Hello St Marks

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.