What we're reading: Okazaki, Scanlan & Blain
Each week our wonderful staff share the books and music that they've been enjoying.
Mark Rubbo is reading We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain
I have been reading the posthumous collection of short stories by Georgia Blain, We All Lived in Bondi Then. It's an exquisite collection, moving, at times funny and so readable. I was reminded of Alice Munro and Tessa Hadley.
I've also just read Nicholas Jose's novel The Idealist. Think le Carré, Graham Greene. An Australian intelligence officer is sent to East Timor just before the vote on independence from Indonesia; he gets drawn into the struggle for independence with tragic consequences. I was so pleased to have discovered this complex and gripping story.
Kim Gruschow is reading River’s Edge by Kyoko Okazaki
I’m reading River’s Edge by Kyoko Okazaki, which was last year translated into English for the first time since publication in 1994. This was great news for me because I adored her book Pink so much that I bought a Japanese copy of River’s Edge a few years ago and attempted to read it using the google photo translate tool, which didn’t exactly go smoothly. It’s a haunting drama about a group of teenagers, in some ways it does have a similar energy to the eighties movie of the same name, there is a corpse, but the Gregg Araki movie comparisons I’ve seen seem even more fitting. It’s a book about sex, violence and the turmoil of being young.
Baz Ozturk is reading Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
I just read Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan and it’s easily one of my favourite books so far this year. Excellent character-driven narrative, excellent prose. An unsurprisingly fast-paced read, but a surprisingly engrossing story. The narrator was so charming. Much is held back but she’s so giving. I loved it. A book of mundane stuff that yields extraordinary results. The writing couldn’t be any sharper. It’s funny, it’s sad, it has a generous heart, and it was a total pleasure from start to finish.
