Flora and her friends worry that one of their favourite places, the Wings and a Chair Bookshop, may be about to close. Flora Smallwood lives in idyllic Rosetown, a place in Indiana, America. Her mother works part time at the Wings and a Chair bookshop. Flora likes to hang out at the bookshop, which is run by the free spirit Miss Merriwether. She reads books in the children's nook with her friend, Yuri, whose family is originally from Ukraine. Flora has another good friend, Nessy, who likes all things horticultural. Life in Rosetown is calm and stable, which is just how the children like it. They all feel they would like to live in Rosetown forever. And yet life is all about change, sometimes painful. Miss Merriwether, who in her past has been footloose and fancy free, feels the urge to move on again. There is speculation that she is going to sell the shop and leave. Flora and her friends feel distraught about this. What will they do if they lose Miss Merriwether? Will someone else buy the bookshop? Rosetown Summer is a sequel to Cynthia Rylant's original 2018 novel, Rosetown. The action takes place one year on, with Flora now ten-years-old. At 80 pages, this is a slim follow-up. The book finishes up all too soon. However, fans of Rosetown will enjoy the chance to re-enter Flora's (mostly) perfect little world of favourite shops, friends and after school activities. It is perhaps recommended to read Rosetown and Rosetown Summer together as one very satisfying experience. Rosetown Summer, by Cynthia Rylant. Published by Beach Lane Books. $14.99 Review by Chris Saliba When a boy goes missing during a dust storm, mysteriously absorbed into the Australian landscape, a town goes in search of him. 1883, South Australia. The town of Fairly is experiencing a dust storm. The horizon shimmers with the burning colours of red and yellow. A six-year-old boy, Denny Wallace, has gone missing during the storm. A child brought up in the bush, he's seems to have simply wandered off. When the adults find out, the whole town is launched into action. A broad cast of characters – police, Indigenous trackers, Denny's elder sister, Cissy, the boy's father – all work in their own idiosyncratic ways to find the boy. The Sun Walks Down is the second novel from Australian writer Fiona McFarlane. There's little plot to talk of, the story propelled along by the eccentric interactions of a brilliantly drawn cast. There are all sorts here, besides the main cast of family, police and Indigenous trackers. McFarlane throws in a Swedish artist, a prostitute, a mad vicar, some Afghan cameleers, a police seargeant who thinks himself more inspired writer than cop, among others. The evocative, almost poetic descriptions of landscape, flora and fauna give McFarlane's story a rich, satisfying texture. A highly wrought portrait of Australia's alienating landscape, written in an endlessly seductive prose and shot through with delicious irony and sly humour. You won't read a better book this year. The Sun Walks Down, by Fiona McFarlane. Published by Allen & Unwin. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba How a group of energised and well resourced independents took power Australia's 2022 federal election brought a major surprise: Six independent female candidates—colloquially known as ‘the teals’ for the signature colour they adopted (a blend of green and Liberal blue)—catapulted themselves into power. All replaced sitting Liberal party MPs in wealthy blue-ribbon seats. But was it a surprise, or a correction? Crikey reporter Margot Saville gives a detailed on-the-ground account of the ‘teal revolution’, interviewing key players and following the action in real time. She suggests that Liberal Party leaders such as Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, with their poor response to women’s issues, emboldened teal challengers. The Liberal Party mindset was one of entitlement. North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman answered feedback from a community group by emphasising a top-down approach: he knew best for the electorate. He was subsequently unseated by independent challenger Kylea Tink. Despite the money, resources and institutional knowledge available to the Liberal Party, they ran a lazy, sloppy campaign. The teal candidates, by contrast, were committed, organised and energised. They were also highly educated, professionally elite and well connected. As teal campaign strategist Kos Samaris notesd, "These campaigns could not be run in working-class communities ...They [People] lack time and money, and certain skill sets." (This raises key questions about poverty and democratic access.) Saville’s book is a neat summary of how an angry and organised groundswell picked off a slew of once-safe blue ribbon conservative seats. It will appeal to citizen activists and curious onlookers alike. The Teal Revolution: Inside the Movement Changing Australian Politics, by Margot Saville. Published by Hardie Grant Books. $24.99 Release date 1st December, 2022 This review first appeared at Books + Publishing. Stories of innocence and bitter experience from a Russian master. Isaac Babel (1894 – 1940) was a Russian writer and journalist best known to English readers for his short stories. He was born into a Jewish family in Odessa, at a time of terrible anti-Semitism. He survived a 1905 pogrom, but his grandfather, Shoyl, was murdered. Babel was a commander during the Polish-Soviet war and witnessed many horrors. With the rise of Stalin, he kept a low profile, his candid writings on the ugly realities of war garnering him enemies in high places. In 1939, Babel was arrested by the Soviet secret police and accused of treason and terrorism. He was executed the following year. Of Sunshine and Bedbugs: Essential Stories is comprised of three parts. "Childhood and Youth" contains sketches from the author's childhood; "Gangsters and Other Old Odessans" concentrates on the gritty side of life in the Jewish ghettos of Odessa, with its dodgy merchants and petty criminals; and finally, "Red Cavalry" chronicles Babel's