Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, Text, 2022
This is the coming-of-age story of Ned West recollected over a lifetime. Ned lives on Limberlost, an apple orchard in a Northern Tasmanian river valley. His mother is dead and his two brothers are away at war. One sends letters, the other they have no news from. His father is silent and sister distant.
Ned traps rabbits and reams of escape on the boat their pelts will help him to buy. It’s always part myth with Robbie Arnott (but this one is a bit of a deviation from the magic realism of Flames and The Rain Heron) and the natural world is ever-present in all its mystery and majesty. By the end of it, you’ll want to lay your hands on the smooth grain of Huon pine and smell the spice of it, which is conjured in such great detail. For me this gorgeous read is his best book so far. I can’t wait to read his newest book Dusk.
Australian Gospel by Lech Blaine, Black Inc, 2024
This memoir is a reminder that love really does conquer all. Lech Blaine’s parent’s Lenore and Tom Blaine foster 5 children over their life time. All of these children become a permanent part of their family. Three of them are biological siblings. They’re the children of Mary and Micheal Shelley, Christian zealots who have also had one other child removed from their care. The Shelley’s spend nearly two decades trying to get their children back through any means including kidnapping, coercion, harassment, and stalking.
This is the story of how the Blaine family survived the Shelley siege but not without cost.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn, Viking, 2023
You’ll need a quiet moment as you read this to grapple with the pointless loss of life that war is, for everyone, on any side. And even those that live, aren’t necessarily surviving.
This is a beautiful heartbreaking book about a handful of boys from a prestigious British boarding school. They’re clever and cocky and charming and they are so so young. Two of them, are in love. As war breaks out some can enlist and others have to wait until they’re older. The details of their days and the emotional attrition of the front is so evocative and well written. I didn’t think I needed to read another war book but this one is something special.
Long Island by Colm Toibin, Picador, 2024
This is the sequel to Brooklyn. Again, it centres on Eilis Lacey. 20 years have passed since the love story from Brooklyn. She’s Eilis Fiorello now, happily married with two teenage children. One day a man visits to tell her that his wife is having her husband’s baby and that he’ll drop it off with them when it’s born.
Eilis has made a decision about this. She won’t have that child brought up in her family and she hopes that her husband Tony will come to the same conclusion while she goes back to Ireland to visit her mother. Everyone’s lives back there have continued, including Jim Farrell who she was briefly together with in the past.
I liked but didn’t love this one which was a surprise. Usually, I’m instantly in for anything written by Colm Toibin but there was a distance between the main characters which made it difficult to emotionally connect – which comes back to the question of characters and if they have to be likeable or not, or what it is you need to give the reader as consolation if they can’t latch onto their protagonist.
i want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki by baek sehee, Bloomsbury, 2018
I picked this book up because of the ‘runaway Korean bestseller’ exclamation on the front and because I wanted to know what tteobokki is. It’s Korean street food, a hot spicy rice cake.
Baek Sehee has dysthymia which is a state of constant light depression. This is a record of conversations with her psychiatrist over 12 weeks. I think readers of this probably fall into four categories; those who feel seen and heard that someone else is articulating what they are feeling, those who are fascinated with our own internal journeys, those who are trying to stay buoyant with their own baggage and don’t need to be reading about anyone else’s and those who are bored by the granular details of another person’s thoughts.
She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark, faber, 2024
This collection of short stories is clever and original. It’s a dark read. Its inversions and examinations take some of the worst that the modern world has to offer especially when it comes to gender relations and violence. It’s not what my head needs at the moment, so despite the writing and ingenuity, I didn’t get very far.
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Nina Cullen 