A genius book that explains big problems and concepts in an easy to grasp manner.

Do you read lots of books and articles about climate change but still find you have only a foggy idea of what it all really means? If so, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster will set you on the right path. Bill Gates brings his considerable analytic skills to the planet's biggest and most complicated challenge, translating it into an accessible explainer. All those facts and figures, graphs and computer models, are boiled down to two simple numbers, 51 and zero. Currently we put 51 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere per year. That figure needs to be brought down to zero. Otherwise the planet's temperature will undoubtedly continue to rise. Babies born today, without effective action, will experience a planet eight degrees hotter than today in their old age.

This task will not be easy. Our economy, dependent on cheap fossil fuels, has been baked in over centuries. To change the world's power grid to renewables will take decades, not years. Emissions from agriculture pose a special problem, as people's diets are cultural and difficult to change. In a world where millions of people need to be lifted out of poverty, more pressure will be put on global emissions, as poor countries improve their standard of living, consuming more energy and meat.

The solution, according to Gates, is a mixture of technology, business and government. Governments can legislate to price carbon, creating a more level playing field. Technology, especially the riskier research and development, when backed with government money, can produce winners that business can capitalise on and improve.

Avoiding a climate disaster will be a huge task, not fixed by merely buying electric bulbs and purchasing an electric car, although all this helps. It will involve huge technological change, government commitment and global co-ordination. Perhaps some changes in our behaviour. To not do anything seems impossible. Leaving today's children with a planet eight degrees hotter – with the chaos and destruction that will cause – can't be an option.  

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill Gates. Published by Allen Lane. $39.99

Review by Chris Saliba

Monica Dux comes to terms with her Catholic means

Writer and columnist Monica Dux grew up Catholic during a time of social upheaval. At home and at school, she was taught about Jesus, Mary and the Apostles. It was a way of life, and a very specific identity, being Catholic, one that never left you. But as young Monica grew up she became sceptical and left the church's teachings way behind. The thing about Catholicism, however, is that you may leave it, but it never leaves you. Lapsed is Dux's attempt to come to terms with what influence Catholicism continues to exert over her life, looking back from middle age.

The result is a mix of humour (lots of laugh-out-loud moments, in fact), memoir and Catholic history, examining in detail the church's many weird beliefs and practices. The section on child abuse scandals covered up by senior clergy burns with rage and indignation.

A highly entertaining book, chock full of gags and zingers, but with a serious core of self-examination.  

Lapsed, by Monica Dux. Published by ABC Books. $34.99

Release date 7th April 

Review by Chris Saliba

Novelist Nick Gadd remembers his wife Lynne through their many walks through inner city Melbourne. 
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Nick Gadd and his wife, Lynne, spent two years circling Melbourne's inner-city suburbs. “Psychojogging”, they called it, walking and exploring, theorising and researching the many odd and uncanny places they visited. When Nick's wife died from cancer, he decided to write up their expeditions as a way of dealing with his grief. Throughout the book an intimate portrait of Lynne is built up through remembered conversations and shared experiences.

In many ways, Melbourne Circle is a quirky and enchanting history of inner Melbourne, from the working class suburbs of Yarraville and Footscray, to the glamour of South Yarra's 1930's outre apartments, as designed by architect Howard Lawson. Many will be surprised to read about Maribrynong's once bustling bomb factory, the Yarraville retirement flats built on toxic waste that sank and that masterpiece of modern architecture, the ETA Peanut Butter Factory in Braybrook (its design was internationally recognised.)

For those who like to absorb their history on the streets – pondering the life of former arcades and post offices, piecing together “ghost signs” faded on old brick walls and staring in wonder at our architectural curios – there is much to delight in Melbourne Circle. 

Melbourne Circle: Walking, Memory and Loss, by Nick Gadd. Published by Australian Scholarly Publishing. $29.99

Review by Chris Saliba​

A female robot is recruited to help with a family going through a difficult time

Klara is an artificial friend (AF) that spends her days in a shop window, waiting for someone to buy her. She's a slightly older model, a B2, so she often feels anxious that she will be passed over in favour of the newer B3 models, just being unpacked from their boxes. Klara loves it when she is positioned at the front of the window and can catch the sun's rays, which recharge her batteries and makes her feel wonderful. In fact, she almost worships the Sun, giving him a male gender and an upper case title.

A 13-year-old girl named Josie repeatedly visits the store with her mother and talks to Klara. They are testing the waters to see if Klara would make a good AF. After much deliberation between mother and daughter (Josie's mother is always quite tense, her mind often preoccupied) they decide to take the machine home.