time in the army and the atrocities he witnessed. The stories are quickly paced, full of lively characters and earthy descriptions. His prose is often humorous and ironic. Here is a passage from the "Childhood" section, about young children recruited for music lessons. “When a boy turned four or five, his mother would drag the tiny frail creature to Mr Zagursky. Zagursky ran a prodigy factory, a factory of Jewish dwarves in lace collars and patent leather shoes. He sought them out in the slums of Moldavanka, in the fetid courtyards of the Old Market. Zagursky showed them the ropes, and then the children were sent off to Professor Auer in St Petersburg. A mighty harmony dwelled in the souls of these starvelings with swollen blue heads. They became renowned virtuosi.” Describing scenes of war, Babel can often shock with brute realism: “He sat leaning against a tree. His boots were stuck wide apart. Without taking his eyes off me he carefully lifted his shirt. His stomach had been torn out, his guts were sliding onto his knees, and you could see his heartbeats.” A bracing introduction to one of the lesser known greats of Russian literature. Of Sunshine and Bedbugs: Essential Stories, by Isaac Babel. Published by Pushkin Press. $24.99 Review by Chris Saliba Six stories comprise this new collection from Pushkin Press by Russian master Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the novella length title story, a state councillor decides to gatecrash the wedding party of one of his office subordinates. A morally vain man, Ivan Ilyich thinks he can infuse some of his lofty values into the common people's celebration. It turns into a mortifyingly awkward evening as the revelers try to keep their superior happy, with Ivan Ilyich feeling terribly out of place. The petty official ends up drinking too much and making a spectacle of himself. The whimsical “Conversations in a Graveyard” features a group of newly dead corpses who discuss various philosophical points, arriving at the conclusion that they should abandon all shame and enjoy their time before they fully decompose. A miserly pawn shop owner chronicles his failed marriage in “A Meek Creature” and in the hilarious “The Crocodile” an obnoxiously ambitious man sees career advancement and opportunity when he is swallowed whole by a crocodile. Living in the crocodile's belly with relative comfort, he sees himself as being a scientific wonder. The last two stories, “The Heavenly Christmas Tree” and “The Peasant Marey” are short autobiographical pieces that touch on themes of the writer's imagination and human kindness. Dostoevsky exhibits his usual brisk pacing and biting satire in these stories. The title story is a brilliant psychological portrait of the gap between how we see ourselves and how the world does. And “The Crocodile”, the other standout story, is delightfully clever and absurdist, lampooning the overconfident type of personality who refuses to see reality. Sharp, witty and vivid, these entertaining and inventive six stories will surprise and astonish. A Bad Business: Essential Stories, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Published by Pushkin Press. $24.99 Review by Chris Saliba A highly enjoyable, witty biography of the great metaphysical poet, John Donne John Donne (1572-1631) was many things in his time: a soldier (although not a particularly effective one), a parliamentary MP (he was parachuted into the role) and a cleric, achieving considerable fame under James I as the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral. He worked hard to curry favour with the royal court, efforts that paid off, although an ill chosen word in a sermon could bring on the king's wrath. Today we remember Donne for his poetry. Everyone knows the phrase, “No man is an island”. Beyond that, he also contributed hundreds of new words to the English language, many which we use today. Donne spent a large part of his life trying to keep out of trouble. He was Catholic (later giving up his religion) at a time when Queen Elizabeth's spies were at work, capturing and torturing anyone suspected of plotting against the protestant queen. Donne's brother, Henry, would be thrown in jail for trying to hide a catholic, where he would die. Donne married Anne More, without her father's permission. An act of deceit that found him temporarily thrown into prison, a terrifying circumstance considering disease was rife. The marriage was a happy one, although perhaps not as happy for Anne. She bore him 12 children, many of them dying either still born or in childhood. Her last pregnancy literally killed her. She was only thirty-three years old. Money was often tight with so many children, but Donne would eventually come into money as a cleric for the Church of England. While Super-Infinite is a biography of Donne, children's author Katherine Rundell also provides an appreciation of Donne's poetry. Rundell admits that Donne can be difficult, even baffling. “The pleasure of reading a Donne poem is akin to that of cracking a locked safe, and he meant it to be so...The poetry stands to ask: why should everything be easy, rhythmical, pleasant?” Rundell's analysis shows a poet and prose writer whose work crackles and pops with ideas, paradoxes and conundrums. He truly wrestled with life's great questions and mysteries, his dynamic mind never tiring for a minute. Donne marveled at our “super infinite” selves, the limitless bounds of human consciousness. He thought each human's inner life vaster, more overflowing, than the very globe we stood upon. Donne's intellectual and psychic energy propelled him like a rocket, his pen producing great satires, sermons and love poetry. Katherine Rundell has written a biography that is delightfully light in tone but deep in its study. We come away from this portrait of Donne pleasantly discombobulated but also invigorated. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, by Katherine Rundell. Published by Faber. $34.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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