Jonathon: Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh—I loved the way this played on ideas of writing and narration to ask what we become in all the stories we tell. An elderly widow moves to a small town with her dog. Her mind grinds in circles of self-talk and narration—all bunctious and pitch black... you want to laugh along, but she gets mean. When she discovers evidence of a murder in a forest near her house, she takes it upon herself to solve the case, writing herself into an amateur detective story within the novel. Moshfegh’s clear prose gives you a brilliantly eerie space to ponder just what her investigation might reveal. (Due April 2020)
Judy: Here We Are by Graham Swift—This as a very English novella—spare prose, emotion compressed. It concerns the life of one small boy, removed to the countryside during the London Blitz. As if by magic, his impoverished and difficult life is transformed, though he remains the same haunted, solitary little boy. The price of his new easeful and beautiful life is the loss of any real relationship with his mother. He is shown the intricacies of magic and, indeed, becomes a magician. He teams up with a born showman and, abracadabra!, the perfect, beautiful assistant answers his advertisement. The trio are ever so successful during the summer seaside seasons of the 1950s, right up to the moment that the magician makes himself disappear. Life goes on, but he is never seen again. The story unfolds beautifully. Fate really does look like sleight of hand; a series of arrivals and disappearances. (Due March 2020).
Viki: Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein—This is a most fantastic companion to one of my favourite ever books, Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone (or Alone in Berlin if you read it under its uninspired UK translation). Also written in the immediate aftermath of WW2, Berlin Finale follows the citizens of Berlin as the bombs fall on their thousand year Reich, and the allies close in on the German capital. Many Berliners, still in thrall to the Nazi propaganda machine (either because they remain true believers, or are afraid to attract the ever watchful eye of the SS or Gestapo) are ready to fight to the last man, woman and child, while the resistance are conducting dangerous conversations and attempted conversions to undermine Hitler’s desire to take every German with him to the grave. A bestseller in post war Germany, the book was ‘revised and improved’ by Rein in 1980. This new translation has a few clunky moments I blame on the lack of editorial and proofing at publishers these days, but that aside, I loved it. In these post-truth days, the de-nazification process is a schooling in how to talk those in utter denial off a ledge, into acceptance and maybe even action. I also ripped through American Dirt by Jeanne Cummins one recent hot and sleepless night. A middle class Mexican bookseller with a cartel-offending journalist husband is hurled, with her 8 year old son, into the stream of refugees heading to ‘el norte’ when her family is massacred. Cummins’ intention is to individualise and humanise the so-called Trump ‘caravans’ of rapists and criminals—and she does it very well. All the violence happens off the page—and this lack of sensationalising the horror makes it even more gripping. Using a middle class protagonist, who herself has to confront her own previous eye-averting complicity is a masterful move. No one leaves their home, comfortable or otherwise, unless they are forced to.
Chloe: Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner—In its opening chapters, this novel could have come from the pen of Jonathan Safran Foer or a son of Philip Roth. Beginning in the third person, you immediately sympathise with Toby Fleishman, the altruistic hepatologist who has been abandoned by his mercenary ex-wife Rachel and left with the care of his two children. The language is at first dripping with Toby’s maleness—his gloomy sense of obligation and hen-peckedness is only marginally cheered by his discovery of internet dating and the many opportunities this entails. But through the subtle insertion of a narrator who slowly metamorphoses from an omniscient being to Libby, an actual first person, you slowly realise the extent to which you’ve been sucked in by Toby. Libby was (the past tense being important here) a magazine writer who made her career profiling men after discovering that ‘this was the only way to get someone to listen to a woman...Trojan horse yourself into a man, and people would give a shit about you’. After years of struggling with the exact same impossible balancing act of kids, work and sanity that Toby is now faced with, Libby is now an invisible stay-at-home parent, still Trojan-horsing herself into the lives of men because that is her how she survives. Through Libby, we also learn some of Rachel’s story, and it becomes clear that the eponymous Fleishman is not one but two, and both of them are in trouble.
