Karina Machado: Spirit Sisters

From the back of the book-
Spirit Sisters illuminates the very personal ghost stories of ordinary Australian women. Journalist Karina Machado has listened to many of these stories and within these pages captures the sorrow, fear, comfort and hope that go along with them. Here she passes on their secrets and shares those incrediable moments when someone leans in to whisper their tale and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
Whether you believe in the afterlife or not, reading this book will lead you to question your reality and wonder...maybe?
I sought out this book after reading its follow up Where Spirits Dwell  and just as expected Spirit Sisters offers more of the same. Reading them out of order didn't seem to make any difference both being simple collections of retold experiences.
The strengths and weaknesses of the book remain unchanged. The stories themselves are again related in a mundane language that requires quite a bit of imagination if the reader is to get a sense of the emotions claimed in the blurb but is no less interesting for that. Perhaps sometimes you really do need to be their if you are to truly understand.
Not bad but don't expect scary-Lynn.

Karen Machado: Where Spirits Dwell

From the back of the book-
There are houses that are as seductive as lovers. There are houses that draw us close and never let us go, there are houses that haunt us. And then there are houses that are truly haunted, houses where spirits dwell. Are you ready to step inside?
Where Spirits Dwell unearths the creaking, spine-chilling moments when ghosts appear in suburbia. Alongside infamous Australian haunted houses, like Sydney's historic The Abbey, Karina Machado takes us away from stereotypical rundown mansions and into everyday homes-from far north Queensland to Sydney's north shore, from Tasmania's desolate coast to Melbourne's outer suburbs.
There are stories in this book that will chill you, shock you and break your heart. Meet the beautiful girl with honey-blonde hair, the stern old lady in a high-necked gown and the malignant poltergiest who lurks in a red-brick bungalow. Spirits dwell everywhere: inside restaurants, hospitals, shoping centres and even our hearts. If you dare, lose yourself in these true-life encounters of ghosts that terrorise, comfort, torment and console.
This collection of ghost stories is told in the words of those who experienced the events. While this gives the reports a ring of authenticity, it does mean they lack narrative flair. Undoubtedly the experiences were terrifying for those on the scene but the retelling, for the main part, doesn't convey a strong sense of atmophere to the reader.
The author does have a tendency to self reference an earlier work that I was not familiar with, something that would normally put me off but in this case has made me curious.
I quite like the fact that the stories were local and the settings mundane. In that respect the author has validated my own experience of growing up in a haunted house and hilighted the fact that not only grand old buildings are home to the unexplained.
An interesting collection of stories but not 'spooky'in the traditional sense.-Lynn

Anonymums

From the back of the book-
Once upon a time, there were three mums-Mum A, Mum B and Mum C.
Bored with their suburban existence, they decided to add some spice to their lives. For three months, they would dare each other to do things.
Mum B would find herself wearing firecracker red lipstick for a whole week (yes, even to swimming lessons); Mum C would tell her atheist husband she'd found religion; and Mum A would have a secret tryst with Santa in a shopping centre.
They also dared each other to tell the truth... The truth about motherhood. The truth about their lives. The truth about who they'd become compared to who they wanted to be.'
This book basically says what all parents, if they're being honest, know-motherhood is hard. It is exhausting, unrelenting, mind-numbing, dull, repetative work. Sure we love our children and wouldn't swap them for the world etc, etc but that doesn't mean we don't pine for the women we were Before Children or mourn the Woman We Could Have Been.
I could relate to a lot of what these women were saying about their mothering experience and sitting surrounded in the mummy-zombie suburbs even be a little jealous that they found each other.
The dares and their responses to them were fun. The truths were open, honest and at times confronting. Both are presented in an engaging, easy to read way. However the book left me with mixed feelings.
For all I knew where these women were coming from part of me (a judgemental, contemptuous part) couldn't help but want to give them a good shake and tell them to wake up to themselves. In the grand scheme of things they have it good. Their problems are most definitely first-world, middle-class ones and not even difficult first world ones. They weren't faced with the death or disability of their partners or children, poverty or abuse.
In all fairness they never claim that their lives are particularly difficult in any way other than motherhood and the book is about loss of identity and regaining self not social justice. I find it interesting that it provoked such a response in me and it has made me examine my world view.
A deceptively light read that will have many nodding in agreement and some wondering why.-Lynn

Cooking the Books - Kerry Greenwood

Corinna Chapman, baker par excellence and proprietor of Earthly Delights, is doing nothing during her holidays. Her trainee Jason has taken off to learn how to surf, her partner Daniel is busy tracking down corporate fiscal shenanigans, and her waif-like assistants Kylie and Goss are auditioning as extras on a new soap. Without care or responsibility, Corinna should be enjoying the down time, but she's bored.
Which is what allows her to succumb to the emotional blackmail of a former school mate, assisting her on the set of "Kiss the Bride" - coincidentally the same soap Kylie and Goss have got parts on.

