July Highlights
Jessica Au, editor of
Mid-winter takes us from the speculative world of mind-bending literati to a ragtag bunch of rural evangelists. Local house Sleepers has brought out its second debut of the year, Vanessa Russell’s Holy Bible – a darkly comedic, darkly savage look at growing up in a Christadelphian sect in Ballarat. There’s also the second novel from London-based, Australian-born novelist Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing.
Wyld was recently named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists for the year. Given that previous lists have spotted talents such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, it’s a safe bet that she is one to watch.
Max Barry has a new genre work out, the science fiction thriller, Lexicon. And short-story enthusiasts should keep an eye out for Holiday in Cambodia by Laura Jean McKay (if you haven’t yet read her brilliant piece of memoir, ‘The Arrangement’, published earlier this year in The Lifted Brow, please do).
Sad news on the international front with the passing of novelist Iain Banks from cancer in June. His first novel, The Wasp Factory, still rises strongly in my mind with its disturbing imagery and alienated narrator, Frank Cauldhame. His final, The Quarry, sees a group of friends gather around the sickbed of Guy, as jealousies, bickering and dysfunction ensue during his final days.
Turning to non-fiction, Henry Reynolds’
aims to make an erasure of mainstream Australian history. Here, Reynolds points out the bitter irony of a nation that commemorates many military deaths overseas, yet cannot bring itself to fully acknowledge the tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples slaughtered at its very own frontiers.
A dark horse for pop-culture fanatics this month might be Alan Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised, which examines the meteoric rise of TV over cinema via favourites such as The Wire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica and Breaking Bad.
In other news, I’ll be wrapping up at Readings after this issue, and I’d like to say a deep and wholehearted thanks to all the wonderful reviewers, writers, designers, illustrators, proofreaders and staff who’ve helped make the Readings Monthly over the past year or so.
I’d also like to extend a warm welcome to the very talented Belle Place, who’ll be taking over the reins. Thank you all, and happy reading.