The Fleishmans’ New York lifestyles are ludicrously expensive and the expectations of their children are outrageous. It is only when his eleven-year-old daughter is expelled from summer camp for sexting that Toby realises how much beyond his control things have become: ‘He’d forgotten something essential about life, which was to make sure his children understood his values. No matter how many times you whispered your values to them, the thing that spoke louder was what you chose to do with your time and resources. You could hate the Upper East Side. You could hate the five-million-dollar apartment. You could hate the private school, which cost nearly $40,000 per kid per year in elementary school, but the kids would never know it because you consented to it. You opted in.’ This struck me as an illuminating observation that middle-class parents everywhere should consider as they drive their SUVs to the private schools they don’t believe in. Despite all this, Fleishman is in Trouble is not a didactic book. The narrative device is brilliant without being tricky and in the end my sympathies were with everyone and the binds they have unwittingly placed themselves in. Whereas previously, as Libby discovered, only ‘men's’ humanity was sexy and complicated’, Brodesser-Akner has well and truly Trojan-horsed these ideas. Everyone is sexy. Everyone is complicated. Everyone is in trouble.
Andy: I've just finished Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel; her dark-as-pitch suburban comedy of a medium and her assistant/manager as they traverse the outer suburbs of London and the home counties, playing dingy pubs, clubs, and community halls. A slow burn corker of a book; deft prose and ultimately a staggeringly awful, sad, and vicious inspection of what lies hidden beneath the surface of suburban life. I also am mightily enjoying Actress by Anne Enright; on the glimmering surface (Enright's prose is as perfect as ever) this novel is an attempted biography of a very famous Irish actress by her only daughter, carefully chronicled from the fifties to the late seventies; but delicate fissures in the narrative reveal a wealth in the pair's relationship.
Louise: Tessa Hadley's 2015 novel, The Past, is about four siblings, three sisters and a brother, who meet for a summer holiday in the old vicarage they have all inherited from their grandparents. The house is old and dilapidated, set in an idyllic country village, there are streams and woods, and other cottages dotted around. Each of the sisters is clearly defined and recognisable, a radical, an actress and a maths teacher, with defined roles in the family group, and well worn grooves in their relationships with each other. Their brother arrives, with a new wife, and his daughter from a previous marriage, and alliances disassemble and reassemble again.
You enter into this adult family group, with a few extras, and then journey back in time to when the siblings were children, on a trip with their mother, who is returning home to her parents’ home in the vicarage, after discovering her husband’s infidelity. Even the minor characters in this book are incredibly vivid—the vicar, his wife, a village real estate agent, all finely drawn and believable. The past is with us, Hadley seems to be saying, and long ago actions can have repercussions today, even if we aren’t fully aware of them, then or now. This is a terrific, mesmerising book, and one that I haven’t stopped thinking about since I read it.
Morgan: Like many of us, I lay low and read a lot over my small break. Two debuts impressed: Braised Pork by An Yu, a Chinese writer (who doesn’t live in China) is a wonderfully evocative and contemporary tale set in Beijing and Tibet, about a young artist whose husband suddenly dies, leaving her questioning her life and her upbringing by her single mother and aunt. In beautiful language and incorporating elements of magical realism that really work, An Yu has written a tender story about love and family.
My Dark Vanessa is an American debut by Kate Elizabeth Russell—a book for the #metoo movement. Vanessa, a 15year old girl begins what she considers a ‘love affair’ with her teacher. She continues seeing him off an on through her 20s, always believing in his love for her, until another young woman accuses him of sexual harrassment and wants Vanessa to back her up. Now in her early 30s, Vanessa has to question and confront the beliefs she has held onto for nearly 20 years about the ‘affair’. Written in the first person, this feels like an astonishing insight into the psychology of an abused woman. It reminded me of one of the stories in Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women. Not brilliant literature but extremely readable, at times very moving, and very topical.
