good Turn.

Kate was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 2011 Birthday Honours, for services to literature.

Click here to buy Life After Life from Booktopia,
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The Marlowe Papers

by Ros Barber

On May 30th, 1593, a celebrated young playwright was killed in a tavern brawl in London. That, at least, was the official version. Now let Christopher Marlowe tell you the truth: that his ‘death’ was an elaborate ruse to avoid his being hanged for heresy; that he was spirited across the channel to live on in lonely exile, longing for his true love and pining for the damp streets of London; that he continued to write plays and poetry, hiding behind the name of a colourless man from Stratford – one William Shakespeare.

With the grip of a thriller and the emotional force of a sonnet, this extraordinary novel in verse gives voice to a man who was brilliant, passionate, mercurial and not altogether trustworthy. The son of a cobbler who rose so far in Elizabethan society that he counted nobles among his friends and patrons, a spy in the Queen’s service, a fickle lover and a declared religious sceptic, he was always courting trouble. When it caught up with him, he was lucky to have connections powerful enough to help him escape.

Memoir, love letter, settling of accounts and a cry for recognition as the creator of some of the most sublime works in the English language, this is Christopher Marlowe’s testament – and a tour de force by an award-winning poet: provocative, persuasive and enthralling.

About the Author

Ros Barber was born in Washington DC and raised in England. She is the author of three collections of poetry, the latest of which (Material, Anvil 2008) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her short fiction, which won prizes in the Asham and Independent on Sunday short story competitions, has been published by Bloomsbury and Serpents Tail. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, London Magazine, The Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and many other publications; it also features in anthologies published by Faber, Virago, Anvil and Seren. Dr. Barber has also published academic papers on Christopher Marlowe. She lives in Brighton and has four children.

Click here to buy The Marlowe Papers from Booktopia,
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The People of Forever are Not Afraid

by Shani Boianjiu

Lea, Navishag and Yael are school friends in a nondescript town in Israel. During dull lessons they play their invented game Exquisite Corpse and fantasise about the boys they fancy. When they hit eighteen they are conscripted into the army. Marooned on checkpoint duty with a bunch of morons, Lea relieves her boredom by creating an invented family life for a dishevelled Palestinian man she sees everyday at the border; Yael takes to sleeping with the men she is training, in between breaking up and getting back together with her wimpish boyfriend at home; and Navishag’s days are dogged by memories of her brother, Dan, who committed suicide after leaving the army. They wait in the dust for something to happen. Energetic, relentless, and with a sharp caustic humour, The People of Forever are Not Afraid captures that single, intense second just before danger erupts.

About the Author

Shani Boianjiu was born in 1987 in a small town on the Israel/Lebanon border, and she served in the Israeli Defense Forces for two years. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Vice magazine, and Zoetrope: All Story. Shani is the youngest recipient ever of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, for which she was chosen by Nicole Krauss. She lives in Israel.

Click here to buy The People of Forever are Not Afraid from Booktopia,
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Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

‘What are you thinking, Amy?’ The question I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: ‘What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?’

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife? And what was in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war. . .

About the Author

Gillian Flynn’s first novel Sharp Objects was the winner of two CWA Daggers, and was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger, and also for an Edgar. She lives in Chicago with her husband.

Click here to buy Gone Girl from Booktopia,
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How Should A Person Be?

by Sheila Heti

Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a twenty something playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create. When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close – sometimes too close – observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life.

Using transcribed conversations, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, the brilliant and always innovative Sheila Heti crafts a work that is part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy confessional. It’s a totally shameless and dynamic exploration into the way we live now, which breathes fresh wisdom into the eternal questions: What is the sincerest way to love? What kind of person should you be?

About the Author

Sheila Heti is the author of five books; three books of fiction, a children’s book, and a work of non-fiction with Misha Glouberman. She is Interviews Editor at The Believer and is known for her long interviews. She lives in Toronto.

Click here to buy How Should A Person Be? from Booktopia,
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May We Be Forgiven

by A.M. Homes

Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet, regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer, with a murderous temper.They have been uneasy rivals since childhood.Then one day George loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life. In May We Be Forgiven, Homes gives us a darkly comic look at 21st century domestic life – at individual lives spiraling out of control, bound together by family and history.

The cast of characters experience adultery, accidents, divorce, and death. But this is also a savage and dizzyingly inventive vision of contemporary America, whose dark heart Homes penetrates like no other writer – the strange jargons of its language, its passive aggressive institutions, its inhabitants’ desperate craving for intimacy and their pushing it away with litigation, technology, paranoia.

