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.