What we're reading: Kendall Kulper, Robin Black & Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.


Fiona Hardy is reading The Witch of Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper

The cover of this book was as seductive as I’ve ever seen on our young adult fiction shelves, and so when it came to pick a title for the book club I’m part of, I waved a picture of this around on my phone saying, ‘I don’t know what it’s about, but can we do this because it looks so great?’ And so we did, because my book club is very agreeable.

Prince George Island has been a whaling port for years, and is a place held together by the magic of the Roe witch, who issues forth charms and spells to calm the seas and bring luck on all who live there. But this surety is now in danger, with the Roe witch getting older, her daughter renouncing her lineage, and her granddaughter – the narrator, sixteen-year-old Avery Roe – trapped with her mother, desperate to get back to her life with her grandmother and reclaim her position as the island’s saviour. Her mother, despite giving her a life of outward finery, has prevented her from ever seeing her grandmother again, or even getting a message to her, and the dream-telling Avery can stand it no longer, especially when she starts to dream of her own bloodthirsty murder.

I’m not a seeker of historical fiction or fantasy fiction or harpooning whales, but this is so far compelling, if not bleak. Avery is struggling against magic she cannot break through – even thinking about running away will cause her mother’s charms to knock her to the floor. It’s a vivid island of ships and saltiness and people full of suspicion and need for magic, and even though I get a bit frustrated with love stories interrupting a perfectly good story of a young woman trying to find her way in the world, the tattooed young whaler whose inky magic draws her in seems a bit of a spunk. I’m hoping for (but not expecting) a whale uprising at the end.


Annie Condon is reading Life Drawing by Robin Black

After reading Robin Black’s warm, generous collection of short stories If I Loved you I Would Tell You this, I was curious to see how her debut novel measured up.

Life Drawing is a portrait of a marriage. Augusta, an artist, and Owen, a writer, have escaped the city to live and work in a peaceful country setting. They are escaping memories of their failed attempts to conceive, and also Augusta’s infidelity. Their relationship seems to be improving when extra pressures are put upon them – Augusta’s father’s Alzheimer’s disease becomes more pronounced, and a woman rents the previously unoccupied house next door to them. This novel is intricate and multi-layered. Infidenlity, revenge, loss and grief and what it means to be an artist are explored in depth.

This is a book I believe has been overlooked this year, but needs to be celebrated.


Bronte Coates is reading Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

I’ve been meaning to read this book ever since Jo Case mentioned it as a great true crime books last year (you can read Case’s article here).

Prize-winning investigative journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent a decade accompanying and recording the lives of a motley crew of Latinos living in the Bronx. The result is Random Family - a huge sprawling work of storytelling that details the characters and events through clear-cut prose. The LA Times called the book as ‘a non-fiction Middlemarch of the underclass’ and, a few chapters in, I’m finding this a particularly apt description.

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Cover image for Life Drawing: a novel

Life Drawing: a novel

Robin Black

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