There are so many delightful things about this series, from the oddments I flag for follow up (Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, the not safe for work song 'The Sexual Life of the Camel') and the meticulously seamless plot to the way traditionally-build Greenwood describes life as a fat woman

"But I haven't got long - I have a dinner date."
"You?" she asked with that touch of incredulity which flicks a fat woman on the raw. I resolved that I would try to do the Christian thing and forgive my enemoes, but that did not require me to turn the other cheek...
She had aged badly, looked haggard and lined. One advantage of being fat is that one does not wrinkly like the slim and gorgeous.

There's bullying, intrigue, a lion, high drama, a tiny bit of Doctor Who, a literary scavenger hunt, the tyranny of the thin-is-healthy obsessed, and bullying of all sorts. There's also the deep satisfaction of just desserts and righteous comeuppances, and the city of Melbourne as integral to the soul of the novel as a character:

The weather was temperate, which is a signal that it is about to change. In Melbourne, a city whose climate can only be called 'unstable'. If by unstable you mean that it is blowing a hot gale before lunch and raining like the Flood after lunch. This makes Melburnians flexible and agile. You have to be, to dodge he hailstones. Some of them are as big as tennis balls, I swear.

Not a breath of a lie! Greenwood's best book, and this is one of that predominant number, are so beautifully constructed, intricate and masterfully crafted that it is impossible to do them justice. It is a mystery greater than any Corinna or her 'twenties counterpart Phrynne have ever solved that she is not more greatly lauded and renown. - Alex the Fan Girl

The Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights; Heavenly Pleasures; Devil's Food; Trick or Treat; Forbidden Fruit; Cooking the Books

Anonymums – anonymous

Subtitled Three women, the truth and a whole lot of dares, Anonymums is an account of three Australian women (Mums A, B and C) – Mum A had met one of them several times at an annual writers’ festival, and the other online. In both cases the women clicked, and she suspected that they, like her, might be diminished by their lives as suburban wives and mothers. “Most days I felt like a zombie – a mindless, animated slave to two needy, demanding kids...” The final straw came when Mum A realised she had a cleaning sponge preference. And thus was born the project – for three months each Mum would get a dare from one of her friends and have to respond truthfully to a question from the other, with twist that the last months’ truth and dare had to be self-set.
There were guidelines – no skydiving, no affairs, nothing that could wind up on Jackass, no salsa – and the dares seemed relatively mild. In December Mum A had to go to a shopping centre, line up, sit on Santa’s knee, ask him for a steam mop and buy a photo for posterity, Mum B had to wear siren-red lipstick for a week, and Mum C had to have a Brazilian wax.
The truths were a little more challenging – tell me about the worst mother you know, tell me your most used sexual fantasy, tell the truth about how you sometimes wish you’d never have children. And in all cases the women found themselves changing, expanding, and challenging aspects of lives that had been mundane.
Anonymums is a recognition of the unrelenting monotony of motherhood, the inequality of parenthood, the frustration and resentment of the stay at home parent, and a realisation that this doesn’t have to be the case – I found Mum A’s self-imposed Big Dare, to change the running of the house and reduce the resentment she felt toward her husband, possibly the most interesting.
I also found her response to the question “tell me about the worst mother you know” fascinating, because of the way it challenged her to look at the truth of this woman’s life rather than her (admittedly distressing) behaviour born of compromise.
I also liked Mum B’s observation, on day 3 of a week-long dare to abstain from both chocolate and alcohol,

8AM
I have a headache. Could it be withdrawal? And if so, from what?
More likely it’s from hearing all about episode 24 of Ben 10. What happened to the Wiggles? That’s what I’d like to know. Then, we knew where we were: a bit of Hot Potato, a rock or two of the bear, point your fingers, do the twist and jump in the Big Red Car. But now, I’ve got ‘diamond-head guy’ and 'four-arm guy’ and eight other guys to deal with. If Big Boy actually knew anything about this cartoon I wouldn’t mind so much – but he’s never even seen the actual show. Won’t let him watch it because I think he’s too young.
Instead, I was watching firsthand the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Kids, it turns out, are naturals at it. Some kid came to pre-school with an enormous plastic omitrix-watch-thingy, and voila! The Game Has Changed.

