The Impossible Fortune

How lovely to be back with the Thursday Murder Club gang again! Though I must admit that the Netflix movie has irreversibly influenced the way I picture the characters now -- and there was a nice cheeky reference to Pierce Brosnan being the best James Bond (which may be the case, but he still isn't quite how I imagined Ron). 

Sinking into The Impossible Fortune was like stepping into a warm bath -- totally comforting and nourishing, and exactly the kind of book I feel like reading at the moment. My only complaint was that there was not quite enough Bogdan; mind you, there are so many gorgeous characters milling about Coopers Chase by now that it's hard to give them all full air time. There are some lovely Joyce-Joanna moments in this novel that make up for it.

The Impossible Fortune takes our octogenarian crew into the world of Bitcoin and old-fashioned 'cold storage,' a service providing physical storage in an age where digital security has become vulnerable. There are explosions and secret codes and double crossing, but there is also another parallel plot involving Ron's daughter and grandson which is less showy, but possibly more important.

I know the Thursday Murder Club can't live forever, but please, can they have lots more adventures before we have to say goodbye?
 

Death of an Ordinary Man

Novelist Sarah Perry's first non-fiction book, Death of an Ordinary Man, was recommended by Susan Green a few weeks ago. Looking back at Sue's review, I see that she used the exact words I was planning to write here: almost unbearably moving. Perry's father-in-law was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, worsened rapidly and died at home just nine days later. How well I could relate to Perry's panic and bewilderment, her pleas for help, for someone to come round now, now, now, we don't know what to do. And yet surprisingly quickly, caring for David becomes routine and manageable and not scary at all; Perry describes a sensation of a woman's hand on her shoulder and feels the reassurance of generations of carers behind her who have faced this challenge and met it, as she and her husband do, too, folding the process death into part of life.

I was amazed at the speed and compassion (mostly) of the health workers who rolled swiftly into action, delivering a hospital bed, nursing care, morphine, special sheets to David's home with a minimum of fuss. I have no idea if similar systems are in place here; I guess I might find out one day. It might not have been the best time for me to read this book, as I'm currently caring for my ninety-year old mother who was recently in hospital with an infection and is taking a while to recover. But I was also able to recognise myself as one of that long line of carers who find themselves able to deal with incontinence, dirty sheets, coaxing tiny spoonfuls of ice cream into a reluctant mouth, organising medication and all the rest of the work of caring. 

The very last image of the book was so incredibly beautiful, it made me cry.

Sometimes I stand at an upstairs window after dark when the city is getting ready for bed, and watch the lights go out one by one in rooms where strangers live. And if I stand there long enough I find, in compensation for the gathering dark, other lights arriving out of nothing -- the passage of a car turning for home, lamps switched on in bathrooms and bedrooms on the outskirts of town, streetlights marking roads I know quite well. Then I imagine I've walked out of the city and up what passes in Norfolk for a hill, and that I can see spread all around me  this same pattern going on over and over: lights, everywhere, coming on where there was no light, then shining for a moment or an hour before fading slowly to an ember, or being suddenly extinguished. On and on it goes, far ahead and behind me, over borders, horizons, seas, summoned up and going out in their own time -- illuminating barely half an inch or fully half a mile, and each light particular, never to be repeated or replaced: all those other lights. All those other towns.

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire is the third novel in Amy Doak's tremendously enjoyable series; the first two are Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer and Eleanor Jones Can't Keep a Secret. In this book, Eleanor is still a new-ish student in country town Cooinda, but she's managed to gather a group of friends around her and some of her social awkwardness has mellowed, though she still speaks her mind. She's even got a kind of boyfriend! But Eleanor seems to attract trouble -- or does she go looking for it, as her friend Holly the police officer seems to believe? This time, in a tinder-dry rural community, someone is setting fires. But who could it be? And why?

Amy Doak has created an appealingly forthright and funny protagonist in Eleanor Jones, but she doesn't carry the story alone. Doak is adept at exploring issues of friendship, loyalty, small town politics and toxic masculinity in this novel, all wrapped up in a satisfying mystery plot (not actually a murder this time, though initially it seems like it might be). I really enjoy the way that Eleanor has collected some adult allies, and her willingness to ask questions about things that other people take for granted. I really hope there are some further installments to Eleanor's adventures!
 

Ancestral Journeys

Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys was a Brotherhood Books impulse buy, and I didn't really know what I was getting. It's actually quite a scholarly book, though packaged up appealingly with lots of pictures and break-out sidebars to break up the text. It's a multi-disciplinary approach to tracking the movements of peoples across (mostly) Europe during prehistory, drawing on archeology, genetics and linguistics to piece together the likely shifts of population, whether by invasion, wandering, retreat or expansion.

I must admit that some of the detailed explanations of DNA haplo-groups made my eyes water and I tended to skim those sections! But Ancestral Journeys excels at painting a big picture of climate changes, the spread of agriculture, and the rise and fall of empires. I found the sections about language the most engaging -- I'm always up for a discussion of Proto-Indo-European and its descendants in modern languages. Ancestral Journeys covers millennia, from the very first humans emerging from Africa, right up to the Vikings, in a relatively short and easy to digest package: a great overview.
 

Impossible Creatures: The Poisoned King

This sequel to Katherine Rundell's Impossible Creatures takes us back to the Archipelago, that magical world peopled by talking animals, dragons, flying unicorns and other incredible beasts. The Poisoned King introduces us to twelve year old Princess Anya, whose wicked uncle is hell bent on taking over the kingdom at any cost, even murder. Guardian-to-be Christopher, from our world, joins forces with Anya to solve the mystery of who is killing dragons (spoiler: it's the wicked uncle) and to save Anya's father, the true heir.

As usual, Rundell delivers a pacy, magical adventure with plenty of heart. I wonder if she was influenced by Eva Ibbotson, because Rundell set her first book in the Amazon, a beloved Ibbotson location, and there is something about the emphasis on love, courage and compassion, and the love of the natural world, that reminds me very much of Ibbotson's novels. I also loved the fact that hereditary royalty is dismantled at the end of the book! Now that wouldn't happen in an Eva Ibbotson novel.
 

Light and Shadow

Mark Colvin was a veteran ABC journalist who died in 2017, about a year after this autobiography was published. Sadly we never got to read the second volume he hinted at in this book. It doesn't seem like nearly ten years since he died; I well remember his mellifluous tones on Radio National.

