Hello St Marks

So much reading, so little blogging. I've wolfed down a smorgasbord of books without even tasting them; all calories, little goodness. For the record, I note: The really dreadful 'Parting the Veil' by Paulette Kennedy—what a muddle. American heiress marries rich but psychotic English Lord in haunted mansion, with lashings of sex, grief, PTSD and Jungian psychology. 'Model Home' by Courtney Sullivan features universally awful people living in US home re-modelling reality TV-land. I felt mean and stupid reading it, but thankfully it was short. Matthew Fitzgibbon's 'Constance' is a near-future sci fi cloning thriller. 'A Day Like This' by Kelley McNeil has a solid premise: Annie wakes up from a car accident remembering a daughter who doesn't exist. 'The Colour of Law' is a wannabe John Grisham; perfect beach reading, thanks Mark Gimenez. James Patterson's 'The Noise' starts well—a very loud noise destroys a town, 2 kids survi...

My happy place is with Lady Georgiana Rannoch. I visit her often and never get bored despite each novel following the exact same pattern as the prior. This past month or two I've returned to 'Her Royal Spyness' (in which we meet Georgie, 34th in the line of succession and dead broke, with a dead Frenchman in her bath), 'A Royal Pain' (in which Queen Mary asks Georgie to babysit a dodgy German Princess), 'Royal Flush' (in which our heroine spies on the Prince of Wales and the odious Mrs Simpson), 'Royal Blood' (in which Georgie encounters murderous vampires in Transylvania while attending a royal wedding), 'Naughty in Nice' (in which Lady Georgiana is an accident-prone model for Chanel; murder ensues) and—oh yes—'God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen', Rhys Bowen's 2021 release, long-awaited by Lady Georgie's avid followers, in which we catch up with her life since... but that would be telling. 

"We tell this story to point out that we all do stupid things as children, and most of us live through them."  'Dirt Town', Hayley Scrivenor's first novel, is bush noir of the best kind. A child goes missing and a methodical investigation begins. The police are diligent and the people of Durton are believably kind, blind or flawed. The drama here is low and steady, the tension builds slowly as the story leaks from the Greek chorus of kids whose voices elevate 'Dirt Town' into something very special. 'Dirt Town' was a magnificent gift from the street library gods, as this uncorrected bound proof copy arrived four months ahead of its planned publication date (April 2022). I hope Scrivenor has many more books in her; this one is fabulous. 

For readers, trauma memoirs are the literary equivalent of slowing down to gawk at a crash; the drama is magnetic but you can feel like a heel afterwards. Rachel Gotto's trauma memoir, 'Flying on the Inside', leads with a string of catastrophes—a dead husband, a dead brother, a brain tumour—then becomes an essay on addiction. Having survived radical surgery for her brain tumour, Gotto finds herself cured but physically addicted to benzodiazepines. Her approach to recovery challenged my preconceptions about medicine and made me uncomfortable; see what you think. 

I barely knew who Amy Schumer was before reading her memoir, 'Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo', as this was a random read delivered to me by Hello St Mark's whimsical magic. Amy Schumer is a very, very famous comedian, actor, writer, producer, director and social justice warrior (you knew that already), and quite fabulous. She was a joyful child, a happy teenager, miserable in her 20s and brilliantly herself in her 30s—and in this memoir she tells all of it. She's smart and sexy and savvy; very rude, very frank, quite fearless and an incredibly hard worker. It's exhilarating and exhausting spending time with Amy. 

Garry Disher is my new crime crush; he's 72 and has written 40+ books, so I'm late to the party. His latest, 'The Way it is Now', is fabulous; the story of a suspended cop pulled taut by grief and regret, investigating the 20-year-old disappearance of his mum in a coastal town south of Melbourne. Disher writes Australia without cliche or overstatement. Bone dry but warm. 'The Way it is Now' is a stand-alone novel so an easy introduction to Disher's universe. If you love it—you will—go find the Hirsch series. 