I’m not a mother, though most of my friends are, and I have in my life children ranging in age from infants through to Lynn’s teens. I also remember the experience of co-parenting my younger siblings. I believe the hype about parental love being transformative and encompassing and amazing, but I also know it’s exhausting, unrelenting, consuming, never-ending and unrecognised. Anonymums redresses this somewhat, and I like the ending, where they are not only reinvigorated by vow to continue challenging themselves and each other.
I don’t need to re-read it, though, and have left it at the airport, hopefully to be picked up and perused by a mum in need of a reminder of her own identity outside the mum label. – Alex

Fall Girl - Toni Jordan

Ella Canfield is a slightly nervous evolutionary biologist. Part of her nervousness is because her project is fairly left of centre - she's seeking funds to research the possibility that there are Tasmanian tigers in Wilsons Promontory National Park, Victoria. The last known thylacine died in captivity in 1928, but there have been sightings ever since - Ella's proposal, made to the eccentric and well-funded Metcalf Trust, set up to support unusual scientific projects, is that thylacines may be a Lazarus species - thought extinct but still alive. She's seeking $25,000 to fund a three month project looking at scat, bone fragments and spoor. Though the Trust's administrator, Carmichael, seems sceptical, the person to convince is Daniel Metcalf, the heir of a fortune. Ella knows he's long had an interest in thylacines, and that's not her only unfair advantage.

Because Ella Canfield is fictitious - she's a creation of Della Gilmore, a third-generation con artist chasing the high of her first ever scam some twenty years earlier and desperate for a high-paying scam that will show her family she can do more than penny-ante short-cons. But Della didn't bank on Daniel being more than a superficial rich boy with more dollars than sense, and it might be Della who gets taken for a ride.

I so wanted to love Fall Girl - Jordan's debut novel Addition was excellent, and the topic of grifters (in fiction, at least) appeals to me. But I found virtually every aspect of Fall Girl irritating, from the set up to Della's family to the wholly unbelievable ending.

To take one example - Della's at lest third generation grifter, yet her cousin Timothy (who's somewhat jealous of Daniel) is more focused on his own agenda than this potentially very lucrative (for the whole family) con - his repeated interruptions while she's on the phone to Daniel in character are annoying, unprofessional and unbelievable.

Part were certainly appealing - I enjoyed the scenes setting up for Daniel's visit to Ella's university office, which reminded me of similar executions in Hustle, while other parts reminded me (sadly unfavourably) to the brilliant series Good Guys, Bad Guys, and the occasional line sparkled: "the dresser is white reclaimed timber that was once distressed but is now hysterical."
Overall, though, I was disappointed, but have high hopes for whatever Jordan writes next. - Alex

Bettina Arndt: The Sex Diaries

From the back of the book:

“From the time I started working as a sex therapist back in the early 1970s, people have been talking to me about their sex lives. What I hear about most is the business of negotiating the sex supply. How do couples deal with the strain of the man wishing and hoping while all she longs for is the bliss of uninterrupted sleep?”
Bettina Arndt recruited ninety-eight couples to keep diaries, revealing their intimate negotiations over sex. Who feels like having sex? Who doesn’t? And how do couples cope if one person wants it more than the other? She draws on her thirty-five years of experience as a sex therapist and psychologist to provide a provocative analysis that challenges our basic assumptions about sex. With her characteristic humour and insight, Bettina Arndt proposes a new approach to how couples can enjoy regular sex-and sustain loving relationships.

I was attracted to this book by a combination of a voyeuristic streak and the title of the first chapter, “Fifty thrusts and don’t jiggle my book”. The humour implied by that title wasn’t forthcoming but this sociological study presents a combination of statistical analysis and case studies in a light and accessible way that avoids becoming frivolous.
The diary extracts from study participants were a fascinating inclusion and quite eye-opening. Stories of mismatched sex drives abound, but it was the recording of sexual negotiations that took place (or didn’t) that I found most interesting.
Though the research focussed on predominantly straight couples there was a brief look at the differences between homosexual and lesbian sexual behaviour as well.
This is not a how-to book for anyone hoping to improve their sex life, neither is it an attempt to legitimise titillating erotica. What it is, is an interesting and objective report about the sexual behaviour of the ‘average’ Australian adult.-Lynn.

Dr Rick Kausman: If Not Dieting, Then What?

From the back of the book:

So how do you manage your weight? There is a solution and it’s all about attitude. In Not Dieting, Then What? shows you how to look at food in a more positive way and move away from the ‘no pain, no gain ethos’, an well as explaining how to fine-tune fat content without sacrificing food enjoyment.
Dr Rick Kausman is recognised as the Australian pioneer of the non-dieting approach to healthy weight management. In this straightforward, no-nonsense guide to weight management he shares his, and his clients’ experiences with the reader. You can learn how to: enjoy food without feeling guilty, increase your eating awareness, improve how you feel about yourself, fit some sort of activity into your day, and achieve and maintain a healthy, comfortable weight for you, without being deprived of food or quality of life.