The subtitle of Light and Shadow is Memoirs of a Spy's Son; clearly the publisher felt this was the strongest hook to draw people in, and it is a fascinating element of Colvin's story. His mother was Australian, his father English, and it was confirmed when Mark was an adult that John Colvin was actually an agent for SIS (MI6). John's most exotic postings (under cover of being a diplomat) were to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and Ulan Bator in Mongolia to keep an eye on the border between China and Russia at the height of the Cold War. (It was while young Mark was visiting his father during this time that he was given the information about the death of Lin Biao who significance he totally failed to realise!)

But Mark's own life also makes a gripping narrative. He fell into journalism at a young age, worked at Double J when it was just starting up, covered wars in Iraq and the Whitlam crisis, started The World Today and for many years hosted the evening current affairs show PM. It was a remarkable career and his family background, which he kept secret, made it all the more dangerous -- he'd been warned by his father never to visit Russia, for example (though he did). Light and Shadow is a thoroughly absorbing and informative read, one of those unknown gems that you pick up sometimes and provide rich rewards.
 

Wild Swans

I am extremely late to the party on Jung Chang's international bestseller from 1991, Wild Swans. If you've been living under a rock for the last thirty years, Wild Swans is the story of three generations of women living in China through the tumultuous decades of the twentieth century. Jung Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine; her mother was a dedicated Communist Party official; and Jung herself eventually studied English and emigrated to the UK.

Wild Swans has been a school text almost from the moment it was published. My younger daughter used it in studying Revolutions and the copy I've been reading is hers. My ignorance of China's history is shamefully almost total, and Wild Swans filled in quite a few blanks for me. I vaguely knew about the Cultural Revolution, but not quite what a horrific period it was, nor the extent of the arbitrary violence and cruelty it unleashed. The tides of being in and out of favour washed Chang's family to and fro; sometimes they enjoyed quite a lot of privilege, sometimes things were absolutely desperate.

For me, Wild Swans started slowly and it took me a while to become captured by the story. The book really came alive for me when Jung Chang herself appeared, and I sometimes found the parts about the internal machinations of the Communist Party head-spinning. However, I was excited when simultaneously reading Mark Colvin's autobiography, Light and Shadow, to come across a section when Colvin was travelling through China in the early 1970s and he was told about the death of important general Lin Biao -- a very deliberate piece of information-planting whose significance young Colvin completely failed to recognise! Thanks to Wild Swans, I already knew the background story of Lin Biao, so this story meant much more than it would have otherwise.

 

Helm

I feel like there's been a bit of a buzz around Sarah Hall's novel Helm, which is centred around the only named wind in the UK (I must admit I hadn't heard of Helm and didn't realise that it was a real thing: a unique, powerful, occasional force). It's such a cool concept for a novel and Hall has constructed a rich narrative of interweaving strands through the history of human interactions with the wind. Hall has given Helm a wild, poetic voice, and it has motivations and desires of its own, which adds a distinctive flavour to the novel.

For me, some of the narrative strands were more successful than others, though Hall has obviously expended a lot of effort in creating authentic and researched stories for each time period. Most of the narratives are focused on attempts by humans to tame or measure Helm: a medieval churchman who sees Helm as a demonic force; a Victorian scientist who wants to set up an elaborate machine to dye the air flow; a modern climate scientist who becomes paranoid in isolation; a Bronze Age wise woman who sees a sacred stone in a vision and dedicates her life to finding and erecting it. Often the protagonists are women who develop a special relationship with the wind, like Janni, a victim of 50s psychiatric treatment who is eventually reclaimed by Helm as Helm's own.

I especially loved the Janni story and the Bronze Age narrative, perhaps because they both came to a satisfying conclusion. Some of the other plotlines petered out or ended anti-climactically, but there is more than enough meat here to compensate, and the actual prose is rich and wild and gorgeous.
 

A Glove Shop in Vienna

I pulled this Eva Ibbotson book off the shelves at the Athenaeum just because I knew I hadn't read it yet; it wasn't till I got home that I realised that it was actually a collection of short stories. I hadn't known that Ibbotson wrote a large number of short stories for magazines like Good Housekeeping and Women's Journal before she became established as a novelist -- when A Glove Shop in Vienna was published, she had only two novels to her name.

It's possible that a whole volume of Eva Ibbotson short stories might be a bit much to consume in one go. The usual Ibbotson ingredients are all here -- intense romance, love at first sight, tragic partings, gentle humour, Russia and France, beautiful and trusting young girls, brave and sensitive young men... It's all very lovely and perfect comfort reading, but I was happy to intersperse these stories with other reading material.

Maybe my favourite was the final story, 'A Question of Riches,' which is in some ways not a typical Ibbotson story at all: it features a young boy at boarding school who sent to stay with each of his grandmothers in turn -- one is rich and haughty, one is poor and loving. Have a guess which grandmother Jeremy chooses to spend Christmas with?
 

Drift

Drift, a free verse novel by Pip Harry, is next on my list of CBCA Notables -- this one didn't make it to the short list, but I ended up enjoying it very much. Nate has just moved back to Australia from Singapore; girl next door Luna is struggling after becoming the victim of a viral video. Nate's dad is still in Singapore, and his mum Amber is almost incapacitated by a back injury. When a swarm of bees invade the walls of Amber and Nate's house, it opens up a new world of beekeeping to Nate and Luna, and enables community bonds to form.

This is a gentle story, despite the violence of Luna's history, filled with tentative connections and slow unfurling. Luna's salvation is running; Nate makes friends with the musical theatre kids. And of course, their developing friendship becomes a source of strength. Traditionally I haven't been a huge fan of verse novels, but Drift (still not quite sure what the title refers to, but it does capture the atmosphere of the book) won me over -- it's so warm and tender, and it was lovely to come back into the world of bees and beekeeping (my first fantasy novel, The Singer of All Songs, had bees in it, and I had to do lots of research). 
 

The Body Keeps the Score

Apparently, trauma-informed care is all the rage in psychology at the moment, and a large part of that is probably due to this book by Bessel van der Kolk, which has become a word of mouth bestseller since its release twelve years ago. Clearly the message of The Body Keeps the Score has struck a chord with readers and practitioners, and it definitely struck a chord with me. I'm fortunate that I haven't experienced childhood trauma myself, but people close to me have, and so much of this book rang true as I read about people under stress reverting to childhood states of high arousal, fear and helplessness (of course, it can also manifest in anger, aggression or running away). 

The core of van der Kolk's work turns on the realisation that talking or medication alone can be inadequate to touch the deep, embodied memory of trauma (he began his trauma work mostly with returned soldiers suffering from PTSD, but the same conclusions also apply for sexual assaults, accidents or childhood abuse). Van der Kolk uses a variety of techniques to release the deeply held tension in his patients' bodies: breathing, yoga, theatre and singing, as well as quite theatrical role-playing therapy which might seem a little woo-woo to some but apparently can be very powerful in integrating traumatic experiences into a coherent sense of self.