Easy, warm and kind. Sophie Green is the perfect antidote to a crappy day or the icecream on the cake of a good one. The Australian Women's Weekly says it's "as Australian as a lamb roast and full-bodied shiraz" and who am I to argue with The Weekly? Three women's lives intersect at a yoga studio in suburban Melbourne; enough said. It's lovely. 

Woke horror. Like COVID novels, it's a product of now. 'Reprieve' is set in a haunt—an extreme 'full contact' haunted house renowned for terrifying the bejeezus out of its paying players who exit traumatised and injured. The Quigley House is in white-than-white rural Nebraska, an uncomfortable new home for teenage Kendra, who is Black, goth-ish and cranky. Thai student Jaidee is equally out of place. White hotel manager Leonard wants more than he deserves. As 'Reprieve' begins we know someone has died at the haunt, and each character's topical backstory is revealed in parallel with a re-telling of the players' progress through a gruesome series of escape-room-style 'cells', each more horrible and viscerally confronting than the last.  This is all very clever and memorable, but the cover claim that 'Reprieve' is "an eventual American classic" is just silly. 'Reprieve' occupies the same territory as the brilliant '...

'The Midnight Library' has a lot of passionate fans, and I can see why. Nora Seed tries to commit suicide and so arrives at the midnight library, offered the opportunity to re-write her life, erasing her regrets and living alternate editions of herself. Nora married, Nora the glaciologist, Nora the motivational speaker, Nora the rock star. It's a cool concept, for sure. What's maddening is that as she awakes in each new life, she's still her current self, invariably sabotaging each new reality through lack of context. She can't be a new Nora, only the old Nora faking it. Haig's heavy-handed moralising is evident from the beginning, and the ending is inevitable. 

I'm not usually a fan of Irish 'chick lit' (a term Keyes dislikes as pejorative) but Marian Keyes can write a cracking story. In 'The Woman who Stole my Life' Stella Sweeney has a car accident, gets sick, becomes famous and loses her way. There's a dreadful husband and a lovely new man. It's Marian Keyes, so we know it'll end well after a cleverly plotted, emotionally rewarding rollercoaster ride. Jojo Moyes calls this one "a brilliant, unusual, brave, sexy book" which is nonsense, but fair play to Keyes. 

'Small Acts of Defiance' had made its way through three satisfied readers before me and will be gone from my street library within an hour, guaranteed; it's exactly the kind of popular historical fiction that does well without anyone feeling embarrassed for having enjoyed it. Sixteen-year-old Lucie arrives in Paris from Australia in January 1940; she's painfully naive—of course she is, she's 16—but step by step she finds the small acts of defiance that are within her power. Others choose differently. Australian author Michelle Wright's debut novel is a winner. 

Comparisons with Oliver Sacks are inevitable and right there on the cover. 'The Nocturnal Brain' is 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' for sleep disorders. It's gripping, naturally, with that Sacks-esque (Sacksian? Sacks-like? Sacks-adjacent?) combination of neuroscience and intimate storytelling. There's the teenager with Klein-Levin syndrome—bouts of extreme sleepiness combined with hypersexuality and morbid hunger. The bloke sent to jail for attempted rape, later diagnosed with sexsomnia and having to deal with the horror of realising he had actually committed—while sleeping—the crime he had vehemently denied. Sleep-related eating disorders. Extreme sleepwalking (and, memorably, sleep-driving). Sleep paralysis with hallucinations. Life-threatening insomnia. 'The Nocturnal Brain' is a very nicely written cornucopia of sleep-related horror stories, with few happy endings. As Leschziner says, "sharing a bed with someone is an act of deep trust...

Happily I have a wretched memory, so reading 'The Power' for the second time was a perfect combination of familiarity (to new characters: I love you already) and surprise (good god, I can't believe that just happened). There's too much to say about Naomi Alderman's provocative feminist dystopia. In a time about now, across the world, girls electrify—literally, not metaphorically—delivering electrical shocks with their hands. It's weird, it's shameful and playful and then almost immediately deadly, and the balance of power between men and women is fundamentally shifted. What do you think would happen if women had real power? Read it, then read it again.