At the novel’s heart are the spaces in between, where the modern family comes together to re-form itself. May We Be Forgiven explores contemporary orphans losing and finding themselves anew; and it speaks above all to the power of personal transformation – simultaneously terrifying and inspiring.

About the Author

A.M. Homes has been the recipient of numerous awards including Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, along with the Benjamin Franklin Award.

She is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the best selling memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter along with a travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist’s book Appendix A:

A.M. Homes was born in Washington D.C., she now lives in New York City and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton

Click here to buy May We Be Forgiven from Booktopia,
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Flight Behaviour

by Barbara Kingsolver

Discontented with her life of poverty on a failing farm in the Eastern United States, Dellarobia, a young mother, impulsively seeks out an affair. Instead, on the Appalachian mountains above her farm, she discovers something much more profoundly life-changing – a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged?

Flight Behaviour is a captivating, topical and deeply human novel touching on class, poverty and climate change. It is Barbara Kingsolver’s most accessible novel yet, and explores the truths we live by, and the complexities that lie behind them.

About the Author

Barbara Kingsolver’s thirteen books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction include the novels The Bean Trees and the international bestseller The Poisonwood Bible which, amongst other accolades, won the 2005 Penguin/Orange Reading Group Book of the Year award. Her most recent novel The Lacuna, won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010.

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The Red Book

by Deborah Copaken Kogan

A college reunion, 20 years after graduation. Can one weekend of nostalgia change some people’s lives forever?

Clover, Addison, Mia and Jane were college roommates until their graduation in 1989. Now, twenty years later, their lives are in free fall. Clover, once a securities broker with Lehman Brothers, living the Manhattan dream, is out of a job, newly married and fretting about her chances of having a baby. Addison’s marriage to a novelist with writers’ block is as stale as her artistic ‘career’. Mia’s acting ambitions never got off the ground and she now stays home with her four children, renovating and acquiring faster than her Hollywood director husband can pay the bills. Jane, once the Paris bureau chief for a newspaper, now the victim of budget cuts, has been blindsided by different sorts of loss.

The four friends have kept up with one another via the red book, a class report published every five years, in which alumni write brief updates about their lives. But there’s the story we tell the world and then there’s the real story, as the classmates arriving at their twentieth reunion with their families, their histories, their dashed dreams and secret longings, will discover over the course of an epoch-ending, score-settling, unforgettable weekend.

About the Author

Deborah Copaken Kogan is the author of Between Here and April, a novel and Shutterbabe, the bestselling memoir about her years as a war photographer. Her photographs have been published in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, L’Express, Liberation and GEO. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, Elle, O: the Oprah Magazine, More, Slate and Paris Match, among others. She lives in Harlem, New York, with her husband and three children.

Click here to buy The Red Book from Booktopia,
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Bring Up the Bodies

by Hilary Mantel

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a ‘truth’ that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.

In Bring up the Bodies, sequel to the Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. This new novel is a speaking picture, an audacious vision of Tudor England that sheds its light on the modern world. It is the work of one of our great writers at the height of her powers.

About the Author

Hilary Mantel is one of our most important living writers. She is the author of twelve books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Giving Up the Ghost, Beyond Black, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize, and Wolf Hall, which won the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

Click here to buy Bring up the Bodies from Booktopia,
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Lamb

by Bonnie Nadzam

Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest. But when Lamb decides to abduct a willing Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness, they are both shaken in ways neither of them expects.
Lamb is a masterful exploration of the dynamics of love and dependency that challenges the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, confronts preconceived notions about conventional morality, and exposes mankind’s eroded relationship with nature.

About the Author

Bonnie Nadzam was born in Cleveland, went school in Chicago and has moved continually westward ever since. She holds a BA in English Literature and Environmental Studies from Carleton College; a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University; and an MA and PhD from The University of Southern California and has taught creative writing at Colorado College. Her short stories have been published in Granta Magazine, Orion Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Coffin Factory, and several other magazines.

Click here to buy Lamb from Booktopia,
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Ignorance

by Michèle Roberts

After every war there are stories that are locked away like bluebottles in drawers and kept silent. But sometimes the past can return: in the smell of carbolic soap, in whispers darting through a village after mass, in the colour of an undelivered letter. Jeanne Nerin and Marie-Angele Baudry grow up, side by side yet apart, in the village of Ste Madeleine. Marie-Angele is the daughter of the grocer, inflated with ideas of her own piety and rightful place in society. Jeanne’s mother washes clothes for a living. She used to be a Jew until this became too dangerous. Jeanne does not think twice about grasping the slender chances life throws at her. Marie-Angele does not grasp; she aspires to a future of comfort and influence.

