here are 10 new books

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The week’s reviews cover everything from addiction to how to live a better, if not longer, life to how to leave your guidebooks and bucket lists behind when you travel to Japan.

FICTION SELECTION OF THE WEEK

frog song
Melissa Manning
UQP, $34.99

Melissa Manning has won the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction for her suite of interconnected short stories. smokehouse. his novel frog song takes us into the intensities of first love derailed by grief and addiction. Growing up together near a local watering hole, Caro and Danny are childhood friends who fell in love in high school. Young and fervently in love, they spend their summers lazing around dreaming of college and careers and living a life together. When Danny’s mother dies, he is traumatized and spirals into drug addiction, social isolation and self-sabotage. He then disappears, and with no sign of returning, Caro is torn between her loyalty to Danny and her need to protect herself. by Helen Garner Monkey Clutch True to the ’90s grunge genre, love and addiction are prominent in Australian literature, and Manning’s contribution captures the emotional turmoil of loving an addict with lyricism and nuance. Closer to Luke Davies Sugar He’s better than Garner in terms of his lyricism; but the opposite is true of his psychology and the complex conflict of loyalty and desire that haunts Manning’s novel.

Self Worth
Emma Tholozan
Clerk, $27.99

The trope of the goose that lays the golden eggs gets a strange, late-capitalist makeover in Emma Tholozan’s work. Self Worth. Anna, a twenty-something from Paris, has a degree in philosophy and no job prospects. To make a living, he performs in a TV show that warms up the audience. Anna lives a cramped lifestyle in a small apartment and is soon joined by her new boyfriend, Lulu, who is also a wage slave. Their luck changes one day when Lulu vomits up a 20 euro bill. He continues to spew out cold hard cash on a regular basis. Anna soon begins using it as a human ATM. Since money doesn’t matter anymore, he goes on a crazy consumption spree and everyone starts treating him differently. Will their love survive if the ATM runs dry? Will Anna mistreat Lulu to get her to leave her? The execution of Tholozan’s absurd, parable-like premise is not as strong as the concept. There are plenty of witty passages and a flurry of shallow cuts, but the social satire can bite deeper into the psychology of wealth (and poverty) and our world’s viral obsession with social status and success.

Dandelion is Dead
Rosie Storey
Borough Press, $34.99

Poppy is still mourning the loss of her sister Dandelion when she decides to look at Dandelion’s smartphone seven months after his death. There, she discovers a dating app message from a man named Jake to her sister, and in honor of Dandelion’s reckless attitude, she decides to assume her sister’s identity and go on a date with him. This crazy prank turns into something else when Poppy finds, to her dismay, the smoldering chemistry between them. This is a problem for Poppy, given that she is in a long-term relationship with another man, Sam. God knows how Jake will react when he finds out Poppy pretended to be a dead woman to seduce him. The main character ignores the frozen pain he feels for his sister, gets carried away by the excitement of a new love, and eventually has to confront the complex web he has woven with emotional honesty. Some of the dialogue is almost Ozploitation-level with its overuse of retro-sounding Australian vernacular, adding offbeat humor to the intriguing maelstrom of love and grief.

Hello World?
Anna Poletti
Staples and Wattmann, $34.95

Digital confusion both stabilizes and weakens this feminist text. Anna Poletti Hello World? Following in the tradition of Pauline Réage and Anais Nin, it explores some of the perversions, tensions and contradictions related to gender, sexuality and power through sado-masochistic play. Our guide is Seasonal, a non-binary woman originally from working-class Australia. After being dumped by her Dutch partners in the Netherlands, Seasonal is left at loose ends and begins a series of intensely erotic online exchanges with male submissive Laszlo. While Seasonal must reckon with the misogyny and gender-based violence in his own past, Laszlo’s manic desire to be dominated coexists with his need to escape the rising tide of authoritarianism in Hungary under Viktor Orban. Can they create intimacy and freedom outside of gender stereotypes? Using online messages in novels might be a departure, but they are turned into poetry in this subversive erotica that explores dom femme dynamics and dives headfirst into the myriad meanings and mysteries of the sexual fetish world.