This is Deborah Rodriguez in memoir mode, not author mode (see review of 'The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul') but it's absolutely the same voice. 'The House on Carnaval Street' begins as Deborah flees Kabul with her son, leaving a wannabe warlord Afghan husband and a beauty school. Completely shattered, she lands in Napa, falls into another relationship (his mother dumps her) and finally catapults into Mexico. It's exhausting spending time with Debbie—she's scatty, erratic and often infuriating—but her life is full, really just exploding with people and colour and mad moments, so we love her. 

Expectations were high, because I loved 'What a Carve Up' and 'The House of Sleep'. But 'Mr Wilder & Me'—Jonathan Coe on film director Billy Wilder's later years, told from the perspective of a very young Greek composer—was pretty, clever and contained, and left me wanting something sharper. Regardless, it's worth reading for the beautiful prose, delicious observations of the movie industry in the late 1970s, and - for which it should be famous—a brilliant Wilderesque screenplay slipped into the book two thirds of the way through; an unexpected treat. 

"No child, still less a foetus, has ever mastered the art of small talk, or would ever want to." Ian McEwan's 'Nutshell' is true crime narrated by a foetus with the voice of a middle-aged English don. So arch. No-one else but Ian McEwan could get away with it; it's painfully, immodestly, gleefully clever. But it is very, very clever indeed and you won't have read anything quite like it.  The precocious narrator on identity politics: "Feeling is queen. Unless she identifies as king. I know. Sarcasm ill suits the unborn." 

I didn't know there was a book, which is a little embarrassing as it's one of Australia's most notable works of fiction, apparently. 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' was published in 1967, with Joan Lindsay then in her early 70s. It's 'Australian Gothic' (also apparently), and reads like the cracking murder mystery it is, undimmed by time or fashion. It's a wonderful book, certainly moody but not pretentious, with strong narrative momentum, and a keeper for the home library. Don't Google it until after you've read it; a final chapter—excised before the book was originally published then released posthumously—explains the mystery and is best left unread.

This copy of Lee Child's 'Bad Luck and Trouble' got caught in a storm (my fault entirely) so reading it meant carefully peeling apart each damp page... but such is my passion for Jack Reacher that I couldn't wait for it to dry off. This is the 11th book of roughly 25 (and may Christmas 2021 bring another one as it has for time immemorial, amen). 'Trouble' reunites Reacher—former badass Army MP special investigator, now enigmatic drifter—with the remnants of his former unit. Cue the bad guys and gun sales and fist fights and corruption at the highest levels, etc. 'Trouble' isn't classic Jack Reacher—way too much self-reflection and teamwork for that—but it sits in my personal top 10 for Reachers, largely because of the central role of scary/awesome former sergeant Frances Neagley, one of the many hyper-capable women that populate Lee Child's quietly feminist fictional universe.

'Choices' appealed because of its retro 1990s cover, plus the blurb says 'female doctor' and 'small town practice' and 'masterpiece' so I'm giving it a go. It's dated, for sure, but the theme—a woman's right to choose—remains sadly topical. 'Choices' is big, warm-hearted, old-fashioned, popular fiction. I didn't know how popular until I googled Noah Gordon—now 92 years old and the most successful novelist you've never heard of. 'Choices' is the final book in a trilogy in which the first book, 'The Physician' had sold 10 million copies (as at 2015) and has been made into a movie, a musical and a Netflix series. I suspect 'Choices' is the weakest of the set—'The Physician' is set in 11th century Persia, so I'm off to track it down.

'The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul' is a bit of a mongrel—part "perfect summer read" and part feminist commentary on life in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. Oddly enough, it works, and the social, cultural and logistical details captured my attention, which might otherwise have been snoozing through the "one little cafe, five extraordinary women" beach read conventions. Rodrigues' actually lived the world she describes so next step is straight to the source: her bestselling memoir, 'Kabul Beauty School'. 