When war falls out of the sky, along with it tumbles a new, grown-up world. The village must think on its feet, play its part in a game for which no one knows the rules. Not even the dubious hero with ‘business contacts’ who sweeps Marie-Angele off her feet. Not even the reclusive artist living alone with his sensual, red canvases. In these uncertain times, the enemy may be hiding in your garden shed and the truth is all too easily buried under a pyramid of recriminations.

Ignorance is a mesmerising exploration of guilt, faith, desire and judgment, bringing to life a people at war in a way that is at once lyrical and shocking.

About the Author

Michèle Roberts is the author of twelve highly acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4′s Book of the Week in June 2007. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud- stories of sex and love (2010). Half-English and half-French, Roberts lives in London and in the Mayenne, France. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Click here to buy Ignorance from Booktopia,
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The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

Adam has just proposed to his childhood sweetheart. Rachel is everything he has ever wanted – pretty, kind, thoughtful, safe and sure of her place in the world. Her family loves him, they share the same friends, in fact they are a perfect young couple set for a life of married bliss and comfort in north-west London. But on to the scene comes Ellie, Rachel’s younger, sexier but vulnerable and mysterious cousin from New York.

Despite his contentment, Adam finds himself uncontrollably drawn to Ellie – her beauty is overwhelming, her history is compelling, and she comes to represent all that is missing from his life: excitement, curiosity, freedom. And so his struggle begins – should he turn towards a new life of adventure and discovery, risking all that he holds dear, or stay true to love, responsibility and the ties of his community, giving up the possibility of any alternative?

The Innocents is an age-old tale of love, temptation, confusion, commitment and coming to terms with the choices we’ve made, that – in a wry, humorous, affectionate voice – tells the story of one young man’s pre-wedding panic as he grapples with the conflicts between responsibility and passion, security and freedom, tradition and independence.

Francesca Segal’s triumphant debut invites us in to a close-knit community, where a universal drama unfolds, with assurance and grace.

About the Author

Francesca Segal was born in London in 1980. Brought up between the UK and America, she studied at Oxford University before becoming a journalist and writer. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, and The Jewish Chronicle, amongst others. She has been a features writer at Tatler, and for three years wrote the Debut Fiction column in The Observer.

Click here to buy The Innocents from Booktopia,
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Where’d You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

A wildly imaginative, laugh-out-loud but also very poignant novel.

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To Elgie Branch, a Microsoft wunderkind, she’s his hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled wife. To fellow mothers at the school gate, she’s a menace. To design experts, she’s a revolutionary architect. And to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, quite simply, mum.

Then Bernadette disappears. And Bee must take a trip to the end of the earth to find her.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a compulsively readable, irresistibly written, deeply touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s place in the world.

About the Author

Maria Semple worked in Los Angeles as a television writer for 15 years, working on hit shows including Ellen, Saturday Night Live, Mad About You and Arrested Development. She lives in Seattle.

Click here to buy Where’d You Go, Bernadette from Booktopia,
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Honour

by Elif Shafak

From the award-winning author of “The Forty Rules of Love” and “The Bastard of Istanbul Elif Shafak”, “Honour” is a novel of love, betrayal and a clash of cultures. “My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten…” Leaving her twin sister behind, Pembe leaves Turkey for love – following her husband Adem to London. There the Topraks hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. Yet, no matter how far they travel, the traditions and beliefs the Topraks left behind stay with them – carried in the blood.

Their eldest is the boy Iskender, who remembers Turkey and feels betrayal deeper than most. His sister is Esma, who is loyal and true despite the pain and heartache. And, lastly, Yunus, who was born in London, and is shy and different. Trapped by the mistakes of the past, the Toprak children find their lives shattered and transformed by a brutal act of murder…A powerful novel set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, “Honour” explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the trials of the immigrant, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that too often tears families apart.

About The Author

Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of “The Bastard of Istanbul” and “The Forty Rules of Love” and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for “The Telegraph”, “Guardian” and the “New York Times” and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 views since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.

Click here to buy Honour from Booktopia,
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NW

by Zadie Smith

Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke and Russell.

Five identical blocks make up the Caldwell housing estate in North West London.

