Hometown by Shaun Tan<\/p>\n
Children\u2019s books, Allen & Unwin, $35<\/p>\n
Shaun Tan\u2019s latest adult graphic novel\/children\u2019s picture book feels like a culmination or apotheosis of the artist\u2019s career \u2013 forms and creatures from other books haunt its edges, like dreams within dreams. The tale of a teenage girl who feels at home in her eerie, wondrous world until a stranger comes to inform her she doesn\u2019t belong, Hometown is a stunning, deeply spiritual allegory of idiosyncrasy and self-acceptance.<\/p>\n
Hovering between the poles of delight and terror, it manages to suggest a harmony of existence derived from our diversity, not despite it. A dazzling, poignant, stunningly realised masterpiece. \u2013 Tim Byrne<\/p>\n
The Lady with the Dog by Carrie Tiffany<\/p>\n
Novella, NewSouth, $29.99<\/p>\n
Carrie Tiffany\u2019s stunning new novella begins when its ageing protagonist receives a diagnosis. She sits in her garden to ponder it. She quickly loses the thread. (\u201cShe must remember to tell her daughter something. Is it something about a flower?\u201d)<\/p>\n
The old grizzled dog that enters her life \u2013 brought to her by the Old Man, whose role in her home she is never quite sure of \u2013 becomes her true companion, and through this cipher we are drip-fed details of her past, and of the present she is failing to grasp. The understated but gorgeous illustrations from Noel McKenna are almost as moving as the story itself \u2013 a story ripped from Tiffany\u2019s own life<\/a>, which is teased out so elegantly, so devastatingly, that you won\u2019t know you\u2019re crying until it\u2019s too late. \u2013 Steph Harmon<\/p>\n The European Mind: Colonialism, Capitalism, Christianity and How to Recover by Bruce Pascoe<\/p>\n Nonfiction, Magabala books, $36.99<\/p>\n Where Bruce Pascoe left off with his rewritten Australian history in Dark Emu, he refocuses his sights perhaps even more contentiously in The European Mind<\/a>: Colonialism, Capitalism, Christianity and How to Recover. In this new book the bestselling, multi-award-winning author lays blame unflinchingly at those three forces for the worst excesses of racism and violent dispossession of the world\u2019s Indigenes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a novel concept. But in what has the tone of a literary swan song, Pascoe writes from a First Nations perspective to draw on a very broad range of western and European \u2013 and later colonial \u2013 sources to prosecute his case. \u2013 Paul Daley<\/p>\n The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters by Kate Grenville<\/p>\n History, Black Inc, $36.99<\/p>\n \u201cThis book is an odd little thing,\u201d Kate Grenville warns. Neither novel nor straight fact, the celebrated author\u2019s latest is an absorbing meta-fiction about the small-town feud of a schoolteacher in rural New South Wales. She stumbles across letters accusing him of harming children, and more than a century later, tries to uncover the truth. Or, a truth.<\/p>\n With a lively mix of archive, imagination and personal curiosity, Grenville returns to the familiar ground of power, personal morality and the violence threaded through colonial Australian life \u2013 and finds her addiction to playing detective raising bigger questions. \u2013 Imogen Dewey<\/p>\n I Can\u2019t Tell You But I Will by Magda Szubanski<\/p>\n Memoir, Text Publishing, $55<\/p>\n Eschewing the kind of jocular reminiscence of most celebrity biography, Magda Szubanski\u2019s follow-up to her 2015 memoir Reckoning \u2013 about her father and the scars of war \u2013 is a thoughtful and erudite grappling with family legacy and the things we owe the dead.<\/p>\n I Can\u2019t Tell You But I Will turns the attention to her flinty Scottish mother Margaret, with whom Szubanski had a fractious, if loving relationship. Weaving the story of her mother\u2019s decline and death with Szubanski\u2019s work on the marriage equality campaign, this is both a work of painful recollection and a deeply felt act of benediction. \u2013 TB<\/p>\n The German Ward by Pip Williams<\/p>\n Fiction, Affirm Press, $34.99<\/p>\n The German Ward is the much-anticipated third novel from Pip Williams, following the mega success of The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho, both of which were global bestsellers. It is a story of love, art and war that takes us from the Australian War Memorial archives to the Anzac camp at Etaples, June 1916. The conduit is a series of sketches by the Australian artist Iso Rae, who was documenting broken men in a shattered world.<\/p>\n There are moments of intimacy and sensuality in the images that fascinate Eva, an academic, who discovers a puzzle she is determined to solve: a love affair between an outspoken English nurse and a German doctor, taken as a prisoner of war. \u2013 Susan Chenery<\/p>\n Askew by Andy Jackson<\/p>\n Poetry, Giramondo, $27<\/p>\n In his first collection since he won the Prime Minister\u2019s literary award in 2022, Jackson takes on what might be broadly lumped together as our collective malaise: the climate crisis, male suicide, social disharmony, \u201calgorithm blues\u201d and news cycles, the traumatic hangovers of Covid and bureaucratic callousness.