'The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle' is a wildly commercially successful book, translated into 28 languages and with a Netflix series in the works. When published in 2018 it made everyone's lists and won some impressive swag. But I suspect it's one of those books that everyone bought but many didn't finish; like 'A Brief History of Time' for crime buffs. Stuart Turton has written a "time-travelling, body-hopping murder mystery" (his words), so tricky and twisty it's near impossible to follow. The narrator wakes up each day in a new body, damned to repeat the same day over and over until he identifies Evelyn's murderer. Of course, it's not that simple. Compounding the complexity, Turton has named three of his key characters Davies, Derby and Dance—an author's conceit which demanded more attention than I was willing to spare.

The reading gods delivered 'Love, Greg & Lauren' to Hello St Marks in the week before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, which was spooky. Greg Manning's wife Lauren was entering the lobby of the World Trade Centre on the morning of 11 September 2001—running a little late—when she was engulfed in a fireball; minutes later, with burns to 82% of her body, she was in an ambulance and not expected to live. She remained in hospital for 90 days, emerging triumphant and thanking God, in December. Greg started writing detailed daily email updates on Lauren's condition on 19 September, and had a publishing deal by late October. This is a moving story, and a worthy book; a story of resilience and love and grit. It can't help also being a story about money and class, and the glorious healing power of wealth.

The night the Titanic sunk, SS Californian was within sight. Second Officer Herbert Stone saw the distress rockets fired by the Titanic and told his Captain, who—irritated and arrogant—did nothing. By morning, 1,500 people were dead. 'The Midnight Watch' is a novel which manages the grey between fact and fabrication beautifully. Author David Dyer brings both empathy and a keen, intellectual curiosity (embodied in the flawed journalist narrator) to the story of these men, their families and the political and cultural response to the greatest maritime tragedy the world had ever seen. 'The Midnight Watch' is a cracking read with all the voyeuristic appeal of this infamous tragedy, and yet—the perfect combination—is reflective, emotionally engaging and beautifully crafted.  Dyer is Australian, a former ship's officer and Titanic obsessive, currently an English teacher with a Doctorate in Creative Arts from UTS; lucky, lucky students. 

I didn't expect to be drawn into this book, and yet I was. It opens at Peterborough Railway Station; a man throws himself in front of a train, and was not the first to do so. We don't know the man but we feel for the staff. Then, a shift of gears, and it's a subtle suburban whodunit, narrated by a ghost. Louise Doughty's 'Platform Seven'—her ninth novel—was much more than I expected; complex, reflective and moving. 

Yet another apocalypse novel, which makes me impatient and a poor judge of Alex Adams' 'White Horse'. It's good, probably quite good, but I've had my fill of the end of the world and found the constant switching between now (genetic plague causing death or mutation; cue monsters) and then (whiny Zoe, hard to love) required more effort than I was prepared to give. 

"The best novel about movie making ever written" says Sunday Express on the cover, and I'm not arguing. 'Shadows on a Wall' by Ray Connolly is terrific. It's a fat page-turner with a rowdy cast of characters set in the surrealist la la land of film studios, screenwriters, producers and actors, as a little play about Napoleon morphs into the most expensive movie ever made. Connolly is a screenwriter, so I imagine that's why this novel rings true and—first published in 1994—holds up wonderfully well. The perfect companion piece to this novel is journalist Julie Salamon's 'The Devil's Candy'—her brilliant and biting account of the making of 'Bonfire of the Vanities', released in 1992.

'The Devil Wears Prada' was a fun book and a great movie. 'Where the Grass is Green' is mildly fun, period. Beautiful rich white Americans and their problems is fertile ground for satire but Lauren Weisberger pulls her punches and settles for a predictable beach read. The saving grace is the sparkling relationship between insomniac sisters Peyton (glamorous news anchor) and Skye (suburban uber-mom), but even so, I now declare an end to my recent run of bubble-headed chick lit. 