Capitalism
treat. She has a lot to say and not enough time to say it! Luckily, her fans are able to savour not only her work, but also critiques of her work, and in June we were blessed with 
John: Over the last several weeks I have read the first ten books in the Patrick O’Brian books featuring Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. I’ve had this whole series sitting on the shelf awaiting my attention for possibly 15 years. And having finally begun, I find myself to be no exception to the readers I’ve seen fall prey to the O’Brian addiction—I find myself compelled towards the next episode, while trying to limit myself because I don’t want them to end. Aubrey is a Commander, and later Post Captain, in the Royal Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Stephen Maturin is his friend, musician, Physician, naturalist, naval surgeon and spy. The books are set in the same period as Jane Austen’s work but show a very different side of Britain (where the non-inheriting second and third sons in an Austen novel may choose the navy as a career). This is Britain as a World Power. The battle scenes are exciting but O’Brian doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war. Giant splinters from the breached structure of the ships leave men dead and horribly injured. O’Brien has managed to create characters with complex inner lives and while much happens on the high seas, Jack and Stephen’s lives are very different, and equally compelling ashore. This is compulsive reading and I am looking forward to the remaining eleven books in the series. 
Andrew: I’ve just started Inland by Tea Obreht and so far it is worthy of the swag of rapturous reviews it has received. It has one of those first sentences that immediately drops you into a time and place and compels you to keep reading: ‘When those men rode down to the fording place last night, I thought us done for.’ Serbian-American Obreht made her name with The Tiger’s Wife which was set in an unnamed Balkan country, but with this, her sophomore effort, she confidently shifts to the American West of Arizona in 1893.
Louise: Ann Patchett’s new book The Dutch House has been a refreshing reading experience for me. Every other book I’ve read recently seems to be about sociopaths, and it’s nice to read about characters I’d be happy to meet in real life. It’s beautifully written—a very literate book—and full of fairytale and allegory. All of this is underneath the surface, while the narrative drives along with a most compelling plot, and extremely engaging characters. 
Janice: It has been a while since I read a Fred Vargus and I’d forgotten how good they are. A colleague gave me a copy of the latest and I was delighted to find that Vargus has not lost her touch with her latest—This Poison will Remain. I had forgotten how much I loved Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsburg, head of the Paris Serious Crimes Squad. Another of my favourite fictional policemen, who love their food and wine, and rely on instinct and feelings to solve crime. 
Morgan: On Drugs, is—I have to use the word—mind-blowing. Brilliant in its analysis, lyrical in its prose and intellectually rigorous (he can’t help himself!), this is a book about addiction, mental health and the desire so strong in Fleming to re-invent himself. ‘I loved the idea that one could simply swallow something and be transformed as a result; the notion transfixed me.’ Fleming’s writing is superb and to use another well-worn phrase, this book is searingly honest and very powerful for it. There’s no sentimentality, no self-pity and no lecturing. A memoir not to be missed.
Chloe Groom: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill—It’s very rare, in my frantic life, that I re-read a book, but Dept. of Speculation is an exception. My most recent reading of JennyOffill’s thin gem of a book was probably my sixth, and I’ll be very happy to go back and read it again. It’s quite simply the clearest depiction of the constant compromise of adult life I’ve ever read. That makes it sound depressing, but it’s also one of the funniest, self-deprecating novels I know. It has none of the annoying cockiness that so many self-referential authors display (Franzen; Safran Foer; other people whose names aren’t Jonathan) and yet there is clearly so much of Jenny Offill in this book. In the first part, the protagonist speaks in the first person and through a series of very short, unconnected but overall chronological vignettes we learn about her life as a creative writing teacher, her marriage to the host of an obscure music show, and her hilarious, very realistic struggles with parenthood. (She also offers tit-bits of general knowledge that you’ll find yourself wasting hours trying to verify. In part two the protagonist has become ‘the wife’ and the narrative switches to the third person. A family emergency, which for mystery’s sake I won’t describe, has driven her at least partly towards madness. Whereas in part one, she was so much more than a wife, in part two she feels defined and depressed by that role—this second half is a deconstruction and reconstruction of a family in a beautiful, complicated way. I first read it close to five years ago when I was in the very early stages of parenthood. Every moment of love and pain rang true. Yet this is not just a book for parents. Offill’s understanding of relationships of all kinds is spot-on, and her images will stay with you forever. Please read this book. It’s very short, it’s truly wonderful, and you won’t regret it. (Offill has a new book coming out in 2020 called American Weather which tells the story of a librarian-cum-fake-shrink who finds herself drawn into the polarised world of left-wingers worried about extreme weather and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilisation.)
