Belle Place's top picks for July
Your regular columnist, Martin Shaw, was holidaying in Germany last month, young family and reading material in tow, which leaves me the pleasure of reporting on bookish news from the southern hemisphere for July.
Far removed from the European continent, two Australian debut novels are released this month that find their setting in our west coast. The rights to Brooke Davis’ Lost & Found have already been sold widely overseas. This much-anticipated release follows three characters, each searching for something, on a road trip from Perth across the Nullarbor. (The three protagonists are depicted on our cover in an illustration from Emi Ueoka, who has previously published her work in the New Yorker.) Tracy Ryan’s taut psychological novel, Claustrophobia, centres on a young Perth wife who sets out to protect her husband by stalking his ex-lover, but finds herself in a tangled, entirely unexpected situation. Closer to home, Melbourne author Eli Glasman’s young-adult novel, The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper Jew is welcomed by our reviewer as a ‘fine response to the call for more diverse YA books’. The story follows Yossi, a gay teenager growing up in a Melbourne Orthodox Jewish community.
To international fiction, and Herman Koch has a new novel, his first since The Dinner. In Summer House with Swimming Pool, Koch again presents a work of sharp psychological insight. Two novels of female friendship, though very different, also feature: Rufi Thorpe’s The Girls from Corona Del Mar; and Emily Gould’s Friendship, a contemporary novel which traces the evolution of a friendship of two New Yorkers. For me, Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. has been my best read of the year so far. She is a brilliantly shrewd and elegant writer and her debut novel centres on thirty-something Nathaniel Piven, a book critic living in Brooklyn. A final debut, also receiving impressive praise, is The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. Our reviewer says it’s for ‘fans of the intricate storytelling of Donna Tartt and Sarah Waters’, which is quite the literary matching.
A short look at the wide scope of non-fiction available this month. There’s Luke Ryan’s memoir of getting cancer – twice (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo), and Tim Low’s ambitious story of Australia’s birds and how they changed the world (Where Song Began). Lastly, Anne Manne’s The Life of I is an account of the rise of narcissism in individuals and contemporary society. Our reviewer suggests that, ‘Parents, especially working women … will find some uneasy reading here.’ It promises to be a provocative release.
