Our books of the month, February 2024
Explore our books of the month for February; each of the below titles has been read and recommended by our booksellers before being selected as our book of the month for its category.
FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH
We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain
Reviewed by Aurelia Orr, Readings Kids
‘Imbued with loss, love, and a yearning for something beyond our grasp, We All Lived in Bondi Then is written with acuity and nuance’
Shortly after she passed away at the end of 2016, Georgia Blain’s final novel, Between a Wolf and a Dog, won the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. The soul and passion of her writing now comes to us anew, this time revived through the release of We All Lived in Bondi Then, a collection of previously unpublished short stories Blain wrote between 2012 and 2015.
In ‘Australia Square’, a sister is haunted by a simple mistake, and by her own guilt as her brother suffers from the consequences. ‘Dear Professor Brewster’ explores a woman grappling with an inevitable future as she cares for her mother with Alzheimer’s. A couple’s relationship is put to the test when a power outage occurs in ‘Last Days’. And in the eponymous story, a woman clings onto a promise made at a party.
Imbued with loss, love, and a yearning for something beyond our grasp, We All Lived in Bondi Then is written with acuity and nuance, expertly weaving stories of tragedy with the very human fear of the unknowableness of the future. What’s so gripping about Blain’s stories is just how drastically life can change with a simple decision, or a person you never expected to meet, or learning unexpected news that turns your life upside down when the day before your life was completely normal. The balance between the mistakes we make and the circumstances that are beyond our control is complicated, and these notions can fill us with confusion, guilt, and sometimes anger.
Blain’s stories offer a lucid yet warm comfort to the pondering of these uncertain questions, and bring readers a sense of unity and intimacy with strangers, even fictional characters, who understand, struggle, and piece back together lives that are irreversibly transformed. Blain could see what we hold in our hearts, and still surprises us with her incredible insight and compassion.
NONFICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH
Monument by Bonny Cassidy
Reviewed by Joe Murray, Readings Kids
'not just a family history, but also an interrogation of the process of remembering itself, framed by a nation where so much has been deliberately, wilfully forgotten.'
Have you ever felt lost in your family history? Have you ever trawled deep into your complicated and often fraught past, finding stories that bewilder and fascinate in equal parts? In many ways, Bonny Cassidy’s Monument is that experience in a book: a long night in the archives, captured with a poet’s sensibility. But it’s also more than that – not just a family history, but also an interrogation of the process of remembering itself, framed by a nation where so much has been deliberately, wilfully forgotten. Cassidy dances along the threads of her ancestry, from Tasmania to Ballarat and back again, studying the margins as much as she does the records themselves. Throughout, she is driven by the question of monuments and the other ways a settler society fills the gaps of a collective memory.
Coming on the heels of David Marr’s own monument of family history, Killing for Country, comparisons are inevitable. Yet, despite their surface similarities, Monument feels unique, animated by a lyrical, ephemeral style that is capable of drifting between present and past, and between poetry and prose. On a conceptual line drawn between memory and history, Cassidy’s approach falls squarely on the side of memory, finding her ancestors in that blurry space where time blends together and the senses come to life. Each individual becomes a piece of the larger story of the slow formation of ‘Australia’ as a nation, but Cassidy never loses sight of what that nation erased. After all, remembering goes hand in hand with forgetting: ‘the hardening of millions of soft denials into unknowing’, as Cassidy eloquently observes.
Wielding a fragmented perspective that refuses to be tied down to a single voice or style, Monument is a book engaged in profound and weighty concepts that demand your attention. Its ambition might occasionally lose you, but Cassidy’s talent and craft will invariably find you again.
KIDS BOOK OF THE MONTH
A Friend for Dragon by Dav Pilkey
Reviewed by Alexa Dretzke, Readings Hawthorn
‘Dav Pilkey absolutely knows his audience and this little dragon is a winner’
A Friend for Dragon is an illustrated junior-grade fiction tale that features a sweet, lonely dragon who is keen to find a friend. For one reason or another, the creatures he approaches for friendship have an array of excuses and say, ‘No’. Finally, thanks to a trickster snake, Dragon befriends an apple. What could go wrong? Dav Pilkey absolutely knows his audience and this little dragon is a winner. At the end of the book, the reader even gets a lesson on how to draw a dragon. For independent readers aged 6+.
YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE MONTH
Smoke & Mirrors by Barry Jonsberg
Reviewed by Kate McIntosh, Readings Emporium
‘Despite everything Grace has been through, by the end of this book I wanted to be just like her’
When your mum drinks too much, your father is dead, your younger brother only appears occasionally, you have no friends, and your grandmother is about to be diagnosed with a terminal illness, you could be forgiven for thinking the world is out to get you. The remarkable star of Barry Jonsberg’s wonderful new novel doesn’t take it personally though. Grace goes to school. Grace takes on the full-time care of her Gran, despite only being in Year 9. And Grace performs magic. She is obsessed with it, she loves it; doing magic tricks so good they go vial on social media is her escape from a world that can be cruel and confusing.
Grace’s magic brings her a new friend, a new business and helps her get through each day. While the descriptions of the magic tricks Grace performs can get a tiny bit tedious, Grace herself never is. She is extremely funny. Her interactions with her Gran are hilarious, and I loved them both. Despite everything Grace has been through, by the end of this book I wanted to be just like her, and I am certain anyone over the age of 12 who reads it will too. She is truly something special.