Dear Reader, July 2019
I read in The Guardian recently that Han Kang is the latest writer to contribute work to artistKatie Paterson’s Future Library project, a collection of manuscripts that are being sealed away unread until 2114. Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell have already deposited work at this library, housed in Norway. The idea of this incredible project is both thrilling and distressing to me; these novels gifted by their writers to readers of the future wait in stasis for their emergence into a time I won’t be around to see. Thank goodness you’ll only need to wait a couple more weeks to read our Nonfiction Book of the Month – the incomparable Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, which will be released worldwide on 9 July.
In the meantime, look out for Jess Hill’s investigation into domestic violence in Australia, See What You Made Me Do, Daniel Ziffer’s brilliantly titled book about the Hayne Royal Commission, A Wunch ofBankers, and Dan Box’s account of a series of unsolved homicides, Bowraville, and new books from Niki Savva, Don Walker, Donald Sassoon, Eve Ensler, James Lovelock, and Peter Wohlleben. There could be no better evidence of the ways in which music feeds the soul and shepherds us through life thanAndrew Stafford’s Something to Believe In, which joins notable memoirs by Stephanie Wood (Fake), Corey White (The PrettiestHorse in the Glue Factory), and JessicaWhite (Hearing Maud), and an artisticbiography of Mirka Mora.
You may have heard that 2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, so it seems fitting that Tara June Winch’s novel, The Yield, is published this year. This is a beautiful and devastating piece of writing, which has the survival of Wiradjuri language at the heart of its narrative. It comes very highly recommended: our reviewer calls it a ‘big hearted, hopeful novel’, and it’s our Fiction Book of the Month. Also out this month are Lenny Bartulin’s Fortune, which our reviewer calls‘extraordinary’, Alice Bishop’s gorgeous elegy to the Black Saturday bushfires, AConstant Hum, and new works from Peter Goldsworthy and Catherine Jinks.
International releases I must catch up on this month include Colson Whitehead’sThe Nickel Boys, Hiromi Kawakami’s The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino, Karen Russell’sshort story collection Orange World, and celebrity profiler Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel, Fleishman is in Trouble. I shared our reviewer’s nostalgic pleasure in my own reading of Anna Hope’s debut, Expectation. Vasily Grossman’s recentlytranslated Stalingrad is the prequel to Life and Fate, and is being called one of the masterpieces of twentieth centuryliterature. Fate would have it this month that two similiarly titled novels appear at the same time, Travellers by Helon Habila, and The Travelers by Regina Porter.
And finally, dear reader, Rachel Cusk has accrued many fans amongst Readings staff and customers with her recent trilogy, Outline, Transit, and Kudos. She has previous work that readers may need to catch up on: look out this month for reissues of The Country Life, Arlington Park, A Life’s Work, and Aftermath.