Stef: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 
Roger: Prompted by the release of Big Sky ( Kate Atkinson’s new novel in the eccentrically brilliant series featuring ex soldier, ex cop, now nearly ex private eye, Jackson Brodie) I took advantage of a recent holiday at son’s family’s house in beautiful Bermagui to get stuck into the backlist of Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series of novels. I first fell in love with Atkinson’s writing when I laughed out loud at her first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and I had read and loved the first Brodie book, Case Histories, when it came out in 2004. But somehow work and personal pressures had kept me away from the three subsequent books featuring the lovable Jackson, victim (or Influencer?) of fate. And now there was this fifth coming out—so I had to catch up. And what an exciting ride it is. Good characters, irony and comedy galore combined with tragedy on steroids in fast moving, zanily coincidental but emphatically believable plots, ( What is the plural of ‘Deus ex machina’?). What more could you want in the modern British novel. They stand alone, but the best way to read them is in order as Jackson struggles and sails through adversity and good fortune adapting himself to the changes of life and society. We need someone to publish a book The Jackson Brodie Novels and Philosophy.)
Victoria: Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli is a multilayered story: A family of four on a road trip from New York to Arizona in search of the history of the Apaches. On this road trip, the family pack seven archive boxes with their favourite or important things— which reveal themselves throughout the book. Alongside this story of family dynamics is the story of thousands of Mexican children being smuggled across the US border which is being documented by one of the parents. Fascinating novel and extremely well written. I have not read Luiselli before—and Lost Children makes me want to read more. 
Jonathon: Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead—A book about facing the ghosts in our past; what we want to but cannot forget. Whitehead fictionalises the true story of a Florida juvenile prison during the US civil rights era, showing the brutality inflicted on children there and tracing its consequences decades later. He powerfully contrasts the idealism of those inspired by MLK with the pragmatism of those not yet ready to trust hope. I particularly enjoyed his snapshots of New York City and the way he ends this story—somewhere between sweet and bitter. (due in July)
Stef: I Built No Schools in Kenya, A Year of Unmitigated Madness by Kirsten Drysdale—is a surprising and often laugh out loud tale of how Kirsten Drysdale found herself caring for an elderly white man with dementia, in Nairobi, Kenya. At times you wonder who has really lost the plot - Walt, the dementia suffere; Marguerite, Walt’s 2nd wife, who is seen as a threat by her step-daughter; or Fiona, Walt’s daughter, micromanaging Walts’ care from her home in the UK. Not to mention the carers, who have to manage every minute of Walt’s waking day—from arranging his clothes in reverse order to help him get dressed to substituting Ribena in the wine bottle so Walt can still enjoy a glass of wine with his meals. As Walt’s dementia worsens the Symth household more isolated and more crazy. Kirsten finds herself on a crash course on managing dementia and toxic family dynamics; and observing British Colonialism and the social and racial attitudes of the master of the household; and discovering a deep affinity to Africa.