If you grew up in this relic of seventies urban design, the plan was to get out and get on, to something better, somewhere else. Thirty years later, Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan have all moved on, with varying degrees of success – whatever that means. Living only streets apart, they occupy separate worlds, and navigate an atomized city in which few care to be their neighbour’s keeper.

Then one April afternoon a stranger comes to Leah’s door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, and forcing Leah out of her isolation . . .

From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, where the main streets hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end, NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters.

About the Author

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975, and continues to live in the area. White Teeth is her first novel and won awards for Best Book and Best Female Newcomer at the BT Emma Awards (Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards), the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Prize for a first novel in 2000, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction 2000, the WH Smith Book Award for New Talent, the Frankfurt eBook Award for Best Fiction Work Originally Published in 2000 and both the Commonwealth Writers First Book Award and Overall Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Her other novels are The Autograph Man and On Beauty, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2005 and won the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006. She also edited the collection of contemporary short fiction The Book of Other People, and wrote Changing My Mind, a collection of personal and cultural essays.

Click here to buy NW from Booktopia,
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Alif the Unseen

by G. Willow Wilson

Welcome to the Empty Quarter, the domain of Djinn, ghouls, demons and the effrit who take the shapes of beasts. You used to walk among us, and we among you. Now things are different. Now we are Unseen.

Alif is a 23-year-old Arab/Indian hacker working in the Arab Emirates. His job is to provide security to enemies of the Arab states, ranging from pornographers to militant Islamists. Alif has fallen in love with the beguiling Intisar, an aristocratic woman he meets online. But their budding love affair is cruelly ended when her father arranges a marriage for her with a man of her class… a man who turns out to be the state’s leading censor, a shadowy and powerful figure known only as ‘the Hand’. The state security forces come after Alif with guns drawn, and he must go underground, trying all the while to fight back against a piece of code he wrote to protect his lover but which the Hand is using to create the most sophisticated state surveillance the world has ever known.

As their final communication, Intisar sends the heartbroken Alif a mysterious old book. Bound in what looks like human skin, and titled The Thousand and One Days, Alif soon realizes that this token of affection is actually a dangerous source of old world magic. And as the keeper of this amulet – the secret book of the jinn – Alif is about to become a wanted fugitive from both the corporeal and the celestial worlds…A life and death struggle ensues as the might of heaven and earth is unleashed.

About the Author

G. Willow Wilson was born in New Jersey in 1982 and raised in Colorado. Shortly after graduating from Boston University, Willow moved to Cairo, where she converted to Islam. She divides her time between Cairo and Seattle. Wilson’s graphic novel, Cairo, was named a Best Graphic Novel of 2007 by Publishers Weekly, the Edmonton Journal/CanWest News, and Comics Worth Reading. Wilson is also the author of two comics series: Air, which was nominated for the 2009 Eisner Award for Best New Series; and Vixen, winner of the 2009 Glyph Comics Fan Award for Best Comic; she is the first Muslim writer to be recognised for either award.

Click here to buy Alif the Unseen from Booktopia,
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The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion – A review by Andrew Cattanach

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

An IT consultant in his 50s decides to write his first novel. The novel is sold to 30 different countries and advances exceed $1 million.

And that’s just the About The Author section, imagine how good the story inside the book is.

Don Tillman  needs a wife. He has evaluated data and it’s obvious that this is all that is required in his life. He is a professor of genetics, physically attractive, is an excellent cook, even a martial arts expert. But has never ever been on a second date. So he designs a questionnaire to separate the wheat from the chaff, The Wife Project. His friends (the few he has) are worried that perhaps his awkward attempts at social interaction may leave him heartbroken yet again. But with a few bumbles along the way, he meets a woman who is spectacularly wrong for him, the questionnaire says so. But as he is about to pass her over she enlists him in an exciting new project, and there’s no harm in getting to know her a little better, is there?

While I rarely read romantic comedies (my attempts at romance in my own life are comical enough), the sheer noise reverberating from The Rosie Project demanded my attention, and I’m incredibly thankful I took notice.

I’m not sure I’ve read a more steady, comic hand than that of author Graeme Simsion’s as he takes you into The Rosie Project. At first you find yourself drawn to Don Tillman, your narrator and protagonist, and his case of what appears Aspergers. Often to hook readers in authors turn to an offbeat voice but in The Rosie Project this simply adds to the subtle comedy rather than being the architect of it.  Don is intense, happy as one could be, and completely unaware that much of his life and rigid personality has been shaped by his condition. He is exceptionally bright and totally aware of it, yet never comes off as arrogant, only calling things as he sees them and unfortunately for most of the people around him, he makes a lot of calls.