The novel is set in the near future and social divisions have become exacerbated. Josie has been “lifted”, genetically edited for superior intelligence, while her good friend and neigbour, Rick, hasn't. Effectively, they belong to different castes. This causes some fundamental friction within their friendship, and their mothers are at loggerheads on how to manage their aspirations. Added to this list of complications, Josie has some unidentified health problems, potentially life threatening.

Ostensibly this is a science-fiction novel, an exploration of a possible future where AI dominates, yet the character of Klara reads more like a Victorian servant. She is observant, there to meet people's needs and knowing when to hide herself away when delicate social situations require it. Besides her ability as a machine to feel human emotions – anxiety, fear, love – she also experiences naivety, believing in the omnipotent powers of the sun. She prays to “him” and is convinced a pollution sputtering building site contraption is the Sun's implacable enemy.

Kazuo Ishiguru is a supremely skilled storyteller. The novel unfolds with the precision of a Swiss clock, a tantalising suspense built into every page as we slowly learn about Josie's illness, its cause and the mother-daughter tensions that permeate. In many ways, Klara and the Sun is a middle-class drama, soaked in guilt, regret, and failed parental aspirations, observed calmly through the eyes of Klara, the astute yet naïve home help, much loved but ultimately dispensable. 

Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguru. Published by Faber. $32.99

Review by Chris Saliba

Lech Blaine revisits a deeply traumatising event from his youth.

In 2009, Lech Blaine and six of his friends were involved in a horrific car crash in Toowoomba, Queensland. No drink-driving or breaking of speed limits was involved, although the car was clearly overloaded (two were travelling in the boot). The group was still in their teens, just boys. They were travelling at 95 kilometres an hour, five kilometres under the limit. When a back tyre hit some gravel the car spun out of control. People at the accident site later commented that Lech was hysterical, crawling out of the car despite being told to sit still until help arrived. Being young and fit, Lech presumed everyone would pull through. Death never entered his head. But over the coming days the seriousness of the injuries would provide a harsh dose of reality. Three of his friends died. One close friend suffered permanent brain damage, unable to walk or talk.

Car Crash, a memoir of this grief stricken time, describes the author stumbling numb and confused through the aftermath. It covers an hallucinatory, nightmare year and paints an emotionally complicated portrait of a group of young teenagers, ill equipped to deal with sudden, inexplicable death.

Lech Blaine is a preternaturally gifted young writer, still in his twenties. His prose shows an easy sophistication and surreal wit, constantly throwing out pleasant surprises. While the book is ostensibly about a group of young Toowoomba teenagers, describing their culture of sex, sport and alcohol, Blaine also spends much of the memoir concentrating on his relationship with his separated parents. His father is a sports loving, Labor voting union man, while his mother is the sensitive lover of literature, burdened with mental health issues. These sections brilliantly evoke complicated familial relationships, how children are formed by their parents, but also act to counter their influence.
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Grief and confusion as experienced by young men, leavened with a smart sense of humour and a true writer's gift for subtle observation.
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Car Crash: A Memoir, by Lech Blaine. Published by Black Inc. $29.99

Review by Chris Saliba

A lost kitten comes to symbolise all the love that we find so hard to grasp in life.

While at a writers retreat in Tuscany, Italy, American writer Mary Gaitskill adopted a stray cat. The kitten was one of a litter, scrawny and blind in one eye, that presented itself for patting. It seemed to have chosen the writer, even though she didn't want a kitten, especially one with special needs that would have to be brought back to the US. Despite all this, Gaitskill took the kitten to the vet, looked after it, got its shots so it could travel, and took it home. She first named the kitten “Chance”, but finally decided on Gattino. She settled Gattino into her new house, letting the kitten outside under supervision, but one day when she rushed inside to attend to something, he went missing.

Gattino was just seven months old. Gaitskill was heartbroken and went to extraordinary lengths to find her kitten, even employing psychics. There were a few suspected sightings, from less than reliable witnesses, but in the end it was accepted that Gattino must have died. A none too happy ending to a story about a pitiful kitten.
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Interwoven through this story of Gattino is a series of personal dramas involving family members and adopted children, especially Gaitskill's emotionally complicated relationship with her father. Lost Cat works more as an extended autobiographical essay and asks the question, is it wrong to invest so much love in a small kitten, when our human relationships are so difficult?

“...the metaphor for love that I feel more deeply is a lost, hungry little animal dying as it tries to find its way back home in the cold. It isn’t truer. But I feel it more. “
A bracing, honest piece of autobiography, one that has an ineffable sadness about it.  

Lost Cat, by Mary Gaitskill. Published by Daunt Books. $19.99

Review by Chris Saliba