A note from our Readings Monthly editor
It is always exciting when reviews begin to arrive for a new issue of the Readings Monthly. Volunteers to review Lisa Gorton’s first novel, The Life of Houses, for the April issue were numerous and swift. Readings Managing Director Mark Rubbo was the first to put his hand up by mere seconds and his review has reassured me that hype won’t be the agent of disappointment with this much-anticipated book.
One of the most wonderful things about working for Readings is that interesting conversations about books are impossible to avoid. It’s not uncommon for Readings staff to be writers as well as readers. Fortunately for all of us, many of these talented people generously give their time to write for the Readings Monthly and for the Readings blog. Emily Harms and Chris Gordon wrote such an insightful and entertaining piece for our blog about Annabel Crabb’s superb book The Wife Drought (find it here) that when we realised there would be several anthologies published this month featuring Australian women writers on ‘why not all women are mothers and not all mothers are the same’ (the incredibly apt subtitle to Mothers & Others!), it was clear we needed to hear from them again.
You’ll find Chris and Emily’s conversation about Mothers & Others and Mothermorphosis here.
While we’re on the theme, the new edition of Rachel Power’s seminal anthology The Divided Heart, which has been expanded to include new contributors and is now titled Motherhood & Creativity, is also out this month. As Bronte Coates says in her review of Mothermorphosis, ‘Religion, politics and money are usually cited as the top three topics to avoid at a dinner party, but surely parenthood trumps them all.’ (Find her full review here.)
As this is not a [stuffy] dinner party, there is no shortage of lively discussions to be had about these books or any of the other fantastic titles out this month.