As Don begins to embark on his quest to find a soulmate you find yourself gripped by the story, and what was once a character piece becomes a warm, touching journey towards life’s greatest question, who are we, or rather, why are we?

It’s astounding that this is Simsion’s first novel, although it was as a screenplay that The Rosie Project was originally imagined. As frustration piled, on waiting for production to take place, Simsion turned his wonderful tale into a novel.

Perhaps it’s with the help of his screenplay that you feel as though every word, every breath from the characters is meticulously considered yet feels completely off the cuff. As I say, an astonishing effort for a debut novel. The dialogue is sharp and funny, the story engaging and thoughtful.

At last we have a Rom-Com with a brain as well as a heart, a story about loving people for who they are, not who we want them to be. Perfect for the book-a-week reader as well as a great gift to the friend who should read more.

The Rosie Project will be talked about for a long time to come, why not grab a copy and join in the conversation today.

Click here to buy The Rosie Project from Booktopia,
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Don’t forget to check out the terrific interview with Graeme Simsion and Booktopia’s own Caroline Baum, it’s a real treat.

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The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee – A Review by Andrew Cattanach

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

Rarely does a blurb prepare you so perfectly for what you are about to read.

The Childhood of Jesus is not like any other novel you have read.

And it is with the same forthright vagueness, if there is such a thing, that J.M. Coetzee tells a beautiful tale of love, loss, and everything in-between.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. J.M. Coetzee was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature and is the first person to win The Man Booker Prize twice. How does one divorce the incredible achievements of a legendary novelist and concentrate solely on his latest work.

Thanks to the genius of Coetzee, now an Australian citizen, I had no need to worry. I was thrown head-first into a world I never wanted to leave, even if I’d had the choice. From the first sentence the book washed over me. I knew I couldn’t reemerge into my world until I turned the last page.

The Childhood Of Jesus is the story of a young boy, David, and his friend and carer Simón. They enter the story as new arrivals into a foreign land, a land where the Spanish spoken is not their native tongue. We learn that David’s mother had left him to fend for himself on the ship, and gave him a letter tied around his neck with instructions on what to do when he arrived to new shores. Tragically, David loses the letter and finds himself alone. Simón takes care of David and finds a sense of purpose, not only in watching over him but helping him to find his mother.

They try and establish a life together while searching for David’s mother. Eventually Simón finds work, and with it the means for food and shelter for the two refugees while they attempt to build relationships with those around them, sometimes inhibited by the peccadilloes of their new home.

Then one day Simón sees her. He’s sure of it, even if David isn’t. Surely, it must be her…..

Early noise about The Childhood Of Jesus suggested a far more conventional narrative about the infancy of the founder of Christianity. Now that the novel is upon us, it appears a much longer bow has been drawn to Christ’s early days, and only on reflection do we begin to see the cracks widen and the subtle themes emerge.

As with many of Coetzee’s works, much of the novel uses the characters as vessels to explore deeper philosophical issues. Many passages from The Childhood of Jesus may leave you staring into space, pondering bigger things than just ink on paper. It reads like a fable, every word carefully drawn out by the author and together molded into an exceptional, timeless piece of work.

The Childhood Of Jesus breathes hope into a world where there appears none, laughter in a troubled time, a lesson before you’ve realised you were being taught. It may be a big player come awards season this year, so like its protagonists, catch the boat and journey to a strange new land. You won’t regret it.

Click here to pre-order The Childhood Of Jesus from Booktopia,
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Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach reveals his five favourite Australian Novelists

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Andrew Cattanach

Booktopia’s

Andrew Cattanach

reveals his

Five Favourite Australian Novelists

—————————————————

I’ve been lucky enough to have a bit to do with our ‘Australia’s Favourite Novelist poll. At the start of the month we sat around a table, discussing it’s potential popularity with a degree of trepidation. Today, with less than 48 hours until the polls close and thousands upon thousands of votes counted, I’m ecstatic with the interest it has spawned.

All of the writers featured, from the nominations to the shortlist, are wonderful. It’s incredible that such a small country can produce so many exquisite novelists. Looking down the shortlist reminds me of all those wonderful books that helped me develop from a boy into a man. The whispers from the page resonated so strongly with me, was it simply because we were from the same patch of dirt?

Australians will always have differences but invariably it’s in literature where our hearts beat in unison, if only for a moment.