David: 
Morgan: 
Steve: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather—In 1848 two French, Catholic priests—Jean Marie Latour and Father Vaillant—are sent to New Mexico to establish a diocese in a country where the Faith has slumbered for centuries. Published in 1927, Willa Cather (1873–1947) had written about, visited and worked in the Indian villages of the Southwest for a decade before she wrote this book. The title may arouse expectations that are not met. The Archbishop’s death—solitary and peacefully contemplative in the land he has grown to love—is only one incident in the series of events, none of which are given much dramatic weight. Some reviewers declared it not a novel at all. The unobtrusive style and structure made the book hard to classify. Replied the author: ‘Why bother? I prefer to call it a narrative.’ A narrative of serene language and timeless simplicity. A masterpiece.
Jack: Lanny by Max Porter—An intoxicating book akin to flicking a radio dial end to end and hitting on a chant, a fable, a warning and a folkloric hymn. Tune into its frequencies and Max Porter will put a spell on you.
Victoria: Fusion by Kate Richards—This is a weird but compelling story about four people (well...you could say three as two of them are conjoined) living on the fringes of society for different reasons—but they care for each other as no-one else will. It raises questions of difference and love and dependency which is woven through a haunting tale. A well written first novel by this Australian writer.
Jonathon: You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian—Hell yes! This is such a fun feminist horror read. Roupenian is something like an edgier Sally Rooney, writing on sex, dating and relationships. Lots of the stories have a horror element, like the creepy take on gaslighting in The Matchbox Sign, or simply they present some horrific aspect of toxic masculinity, as in Cat Person. I read many of these stories either gleeful or worried that they were all too familiar. Loved it.
Andrew: Vietnamese-Australian author Nam Le is the author of an acclaimed short story collection, The Boat—the title story of which remains one of the most powerful and heartrending stories I’ve ever read. Its portrayal of refugees escaping from the Vietcong by boat is gut-wrenching, and has remained a moral touchstone for me in relation to the plight of refugees. I’ve been waiting eagerly for a decade for his debut novel, but, in the meantime, am delighted that he is 
publishing an appreciation of On David Malouf, for Black Inc’s Writers on Writers series this month. Which is my rather lengthy explanation of why I’ve decided to pick up The Great World by David Malouf. This would have to be one of Malouf’s finest novels. I’m a little over halfway through but am finding it enthralling. It has so far flitted consummately from the Hawkesbury River, to a depression era Strathfield mansion, to the Burma Railway, to a raucous postwar Darlinghurst Road, and as such must be one of the great novels of Sydney, and of World War Two. Malouf’s prose soars in its realism one moment and swoops effortlessly into the metaphysical with the poeticism and precision of a bird of prey.
John: Set mainly in Paris and Israel, A Long Night in Paris by Dov Alfon is a great international thriller. When an Israeli citizen is kidnapped and later found murdered at Charles de Gaul airport an overworked French detective is joined by an Israeli ‘investigator’ Colonel Zeev Abadi who is in fact from one of Israel’s most secret intelligence agencies, Unit 8200. The chapters are short and pacey with the author sharing information as the story unfolds. Who was the target of the abduction and murder? Who are the assassins? The motivation of various key players slowly becomes clear—some acting in their own interest others are acting on behalf of the State. Bureaucratic rivalries and politics continually interfere with the investigation making it a perfectly believable scenario in the era of Trump and Netanyahu. A terrific page turner!
I love the concept of England hopping on bandwagon and opting out of Great Britain - someone's sure to hashtag it and run. Elton’s book brings to mind an Australian book I really enjoyed last year—Ken Saunders' 2028. If you haven’t read it, 
this often laugh out loud (and to my mind entirely plausible) solution to our tax cuts for votes Australian democracy might give you some relief from the 2019 election carpet bombing. The other book I have open is Brian Phillips’ collection of essays, Impossible Owls. What a fantastic writer. I give you Phillips on Prince Charles: ‘He has the bearing of a man who has fought bitterly, with the tooth and claw of detachment and protocol, to survive the immense good fortune into which he was born...There are men who command a room with their presence, men whose vitality bullies the air. Charles compels attention through a mechanism inverse to this, a king of charismatic absence: Reality warps toward his titles as toward a reluctant black hole.’ This is from an encyclopaedic essay about the Queen that will satisfy many a The Crown viewer.