Since I’ve decided to finally follow my doctor’s advice and stop dieting I’ve begun researching intuitive eating. The basic principle is simple: eat when you’re hungry, don’t eat when you’re not. But anybody who has ever had a genuine weight problem (and not just carried four or five excess kilos) can tell you that hunger often has very little to do with eating. This author understands that.
The purpose of this book is to give the reader the tools they need to get out of the yo-yo dieting cycle and get back in touch with their body. With chapters that address why diets don’t work, the importance of choosing realistic goals, non-hungry eating, body image and the inevitability of losing focus occasionally, this book covers the most commonly asked questions of this approach to weight management.
Personally I found chapter 3 ‘Non-hungry eating’ and chapter 7 ‘Eating with awareness’ to be of particular interest. I am making an effort to apply the techniques suggested to relearn to recognise my body’s needs with the hope that eventually these will become second nature (or is that a return to ‘first’ nature). At the time of writing this it all still requires considerable conscientiousness on my part and it is much too soon to say if the techniques will, in fact, work for me.
As far as “diet” books go this is one of the most reasonable and sensible ones I’ve ever read. The local references were a novel bonus too.-Lynn

Shaun Tan: Tales from Outer Suburbia

From the back of the book-
Shaun Tan…reveals the quiet mysteries of everyday life: homemade pets, dangerous weddings, stranded sea mammals, tiny exchange students and secret rooms filled with darkness and delight.
When my teenaged daughter brought this book home from school I was a little surprised. She’s well past the age where I would expect her to be perusing the junior section of the library. However, I’m glad she decided to share this discovery with me. This picture book for older children is truly delightful.
At first glance the illustrations appear simple, even slightly rough but with closer inspection they reveal themselves to be incredibly detailed and highly expressive. Though many of the stories are accompanied by words, the pictures are so rich as to make them superfluous. Having said that, the author has a succinct way with words, getting a maximum of meaning and emotion out of a minimum of syllables.
This is a layered work offering more than is simply, and beautifully, presented on the pages. I don’t know how it is I’ve never come across this author before but I would highly recommend his works to all.-Lynn

As Darkness Falls - Bronwyn Parry

Isabelle O'Connor is still on leave from the New South Wales police force, following the aftermath of a child abduction in her small country town. One year to the day, another child goes missing - the third in the region in three years. Though it's vindication that the accused suspect wasn't the perpetrator, Bella has less than a week to find Tanya alive. But she doesn't want to return to Dungirri, the town where she grew up, where she trusted in the support of her community, and where she was almost killed defending the suspected abductor from the mob that murdered him.
In conjunction with Sydney-based Detective Chief Inspector Alec Goddard, Bella has to use her instincts, skills and local knowledge to discover who the predator is, and recover Tanya before it's too late. But her own life is in danger, forcing her to rely on a stranger - a stranger to whom she's drawn despite herself.
Parry's first novel tries to combine a mystery with a traumatised-heroine romance; I found the latter far from compelling, at least in part because the writing was so hyperbolic. But from the opening I knew what to expect:

No, not this.
Detective Sergeant Isabelle O'Connor dragged up every ounce of self-discipline to halt the cry of denial, and it lodged, unsounded, in her throat, She closed her eyes against the sight as years that couldn't be shed scalded her eyelids.

Isabelle is beset by emotional response, though she manages to overcome it:

Panic almost overwhelmed her senses, thundering in her head, blurring her vision. A voice screamed from deep inside, No - not Alec too.

Information, predominantly about the hero and heroine, is dribbled to the reader in a way I suspect was intended to heighten intrigue and suspense, but which made the plot and motivations harder to understand than necessary. For example, Isabelle's florid reaction when Alec lets her know there's a snake at his feet (see "Panic almost overwhelemed her senses") would be more resonant if we knew before the event, rather than after, that her mother died of a snake bite in front of her when Isabelle was a child - I'd have related better to her need to summon "every internal resourse," the screaming of her inner voice and "the new wave of almost paralysing panic" she felt. I'd still have been distracted by the purple prose, but at least felt it was somewhat warranted. Learning this detail after the drama had abated made me instead think, "Oh, well then."
I could see no reason for reserving some of these facts for later in the novel, unless Parry's intent was to heap disaster upon disaster for her heroine. But they're all past events, incidents that have shaped who she is, and Isablle's responses and persona would have made far more sense to me had they been included at the outset, or at least earlier in the text.
There are several instances where the writing diminished what would otherwise have been emotionally resonant moments. I noticed this particularly when, in response to Alec's account of a genuinely distressing event, "Horror scalded her throat and his sorrow twisted tightly around her heart." A small amount of show - reaching for his hand, perhaps, would have heightened the effect rather than distracting from it.
And once again, this is an event that has contributed to a major character's demeanour and emotional availability, so including it earlier would have better accounted for Alec's reserve, despite himself. It would go some way to explaining why he remained distant from Bella, even though,

The fresh scent of her hair and the press of her body against his caused an avalanche of sensation to blast away the serenity he'd been experiencing just a moment before.
His breath stalled in his lungs as the urgent craving to pull her fully into his arms flooded his awareness. he almost did. Almost lost his self-control and gave in to the longing his sub-conscious had been pounding him with all day.