In 'This Has Been Absolutely Lovely' all the familiar ingredients are in the mix: someone's pregnant, someone's addicted, someone's sad, someone's dead. The mum was a pop star. The daughter's a hippy. The neighbour's a spunk. The son is selfish. His wife is German. Set in a Sydney summer, it's light but tart and absolutely lovely. "Oh, it's a thing all right. I've seen enough things in my time to know a thing when it's right in front of me." That's Jane, my favourite. 

I can't remember if I've read 'The Shining' (published in 1977) but 'Doctor Sleep' (the sequel, published in 2013) was a bloody good read. It's so interesting watching a wildly successful author, fabulously skilled, play out a multi-generational career. 'Doctor Sleep' has some of the Stephen King tropes—a motley crew of friends standing against monstrous evil, and alcoholism. King is really interested in friendship and recovery, and 'Doctor Sleep' is hinged on the addiction and redemptive recovery of its hero. Plus child-killing, steam sucking, near-immortal bad guys and actual ghosties familiar to readers of 'The Shining' (or its movie), otherwise there's no story. Super fun. 

Cait Copper's cat has dreadlocks so we know which of the two blokes she'll end up with in 'The Last Bookshop', and yet the predictable plot doesn't reduce the joy of this lovely book one iota. Cait runs a bookstore in Perth, Western Australia—so I'm hooked right there. Emma Young is a bookseller turned author and it shows; this book is filled with bookshop lore and the best kind of conversations you have with book-loving friends—recommendations, distractions and "I've read that, too" moments.  "People always seemed to exist in blissful ignorance of their unbelievable good fortune at being able to purchase an original work of art, that had taken anywhere from a year to ten years to write, guaranteed to provide many hours of entertainment and education and insight, for as little as ten or twenty dollars... She would never understand it." Well said, Cait (and Emma). 

Robbie loses his memory every 179 days. As the calendar counts down to the next 'forgetting', he tries to protect his fragile identity before it's wiped clean once again. If you've seen 'Memento' or read S. J. Watson's 'Before I Go to Sleep', you know the territory is rich in twisty hypotheticals and should be fascinating. As Robbie wonders, "What was I doing except trying to shackle my future self, to bend him to my will?" It's an initially engaging conundrum (if a bit daft), but Breakey's take on the memory loss genre (sub-genre? niche?) is oddly dour for a supposed "compulsively readable love story", and a bit of a slog. 

First published in 1894, 'Seven Little Australians' is a vivid time capsule of Victorian Sydney, gorgeous to read in 2021. It starts with a warning: "...not one of the seven is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are... It may be because the miasma of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy of our atmosphere". And with that encouraging start, we meet the General (a baby), Baby (not a baby any more), greedy Bunty, beautiful Nell, spirited Judy, lovely Pip and boring Meg. Ethel Turner wrote this novel when she was 23 and it has been in print ever since. A joyful read. 

Brendan Murray is a teacher, the best kind of great teacher: geeky cool, non-judgemental, engaged, pragmatic. And he's a writer, hence 'The School', a memoir of a year at an un-named Government high school on the Mornington Peninsula. He writes about the ghosts that populate every school room, barely remembered; Murray defends the detachment teachers must practice, but this book—a lyrical, emotionally engaging introduction to a handful of kids, framed by a single school year—undercuts that defence. Murray gives us Tessa and Lonnie, bullied and bully. Illiterate Grace, failed by the system. Angry Charlie, who channels his fury into competitive sport. Lovely Kelvin. Wambui. Claire. Kids with dark backstories and complex challenges, kids with the wrong parents and kids with mighty ambitions. Murray savages the Victorian education system, then goes back to calmly doing the very best he can for the kids briefly in his care.   

600 prisoners escape from a Nevada jail. Death row prison guard Celine Osbourne wants her prisoners back. Especially John Kradle, sentenced to death for the cold-blooded murder of his wife and child. It's all exactly what it sounds like and Australian crime writer Candice Fox delivers the goods. A capable, fast-paced thriller. 