And so it’s with great joy and constant whittling that I’m able to present my Five Favourite Australian Novelists. Here we go.

Patrick White

Let me get Patrick out of the way, because while he’s a divisive figure in ‘popularity’ contests, he’s not exactly a surprise nomination. Reclusive, pro-British, aloof, and hardly an accessible writer, White has divided opinion for years. I didn’t read a Patrick White novel until my final year of school when someone told me to read Tree Of Man. As a young man growing up in the country, sent away to school in the city, my life would never be the same after reading it. I still watch his awkward interview with Mike Charlton after word filtered through of his Nobel Prize win at least once a fortnight.

Click here to buy Tree Of Man

Tim Winton

Ah yes, I hear you say. First Patrick White, then Tim Winton. Jumping on the obvious bus, first stop safe picks. But my relationship with Winton was prickly for a time. Truth be told the first of his I read was the Bugalugs Bum Thief, which had a Portnoy’s Complaint effect throughout my year 2 schoolyard, it was the scandalous book you had to read. It was wholly Australian, rude, and very funny. Cloudstreet was thrust upon me as a 15 year-old. I didn’t like it. We studied it syllable by syllable for a year and magic of the story had been lost for me. Then before my first overseas trip as a school leaver I flung it into my backpack for the trip. And from the first moment I reopened it, I understood it. I was a little older, a little wiser, and little more homesick. And it spoke to me. If I had to teach someone about Australian’s I’d throw Cloudstreet at them, enough said.

Click here to buy Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Helen Garner

Timing is everything when it comes to your favourite novels. Monkey Grip got me at the right time and I’ve never looked back.  It found me at Uni, struggling through an arts degree, balancing study with cheap beer and apathy. Her voice struck a chord with me and it was the first time I felt as though someone was speaking to me from an earlier point in their life, at a similar junction in mine. As though her experiences and thoughts and twists and turns were frozen in time for me to discover. Helen Garner is an extraordinary writer and I was stoked to see her do so well in the voting in the heats for Australia’s Favourite Novelist.

Click here to buy Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Christos Tsiolkas

Putting aside his bestseller The Slap which continues to grow in popularity and acclaim over the years. Christos Tsiolkas has been a wonderful writer for a long time now. His first novel Loaded, is still one of my favourite Australian Novels. I admit it’s strange that a novel about a teenage homosexual Greek-Australian man raised in Melbourne would strike such a chord with a teenage heterosexual Irish-Australian man raised in South-West New South Wales, but it’s undeniable. Loaded, like so many of Tsiolkas‘ novels, cares little for pretence and throws you into the eye of the storm, pulling you towards conflict and the darkness amongst the light. Dead Europe is also an absolute cracker.

Click here to buy Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas

Nick Cave

Now, now, hear me out. When I put this list together I thought to myself, what makes a favourite novelist? Is it a body of work? Perhaps. Is it for guidance? Possibly. But I think one of the biggest marks of someone being your favourite novelist is when you put ‘their name+new+novel’ into google on a weekly basis, such is your eagerness to read more of them. So since reading Nick Cave’s delightfully macabre sophomore novel The Death of Bunny Munro I’ve been hanging out for more of his words ever since. Cave, the product of a librarian and an English teacher, is an extremely gifted writer with a dark wit and an ability to keep a story flowing despite the many odd pit stops along the narrative. I wait with baited breath for his next novel, if there ever will be one, so I suppose he has to make it onto the list.

Click here to buy The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to the Booktopia Blog. You can follow Andrew’s ramblings on twitter at @andrew__cat

Filed under: Australian Author, Book Recommendations, Book Talk, Fiction | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Andrew Cattanach’s Top Books of 2012

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Andrew Cattanach

Town Crier2012 has been an incredible year for the arts. We had the sublime documentary series The Shire, the whimsical adaptation of a board game not played since the 50’s, Battleship, and the welcome introduction of dubstep into every song on every radio station across the world. I don’t know how they do it. Actually, I’m pretty sure they just turn a knob clockwise…..

…genius is born in many ways.

But a wonderful year for books it was, ‘ole 2012. Some riveting fiction flooded the shelves and some of the most anticipated biographies for decades seemed to congregate at our door this year.

After much soul-searching, writing, crossing out, thinking about, reinstating and paper ball creating, I’ve put together my best six books for 2012.

And here we are….

