Elke Power
Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly.
Reviews
Sweetness and Light by Liam Pieper
Liam Pieper’s unsettling, atmospheric second novel, Sweetness and Light, is set first on the west coast of India and later on the east. We initially encounter Australian expat Connor, who is ostensib…
Melting Moments by Anna Goldsworthy
Fans of Anna Goldsworthy’s award-winning writing to date will be delighted – and far from surprised – to find that many of the notable qualities of her nonfiction and memoir writing are adroitly depl…
Shirl by Wayne Marshall
It’s evident from the first page of Wayne Marshall’s debut collection of short stories, Shirl, that writing is inescapable for the author. As deep and fundamental as this creative drive may be – and …
Make It Scream, Make It Burn by Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison’s first essay collection, The Empathy Exams, made Readings’ Best of Nonfiction list in 2014. It is a book we still recommend and to which many of us still return. Jamison’s new essay c…
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates has been a correspondent for the Atlantic and among his bestselling works of nonfiction is Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award. Coates is also the current aut…
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk is an extraordinary reading experience. It’s both philosophical and practical, and underpinned by a compassionate yet realistic humanity. At the core of Sand Talk is a de…
The Travelers by Regina Porter
Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumna Regina Porter has an award-winning background in playwriting, and it shows in every line of her much-anticipated debut novel, The Travelers. Pitched as an intergeneratio…
See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill
Sometimes you begin reading a book and everything else you need to do or think about instantly recedes. See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill is one such book. Hill is a Walkley Award-winning investig…
Little Stones by Elizabeth Kuiper
Set in the last decades of Mugabe-era Zimbabwe, Elizabeth Kuiper’s debut novel Little Stones is about grappling with identity. Hannah Reynolds is a precocious eleven-year-old energetically passing he…
Women’s Work by Megan K. Stack
Megan K. Stack has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. She was a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times; she made a career of immersing…
A Universe of Sufficient Size by Miriam Sved
With her second novel, A Universe of Sufficient Size, Miriam Sved again demonstrates her ability to write about highly specific human preoccupations in a way that renders them interesting and engagin…
The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan
Regular Readings Monthly readers will no doubt remember how obsessed we were by Irish born, Perth-based Dervla McTiernan’s debut crime novel. After turning the final page of The Rúin in early 2018, s…
Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Brain and Mind by Nicola Redhouse
In this extraordinary memoir, the reader is taken into the confidence of Nicola Redhouse: writer, editor, reader and, above all, someone who constantly seeks to better understand the human condition …
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is perhaps best known for her award-winning novels The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and The Lacuna (2009), though her numerous other works will also be familiar to many. With her much-a…
Boys Will Be Boys by Clementine Ford
Just as she did with the title of her first book, Clementine Ford has taken another well-known expression and repurposed it for the title of her second. Ford reclaimed Fight Like A Girl and framed th…
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller
English author Andrew Miller has been winning awards for his writing ever since his first book, Ingenious Pain, was published in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IM…
Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang
Perth-based South African writer Sisonke Msimang was raised in exile in the 1970s and 80s by her South African freedom-fighter parents. Her childhood and early adulthood were spent in Zambia, Canada,…
Orchid & the Wasp by Caoilinn Hughes
Orchid & the Wasp opens outrageously and does not miss a beat from there: ‘It is our right to be virgins as often as we like, Gael told the girls … Gael was eleven. It was her last term in primary sc…
There Are No Grown-Ups by Pamela Druckerman
I love Pamela Druckerman’s writing. Her last book, French Children Don’t Throw Food, was, and still is, an international bestseller. To be clear, she is not the author of the French Women Don’t Get F…
Small Wrongs by Kate Rossmanith
Small Wrongs is a powerful consideration of remorse, and whether we can ever truly know it when we see it. As an ethnologist, Kate Rossmanith is more than equipped to explore this subject from a theo…
Little Gods by Jenny Ackland
Olive Lovelock is curious, independent, and beguiling. She is growing up between her parents’ home in a small town in the Mallee and her cousins’ farm, a (long) bike ride away. For Olive, Grade 6 is …
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The Heart’s Invisible Furies opens with Catherine Goggin being publicly shamed and violently thrown out of her church and country town in Cork. As she is hurled out the door she’s given a kicking by …
The Good People by Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent’s second novel, The Good People, is based on a true story, as was her bestselling and much-lauded debut novel, Burial Rites. Both are engrossing works of historical fiction that bring to …
Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill
In Their Brilliant Careers, Ryan O’Neill combines conventions of biography and short story in an exhaustively brazen blend of Australian literary history and plausible yet gloriously bonkers inventio…
Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Set in England, France and Malta during World War II, Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave is Forgiven introduces four likeable, amusing characters and puts them through hell.
Mary is a socialite turned t…
The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s debut novel is an entertaining tale that follows the unravelling of the Plumb family’s best-laid plans when the siblings’ long-awaited financial parachute, aka ‘the Nest’, i…
Utopia: Season 2
If you watched the first season of Utopia, you probably have high expectations for the second. If you haven’t seen the show before, but are familiar with the uncannily accurate and hilarious 90s news…
Relativity by Antonia Hayes
Panic, like pain, is hard to remember after it passes. Hayes pulls you into the moment like you’ve unexpectedly pin-dropped through Antarctic ice. Having seized your attention, she then introduces th…
Gut by Giulia Enders
Anyone who enjoyed Norman Doidge’s bestselling The Brain That Changes Itself will find much to appreciate in Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ. While these two organs may not…
News
This month’s most exciting new releases
Every now and then a book comes along that causes reading queues among Readings staff, caffeine over-consumption (if there is such a thing) to compensate for compulsive late-night reading, and a lot of excited discussion as reading copies are passed around. This month, Irish-born, Perth-based Dervla McTiernan’s debut novel, The Rúin, has had this effect. Bronte Coates’ review will tell you everyt…
Exciting new releases in April
In international fiction, there was almost a bookseller stampede for John Darnielle’s much-anticipated second novel, Universal Harvester. Our marketing and events coordinator Stella Charls describes it as ‘a wonderfully strange and moving reading experience’. American journalist Omar El Akkad’s American War, a dystopian novel set in a near-future where a second Civil War rages, is reviewed with r…
Exciting new releases in March
We were impressed and profoundly moved by our book of the month, They Cannot Take the Sky, a project from Behind the Wire. Our reviewer urges all Australians to read it; you can begin by reading the review here.
There’s plenty to choose from in politics this month, and in Australian studies you can’t go past The Family by Chris Johnston and Rosie Jones, which looks at the notorious Melbourne cul…
The most anticipated books of 2017
Several much-loved authors return after long breaks with new novels: Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1 is his first novel in seven years (Faber & Faber, February). Arundhati Roy also returns with The…
Elke Power interviews Jennifer Down
Those of us at Readings who have been fortunate enough to read Jennifer Down’s debut novel, Our Magic Hour, have struggled with fears that anything we say or write about this outstanding book will be dismissed as hyperbole. Admittedly, we are not the first to recognise Down’s talent. Down won th…
A note from our Readings Monthly editor
Download a PDF of the latest issue here. You can also pick up a free copy from our shops.
We will miss Martin Shaw when we wave him and his family on their way to their new adventure in Germany, but as oceans are no barrier to flurries of emails about new book discoveries, we will be saying bon voyage to Martin, not goodbye. We are excited to welcome Alison Huber to the role of head book buye…