Most intriguing to me is EMDR (Eye Movement Desenstisation and Reprocessing), which at first blush does seem completely woo-woo -- patients relive traumatic memories while watching the movement of the therapist's finger in front of their eyes -- but is in fact extremely effective. This does make sense when you consider that this process mimics the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, during which memories are integrated. A member of my family, who has had a lot of conventional talk therapy, swears by EMDR. 

The Body Keeps the Score is a gripping, lively and persuasive read, and I'm not surprised it's been such a huge success and so influential. 

No Fond Return of Love

No Fond Return of Love (1961) is a minor Barbara Pym work, and I think it might have been the last one published before the long hiatus which led to Quartet in Autumn in 1977 and her rediscovery by a new audience of fans. It's not her best work, but it features the usual cast of middle-aged spinsters and attractive clergymen; there are also some young people floating about. There is a strong sense that the world is changing and that these young people are inhabiting quite a different reality from their elders -- where women are expected to work and live independently, rather than be content to perform volunteer 'good works' attached to some church, where they can go out drinking and dancing with relative freedom.

But even a second tier Barbara Pym is worth reading, for comfort if nothing else, and I am in the mood for comfort reading. It's so relaxing to escape into a world of seaside boarding-houses, sherry before dinner, pink velvet hats and jumble sales for the organ fund. It's a small, self-contained world, untroubled by politics or protests or violence or passion -- even love, though a disruptive force, is still obliquely expressed and sensibly regulated. It's weird that the momentum of the novel, such as it is, is provided by Dulcie becoming a kind of stalker of Aylwin Forbes, who she's met briefly at a conference: she checks out his brother's church, she goes to stay at his mother's hotel. And ultimately it seems that her obsession is going to be rewarded, which is perhaps not the best message! Dulcie and her eventual friend Viola are freelance indexers, and the original title of the book was A Thankless Task, which in some ways fits it better.

The Edge of Everything

Next read on the CBCA Notables list was The Edge of Everything by Miranda Luby. This is Luby's second novel and I liked it a lot. Lucy's older brother Charlie has died in a freak accident and thrown everything about Lucy's life into chaos. Her former best friend is being too sensitive around her; her new friend doesn't even know that Charlie is dead; the boy she'd been kinda-sorta starting to get together with has backed off. Her parents seem to be coping okay -- but are they really? And an existential black hole is opening up inside Lucy that she's afraid to confront.

The Edge of Everything is a solid, satisfying novel packed with poignant moments and big life questions. The characters are well-rounded and sympathetic, and Lucy is an attractively dorky protagonist. There is a deep and realistic sadness hanging over this book, but it's countered by humour, friendship and love. The message is that life can be painful and unpredictable, but that makes it all the more worth cherishing, is something that we all need to hear, whatever our age.

The October Man

The October Man, from 2019, also takes us away from London, though not as far as Winter's Gifts. In this novella, we are in Germany and our narrator is Tobias Winter, who basically has Peter Grant's job (and, it must be said, almost exactly Peter Grant's voice...)

Set in the wine-growing town of Trier, our first mysterious corpse has been choked by mould, which proves to be 'noble rot,' used in wine making. But there's a tangled backstory that involves German river goddesses, ancient wizards, a men's social group, an attempted rape twenty years ago, layers of German bureaucracy and fun compound words, and an over-enthusiastic assistant.

The October Man doesn't really contribute anything extra to the main Rivers of London narrative, apart from a vague warning that magic is increasing, but it's a fun excursion. What's the point of creating this rich, sprawling universe if you don't explore its outer reaches now and then?
 

Jilya

I can't remember where I heard about Tracy Westerman's book Jilya -- I think I might have seen a mention of it on Facebook (sometimes it is useful for some things!) Published in 2024, it's subtitled How one Indigenous woman from the remote Pilbara transformed psychology, and it is concerned with two of my favourite areas of interest: psychology and First Nations culture.

Jilya means 'my child,' and Westerman's focus is squarely on Aboriginal child suicides. The rates of children taking their own lives, especially in remote or disadvantaged First Nations communities, are truly horrific, and should be a huge mental health priority. Westerman has zeroed in on the shortage of psychological supports in these areas as a primary factor, as well as multi-generational trauma and multi-generational difficulties in forming secure childhood attachment.

Jilya outlines some fascinating differences between mainstream Western assumptions and Aboriginal culture -- for example, Aboriginal child-rearing practices that might look like 'neglect' to white, middle class social workers. There is a lot in this book about trauma, including everyday racism, deep grief and loss, and the legacy of familial disruption -- such a heavy burden for individuals, let alone whole communities to bear. But Jilya is also the story of Westerman's own life, and her decades of struggle to establish better data collection and protocols for dealing with Aboriginal communities. There is another whole story there about politics, trying to run a private business, and philanthropy, which I won't begin to try to untangle.

I found the middle sections of the book, about applying specific techniques and practices to First Nations individuals, families and communities, the most compelling, but the whole of Jilya is a riveting and powerful read. More power to Tracy Westerman's arm -- she is accomplishing some amazing work.
 

Bad Behaviour

I was intrigued to read about Rebecca Starford's memoir, Bad Behaviour, on Susan Green's blog (my go-to source for interesting next reads). Starford writes about her year on a rural school campus at fourteen; it's not stated, but it's probably Geelong Grammar's famous Timbertop. Year 9 is a notoriously difficult time for adolescents (though I have heard that Year 8 is the new Year 9). I remember my own Year 9 experience as horribly painful, as friendship groups shifted and I found myself excluded (it all worked out fine in the end).

Bad Behaviour reads like a novel, with memories of events at Silver Creek intercut with reflections of Rebecca's later life, especially her relationships, which were clearly affected by patterns that were set up in that fateful year. I have to say that Silver Creek sounds awful, Starford's experience of it at least. Her dormitory house was ruled by a bully and her clique, who egged on Bec and others to escalating feats of cruel and stupid rule-breaking. It takes a long time for Bec to realise she'd be better off with different friends, and it's hard to comprehend the appeal of the mean girls (I am a steadfast goody-goody, so the glamour of bad behaviour is lost on me). 

Starford writes with compelling immediacy about the ebbs and flows of teen friendship and the weird power that charismatic individuals can wield, though I was less invested in the later relationship dramas of her twenties. Mostly Bad Behaviour made me thankful that I'm not fourteen anymore, and I'd be interested to find out how teenagers would respond to it.