Judy: 
Stef: The Aunts’ House by Elizabeth Stead— Set in Sydney, 1942. Angel Martin, just 11 years old and recently orphaned, is settling in at Missus Potts’ boarding house. Angel is an unusual child, who perceives the world around her through music and colour, and is often thought of as a strange child—not quite right in the head. She may be a little unusual but there is nothing wrong with her ability to read those around her and find her way in the world, and she is determined to have a different life than the one fate has handed her. Stead has created a world of eccentric characters and captured the time, place and unsophisticated society with both naivety and charm. (due out in April).
Andy: The Friend by Sigrid Nunez—The premise of The Friend was (for me) immediately captivating—a New York writer living in a small apartment is obliged out-of-the-blue to adopt the mature Great Dane of a suddenly deceased friend. The blurb suggests it is a meditation on loss and loneliness and so of course, my heart all aflutter, I began it thinking the book was going to be some sort of heart warming tear-jerker. A sort of highbrow literary Marley and Me. I think my false expectations put me on the wrong footing with the book for a while; it is well worth the read but it a spiky, discursive, measured and contemplative little affair, and it spends as much time wryly examining the art of writing, literature and academia as it does dwelling on canine companionship and animal intelligence. There is a bit of the autofictive about it, and it reminded me a bit of the Rachel Cusk trilogy in its clever, playful, voice. And, yeah, whilst the book is much much more than this, there is a bit of cute dog observation in it too.
Sophie: Right Amount of Panic: How women trade freedom for safety by Fiona Vera-Gray—Based on Vera-Gray’s research and women’s real experiences, this book details the largely unnoticed “safety work” and energy women put in to avoid sexual violence everyday. Written in an accessible and thought provoking manner, a book to be read by all genders to understand how rape culture and the threat of sexual violence effects women’s everyday enjoyment of the world. Gaysia by Benjamin Law—Law’s humour and wit makes this often sad and troubling journalistic style exploration of Asian queer culture a fun ride the whole way through. From the ladyboys of Thailand to the fake marriages of China, this book gives an insight into how queer cultures are resisting, thriving and surviving in countries that aren’t always forthcoming in their acceptance. An insightful read. 
Morgan: Zebra, a collection of stunning short-stories and one novella. The latter is a small tour-de-force written with a dead-pan humour about an imaginary female Prime Minister who is sent a Zebra to live in the extensive gardens of, one assumes, the Lodge—or maybe it’s Kirribilli House, or more probably, a fictional garden. And it’s in this garden that a strange and remarkable friendship is formed. In Festive Food for the Whole Family, a woman has a hideous Christmas Day catering to everyone’s dietary needs and peccadilloes only to realise certain betrayals are going on behind her back. Adelaide’s writing is marvellous—there’s not one bad story in this collection and not a word out of place. She manages to juggle a wry humour with pathos and intellectual rigour. 
Louise: Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. An extraordinary book. Set in an inhospitable camp site in Northumberland, Silvie, the narrator, is there with her mother and father, as part of an archaeological, pre-Roman life re-enactment. The family are there with a group of university students and their professor. From the very beginning a sense of dread pervades the story, although how that dread will manifest is kept just out of sight by the author. Silvie’s father is a piece of work—an extremely abusive man who has managed to persuade his family to submit to his bizarre wishes, but someone with enough credibility to team up with professional archaeologists who actually listen to him. The expression ‘the banality of evil’ came to mind the whole time I was reading this, but Sarah Moss created enough suspense to keep me reading—her spare but vivid descriptions making the story come alive in a really compelling way.