I am stupidly fond of 'World War Z'. Subtitled 'An Oral History of the Zombie War'. I know, I know; sounds like utter trash and yet—set aside the zombies if you can—it's fabulous. Max Brooks has framed this novel as a true account of the zombie plague, recorded in the decade after the war was declared won. It's framed as an oral history, so the texture of the book is dense and rich with many voices: the soldier, the mother, the politician, the scientist, the teenage cannibal, the blind Japanese horticulturalist, the Deep Submergence Combat Corp diver. All those first person voices, all survivors—it's fascinating and remarkably moving. I've read this in hardcopy a couple of times and then found it on Audible's top audiobooks of all time list—at #3. It's really that good.

Some books arrive in the street library at the end of a long journey, not looking their best. Add a trashy cover—gloomy moor, skull—and I get the wrong impression. But 'Blacklands' was Belinda Bauer's first novel, and she didn't set out to write crime at all. It's lean and clever and moving; a psychological tug of war between 12 year old Sam and the imprisoned paedophile serial killer suspected of murdering his uncle. Bauer has since written another 8 books and been longlisted for the Man Booker prize (for 'Snap'). So, not trash at all. 

"The joy of this book is just that: the joy. What Moran is really arguing for is more female happiness." That's The Guardian's review of Caitlin Moran's 'How to be a Woman' and it's true, but not the whole story. 'How to be a Woman' is part memoir, part feminist manifesto, part rant, part plea; it's clever and raw and very, very funny.   "If I were the patriarchy I would, frankly, be thrilled at the idea of women finally getting an equal crack of the whip. Let's face it, the patriarchy must be knackered by now. It's been 100,000 years without so much as a tea break."

"The past had always been a minefield, but never more so than in 1953." Any suggestion that the past was better than the future is strictly outlawed in C J Carey's England in 1953; an England 13 years into the Alliance with the Third Reich, occupied in all but name. " Sentimentality is the enemy of progress. Memory is treacherous. The sentiments every half-diligent schoolchild knows by heart." Rose Ransom is a Geli—ASA Female Class 1 (a)—beautiful and privileged. Not a Leni (professional, dour), or a Klara (fertile mothers), a Paula (caring, teaching, nursing), a Magda or a Gretl (don't ask). Certainly not a Freida—a Freidhofefrauren ; a widow over 50 with no children, no reproductive purpose, who did not serve a man. Ah, you already know where revolution begins, don't you?  This is a cracker of a book. Beautifully written, taut, moody, engrossing. Track it down. 

I enjoyed 'Crazy Rich Asians' so should have loved 'Last Tang Standing', but didn't. Malaysian-Chinese lawyer Andrea Tang is a 33 year old successful professional woman... with the narrative voice of a bratty teenager. It's often very funny, but infuriating. My patience for her whiny nonsense was soon exhausted and the romance plot held no mystery. I bore with it to the end because of the other bits: the shiny Singapore setting, and Lauren Ho's light-touch, warm-hearted exploration of the power and weight of familial expectations. 

Mark Brandi writes prose like a poet. Short sentences. One line paragraphs. One thought at a time. A jerky, staccato rhythm. It's maddening, but deployed to great effect as the voice of the 11 year old narrator/protagonist of 'The Others'. Jacob lives with his dad on a farm, of sorts. Safe from the plague and the others, learning about the world from his dictionary and his dad. His dad is a complicated man. As we discover, one short sentence at a time. 

Deirdre gets an email from her sister Caro at a funeral. Caro's funeral. Caro says she was murdered, and her husband did it. 'Her Last Breath' is entertaining nonsense, a perfect example of the domestic thriller genre. Three. Word. Title. Twisty plot. Fast pace. Damaged women. Hilary Davidson has written a swag of these, and good on her.

Monica McInerney is famous for feel-good fiction. 'The Godmothers' is her 12th book, so she's very, very good at it. I read this one fast and casually, probably not doing it justice. Glamorous godmothers, international locations, handsome brothers—all the ingredients are in place for "a great big hug of a book" (according to the blurb), but meh. 