And that the writing is so distracting is a real shame, because elements of As Darkness Falls are really effective. I very much liked Isabelle's response to an ignorant remark about indigenous tracking (that also addressed the correct use of 'Koori'). Parry's portrayal of Dungirri is vivid and strongly evocative of a sense of place, taking me back to my childhood experiences staying with family in a Victorian country town. The tangled relationships of the townsfolk are convincingly portrayed, as is the stifling atmosphere of suspicion and guilt - though few of the attackers were formally charged, there have been a significant number of suicides and accidents among the town's men in the past twelve months, and the disappearance of Tanya demonstrates more powerfully than evidence that they killed an innocent man.
The mystery is equally strong - in true genre style, the perpetrator is in view all along, with both the revelation and dénouement ringing true. Had the writing style been more restrained and the character development more integrated, I would have been caught up in the hunt and concerned by the attacks on Bella (intended to destabilise her and distract her from the investigation), shocked by the reveal, and satisfied by the ending, which manages to conclude this chapter of their lives without tying everything up in a Happy Ever After.
Instead I'm not particularly fussed, felt no emotional resonance or satisfaction, and if I'm inclined to read the next of Parry's works it will only be because Lynn has a connection with the author. - Alex

Starfish Sisters – JC Burke

Courtney, known to the world at large as Ace, is the poster girl for surfing supplier Ocean Pearl. A shoo-in for the team, going to training camp for selection is just a formality – she’s more concerned about her relationship with pro-surfer Tim. All he seems interested in is her body, but who will like her if they’re not together?
Georgie loves surfing, but over the past few months her enthusiasm has waned. Once she aspired to be like her role model, Ace, but now the idea of going to an elite training camp fills her with dread – something about the pressure of competition has taken all the joy of it and left only anxiety.
Georgie’s best friend Kia has a way to deal with her stress, but she can’t tell anyone. Above all she needs to show her father that she’s worthy of his love, but he’s so preoccupied with his best friend’s daughter he doesn’t ever seem to notice his own – Kia’s never met twelve-year-old Micki but she already hates her.
Micki’s been looking forward to the Elite Surfing camp for months, not only because she’ll get to hone her skills but also because she’ll get to meet Reg’s daughter, Kia. She just knows they’ll get along great. She has no idea that Kia will tell their cabin about her mother; it’s a good thing Kia doesn’t know about her dad, too.
This Australian YA novel combines narratives from each of the protagonists to create a story about surfing, competition, friendship and growth. I can see its accessibility for its target audience, and applaud Burke’s portrayal of young women invested in competitive physical activity in a traditionally male arena.
Despite this I couldn’t really get into Starfish Sisters, and not just because I managed to leave a library copy of the book on the tram (and am still hoping a kind person will return it). Perhaps I’m just too old and past the self-oriented angstyness, which I’m sure was a major factor in my missing the allure of the Twilight phenomenon. I just couldn’t get that invested in any of the characters, particularly Kia, who seems to have no redeeming features – she drops her best friend for the famous Ace, goes out of her way to make Kia miserable, and even though she’s tormented and at the end is shown to have the biggest problem of all, by that time she was so unsympathetic I really didn’t care. There’s a sequel, which I borrowed at the same time as borrowing a second copy, but I think I’ll pass on it for now. - Alex

The Good Daughter - Amra Pajalic

Sammie was happy with her life in Thornbury - her mum was cooler than most of the other mothers, she had a best friend and could slide along at school without any worries. But when her grandmother died and her Dodi came from Bosnia to live in Melbourne everything changed. She went back to being Sabiha, they moved to St Albans to be closer to family and the Bosnian community, and all of a sudden she had to start acting in accordance with community standards.
Irritated by her mother's attempts at finding a suitable boyfriend, frustrated by the close supervision of a neighbourhood where everyone knows your business and reports to your family, and disappointed at the disintegration of her friendship with Kathleen, Sabiha's fifteenth year is not a happy one, and it's all the fault of her stupid grandfather.
Pajalic fits a lot into this YA novel about identity and discovery. All the secondary characters have secrets and back stories that Sabiha is unaware of when the novel opens, predominantly dealing with betrayal and forbidden loves of all kinds.
The reflection of how the dissolution of communism in Yugoslavia changed the cultural norms and identity of Bosnians is interesting, and I liked the way this tension was differently portrayed across the generations.
For the most part Pajalic does a credible job of working this and other background unobtrusively into the text, and Sabiha's own lack of familiarity with her faith allows a degree of explanation that isn't slab-like exposition. That said, I did find the first section, where Sabiha explains why, though they're Muslim, Bosnian women don't wear hijabs and the men are neither turbaned nor bearded, a little forced.
From time to time there are nice turns of phrase, like "Now I had all this Bosnian baggage to drag around and I didn't know how to carry it." I also really liked a discussion between Dido and Sabiha's mother, Bahra, about conventional medicine versus faith healing:

"Have you been taking your tablets?" Dido asked.
"I don't need them any more." She smoothed her skirt.
"Why?"
"All I need is to pray."
"If you don't take your tablets you'll get sick," Dido said gently.
Mum shook her head vehemently. "I pray to Allah and I won't get sick."
"And Allah hears your prayers, but he created medicine so it helps you."