Your Name is Not Anxious

Anxiety sucks. I've been there, so have most of my family and some of my friends. It's not a place you want to dwell, or even visit for very long. Stephanie Dowrick, who has had her own mental health battles, has written a friendly, approachable guide for sufferers, reminding us that while anxiety can feel overwhelming, it is not our whole identity; that it's vital to treat ourselves with compassion and kindness, rather than blame and guilt; that anxiety is a whole-body experience, not just 'in our minds;' that there are emergency measures we can take in a moment of crisis (breathing techniques, cold water, reducing causes of stress (can be easier said than done!)).

It's all great advice, delivered in short, easily-digested chapters, and the book is designed for dipping in and out as needed, rather than being read cover to cover, which is what I did. Much of the material is reinforced in more than one place, which is helpful -- in my experience, these messages need repeating over and over, and even then they sometimes don't sink in. I can imagine Your Name is Not Anxious as a comforting bedside companion, to be used in times of crisis along with professional therapeutic help, exercise and medication if needed; I don't think it would be enough to pull you out of an episode on its own. There are also personal stories from others who have wrestled with OCD, body anxieties and addiction, and come out the other side, which is always a good reminder. The dark valley can seem like a long, deep crevasse at times, and it's helpful to remember that it can and does end.

Grace

I bought Grace on impulse from Brotherhood Books because I love Jill Paton Walsh, even though I knew nothing about the book. It's a young adult novel, published in 1991, telling the story of 1830s heroine Grace Darling. I knew the broad outline of her feat -- that Grace, a lighthouse keeper's daughter, had helped to row a boat to rescue survivors from a shipwreck, and became famous enough to have a pub in Collingwood named after her, on the other side of the world -- but no more than that.

Maybe because I had no expectations, I thought Grace was amazing (see what I did there). The first part of the novel faithfully recounts the events of the rescue and what followed: Grace swiftly became a folk heroine, an exemplar of courage and strength which went against Victorian expectations of what a young woman could achieve. In the second part of the novel, Paton Walsh allows herself to imagine more freely the effect of this sudden and overwhelming attention on Grace, who was only twenty two, though she sticks to historical sources where they're available. Grace is showered with gold medals, public concerts raise money for her, she receives thousands of letters and gifts, all of which require a reply. 

The dark side of this fame is something that I had never suspected. An official lifeboat from the mainland also set out to rescue the survivors from the rock, but arrived there just after Grace and her father had plucked them to safety. Though they were equally brave and faced the same violence of sea and storm, lifeboat crews were rewarded according to the number of survivors they saved, and the Darlings had gazumped them. Grace and her father did their best to make sure that the crew were also recognised and paid for their efforts, the avalanche of public attention and money heaped on Grace caused bad feeling in the local town. In Paton Walsh's story, Grace becomes increasingly tormented that she might have performed her brave deed for the sake of the reward, not from pure altruism. Tragically, Grace died from tuberculosis only a few years after the Forfar rescue.

I found Grace a totally engaging ethical and moral examination of fame and courage, and the consequences of celebrity. As Grace herself recognises, it became impossible for her to marry -- she was too rich to be a suitable mate to a simple, ill-educated fisherman, but at the same time, she was too socially lowly to marry a man from a higher station in life. She became famous all over the world, but her fame was a terrible burden from which she could never be free. This was an unexpectedly moving and thought-provoking novel.
 

Winter's Gifts

Another Rivers of London novella from Ben Aaronovitch. Winter's Gifts takes us across the Atlantic to snowbound Wisconsin, with FBI agent Kimberley Reynolds as our protagonist. While she mentions (and once telephones) Peter Grant and the Folly in London, the focus is entirely on her and her hunt for a mysterious and vengeful supernatural creature.

I very much enjoyed this foray onto another continent, and Kim is good company: smart, resourceful and capable. There's a satisfying amount of action, with explosions, severed limbs, several frantic pursuits, a tentacled beast rising from a frozen lake, and even some pashing. We meet a Native American spirit in the form of a fourteen year old boy, which is a nice touch. I must admit that I wasn't entirely clear at the end of the story exactly what the evil object was, but maybe that was due to my inattentive reading -- I do tend to let the details wash over me when I'm reading Rivers of London books and just enjoy the ride.

Darkest Night, Brightest Star

Darkest Night, Brightest Star is a fantastic inclusion on the CBCA Notables list -- a really timely, pertinent and immediate book about Australian masculinity. Barry Jonsberg is an elder statesman of Australian YA writing, and he turns his former teacher's eye on the kind of boy I bet he saw a lot of in his classrooms. Morgan is thirteen, not interested in school, growing up with his dad and older brother after his mother left the family when he was just two. Morgan is not articulate; he keeps himself to himself, and not surprisingly, he's internalised a lot of not-great messages from the men in his family, who believe in never showing emotion (especially not vulnerability or fear), belittling women, and physical toughness as the measure of a man. But Morgan befriends Gray (who turns out to be gay); he'd rather look after plants than kick a ball on the soccer field; and his innate kindness comes to the fore when he starts helping out an old woman, Mary, who has a muddled idea that Morgan might be her own long-lost son.

Darkest Night, Brightest Star has a tight cast of characters. Sometimes the reader is able to draw connections that Morgan is a little slower to make. Morgan makes plenty of mistakes as he goes along, but he's lucky to have a handful of people in his life who really care about him, and at the end of the day, that's all any of us can ask for. The book doesn't wrap up everything in a tidy bow, but there is hope for Morgan (maybe not for his dad, who is not a great guy -- though Jonsberg drops us some hints about he became the damaged person that he is, and how he's passed on that legacy to his elder son). I hope boys read this book and perhaps see something of themselves in Morgan. I really liked it. The only element that Jonsberg hasn't tried to deal with here is the pernicious influence of the online 'manosphere' (I wish we had a better name for it), but maybe that's too big a topic to shoehorn into a short novel.

Fahrenheit 451

It came out during dinner with friends that I had never read Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451, and Sue immediately jumped up to pull it from her shelves. It made a big impression on her when she studied it at school, and many of the details, as well as the central message, had stuck with her for decades.

I can see why it's become a school text staple. Fahrenheit 451 is a novel of ideas, first and foremost. In a society where books are outlawed and ritually burned when they're discovered, the population are kept docile on a diet of shallow entertainment provided by screens and ear-'seashells' and war is a constant threat, it's no wonder that in some ways Bradbury's novel seems even more relevant today that it was in 1953. Fireman Montag works at setting fires, not putting them out, and over the space of a few days, becomes first quietly questioning, then fully radicalised to oppose the prevailing social structure, ending in a thrilling pursuit and a cataclysmic ending.

