By Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp
The Under History by Kaaron Warren.
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Under History
Kaaron Warren, Viper, $32.99
Kaaron Warren’s The Under History is a haunted-house mystery and a hostage thriller rolled into one. At age nine, Pera Sinclair survived a catastrophic tragedy. A pilot intentionally crashed his plane into her family’s stately home, killing everyone inside. Rebuilding the house and devoting herself to the many faces of death her family history has known, Pera eventually became an odd little old lady running ghost tours. Death comes to her doorstep once again when a group of desperate men gatecrashes the last ghost tour of the season, and Pera must use her storytelling skills – not to mention her rather intimate relationship with death – to ensure the safety of her innocent guests. A gothic-tinged tale of supernatural horror and Scheherazade-like storytelling, with all the suspense and menace of page-turning crime fiction, for good measure.
Why Do Horses Run?
Cameron Stewart, Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Why Do Horses Run? by Cameron Stewart.
Walking alone across Australia for three years, Ingvar has gone off-grid. He has barely spoken a word in that time, so it’s a strange thing to find refuge with Hilda, a woman who talks to someone who isn’t there. Recently widowed, Hilda still converses with her dead husband, and when Ingvar’s peregrinations take him to the remote tropical valley full of misfits where she lives, she allows the itinerant swagman to shelter in a shed on her property. Cameron Stewart’s literary debut is a lyrical and emotionally intelligent novel, contrasting the wonder, as well as the harshness and foreboding, of the natural world against the interior landscapes of two characters whose suffering can only be borne, not outrun. Sentimentality often afflicts fiction exploring grief and loss, so it’s refreshing to find a hard-edged portrayal that compels a sense of hard-earned hopefulness.
Close to Death
Anthony Horowitz, Century, $34.99
Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz. Credit:
Murder meets metafictional hijinks in the latest from global bestseller Anthony Horowitz. The fifth in the “Hawthorne and Horowitz” series, Close to Death, concerns another homicide in a moneyed corner of London.
Hedge-fund manager Giles Kenworthy probably deserved a comeuppance of some sort. He was awful and entitled and alienated almost all his neighbours in the exclusive cul-de-sac he lived in. He probably didn’t deserve to be shot dead with a crossbow in his mansion, however, and when detective Daniel Hawthorne and his offsider, John Dudley, investigate, they’re up to their necks in suspects. Everyone hated the victim. But then their chief suspect dies.
A serial killer seems to be on the loose in this posh enclave, and the author insinuates himself into the narrative at times to help conform to (and defy) genre expectations. It’s perfectly readable, but postmodern detective fiction has been a thing since Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Horowitz’s latest is a somewhat uneven and flat-footed example.
High Noon at Starbucks by Richard Freadman.
High Noon at Starbucks
Richard Freadman, Hybrid, $25
Retired English professor Richard Freadman has penned a collection of short fiction that, as you might expect, is very well-turned in terms of prose technique. What it lacks is reliable depth.
Consider the title story, High Noon at Starbucks. An Australian retiree living in Florida experiences culture shock, and an eye-opening intro to the polarisation of the Trump era, at a golf club. It ends with a young woman flashing her nipples in protest, after being forced to listen to demeaning sexist banter between men. The material could have sustained a Carl Hiaasen-like, whistle-stop tour of Floridian eccentricity, but it’s too truncated, the observations aren’t sharp enough and the structure’s too prosaic and workmanlike for the black comedy to fly.
Other stories have resonance and insight, including one that confronts layers of mortality and the meaning of human suffering.
The Internet of Animals by Martin Wikelski.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Internet of Animals
Martin Wikelski, Scribe, $36.99
For thousands of years, indigenous peoples have been masterful trackers. In the West, a revolution in tracking occurred 50 years ago when scientists began attaching tagging devices to animals they were studying. In recent times, the team of scientists behind the Icarus Project have connected this information on a global “internet of animals”, allowing them to interpret animal behaviour in unprecedented ways, whether it is to forecast the weather, the spread of disease or track species under threat.
Ornithologist Martin Wikelski begins this visionary and heartening account with the two brothers whose know-how spearheaded satellite tracking. But it is the animals in this tale that are the greatest teachers. As we enter what Wikelski calls the “Interspecies Age”, we will be able to truly listen and respond to animals all over the planet and recognise that their needs are inseparable from our own.
Hope by Rosie Batty with Sue Smethurst.
Hope
Rosie Batty with Sue Smethurst, HarperCollins, $35.99
“Why doesn’t she just leave?” It’s a question that reflects the depths of ignorance about domestic violence that campaigners such as Rosie Batty still have to contend with. The question we should be asking, she says, is “Why doesn’t he stop being violent?” Batty, whose son Luke was murdered by his father, has devoted the past 10 years since Luke’s death to changing attitudes, laws and institutional approaches to this form of violence.
Her contribution has been colossal and the satisfaction of making a difference has helped her deal with her grief. But the glare of public attention has taken its toll. In Hope, she documents life after she became Australian of the Year and the many people who supported and spurred her on.
It is an expression of gratitude and a reminder that even though the pain never goes away, it can be borne, and that meaning and purpose can be found in the darkest places.
Excitable Boy by Dominic Gordon.
Excitable Boy
Dominic Gordon, Upswell, $29.99
Junkies and fugitives who cruise the state library with “salivating eyeballs”. A mysterious insect-like ex-crim with “a fair bit of coin” who has been living at a hip inner-city hotel for years. Graffiti artists addicted to the adrenalin of risk that leaves them feeling “primal, precipice-close. Alive.” These are just some of the characters, hidden in plain sight, who populate Dominic Gordon’s broken-bottle-sharp stories about growing up in Melbourne’s working-class western suburbs.
The first few stories are spare and tight as a drum. But as Gordon journeys back into his youth, there is a pell-mell quality to them that reflects the inchoate desires driving him to break the law and his body in his quest for thrills and escape.
As he documents his attraction to the city’s underbelly and his darkest impulses, his stories ring with the unvarnished truth as Gordon challenges us not to look away.
Wild Quests by Satyajit Das.
Wild Quests
Satyajit Das, Monash University Press, $34.99
Anyone planning to watch animals in the wild for their next holiday adventure should read this bracing book. “Ecotourism is one of conservation’s foundation myths, based on shallow ecology. Without this fairytale, wildlife tourism is simply short-term mining of the resource and has no role in a modern sustainable society.” And this is written by a dedicated pursuer of animals in their natural habitat. Satyajit Das has, however, grown uneasy about the price paid by the creatures at the centre of this industry. Blending his own journeys with an examination of the rise of packaged encounters with nature, he confronts some disturbing truths: ecotourism damages the environment, disrupts animals’ natural rhythms to lure them into our orbit, commodifies wild creatures as items for a bucket list and traps them within a sentimental human frame. This is a book you will want to argue with even as you weep.
Rosie Batty is a guest at Melbourne Writers Festival (mwf.com.au). The Age is a festival partner.
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