Much of Sabiha's angst is due to her forays into the world of dating, as she finds herself attracted to several boys but indecisive and unsure. Her attitude to male/female relationships is coloured by her mother's experiences as both an abandoned wife and as a sinner (at least in the eye of the community, for she dated several Bosnian men and lived with an Australian), and also by being molested a few years earlier by one of Bahra's male friends. The effects of this traumatic experience, as well as the distress caused by Bahra's illness when she was younger (and Sabiha's subsequent surveillance care taking) are well done.
Despite my concerns that this might be jumping on the band wagon of recent young-Muslim-women-growing-up-in-the-West novels, The Good Daughter is readable, the coming-of-age plot is fresh, and the secondary plots are relatively substantive. There were a few loose ends (the severing of Bahra's relationship with her former closest friend is never well explained), but I'm not a fan of every little detail being accounted for, so that wasn't a problem.
Yet for some reason The Good Daughter felt flat to me. While not everything was wrapped up, there is a markedly last minute transformation, as in the space of a few pages Sabiha becomes sensitive to the needs and concerns of her mother, her grandfather, her friend Brian, her cousin Dina... that seemed a little abrupt. That doesn't account for my lack of enthusiasm throughout, though. After much thinking about why, I think it's because Sabiha is not particularly sympathetic. Though self-centredness is typical for teens, Sabiha almost never sees anything except in relation to its effects on her. She seems sulky, moody and inflexible, and as the novel is told in first person this is something of an achievement by the author. The Good Daughter is certainly accessible to a wider audience, and I'm interested to see what she writes next. - Alex

Cross My Heart - Maureen McCarthy

Michelle didn’t even like Kevin that much but when she fell pregnant there was no option but to marry him, trapping her for life in the small Victorian town she’d longed to escape. Her life was over at age seventeen. Until, propelled by a spurt of bravery and in the midst of their engagement party, Michelle found the strength to run away.
Mick knew better than to get involved in a stranger’s problems but the girl looked frozen, waiting at the petrol station before dawn, and his recent sentence meant he could read the intentions of the pair of guys in the flash car who offered her a lift. Almost despite himself, Mick found himself offering her a ride, and as they travelled north, through Australia’s landscape – virtually barren to Michelle’s eyes and filled with the richness of home to Mick’s – they got to know one another.
Published in 1993, Cross My Heart has been sitting on my too-be-read shelves through three house moves and I only got to it now because I took backlogged books away with me. It's a very Australian YA novel that could have been set nowhere else. There are loving descriptions of the land and of outback culture, and though it's set against the backdrop of the great drought, Australia's current big dry and the lack of pop culture and tech references means the novel isn't dated despite its age.
I was initially not particularly impressed with the novel, which is not particularly showy or dramatic, despite some really significant themes. But, like the landscape it describes, there are nuances and details that are missed if you don't take the time to look properly. The characters throughout are well rounded, the dialogue rings true, and there's a realistic amount of vernacular without knocking you over the head with signposts saying "we're in Australia, mate - too right!" The plot unfolds gently, and nothing stood out enough for me to note it while reading, but I ended with a mildly optimistic feeling and a little homesickness, not just for home but for the outback and rural Australia - Alex

Nick Gadd: Ghost Lines

When a disgraced investigative journalist, reduced to belting out filler stories for a local rag, is sent to cover a level crossing accident he expects nothing more than a routine tragic death story. But events conspire to drag him into a dark world of art theft, dodgy business dealings, political corruption and murder. With his health failing and his personal life in tatters the last thing he needs is to get involved but the story takes on a life of its own and no matter how hard he tries to drop it the only escape for him might very well be his death.
This is a mystery story with real depth. A number of seemingly disparate elements all weave together to form a bigger picture that is more than the sum of its parts. The main character is beautifully drawn and believably flawed. The plot is complex enough to keep the reader guessing all the way without resorting to an excess of red herrings or with held information.
There was a very slight supernatural element (that I can’t go into without spoilers) which I don’t think the story really needed. To my eye it didn’t add anything particular but neither did it detract from the story either. So while it didn’t work for me, it wasn’t a deal breaker and I’m sure the author had his reasons for adding it in.
The ending resolved all the subplots in a neat package and the local setting was a novelty I enjoyed.
For a first novel this was a fine effort and I hope to see more of Gadd in the future.-Lynn