NW

by Zadie Smith

It is a mark of Zadie Smith’s genius that some people actually thought this was below par compared to the rest of her books. It isn’t, and yes she sets the bar extremely high but she vaults over it, with bells on. NW stands as another triumph for the 2006 Orange Prize winner, and another wickedly funny, dagger-toothed look at the world of modern, multicultural Britain, oxymoronic as Smith may reflect on it be.

Click here to buy NW from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

9780670076604On Warne

by Gideon Haigh

Perhaps the best cricket book of the decade, certainly the best of the year. Gideon Haigh’s masterful take on one of the most celebrated Australian cricketers and most lamented Australian characters is a joy. Haigh plays the ball not the man and yet even without the tabloid gossip that has littered other books on the former leg-spinner he delivers a terrifically engaging look at Warne, both the man and the athlete.

Click here to buy On Warne from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

9780297867913The Orchardist

by Amanda Coplin

An absolute bell-ringer that woke me up from my winter slumber, The Orchardist is one of the most impressive debuts for some time. With calm, deliberate, minimalist prose it echoes the greats of American literature and as the crescendo hits you find yourself on the edge of your seat when you thought you were reading a lovely book about a apple farm. Sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful, I’m already typing author Amanda Coplin into google to see what she has in store for us.

Click here to buy The Orchardist from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

Waging Heavy Peace

by Neil Young

I’ve been waiting for this book all my life. Taken by Young’s seminal album Harvest as a young whipper-snapper in rural NSW, I always hoped he’d betray his promise to never write a memoir and sure enough he did. Much like Paul Kelly’s exquisite How To Make Gravy, you can start from anywhere in Waging Heavy Peace, such is his power as a rambling story teller. In the same way he revolutionised the music industry a dozen times over, Neil Young delivers a warm, contemplative and rewarding collection of memories that have only been enriched over time.

Click here to buy Waging Heavy Peace from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

Triburbia

by Karl Taro Greenfeld

It’s always nice to be surprised by a novel, to write it off before it spits truth back at you. Triburbia was that. Imagine The Slap without the slap, set in Soho, New York. Doesn’t sound anything more than middle-aged hipsters talking about first-world problems with their kids in the corner of the room does it? And that’s where the genius lies. Author Karl Taro Greenfeld chooses not to open this world up with a can opener or even a sharp knife, but, like a can of sardines that won’t budge, throws it down onto the hot pavement  busting it open and watches the oil slowly seep. Triburbia is an unflinching portrayal of modern life beautifully extracted, with so many worlds dissecting each other, under the watch of a masterful eye.

Click here to buy Triburbia from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

The Last Holiday: A Memoir

by Gil Scott-Heron

Immortalised by his haunting words “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, Gil Scott-Heron is undoubtedly one of the greatest figures in the battle for civil rights in American history. While he sadly left our mortal shores in May of 2011, we’re incredibly lucky that he finished his memoirs which were published posthumously in early 2012.  His body of work in politics, music, film and literature is extraordinary and it’s with joy that I discovered the final words he would put his name to would be so beautiful, so poignant, so visceral.

Click here to buy The Last Holiday from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

Click here to read all of Andrew’s posts. Click here to see Andrew on twitter.

Filed under: Book Recommendations, Book Talk, Fiction, Non Fiction, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Prepare for Armageddon – Booktopia presents the best guides to surviving the Apocalypse

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Andrew Cattanach

Mortal souls, our time on earth is rapidly coming to a close. As most of you know, the Mayan Calendar predicts the world as we know it will come to an end on the 21st of December, 2012.  When trouble hits there’s no better place to turn than your very own port in the storm, the book.

Literature has always been obsessed with the apocalypse and the anarchy that follows. Some of the great works through history that were once considered fiction can now stand as incredibly helpful ‘how to’ manuals during these, our last days.

THE ROAD

Cormac McCarthy’s most recent effort is a beautiful manual, one of the greatest of the last 25 years. Strangely enough it is the only post-apocalyptic survivor manual to have also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
WHO’S TO BLAME: Possibly global warming, war, the government.
CLIMATE: There will be fires on the horizon during The Rapture, but strangely enough there will also be a great deal of snow for much of the time after.
DO…. Try and get your father to do a medical degree before the apocalypse, this can be very handy.
DON’T…. Go into the basement of an abandoned home. Seriously, it’s not a good idea.