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's 'The War that Saved My Life' was a Newbery Honor Book winner but that was not the book I was reading. 'The War I Finally Won' was the sequel; yes, perhaps I could have guessed. A very battered copy arrived in the street library absent a back cover, so I read 'Finally' with care, lest the final pages detach altogether. Had I lost those last pages I would have been mildly put out, but my 12 year old self would have been devastated. Damaged child heroine Ada Smith is orphaned and—with reason—deeply ignorant and deeply distrustful. In 'Finally' the abuse she escaped in 'Saved' has lingering effects; Ada's defiant recovery plays out among familiar WWII tropes (English village, courageous sons and their mothers, the healing power of horses), creating the blend of dark and light beloved by the Newbery and earnest young readers. 

Alex Verus is a diviner, quietly running a magic shop in contemporary London. This is urban fantasy by Benedict Jacka, very well done and justifiably popular—as evidenced by the 10 books which came after 'Fated'. The final book is due in December 2021. I won't be embarking on the full dozen but tip my hat to Jacka for his clever world building. If you could have divination or teleportation, which would you choose? Now I know. 

I expected to enjoy 'The Wych Elm' because I'd loved 'The Searcher', but no. Entitled man-child Toby, antihero of 'Wych', was loathsome company compared to thoughtful retired detective Cal Hooper from 'Searcher'. Bloody Toby all but ruined 'Wych' for me, despite French's ferocious talent for characterisation and cracking Irish dialogue. Handsome, educated, charming, charmed—Toby is oblivious to most everything until he's the victim of a violent robbery and retreats, brain-addled and humiliated, to the summer house of his childhood. When a human skull is found in the wych elm, Toby's fractured memories smash against a new, darker reality. 

'Providence' is a warship. Probably sentient, but best not to think about that too much. Better for its crew to pretend they're not just passengers chosen for their media-friendly back stories: hunky warrior, adorable geek, stoic captain, bubbly propagandist. In this war against the aliens known as 'salamanders', the four humans dutifully take to their stations—Weapons, Intel, Command, Life—when the enemy is engaged but, again, best not to get in the way. Then, half way through a four year tour, closing in on 600,000 kills, the salamander hits the fan and the four crew members have to dig deep to find strengths they definitely weren't recruited for.  Max Barry is a successful Australian sci-fi writer, so quite a rare breed. I didn't love this book, but I celebrate the Max Barrys of Australian fiction. 

Nerd thriller. Geek hero. Intellectual swashbuckler. Andy Weir's 'The Martian' spawned some unexpected word combos plus the immortal battle cry: "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this". Who hasn't used that one? In 'Project Hail Mary' junior high science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship, with no memory, and has to save the world. Cue the hyper-technical problem-solving monologues which define the Weir Way. I have no idea what Grace is talking about almost all the time, but the science talk has a cadence which carries you along. I love it. 

The central mystery of 'We are all Completely Beside Ourselves' is: what happened to Fern? Fern and Rosemary are sisters, all but twins, inseparable until Rose is five and Fern, inexplicably, is gone. 'We are all Completely Beside Ourselves' was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction so we know going in that this novel about family, siblings and psychology will be both good and clever—which it is. It's also charming, uncomfortable and twisty.  

The Street Library has gifted me with a copy of 'The Kraken Wakes' so old it has a price of 3'6 on the cover and is held together with sticky tape. This is one of John Wyndham's catastrophe novels, written in the 1950s and in print ever since. Like 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'The Midwich Cuckoos', 'Kraken' is a perfect short novel. Succinct, very clever, astutely observant and never overwrought. Very British of its era, or so I imagine. In 'Kraken' interstellar monsters colonise the deep oceans of Earth and set about changing the climate to their ends, so among the joys of this book is a 1953 perspective on climate change denial, propaganda and response. With more tape, this one goes back to the library — a 1963 edition of a 1953 novel, ready and relevant for another 2021 reader.  Postscript: I'm delighted to advise that 'Kraken' lasted less than a day in the Street Library before finding its next reader.