Rebirth
Antun Jesus
Hachette, $34.99

Anton Issa Rebirth is a novelization of his mother’s experiences of love and war and her escape from Lebanon to Australia in the 1970s. It follows Laila Khalil as she comes of age. Born into a poor Catholic family in Beirut, Laila is expected to marry as her family wishes, but it is Nicholas, a local hairdresser, who wins her heart. Their courtship is conducted in the shadows, and Laila’s overbearing father is sure to disapprove. Then the Lebanese Civil War breaks out, resulting in tragic loss of life, and Laila faces the prospect of a crucial move to Australia. New hope, cultural adaptation, and the guilt of leaving a homeland that will never seem to be the same again are woven into a complex knot of emotions in Issa’s novel. With obnoxious whistle-blowing about the “values” of immigrants to Australia and the ongoing and terrible cost of the war in Lebanon. Rebirth It offers a compelling narrative of a Lebanese Australian family on an intimate family scale; a narrative that honors loss but affirms and emphasizes resilience and connection.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

In Progress
Lucinda Holdforth
Summit Books, $29.99

A Japanese tale tells of an old woodcutter who came across a stream that reversed the aging process. He tells this to his wife, who rushes to drink it. When he doesn’t return home, he goes looking for her and finds her transformed into a baby. In this article, Lucinda Holdforth addresses the pressing question of who holds the old dolls we transform ourselves into over lifetimes that extend far beyond our capacity to enjoy them. Instead of a healthcare system determined to keep people alive at all costs, we need to shift the emphasis to “helping people live well and die well.” Holdforth, who is in her early 60s, understands that demographics are skewing society in favor of older people like herself, to the detriment of young people and caregivers, the majority of whom are women. In this impressive and courageous work, he calls us to reject the “narcissism of dictators and long-lived technology companies” in the name of a society that is aware of its duty to everyone.

When Words Fail Us
Stan Grant
NewSouth, $26.99

“A career full of words left me with nothing to say.” That’s how Stan Grant felt when he stepped away from the coal water of journalism and the noise of public life. In these meditations, he wrestles with how to speak from a place of healing silence. Echoing the example of Jesus on the cross, he says: “His truth was that we are one another… You could say our tears are our common language.” Grant looks to touchstones (philosopher Simone Weil, writer Albert Camus, Ngarinyin mystic Bungal David Mowaljarlai) to help him understand what might lie beyond traditional notions of time, history, identity, politics, and rights. It does not compromise on conventional modes of public debate, pushing the boundaries of language to find new ways of creating meaning. To hear what Grant is saying, we must leave our favorite slogans at the door and be open to what Weil calls “mystical activism.” “Not asking how can I fight for you, but simply – which is much more difficult – what are you going through?” An activism that asks:

Periodic Bitch
Emma Hardy
Allen and Unwin, $29.99

Most women know something about the mood swings that come with hormonal fluctuations. But what Emma Hardy experienced every month was beyond measure. He felt manic, out of control, a stranger to himself. When she was first diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, the condition was only vaguely understood. Although she was relieved to discover that her feelings of madness had a biological origin, she was troubled by the fact that the disease seemed to confirm myths about women as unfortunate victims of the menstrual cycle. Melbourne’s Covid-19 lockdowns form the backdrop to this clearly written, self-aware memoir, further heightening the intensity of Hardy’s already heightened emotional swings as he documents life and love in the midst of the situation. What could have been a claustrophobic story is given mood and broader perspective through forays into popular horror, crime, and medical narratives that shape our understanding of the monstrous feminine.

Take Care of Your Feet
Rosalie ham
Allen and Unwin, $34.99

Working as a nurse in aged care has impressed Rosalie Ham on two things about aging. Mobility makes a big difference; so it’s important to pay attention to your feet, and dementia can be fun. Or not even dementia: “The old people were downright honest after a lifetime of being polite, ladylike, and good-natured.” The freedom to please yourself and speak your mind without caring what others think is rightly celebrated in this memoir about coming of age, along with a wide-eyed readiness to laugh at yourself and your peers. While a part of me recognizes and cringes at the stories of hearing loss, memory loss, and sagging flesh, the joke is also valid for younger generations who can’t believe these things will happen to them. After regaling his grandchildren with stories about his friends’ cracked knees and shingles on their hips, Ham adds with sly delight: “One day you’ll remember laughing at old people’s injuries, and that day you’ll fall or cut your ingrown toenail.”

Secret Japan
Jane Lawson
Approval Press, $35

Inspired by Zen Buddhism, Jane Lawson advises readers of this travel guide not to let expectations and to-do lists blind them to the incidental rewards of “wandering around without an agenda.” Instead, he encourages “conscious travel,” providing the building blocks from which readers can create itineraries tailored to their particular interests at a pace that allows for serendipitous experiences. In addition to chapters on the 47 prefectures of Japan’s main islands, Lawson also includes meditative reflections from 40 years of traveling the country. His tendency is to avoid peak seasons and pay attention to weather variations between islands and the microclimates within them; Information that can make all the difference when chasing cherry blossoms in the spring or maples in the fall. With its pinpoint details about towns and villages, traditional handicrafts, food and beverage and natural features, this guide is like a concentrate that you can dilute according to your taste. A solid foundation for designing personalized journeys open to serendipity.

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