Dear Reader, July 2017
Identity and memory are themes that run through a number of books in this issue. Our Nonfiction Book of the Month is Roxane Gay’s Hunger. It lays bare, in the most generously open way, Gay’s life as lived in her own body, the histories that body contains, and the non-normative identities she inhabits. This book is a vital contribution to the discourse of body politics as it intersects with lived experience.
Melanie Cheng skilfully addresses the vexed question of ‘Australian-ness’ in our Fiction Book of the Month, Australia Day. This collection won 2016’s coveted Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript; Jason Steger has noted that this award ‘has a remarkable record of identifying writing talent’ (Maxine Beneba Clarke! Jane Harper! Readings’ own Miles Allinson!), so Cheng’s debut is simply a must-read.
Mark Brandi’s Wimmera received a commendation at the same awards and won the UK’s Debut Dagger, also a prize for an unpublished manuscript: worthy praise indeed for this story that toys with 1980s nostalgia while creating genuine suspense. Is it time for a grunge-lit revival? If Iain Ryan’s excellent campus novel The Student (touted as ‘hardboiled regional noir’) is the benchmark, the answer is a resounding YES – so vivid is its 1994 setting, Ryan had me wondering where I left my Discman, and what this thing called ‘the internet’ is all about (though I’m still wondering about that TBH).
As always, we recommend more Australian releases than I can cover, including debuts from Michael Fitzgerald, Pip Smith, Dennis Glover; new work from Steven Lang and Peter Barry; and the reissue of the late Cory Taylor’s Me and Mr Booker as a Text Classic. International fiction includes: Catherine Lacey’s The Answers, which Stella Charls calls ‘startling, exquisite and compulsively strange’; Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy, a favourite of our Readings Monthly editor, Jo Case; The Parcel by Indian–Canadian writer Anosh Irani; ‘Mexico’s greatest living novelist’ Yuri Herrera’s Kingdom Cons; Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Here Comes the Sun, which Ed Moreno raves about.
Brodie Lancaster’s brilliantly titled debut, No Way! Okay, Fine. – shortlisted for the inaugural Richell Prize – is a confident exploration of collective memory and pop culture’s role in the formation of the self. Readers interested in birds and brains are well covered this month (An Uncertain Future and The Secret Life of the Mind respectively), as are Russian Revolution enthusiasts (October), sugar critics (Sugar), horsey folks (Farewell to the Horse), and climate worriers/warriors (Climate Wars). Note, too, Andrew O’Hagan’s examination of identity and selfhood, The Secret Life; Mackenzie Wark’s General Intellects; and Sarah Sentilles’ unique work in Draw Your Weapons, a smart piece of theory-memoir that will appeal to the many fans of Maggie Nelson.
And finally, dear reader, we’re offering 3-for-2 Penguin Black Classics this month at all shops (except Readings Kids and online). Time to check your shelves and update that pesky ‘yet to be read’ list.
