In 1960s Australia, a Catholic priest starts an affair with a young student.

Gifted student Maggie Reed attends a Catholic boarding school in Cumberland, a western suburb of Sydney. It's 1967 and Maggie is seventeen-years-old. She's won a scholarship to attend the school, which is just as well, because her drunkard father would prefer she give up studying altogether and find a job. Her mother, who puts up with a lot of spousal abuse, has too much on her plate to take care of her daughter. Home is a depressing place, full of fear and anger, and Maggie is happy to be boarding, a brief respite from so many troubles.

Events take a sharp turn when local priest Father Nihill, handsome and charming, takes an interest in Maggie. She initially resists, but soon finds herself succumbing to a sexual relationship. It's one full of secrecy and deception. When Maggie becomes pregnant, her life is turned upside down as Father Nihill – Lloyd, as he has insisted she call him – tries to deal with the pregnancy in a very un-Catholic way.

Maggie is Catherine Johns' debut novel. It reads as autobiographical and one wonders if it's based on personal experience, or that of a friend. Every page feels real and immediate. The novel provides an excellent overview of social mores in 1960s Australia - the position of women, the church and reproductive rights. The hypocrisy of the church's priests is jaw dropping. Sometimes evil. The treatment of Maggie as a problem to be hidden away, with no concern for her as a person, will make readers indignant at such injustice and misogyny, obviously the norm for the times.

One minor caveat: for a story driven by so much drama, the writing can feel flat at times. Characters don't leap off the page and the plot structure feels pedestrian. Having said that, the book is still a page-turner and Maggie's journey is compelling in its twists and turns. A well rounded, disturbing portrait of the darker side of 1960s Australia.

Maggie, by Catherine Johns. Published by Hachette Australia. $32.99

Review by Chris Saliba

The former Baywatch star and Playboy pin-up tells her story.

Pamela Anderson has always been perceived as a two-dimensional figure – a pin up girl and Baywatch star, more famous for her red swimsuit than any acting ability. She married drummer Tommy Lee in a bikini on the beach and found her life dragged through the gutter when some private videos were stolen from her house and edited into a sordid “sex tape”. In later years a different side to Anderson emerged. There was her animal welfare work for PETA and advocacy for Julian Assange.

Now middle-aged and with two adult sons, Pamela Anderson has decided to write her own story. An avid reader (everyone from Anais Nin to Noam Chomsky is referenced) and diary keeper since childhood, Love, Pamela seamlessly blends poetry and prose and has a brisk, almost chatty tone. She discusses growing up in Canada, her parents' turbulent relationship and childhood traumas such as when she was molested by a female babysitter. There are entertaining chapters on working for Playboy Magazine, her passionate and often extravagant lifestyle with Tommy Lee and the more settled years of activism and farming on her Canadian property, where she lives with her parents.

Love, Pamela could be best described as a book of forgiveness and healing. Anderson is candid about the many mistakes she has made in life, but seems to shrug them off as all par for the course. No one's perfect and nor should they expect to be. Where others have done her wrong, she holds no grudges or bitterness. Indeed, this is a sweet and hopeful book that strives to see the best in people.

An inspiring memoir, written in Pamela Anderson's unique authorial voice. The blonde pin-up now speaks, her words wise and compassionate.    

Love, Pamela, by Pamela Anderson. Published by Headline. $34.99

Review by Chris Saliba

Maggie Haberman's exhaustive biography of Donald Trump

It feels like we reached Trump saturation point many years ago. Who would want to read another book on the polarising president? Maggie Haberman is a journalist who has covered Trump for decades. Like Trump, she's a born and bred New Yorker. Unlike other memoirs and biographies that paint Trump as a cartoonish ogre, Haberman has drawn a nuanced, fully fleshed portrait. Confidence Man argues that if you want to understand the Trump of today, it's imperative to look at his past – his years as a 1980s property tycoon and his relationship with his father. We learn that Trump senior was controlling and brutal. As a property developer in a violent and corrupt 1980s New York, Trump was more bruiser than businessman, intimidating his way to success and using his father's money.

The second half of the book covers Trump's presidency, culminating in the January 6 insurrection. With superb research and detail, Haberman describes a slow motion train wreck. Trump's personality grew even more erratic and domineering with unchecked power. In the book's epilogue, Haberman neatly sums Trump up: “...a narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse...”
A tour de force.  

Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, by Maggie Haberman. Published by HarperCollins. $34.99

Review by Chris Saliba

Intimate, introspective stories about a community of cats that look out for their humans. 

Four cats – Chobi, Kubo, Cookie and Mimi – roam through four human stories about loss, anxiety, loneliness and grief. While each story is a stand alone tale, dealing with an individual's problems and traumas, the cats know each other as a little community and form almost a collective chorus, with the narration swapping between the feline and human. They observe their human owners in trouble – all women, hence the book's title – and try to nudge them in the right direction. The cats hold a bemused view of the human world, with all its frailties and worries, and feel somewhat superior with their no nonsense attitude to the cycle of life and death.

She and Her Cat is the debut novel from anime filmmaker Makoto Shinkai (translated by Naruki Nagakawa). It's a sensitive and intimate portrait of vulnerable people, trying to live the best they can but still struggling. The book's bustling urban environment – of trains and busy streets – adds to the atmosphere of quiet alienation. A gentle, oddly soothing novel about how we come to realise the simple joys of life through suffering and adversity.  

She and Her Cat, by Makoto Shinkai. Published by Doubleday. $32.99

Review by Chris Saliba