But... it didn't really work for me. Apparently it was written in a frenzy and needed quite a bit of editing to pull it into shape. I wasn't totally convinced by the world-building, though the ubiquitous screens certainly seem prescient -- there are plenty of logical holes in the story and the characters' reactions don't always make sense. But the size of the concepts and the breathless pace of events would sweep younger readers along, and the ideas the novel raises definitely need to be aired. Maybe if I'd read it when I was 14, it would have worked magic on me? 

The Jane Austen Book Club

I'm not at all surprised that Karen Joy Fowler's 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, became an international bestseller and was made into a movie. I checked out the trailer and was disappointed that I only could only recognise a couple of the characters, so I suspect they were cast without close reference to the book. I don't think the movie performed all that well. The novel, on the other hand, was a delight, easy to read, with subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to Jane Austen's novels, without assuming an intimate knowledge of Austen in the reader.

Fowler presents us with six characters, mostly middle aged ladies, but including one younger daughter and one bloke. The bloke, Grigg, is a lot of fun -- he is a computer geek whose first literary love is science fiction, and who has never read any Jane Austen before. The ladies' initial bristling suspicion of him is lovely, and I adored the scenes where he and Jocelyn meet -- he is at a sci fi con and she is at a dog breeders' conference, and there are some gorgeous crossed wires. 

There is a section at the back of the book where Fowler gives synopses of each Austen novel, and a hilarious collection of reviews, starting with Jane's own family and friends and moving through two hundred years' worth of admirers and detractors. I doubt anyone would approach this book unless they were already a Janeite, but fans of Austen will find comfort and pleasure in these pages. 
 

He

I have been re-reading Helen Garner's trilogy of diaries, which roughly follow the story of her relationship with author Murray Bail, anonymised in the diaries as 'V' (though it's certainly not hard to find out his real identity). At one point he objects strongly to the idea that she is writing about him in her diary, and anticipates with horror and dread the day when they might be published, or read by academics, and her private portrait of him and their marriage will become public -- which is exactly what has happened, and it's true, the image of him that emerges from those pages is far from flattering. She argues back that she can't live fully without writing in her diary, that the diary is what makes it possible for her to live her life at all. Eventually she agrees not to write about him except in the barest, most functional way, a resolve which is soon broken. But I thought, from some sense of fairness, that the least I could do was to read Bail's own account of himself, and see how things looked from his side.

He is not exactly an autobiography. It's composed of fragments of memory and reflection, some floating free of context, all couched in the safely distancing third person point of view. He does mention his first and second wives (Garner was number two), without naming them, and expresses admiration for Garner's writing without disclosing their relationship! In her diaries, Garner often bemoans V's refusal to admit to feeling or expressing emotion, and it would be hard to imagine a more clinical piece of autobiographical writing, in which the word 'I' never appears!

He is, however, a beautiful work, filled with evocative images and remembrance, though the meaning of each fragment and their connection to each other is left for the reader to put together. I did feel I had a bit of an advantage in understanding Bail's character after seeing him through Garner's eyes -- at first intrigued, then in love, then increasingly frustrated, and finally devastated. Reading He was an interesting exercise, and a window into a certain kind of man's perception of the world. But I'm not sure I want to spend too much time inside his head.
 

What Rhymes With Murder

Disclaimer: I made friends with Penny Tangey at a posh school literature festival in Queensland when I was a relatively baby author and she had just published her first novel, Loving Richard Feynman, which I absolutely adored. Already her trademark droll wit was much in evidence, and it's been a consistent element of her work whether she's writing for a middle grade or young adult audience, or now for adults. (Recently I loved Music Camp.)

What Rhymes With Murder? is a mystery story, but the real pleasure of this book lies in the voice of Frida, a new mum who is anxious about everything, especially harm coming to her six month old baby, Finn, after an earlier miscarriage. Tangey is superb at interweaving genuine emotion with humour, and the reader's heart goes out to poor panicking Frida who can't get down the stairs from her apartment, as well as laughing at her put-upon, passive-aggressive hints to her partner about the housework.

 I pop Finn on his playmat and check on the machine. I plonk the clean washing into a basket then carry it to the lounge room, where I wrench open the balcony door. Outside I drop the basket with a thud.

    Ben asks, 'Are you okay?'

    'Yes. Just hanging out the wash.' As per usual.

    'Do you want me to do that?' 

    I shake my head. I don't want him to do it. I want him to have done it already.

There was an extra delight for me in the East Melbourne setting: my elder daughter has just moved into a tiny apartment in East Melbourne and I loved recognising the parks and thinly-disguised cafes of the area (I bought my copy of the book at the General Store which is surely the model for the 'Gipps St Cafe'.) There is a lot of coffee in this novel!

But there are serious themes here too, mostly about reproduction. Frida's post-natal mental health battles, anti-abortion activists, a local reproductive clinic suffering attacks from the same group, a group of three co-parents, a yearning grandmother, a childless professional -- and much of the action takes place at the library! What Rhymes With Murder? is very Melbourne and a lovely read.
 

What Abigail Did That Summer

What Abigail Did That Summer is a novella, less than 200 pages, set during the same time as Foxglove Summer. There's some suggestion that this is a young adult spinoff, designed to draw in younger readers to the Rivers of London series, which makes sense. Our narrator is Abigail Kumara, Peter Grant's thirteen year old cousin, who also has magical abilities and is beginning to be mentored at the Folly. 

There are a lot of reasons why this story might appeal to younger readers -- there are talking foxes! Missing teens (who are all returned unharmed). A sassy, streetwise, smart-mouthed heroine who can summon up river goddesses for advice. And the plot of What Abigail Did is a fair bit milder than most of the Peter Grant novels, which can contain some very dark material. The thing is, I'm not sure that Rivers of London needs a special YA gateway; I'm pretty sure that YA readers are quite capable of discovering and enjoying the regular novels all on their own. And I'm also not sure that Abigail's voice is totally convincing as a thirteen year old Black girl? (I must say that Abigail narrated parts of Stone & Sky and her voice was better handled in that later novel.)

Having said all that, I really enjoyed What Abigail Did, and especially the poignant source of the mystery, which is a house that's kind of come alive and kidnaps teens to act out memorable scenes from its past (shades of Tumbleglass). One aspect of the Rivers of London books I really relish is the awareness and inclusion of history. Those references just sit a tiny bit uneasily in Abigail's mouth, for me.
 