<\/p>\n That Askew manages to be so tender while charting such distressing times is a testament to Jackson\u2019s skill. Take this snippet from 24-hour (no) news (haiku) cycle: \u201cnow you don\u2019t know what isn\u2019t news \/ the temperature at the Svalbard Seed Vault rising \/ return from a walk exhausted \/ from carrying yourself.\u201d Or his bushfire poem What endures: \u201cWe ignored the warnings, became a pack-a-day country. \/ What now? No poet can reason with this lust for smoke.\u201d \u2013 Sian Cain<\/p>\n Weeknights with Alice by Alice Zaslavsky<\/p>\n Cookbook, Murdoch Books, $45<\/p>\n Continuing her reputation as Australia\u2019s hype girl for vegetable cookery, Guardian regular Alice Zaslavsky<\/a>\u2019s fourth book delivers whip-smart, veg-leaning recipes, many of which clock in under 40 minutes from prep to plate. She instructs cooks to \u201cplonk\u201d, \u201cslosh\u201d and \u201cempty the baggie\u201d (of prepacked slaw); she tops a tuna mornay with salt and vinegar chippies; she throws Japanese curry cubes into a mac and cheese; she is an advocate of wet-frying mushrooms<\/a> for a stroganoff-pasta hybrid.<\/p>\n If her recipes sound slightly chaotic but undeniably joyful, that\u2019s because they are. \u2013 Yvonne C Lam<\/p>\n The Last Best Place on the Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia by Richard Cooke<\/p>\n Nonfiction, Black Inc, $36.99<\/p>\n In his very funny and deeply researched book about Wikipedia, Richard Cooke preserves a rare history of the internet before the internet ruined the internet; of \u201cone of the strangest and most outlandish successes of its time\u201d. We learn how a website so \u201cprofoundly uninnovative\u201d managed to get going (if you build it badly, they will come); about the messy fights between Wikipedia\u2019s obsessive volunteers; and about the radical attempts to make it better.<\/p>\n One gets the sense that Cooke was sucked down his own Wikipedia wormhole to write this book, which is packed with hilarious and heartwarming stories \u2013 like the time \u201cthe cream of roadgeek Wikipedia\u201d staged a mass exodus to start a Wiki of their own, \u201cwhere every road is welcome\u201d; and like the man who bravely uploaded images of his micropenis to be used for free via Wikimedia Commons. (\u201cAfter our brief email interview, Mr. Lasiter spent months sending me unsolicited photos from the same series.\u201d) Prepare to learn, sure, but also prepare to laugh. \u2013 SH<\/p>\n Well Well Well \u2026 by Judith Lucy<\/p>\n Memoir, Scribner Australia, $36.99<\/p>\n If you follow Judith Lucy on social media, you will have noticed a startling number of her posts are about faecal transplants. This book is the explanation you may have been looking for: the beloved comedian is fascinated by wellness and, when she retired from standup in 2022, decided to dedicate her time to write a guide to everything she had tried \u2013 including float tanks, reiki, sound healing and meditating (with a horse). Then she found herself sick, burnt out and did what we all do: went on an ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon.<\/p>\n This is a funny exploration not only of wellness but also the very modern illness Lucy has experienced that many readers will know all too well. \u2013 SC<\/p>\n The Lucky Son by Li Cunxin<\/p>\n Memoir, Penguin, $36.99<\/p>\n Li Cunxin has, by all standards, lived an extraordinary life: from extreme poverty in rural China during the reign of Mao, Cunxin rose to become one of ballet\u2019s most internationally renowned dancers. The Lucky Son is the follow-up to his global hit Mao\u2019s Last Dancer, and if it doesn\u2019t have quite the narrative sweep of his previous work, it still captivates and moves in equal measure.<\/p>\n Cunxin\u2019s wife Mary emerges as the true hero, sacrificing her own career to guide the couple\u2019s profoundly deaf daughter Sophie into a world of music and dance. The word inspirational somehow seems insufficient. \u2013 TB<\/p>\n Simple Pleasures by Julia Busuttil Nishimura<\/p>\n Cookbook, Plum, $44.99<\/p>\n My siblings\u2019 WhatsApp chat is an echo chamber of Julia Busuttil Nishimura recipes, which hit the sweet spot of being aspirational and approachable. In her fifth book, the author leans again into Mediterranean territory with pasta, minestras and tomato-based stews, plus a chapter on cookies and fruity cakes that make me, a storied non-baker, want to get friendly with some flour and butter.<\/p>\n The photography by Armelle Habib is impeccable. A restrained, elegant book. \u2013 YCL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hometown by Shaun Tan Children\u2019s books, Allen & Unwin, $35 Shaun Tan\u2019s latest adult graphic novel\/children\u2019s picture book…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-915989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}