Belinda Alexandra: Silver Wattle

I just wrote a long and detailed review of this novel and my thoughts about it. Unfortunately the internet seems to have eaten it and I couldn’t be arsed rewriting. So in essence:
After the suspicious death of their mother two young girls flee Prague in fear for their lives. They seek sanctuary with an estranged uncle in Australia.
Life in 1920’s Sydney is very different to their privileged upbringing in Europe but the two talented young women grasp every opportunity that comes their way. They eventually make a name for themselves in the local film industry but success doesn’t necessarily equal safety or happiness.
Basically they overcome the many tragedies of their lives, past and present and we are left with hopefulness for their futures-though a happy ever after isn’t explicitly spelled out.
I was attracted to this book by the gothic sounding plot and the 1920’s setting. Neither played a great part in the story, which was more of a coming of age/family saga kind of tale.
Though this is not the kind of story that I would normally read I found it to be nicely written.
My initial review was somewhat more erudite but since it’s gone for good, this condensed version will have to do.-Lynn

Ripe Enough – Cherry Ripe

In this frequently engaging collection of articles Ripe discusses many aspects of food, opening with an exploration of ripeness and why so many of us not only availed only of unripe, early picked and poorly stored fruit but are also unable to recognise good fruit. She moves on to artichokes, chickpeas via beef, and leaves barely a culinary arena, from seafood to rancidity, untouched. Each chapter concludes with a recipe or two, and the entries progress alphabetically rather than thematically.
This is a re-reading for me – I think Ripe Enough, first published in 1999, was the first book I read about food. Since then I’ve become acquainted with a number if food writers and enjoyed my forays into the genre, fuelling an interest in revisiting the beginning of my journey. Despite several, somewhat cursory, trolls through my boxes of books over the last couple of years, I haven’t found my copy so when I discovered that the library had it I was very pleased. I remembered the opening exposition, though no the recipes, and re-reading it was an interesting experience. Ripe writes of the Australian scene, so the produce, culture and regions she discusses are relevant and hold extra interest. The decade between publication and re-reading resulted in both differences in what she describes and contemporary situations, yet many things are not that different. I would have been interested, in her discussion about coffee (“Coffee Cherries: From Pits to Pots”), to see what she made of Starbucks opening here, and about Australia being the first location where stores of the chain closed.
Her basic thesis is worthy and well ahead of its time – buy locally, in season and when food is at its peak, consumers will pay more for better produce, the better educated consumers are about food (varieties of potatoes and their uses, the virtues of marbling in meat) the more demanding they’ll be about quality, great ingredients come from ecological and animal-friendly farming practices, best flavours (and often greater yields) come from older and rarer ‘heritage’ plants. I agree with all of that. But I found, wholly unexpectedly, that Ripe’s tone grated, the more so the further through I progressed. It wasn’t her (justifiable) distain of Anglocentric criticism of fusion cuisine or her (I imagine justified) dismissal on two occasions of famous foodie Keith Floyd’s accuracy and depth of knowledge. In fact I can’t quite put my finger on what, precisely, irritated me. I suspect it’s just that I built her writing up in the intervening years and have discovered that the book is adequate and unobjectionable, but not as absorbing as the best. - Alex

Piggy in the Middle - Catherine Jinks

Dallas shoots feral pigs for a living - she has to send a specimen from each one to the biotech company that employs her as proof of death, and is paid per pig. When she sent in a sample of her own skin as a test she wasn't paid, so the company must do some kind of analysis, but Dallas isn't too fussed about that. She is, however, concerned that there are fewer feral pigs about and an increasing number of diseased, dying pigs - she'll soon be out of a job and has few prospects.
Ron lives with his blind grandfather and looks after the pigs at Agricultural Biomedical Research Industries. The modified animals, with fingers growing out of their backs and ears out of their sides, discomfort him, but not as much as Jibby does - she has oddly human grey eyes and malformed trotters. More important, though, is the loss of his license - he can't marry his girlfriend until he gets his wheels back.
Felix is a sixteen year old genius, working in a limited capacity at ABR. When a call from Dallas is put through to him over summer, when most of the other desks are empty, he encourages her to come to ABR and ask for compensation for the results of the ABR-designed virus that has killed off most of Australia's northern feral pig population. He befriends Ron in the cafeteria and inserts himself into his new best friend's life.
This is a deceptively complex novel about genetic research, gene ownership and xeno-transplantation that involves naive and young protagonists. Perhaps because of my background in ethics, I would really have liked to see more about the former aspects of the novel, but the impact of this is to a degree let down by the latter, as most of the issues around these topics are not explored. Instead much of the focus is on relationships - Ron's with his girlfriend and his grandfather, Dallas with her odd and distant family, and Felix's with both his very remote parents and his intense feelings for Ron.
Piggy in the Middle felt undeveloped or incomplete for me, and I was left with my unresolved questions about the plot and the characters, and particularly the projected fate of Jibby. I have found Jinks's contemporary novels less compelling that her historical ones, and that pattern continues. I'm glad I read Piggy in the Middle, and certainly didn't not enjoy it, but I'd rather have read another book about Pagan. - Alex