Project Hail Mary

My younger daughter is a big fan of space, and she loved Andy Weir's previous book (and the movie) The Martian, so she was very excited both for this novel and the film which has just been released, starring another favourite, Ryan Gosling. (She went to see a preview of Project Hail Mary at IMax, and we are going together to see it again next week.)

Andy Weir is very good at writing about science and using science to solve specific problems. There's no hand-wavery here (not that I can detect, anyway). In The Martian, we saw a marooned astronaut figuring out how to survive on Mars. Project Hail Mary widens the scope of the drama to put the entire Earth in jeopardy, when a light-feeding life form starts devouring the sun. The whole of humanity unites to solve this problem (pity we can't seem to do this for the climate crisis) and it ends up with, again, a single astronaut, Ryland Grace, far, far out in space, having to work out what to do to save the world. This time our sole survivor is joined by an extra-terrestrial who looks like a spider, uses hearing instead of sight as their primary sense, and 'speaks' with sound, who has come from his own home world to solve the same emergency, which he calls, 'bad bad bad.'

Some of my favourite scenes in the novel are the ones where Grace and Rocky are working out how to communicate with each other and work together, despite the differences in their physiology. It's lucky that Rocky's culture is broadly compatible with that of an American high school science teacher and they can get along so well. I had a quibble when Grace noted that Rocky calls him the Eridian equivalent of the word 'grace,' which, given the religious and historical freight of that word in English, raised more questions about Rocky's planet than could possibly be answered.

Weir does an excellent job of continually raising the stakes and throwing obstacles at his characters; he also skilfully uses flashback and Grace's initial amnesia to reveal the backstory of events on Earth. Honestly I was more interested in the Rocky/Grace timeline but it was all fun. I can't wait for the movie, which my daughter reviewed as 'amaze! amaze! amaze!' 

Hour of the Heart

Irvin Yalom is well into his nineties, still writing and until relatively recently, still practising as a therapist. Hour of the Heart was published in 2024 with the assistance of his son Ben, who has a background in theatre but has now also trained as a therapist. Hour of the Heart was written after the death of Irvin's beloved wife Marilyn; he realised that with his unreliable memory and lowered energy levels, it was no longer possible for him to offer long term therapy to patients, but instead decided to try single sessions with a new client each day, often over Zoom. 

Hour of the Heart presents a score of stories from these sessions, which involved clients from all over the world (interestingly, there were a few from Melbourne, perhaps reflecting the high anxiety and distress caused by prolonged Covid lockdowns here). Yalom is upfront about the limitations of offering a single therapeutic session, just one hour, but he also recognises that with his vast experience and established authority, he can cut through more quickly than other therapists might. Sometimes this backfires, as patients are over-awed by his reputation or project father difficulties onto Irv and become tongue-tied, but Yalom finds some tricks to accelerate insights -- he reveals more of his weaknesses and fears to establish a quick rapport, and he turns the tables and invites clients to ask him questions. This techniques can produce some surprising results.

But finally, sadly, Dr Irv finds himself in a confronting conversation with a doctor who has begun to suffer the effects of dementia. To his horror, when he comes to write up the session, Yalom finds he has completely blanked out what they said to each other, perhaps because this subject matter brushed so close to his own anxieties about getting old and becoming incompetent. According to son Ben, this was the last session Yalom ever held with a patient. It's a sad ending to an extraordinary and generous career, but Hour of the Heart is also a wonderful testament to Yalom's willingness to keep learning and experimenting for as long as he possibly could (and apparently yet another book is in the works, this time the final, final work).
 

Dancer in the Wings

I bought Dancer in the Wings (1958) at the same time as Principal Rôle, which was a bit of a self-indulgent impulse -- I've now acquired five of these Lorna Hill ballet books in hard cover, purely from childhood nostalgia. 

Dancer in the Wings is definitely a second tier Lorna Hill (unless all the Lorna Hill titles are less good than I've remembered??). It centres on Annette Dancy (is that a bit lazy, Lorna?) who is a member of the Cosmopolitan Ballet company, but finds herself in a precarious position when her mentor teacher dies. I always enjoy stories about intra-company politics and rivalries, but quite soon we escape this scenario when Annette takes off for Scotland, shaken by the news of her mother's unexpected second marriage, which turns Angus MacCrimmon from a vague love interest into her stepbrother -- no, wait, he's still a love interest. I guess that is okay, though I'm pretty sure my daughters would say 'ick.'

In some ways Dancer in the Wings resembles Principal Rôle, with Isle of Skye taking the place of the Slavonian Alps in providing the scenic backdrop. There's actually a shout-out to the Slavonian setting of the previous book in this novel. There is however quite a bit of actual dancing in this book, as Annette pays her passage to Skye by performing on board ship. I think Dancer in the Wings was right at the tail end of the heyday of ballet books, as the swinging sixties was about to hijack the glamour of ballet with pop and fashion. No, I see that Hill kept writing ballet books until the mid-1960s, though she did switch tack after that to The Vicarage Children series, though I would have thought that vicarage children might be on their way out by then, too!
 

Mr & Mrs Gould

Grantlee Kieza is a prolific author of Australian history and biographies. My younger daughter gave me Mr & Mrs Gould for Christmas, because she figured the combination of Australian history and birds would be a winner, and she was mostly right. It's a shame that Mr Gould himself wasn't a more attractive character, which took the shine off his story a little bit.

John and Elizabeth Gould arrived in Australia in 1838, already established as pre-eminent naturalists and producers of wildlife books; The Birds of Australia would make Gould more famous and very rich. John organised and carried out the collection of specimens, while Elizabeth, who at the time of their Australian trip was into her seventh pregnancy (at 34 -- when I was just getting started! Gulp), was responsible for the extraordinary illustrations, many of which are reproduced in this book. Kieza has done his research thoroughly, and provides all kinds of social and scientific background; it appears that it was humble John Gould who first suggested to Charles Darwin the possibility of natural evolution.

John Gould was a hard taskmaster and a relentless worker who didn't treat his subordinates very well, and he was a bit rough round the edges in a world people largely by gentlemen amateurs. However, he does seem to have been genuinely loving to his wife and grieved her deeply when she died, though Elizabeth never received her full credit for his commercial success. Mr & Mrs Gould is a readable and engaging popular history which taught me a lot about early colonial Australia and its abundant ornithological wonders. And the pictures are gorgeous.
 

Notes to John

I felt quite conflicted about reading this book -- Notes to John is not even really a book, it's a collection of notes that Didion made after sessions with her psychiatrist, ostensibly addressed to her husband, John Dunne. Mostly Didion and Dr MacKinnon discuss Dunne and Didion's daughter Quintana, who was struggling with alcoholism, but they also talk about Didion's childhood and her own psychological battles. The material is extremely intimate and personal; was it ever intended to be read, let alone published? The papers were found in Didion's desk after her death.