Click here to buy The Road from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

1984

Not strictly an apocalypse, but certainly a huge cataclysmic event, spawned the creation of George Orwell’s classic manual. One of the greatest manuals of all-time, it describes a world where privacy and free thought and speech are almost non-existent due to the totalitarian regime in place.
WHO’S TO BLAME: War, the government.
CLIMATE: Heavily industrialised, quite cold, neo-gothic.
DO…. Follow the crowd whenever you’re in a public place despite your hesitation, the after-world can be a tough place for an outsider.
DON’T…. Trust anybody, or make eye contact with co-workers, although for many people in the world today this shouldn’t be a huge departure from the current day to day.

Click here to buy 1984 from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

I AM LEGEND

If you have seen the infomercial presented by William Smith than you may be a little surprised as the manual it is based on, published in 1954, does have some different points to raise. I can assure you that the written manual is incredible and much better than the infomercial. It’s a stunning self-help book filled with immense symbolism and brutal plot twists.
WHO’S TO BLAME: War, scientists.
CLIMATE: Perhaps only one human left in existence, the world in complete devastation, vampires now roam the planet.
DO…. Have garlic, mirrors and crucifixes at the ready.
DON’T…. Think that you’re safe in your house, or anywhere. They’re coming for you.

Click here to buy I Am Legend from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS

John Wyndham put together a riveting manual published in 1951. Wyndham takes you through surviving a post-apocalyptic world where flora is your enemy. A classic manual taught in classrooms the world over, and a sure fire way to stop you looking at the night sky.
WHO’S TO BLAME: The Soviets. Botantists.
CLIMATE: Near complete devastation, large carnivorous plants roaming the planet, nearly all people in the world are blinded so interior decorating has become sub-standard at best.
DO… Try and find other pockets of survivors, although watch them carefully and don’t trust anyone with red hair.
DON’T… Ever, ever, ever, watch a meteor shower. Big trouble.

Click here to buy The Day of the Triffids from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

WORLD WAR Z

Son of you-know-who, Max Brooks builds on his best-selling The Zombie Survival Guide with the stunning manual World War Z. Through a series of stories pieced together, Brooks tells the story of a zombie apocalypse. Soon to be realised as an instructional video presented by Bradley Pitt.
WHO’S TO BLAME: Zombies.
CLIMATE: All corners of the globe are heavily war-torn, lots of rubble, things like that.
DO… Learn a trade or a really cool skill, they are valued in the future and you might become the President if you learn to unclog drains.
DON’T… Trust the pharmaceutical companies if they tell you they’ve found a cure. They haven’t.

Click here to buy World War Z from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

There are also a large amount of instructional videos available, some can be found below.

Click here for more detailsSHAUN OF THE DEAD

WHO’S TO BLAME: Zombies.
CLIMATE: Buildings are still largely intact, streets are not safe. John will do you a toasty out back of the Winchester, but survival is difficult if the building is surrounded.
DO… Find your loved ones and huddle together.
DON’T… Get too close to loved ones, because if they get bitten, oh boy….

Click here to buy Shaun Of The Dead from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Movie Hub

Click here for more detailsINDEPENDENCE DAY

WHO’S TO BLAME: Aliens
CLIMATE: Major cities completely destroyed,  army bases under threat.
DO… Find military bunkers, put your faith in Randy Quaid.
DON’T… Hold up placards welcoming the aliens while standing on a tall skyscraper directly below an alien ship. Bad idea.

Click here to buy Independence Day from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Movie Hub

Click here for more detailsTHE TERMINATOR SERIES

WHO’S TO BLAME: Skynet, the machines.
CLIMATE: Complete devastation, army bases in deserts still remain.
DO… Pick the times to trust robots very carefully.
DON’T… Start building robots. It’s all downhill from there…

Click here to buy The Terminator from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Movie Hub

Click here for more detailsMAD MAX

WHO’S TO BLAME: Diminishing natural resources.
CLIMATE: Think Broken Hill in the summer of 1977-78. For some reason, it’s exactly like that.
DO… Avenge people, you seem to live longer.
DON’T… Worry if the paperwork is clean, it won’t be.

Click here to buy Mad Max from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Movie Hub

Click here for more details2012

WHO’S TO BLAME: That pesky sun, the earth’s core.
CLIMATE: A few earthquakes and then come December 21, everything goes to pot. Lots of cracks you don’t want to step on.
DO… Find a plane and discover secret government evacuation plans.
DON’T… Be a jerk, because you’ll never survive.

Click here to buy 2012 from Booktopia, Australia’s Local Movie Hub

Click here to read the rest of Andrew’s posts. Click here to see Andrew on twitter.

Filed under: Action, Book Recommendations, Contemporary Literature, Dystopian, Horror, Movies, Science Fiction, Thriller, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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