Hello St Marks

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.