Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Joanna has been reading:
Alone
Beverley Farmer
In April, the Hidden Treasures Fiction Book Club at Readings Carlton is meeting to discuss Beverley Farmer’s debut novel Alone, first published in 1980 and reissued last year by Giramondo Publishing. At 117 pages, it’s more of a novella than a novel, an intense, contemplative book you can inhale in one long breath. The narrative spans two days in the life of Shirley Iris Nunn, turning eighteen and contemplating the end of her first love affair, with Catherine, a classmate at the University of Melbourne. She’s unhappy, restless, and spiraling into dark thoughts. But Shirley’s inner monologue and her deeply felt solitude also provides a space from which a writer might emerge.
Written in 1969, when Farmer was living in Greece with her husband, Alone takes as its starting point experiences she had in the late 1950s when she was a student. Her depiction of Australia at this time – and Carlton in particular, where Shirley lives in a ramshackle boarding house – is vivid and disturbing, with overt racism and the threat of sexual violence lurking around every street corner. Alone isn’t an easy book, but written in Farmer’s sensual, attentive style, it is a gorgeous one, and certainly worth (re)discovering.
Joe has been reading:
Dengue Boy
Michel Nieva
I know I shouldn’t judge books by their cover, but the moment I saw Dengue Boy’s, I knew I needed to pick it up. Thankfully after the first few pages I knew I’d made the right decision. Best described with comparisons, Dengue Boy feels like the strangest parts of Phillip K Dick – all the things that didn’t make it into Blade Runner – combined with the glorious unsubtlety of The Substance’s final act (if you know, you know).
Add in influences as wide ranging as Lovecraft and Borges and you’re left with a book stuffed to the brim with provoking ideas and brilliantly shocking swings in tone. If you need convincing, just read the first chapter, which was such an emphatic declaration of intent it made me burst out with gleeful laughter. Simply incredible.
Yasmin has been reading:
We Used to Live Here
Marcus Kliewer
When Eve opens the door of her new home to Tom, a man claiming that he grew up in the house and would like to show his family his childhood home, Eve wearily invites them in. That was her first mistake. As the family start to make excuses on why they won't leave, creepy shadows appear and the house itself begins to change in appearance. Eve starts to question her sanity. Did she really let these strangers into her house? Or had they always lived there and she was the intruder?
Gripping, eerie and mesmerizing, this debut novel had me devouring this book in one sitting. With it's horror setting and breadcrumb twists throughout, I simply could not put this one down. This is an author to watch!
