Dear Reader, October 2022
This time last year, we were in the gruelling final weeks of that particularly long lockdown (which is somehow feeling much further in the past than just a year ago), and I was introducing you to books such as Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light, Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness and Diana Reid’s Love and Virtue (the Miles Franklin 2022 winner, Women’s Prize 2022 winner, and ABIA 2022 Book of the Year respectively). Can you pick which of this month’s releases you think we’ll hear more about in 2023?
Our Book of the Month is Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost. Arnott has beguiled readers with his unique take on writing the Australian landscape since his hugely impressive debut, Flames, which our staff shortlisted for the 2018 Readings Prize. The follow-up novel, The Rain Heron, went on to win the The Age Book of the Year in 2021. Arnott’s trajectory is one of a writer really hitting their stride, and in exciting news we can confirm that he has, in the words of our reviewer, exceeded expectations with Limberlost. I feel sure it will be acclaimed as one of the books of the year. As I’m writing this I realise that we actually have a total of four Readings Prize alumni represented in this month’s Australian releases: along with Arnott’s book, we have Angela Meyer (shortlisted in 2019 for A Superior Spectre) with Moon Sugar, Fiona McFarlane (shortlisted for The High Places in 2016) publishing The Sun Walks Down, and Diana Reid (who is shortlisted for this year’s prize with Love and Virtue) releasing book two in as many years, with Seeing Other People. That feels extremely cool to me! The very talented Fiona Kelly McGregor (who, like Arnott, is also a winner of The Age Book of the Year – in 2011 for Indelible Ink – I am living for these book-to-book connections right now) has a major new work called Iris: you can read my review here. And there’s also the small matter of our Crime Book of the Month, the new Jane Harper novel, Exiles, another blockbuster starring the character of Aaron Falk for, we are told, the final time.
If, like me, you’ve lost all sense of time this year, you can determine that in all likelihood it is October because we have new books from just a few other writers you might have heard of: Ian McEwan, Barbara Kingsolver, A.M. Homes, Orhan Pamuk, Elizabeth Strout (again!), Celeste Ng, George Saunders, William Boyd, John Irving ... yes, John Irving! Don’t miss the new releases from staff favourites Yiyun Li and Iain Reid, or this year’s perfect gift for every cat lover and/or Japanophile in your life, She and Her Cat. Less was the breakout book for Andrew Sean Greer, winning him the Pulitzer Prize in 2018, and it’s exciting that he has returned to the character we loved so much in Less Is Lost. Giramondo publishes Norwegian author John Fosse’s Septology for the first time in one volume. Fosse and his translator, Damion Searls, have been long - and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize for different volumes of this work and I’ve been meaning to read them for ages. There are many, many people around the world who are loving the work of romance/BookTok superstar Colleen Hoover right now, and a very, very large number of them are waiting to read the sequel to the blockbusting It Ends with Us. It’s called, of course, It Starts with Us. If you haven’t heard the words ‘Colleen Hoover’ until just now, I promise it’s one of those situations where you will notice them all the time and everywhere from now on.
I can’t get enough of the idea of The Bodyline Fix: How Women Saved Cricket by Marion Stell. This is a wonderful piece of sport and social history. I must admit that I’m not much interested in cricket, but I’m extremely interested in women’s history, in the story that Stell assembles here, and in the research that has uncovered this piece of cricket’s past that should be much more widely known. Of course, it’s our Nonfiction Book of the Month. This month’s Melbourne City Reads pick is Myf Warhurst’s memoir, Time of My Life, and it’s a total delight, which should come as no surprise. Our reviewers also give praise to Anna Spargo-Ryan’s A Kind of Magic, Shannon Burns’ Childhood, and Danielle Clode’s Koala: A Life in Trees. Remember how I said this month is full of books by big names? Well, they’re writing nonfiction too: Shaun Micallef, Grace Tame, Richard E. Grant, Geena Davis, Constance Wu, Annie Proulx, Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan. Julia Gillard assembles a group of voices to reflect on the 10 years since her unforgettable and inspiring ‘misogyny speech’; I rewatch this on a semi- regular basis and it still give me chills. The festive season’s cookbooks are standing at the ready this month too: it’s Hetty Lui McKinnon, it’s Alice Zaslavsky, it’s the brains behind Very Good Falafel and Cornersmith, and too many others to mention. We loved Old Vintage Melbourne so much last year, and I think we’ll love Old Vintage Melbourne, 1960–1990 even more: it’s out mid-month.
And finally, dear reader, I’m keen to offer two votes of congratulations. The first is to our colleague Miles Allinson, who recently won The Age Book of the Year award for his wonderful novel In Moonland. Those in the know have loved this book from the start, but if you missed it, let this be another reminder of its excellence. The second is to our former colleague Nina Kenwood on the publication of her second novel Unnecessary Drama. I haven’t read it yet, but I know will be brilliant. Yay Miles and Nina!
