Hello St Marks

Most hyped novel of 2022, etc. Described as a "lush, lyrical heist novel" by the PR team, 'Portrait of a Thief' is neither lush nor lyrical but it does have a very stylish cover, a paint-by-numbers crew of sassy heist novel archetypes (including a sexy female street racer) and a fantastic back story. Chinese-American author Grace D. Li is a current Stanford University medical student, former high school teacher, graduate of Duke University, grew up in Texas. Very cool indeed, and all power to 28 year old Li—she's clearly amazing. There's just a weird disconnect between the hype and the book, which is a mash-up of international action movie and overwrought, post-teen angst—producing some of the silliest dialogue you'll ever delight in reading. 

"That was the secret of a happy marriage: step away from the rage." Liane Moriarty is really, really good at writing books that are both cracking stories and tartly acerbic commentaries on—well, whatever pocket of contemporary Australian life she turns her attention to. With 'Apples Never Fall' it's tennis. I don't care even a smidge about tennis but loved this rollicking, astutely observed book and its cast of very human beings. 

Laurie Graham's 'The Importance of Being Kennedy' reminded me of Jo Baker's 'Longbourn, The Servants' Story'. Both are re-imaginings of familiar stories from the help's perspective. 'Kennedy' is voiced by Nora Brennan, no-nonsense nursemaid to all nine Kennedy children— those Kennedys, American royalty, infamous and tragic. Both novels sound like trash and weren't. 'Longbourn' was lyrical, 'Kennedy' is acerbic; both are clever and thoughtful with the frisson of a familiar story told fresh. 

A year ago I started a record of every book I read in 2021. Thank heavens that's over; it was a dreaded burden writing about ever darned book I consumed, and often embarrassing (count the terrible books I read in 2021, or no, please don't). For the record, I read 101 books in 2021, or thereabouts. Plus a couple of dozen I started but didn't finish—too hard for my wooly head, or too awful even for my low standards. As the second COVID-19 year ground on, quality plummeted and non-fiction consumption declined to barely a garnish on a diet of calorie-rich, low-fibre fiction. I'm making no promises for 2022. 

1 Jan 2022 and I'm playing catch-up on my 2021 reading. Only four books to go and here they are, in a rush. 'Bridge Burning' by the lovely Kitty Flanagan; the friend you want for real. I'll try '488 Rules for Life' next for a mega-dose of funny/serious common sense. 'The Secret Lives of Dresses' by Erin McKean is a perfectly lovely romantic-ish story about a dozy zoomer finding herself thanks to a fabulous wardrobe of vintage clothes. 'An Absolutely Remarkable Thing'—about social media, fame, unearned power and aliens—is absolutely brilliant. Hank Green (podcaster, vlogger, entrepreneur) is a very clever writer with a big, bold brain, so I'm off to find his second novel. Ah, finally, 'Happy Hour' by Jacquie Byron. Francis' husband died 3 years ago and she's doing grief her own way. Franny is utterly furious, sometimes mean, often drunk. Also clever, creative, acerbic and kind, and Byron lets her be all those things without jud...

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.