Dear Reader, July 2016
July’s Book of the Month is the superb Music and Freedom, a debut novel from multi-talented Melbourne-based writer Zoë Morrison. It is my long-held opinion that it’s incredibly difficult to write well about music, but this book’s accounts of piano and Rachmaninov make it look easy, and are truly sublime. I recently learned that my childhood piano teacher is a reader of this column: dear Mrs M, I must tell you that this book made me very sorry I didn’t practise as much as I should have, and made me want to learn to play all over again.
Joining Morrison’s book are a number of other remarkable works of Australian fiction, all from emerging writers, including: Rajith Savanadasa’s impressively crafted Ruins (written in part during his tenure at a hot desk at the Wheeler Centre that is sponsored by the Readings Foundation); Liam Pieper’s first work of fiction (following his acclaimed memoir from 2014, The Feel Good Hit of the Year), The Toymaker; Faber Academy graduate Michelle Wright’s sharp collection of short stories, Fine; 2011 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist Gretchen Shirm’s second book, Where the Light Falls; Ariella Van Luyn’s debut, Treading Air, an excellent character study of a woman’s life in early twentieth century Queensland; Sarah Drummond’s evocative account of lives at sea, The Sound; and Isabelle Li’s commended short story collection, A Chinese Affair, which explores Chinese migration and living between cultures. There really is no shortage of new talent on the Australian literary scene.
People all over the place have been talking a lot about Californian author Emma Cline’s debut, The Girls, which could be thought of as one of those ‘highly anticipated publishing events’ that includes a hot book auction, the sale of film rights, etcetera: happily, it more than lives up to expectation and is seriously one of my favourite books of 2016 already. This month it’s Anne Tyler’s turn to offer the next instalment in Hogarth’s series of Shakespearean retellings: she takes The Taming of the Shrew and turns it into Vinegar Girl. Perhaps you’re mourning the final episode of Downton Abbey? Cheer up: its creator, Julian Fellowes, publishes Belgravia this month, a story originally available in app form (if that sounds confusing, think of it as a digital take on the Victorian tradition of serialised novels). Author of The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton, has new work out this month: a novel called The Muse. Our reviewer can’t speak highly enough of Brazilian author Alexandre Vidal Porto’s Sergio Y, and I always listen to what Ed says (so one must take his acclaim of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night very seriously indeed). I also recommend Brad Watson’s lovely Miss Jane to you most highly.
And finally, dear reader, I am, as always, running out of room in this column, so let me end by asking that you please don’t forget to look out for memoirs from Jessica Valenti (Sex Object), Margo Jefferson (Negroland), and Baba Schwartz (The May Beetles), as well as new writing from Geoff Dyer (White Sands), Ben Lerner (The Hatred of Poetry), Sebastian Junger (Tribe), Melissa Broder (So Sad Today), and Steve Hely (The Wonder Trail).