However, Didion, Dunne, Quintana and Dr MacKinnon are all dead now; there's no one left to be hurt by any revelations. It's impossible to believe that Didion didn't discuss these sessions with Dunne as they were happening, in fact she says as much. So perhaps these papers were not really intended as letters or private communications, but functioned more as memory aids or journal entries. Does that make them fair game? I'm still not sure.

Ethical dilemmas aside, I found Notes to John absolutely gripping and very moving. I'm a sucker for anything about psychology or psychiatry sessions, though most of the books I've read have been fictionalised -- but I'm also thinking about Couples Therapy on SBS, which I am addicted to. There is so much here about love and family, dependence and independence, parenting and separating from parents, addiction and alcoholism. My elder daughter also found it irresistible, and terribly sad.
 

Catch

  

What a fantastic start to my traditional (since last year) read-through of the CBCA Young Adult Notables list! I knew as soon as I began Sarah Brill's Catch that I was going to like it. It has a quite bizarre premise: over the summer holidays, sixteen year old Beth has grown tall and hot, and she's also developed an unexpected gift -- she can anticipate when someone is going to fall, and she can catch them. At first her strange ability is a secret. She can tell when a catch is coming because she starts to feel nauseous, then she's compelled to run to the location where she positions herself, and confidently, competently, no matter how heavy or awkward the person or how far they're falling, she catches them. 

Some falls are deliberate, and Brill doesn't sugar coat this reality; some (most) are accidental -- kids falling out of trees, a collapsing scaffold. But Beth has other problems to deal with, like her crush on neighbour Etienne, who for the first time seems to like her back, and her slightly older sister Meg, who is pregnant (for ages I thought the book would end with Beth 'catching' Meg's baby, but it doesn't). As more and more people find out about Beth, her life becomes more complicated.

Brill gives us a first person narrator in Beth, but she also deploys a technique of reporting a lot of conversations indirectly, rather than in direct dialogue, which gave the story an interesting, slightly flattening feeling which I enjoyed. I suppose Catch is magic realism? Brill definitely thinks through all the real world implications of Beth's unlikely gift (for one thing, she becomes amazing at basketball). Her mysterious ability is never explained; it just is. My only quibble is that the novel didn't really resolve, it just kind of... finished. Perhaps there is a sequel on the way, and Brill has left it deliberately open-ended? Despite this niggle, I loved Catch and I hope it makes the shortlist.

Stone and Sky

Since the first Rivers of London novel appeared in 2011, the universe of Peter Grant has expanded to include ten full length books, graphic novels and several novellas. I must admit I've pretty much stuck to the novels, though I'm tempted to sample some of the other products (if I can find them). I've been waiting for months for Stone and Sky to arrive on my reserve shelf at the library, and though I confess I have lost track of some of the characters and events, I'm always eager to plunge into a new Ben Aaronovitch. He can't seem to resist the temptation to invent new characters and fresh phenomena with every Rivers of London story; some of them can be successfully woven into the new material, some inevitably get left by the wayside (there wasn't nearly enough Nightingale in Stone and Sky for my liking, but I was happy to spend lots of time with Abigail, Peter's feisty younger cousin).

In Stone and Sky, we relocate from London to Aberdeen, an area of Scotland that I'm not hugely familiar with, to deal with murdered selkies, sexy mermaids, other dimensional panthers and homicidal gulls, as well as talking foxes, river goddesses and gigantic magical horses. Even if I no longer have a firm grasp on the outer reaches of Peter Grant's universe, I'm always along for the ride. Aaronovitch produces a perfect (for me) marriage of magic and the supernatural with police procedural, two of my favourite genres, and it's always hugely good fun.
 

Sweet Danger

I was prompted to read Margery Allingham's Sweet Danger by Susan Green, and also the Secret Life of Books podcast on the Golden Age Queens of Crime; Allingham was the only one I hadn't yet sampled. Sue was right; Sweet Danger is an absolute romp, with lots of action, a preposterous plot and attractively eccentric (and also sinister) side characters, including the smart and lively seventeen year old Amanda, who is destined to become Campion's wife in a few books' time.

I knew that in the early 1990s, the BBC had made a couple of seasons of Campion, starring Peter Davison, and I found one story, Mystery Mile, (two episodes) on YouTube, which I watched to get the flavour of it. This might have been a mistake, because the two stories were quite similar in feel, and some of the characters from Mystery Mile were even referenced in Sweet Danger, and I might have confused myself about some of the plot details. In Davison's autobiography, he regrets that the BBC didn't make more Campion, but points out that they were quite difficult to adapt for television because the plots were so complicated! Apparently the BBC splurged 25,000 pounds on buying the ancient red Lagonda that Campion and offsider Lugg drive -- it worked out cheaper than hiring it for the duration and they were able to resell it at the end of the production and it cost them virtually nothing.

I enjoyed Sweet Danger a lot, and I think I might check out Tiger in the Smoke, which was the novel discussed on SLOB and is considered Allingham's post-war masterpiece.
 

Ruptured

I expected that I would find Ruptured difficult to read; and I did. I've been increasingly aware that, despite always being fascinated by and sympathetic to Judaism, at the moment I exist inside a decided pro-Palestinian bubble. One of my daughters is determinedly pro-Palestinian, to the point where, to me, she's become uncomfortably anti-Israel. I can't defend the actions of the state of Israel in Gaza, but I wanted a clearer understanding of why Israel has been behaving that way.

Australia is a small world. I didn't expect to find essays in here from an ex-housemate and from my former school captain. I also had to remind myself that this book was published before the Bondi shooting of December 2025; I can only imagine how much the deep anguish and fear expressed in these essays has intensified since then. One thing that became immediately obvious that that although I myself find it simple to separate the nation state of Israel and its actions from the Jewish people, these Australian Jewish women experienced no such easy distance. For them, Israel and being Jewish are inextricably intertwined, so that criticisms of Israel's action are felt directly as anti-Semitism. It's much more personal than I'd realised. Any critique of Israel is felt as a denial of Israel's right to existence. Also, the events of October 7, when Hamas attacked and murdered Jewish citizens, was such a violation, so painful, that no amount of bloodshed in Gaza seemed to touch it; there was no comparison, no equivalence. (I'm aware that my words are clumsy and indeed I'm struggling to clearly express the emotions that rose so painfully from these pages.)