Tunnel Vision - Sullivan McLeod

At the age of 29, after much travelling, "a lifetime of silly ideas" and the odd bit of stand up, Sully McLeod decided, while in a Norwegian sauna, that he was going to try to make it as a professional surfer. Okay, he was overweight, unfit, broke, and hadn't surfed since he was eleven, but it was an idea.
Subtitled The true story of my probably insane quest to become a professional surfer, Tunnel Vision is the story of the nine months McLeod spent training (mostly drinking) in his home town of Margaret River, funding (persuading a brother to add on to the size of a business loan), and competing (see 'training) in Indonesia, South Africa, England, France Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Hawaii. Along the way he meets a variety of predominantly agreeable people, has almost everything he own stolen (including his boards), and winds up in a detention cell because he entered a country without a visa.
This is a highly entertaining and genuinely interesting tale that made me nostalgic for the misspent, impulsive youth I managed to avoid. The irreverent tone and 'she'll be right' attitude could only be Australian, and I found McLeod's take on his homeland as interesting as his account of the circuit, with the added bonus that it wasn't complicated by surf speak (there's a handy glossary at the back, though). I particularly liked his description of Melbourne as a place where, if you distilled its essence you'd have "a young woman with pink beads in her hair who studies law during the day and karate at night."
There aren't any great insights or life changing events, and this travel book has much in common with others written by young globe trotting men in their twenties, but it was amusing and the quest was absorbing enough that I almost feel bad McLeod won't get anything from my having read it, as I polished off Tunnel Vision in a spare hour or so between meeting a friend for coffee and meeting my parents for dinner. - Alex

Kim Wilkins: Grimoire

In Victorian London a magician’s quest for eternal life culminates in his summoning of the Devil himself. Angered by the summoning, Satan kills the man and threatens to destroy the world if anyone should try such a thing again.
In modern day Melbourne a group of academics devoted to the Victorian era have found the magician’s grimoire and are secretly trying to recreate his paranormal experiments, unaware of the consequences.
But they are not the only secret society meeting at the College. A group of students devoted to illegally exploring a labyrinth beneath the college uncover both the secret of the grimoire and the potential result of performing the magic it describes.
They steal the grimoire in an attempt to put an end to the experiments and soon find themselves the targets of a ruthless killer.
They escape, barely, but are unable to destroy the grimoire. The experience irreparably alters them and their relationships with each other and the question remains will they be able to protect the secret they have discovered or will the grimoire’s esoteric knowledge prove too much to resist.
A horror story in the gothic tradition, Grimoire, is dark and eerie. The atmosphere is decidedly creepy everywhere it should be and the author gives a sense of place without intruding upon the story.
Explanations as to how such disparate times and places have become linked are solid and believable, something many authors don’t manage to achieve convincingly.
The characters are complex and though a lot of time goes into their development I would like to have seen more of this towards the end of the story when situations change rapidly. I had a slight problem believing some of their behaviour in respect of their supposed ages-they behaved much younger than I would expect but that is a minor quibble.
As expected of a character driven piece the plot is relatively straightforward. Though there were still a few surprise turns there was nothing coming out of left field leaving me bewildered. I must admit that the ending left me a little flat. It felt a bit like the sequal bating endings of bad horror movies and I felt the characters deserved better. I would be disappointed if the grimoire were to feature prominently in a future work.
Overall slow in places but genuinely chilling at other times, this early effort by an author for whom I have high hopes, was a great find and I look forward to reading their more recent works.-Lynn

Witch Bank – Catherine Jinks

Heather has learned to be as unobtrusive as possible – that way she’s less likely to attract her tyrannical father’s attention – so she’s not surprised when most people at the bank where she now works tend not to notice her. When her boss suggests that she may actually be able to become invisible at will and, like her, be a witch, Heather is taken aback but rapidly becomes involved with the small coven associated with the bank. All goes well until Heather discovers that, even when she’s deliberately being invisible, a strikingly handsome computer tech can see her – Jasper’s attractive, and seems interested, but shortly after he fixes her computer Heather starts having blackouts. Is Jasper as benign as he seems?
I can’t tell how much of my disenchantment with Witch Bank comes from the dated elements (inevitable when technology plays a significant role in a book nearly fifteen years old) and how much is due to actual flaws in the text. Either way I found myself not particularly invested in the story or the outcome. Unlike Jinks’s Pagan series, Witch Bank lacks wit and humour, and though Heather grows by the end of the novel and I finally able to stand up to her dad, the other characters are significantly less well defined. Jasper in particular remains something of a cipher, which is unfortunate given the pivotal role he plays in plot development. - Alex