I'm not sure that I really found the clearer understanding that I was seeking from Ruptured, but I'm much more aware of the genuine suffering that these women have endured and are still enduring, and the mutual incomprehension that seems to lie between the Jewish community and the pro-Palestinian protesters (I'm talking about peaceful marchers like my daughter, obviously not the terrorists who have firebombed schools and synagogues, and definitely not the Bondi shooters.) It's all such a horrible, agonising tangle, and I don't know how it can ever be smoothed out so everyone can live in peace together. Here and now, it seems impossible, even in my city here on the other side of the world.
 

Principal Rôle

Principal Rôle was an impulse buy -- I have a weakness for Lorna Hill's Sadler's Wells ballet series, and this one, along with Dancer in the Wings, were a couple of titles I hadn't come across before, and I couldn't resist. This one is from 1957, and honestly, it barely qualifies as a ballet book! The ballet element is quite tangential. The story centres on fifteen year old (not eighteen, as the cover blurb claims) Princess Fazia of the imaginary kingdom of Slavonia, capital Drobnik, which all sounds quite Yugoslavian, except that it's vaguely nestled in the Alps somewhere. Anyway, it's been overthrown by Communists and her brother Leo is king in exile. So far, so Eva Ibbotson, and this novel shows that fascination with the Alps which was current in the early 20th century.

In fact, it's King Leo who is really keen on ballet, particularly one ballerina. We're told that though Fazia is an incredible dancer, she's not really that interested; and her young governess Elizabeth Lister, whose viewpoint we share in the first part of the book, did ballet at school but is far from professional standard. The story veers around quite wildly and comes to a screaming climax with one character catching on fire, a hospital bedside proposal, an assassination (off screen) and (spoiler) Princess Fazia assuming her Principal Rôle as... Queen of Slavonia (weirdly no one seems particularly worried that she might be assassinated).

I don't regret this purchase and it has a very pretty cover, but it's a very slight piece of work! My expectations for Dancer in the Wings are now quite low.
 

My Sister the Serial Killer

My Sister, the Serial Killer probably isn't the kind of book I would normally pick up, but my interest was piqued after reading a recommendation on a book thread where someone was looking for novels from different countries (I think they were aiming to read a book from every country in the world). I'm very conscious that my reading pool of nationalities is tiny, so I made a note of Oyinkan Braithwaite's novel and found it at the Athenaeum.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is no mystery story -- the very title gives it away, and the first page begins with a murder, clearly not the first. The tension in the story comes from wondering if the narrator Korede will keep covering up for her homocidal sister, or betray her to the police; and from the imminent danger to Korede's crush, kind and hunky doctor Tade, who has the hots for Ayoola. 

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a very easy and engaging read; I flew through half of it while giving blood. The chapters are short and punchy, the action is swift. In some ways it reminded me of Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, in that it does provide some plausible excuses for Ayoola's behaviour, and I really enjoyed the glimpse into Nigerian culture (albeit an upper class, 'nice' family). I wouldn't exactly call it a fun read, but it's effortless and very enjoyable, so far as a novel about a serial killer can be, and it does actually have some serious observations to make about intergenerational violence and co-dependent relationships.
 

Taboo

West Australian Noongar author Kim Scott has been on my radar for a while, but somehow I've shied away from his novels, fearing they might be too harrowing for me. But I was persuaded to pick up his 2017 book, Taboo, by my book group friend Cathy, and I'm so glad I did.

Tilly is a schoolgirl who's recently discovered the truth about her Aboriginal parentage; she finds herself caught up in a kind of cultural camp for Noongar people, returning to their Country after a long exile and horrific history which has rendered that place forbidden until now. The narrative about the adults exploring their heritage, tentatively recovering language, making traditional tools and painting, singing old songs, enveloping young Tilly in a family she's never known, is extremely moving. But there is deep darkness in the story too, not just in the form of past massacres, murder and rape, but in the present, between vulnerable Tilly and sinister Doug, who is also connected to the community.

Taboo contains both horror and humour, and a touch of magic realism that weaves First Nations spirituality through a gothic, haunted story. The book ends with the hint that eventually Tilly will make peace with both sides of her inheritance, despite all the pain that has come before.
 

My Brother the Orangutan

Disclaimer: Heather Gallagher is an old friend of mine. We met at ante-natal classes before our first babies were born, and quickly discovered that we had a lot in common -- not just living in adjacent suburbs, but Heather and I were both aspiring children's authors. It's hard to believe that was nearly twenty five years ago.

My Brother the Orangutan is a lively, fun body swap story in the best tradition of Paul Jennings. Esther and her brother Rex have newly arrived from the country to the city, where their dad has a new job working at the nearby zoo (every kid's dream, surely). But the family are also grappling with the recent death of Esther's beloved grandfather, and moving in with their eccentric grandmother, whose cooking tends to produce dishes like salmon and lychee souffle, or tuna and pineapple muffins. But the trouble really starts when Rex swaps bodies with Harta the orangutan and Esther finds herself sharing a bedroom with an ape in a boy's body, while her little brother is stuck in the zoo.

Resourceful Esther's hero is Sherlock Holmes and it doesn't take her long to start putting the vital clues together. But there's only so much an eleven year old can do to persuade adults that something truly bizarre is going on.

My Brother the Orangutan mixes a warm family story with a twisty magical mystery and plenty of laughs. It would make a fabulous read-aloud and I can see it appealing to reluctant readers, too. Lots of fun.
 

Clock Dance

Anne Tyler is one of those reliable authors where you always have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get, and you can relax in the knowledge that you're in safe hands while you get there. (I'd put Noel Streatfeild, Agatha Christie and Eva Ibbotson into the same category.) In one respect, Clock Dance departs from Tyler's usual MO -- instead of revolving around a nuclear family, or a couple of generations, this one consists of a few mostly unrelated individuals who end up forming a kind of chosen family.

Willa has two grown up sons, with whom she has little contact -- not because of conflict, they've just drifted apart. Widowed young, she's on her second husband, an honourable but pedantic and unbending man. Peter is most put out when Willa is unexpectedly called to the rescue of her son's former girlfriend and her young daughter, but he heroically accompanies her from Arizona to Baltimore so that Willa can step in. However, his willingness to be a hero is strictly limited and soon Willa finds herself torn between competing duties.

Clock Dance is a really sweet read. Willa is quite a passive character, but I recognised a fellow Phlegmatic type -- averse to conflict, resisting through inaction, a calming presence. It's lovely to see her gradually being appreciated by this bunch of neighbourhood strangers, even as her supposed nearest and dearest dismiss and overlook her. At the end I almost stood up and cheered.