How it Feels

by Brendan Cowell

Picador. Australian, Adult fiction. Paperback, RRP $22.99

The artist, the businessman, the bouncer and the girl. Three best mates and a girl friend growing up in the Sutherland Shire, all finishing their final year of school together – out for the last hurrah. Over the course of their last night as high schoolers an action soon becomes a chain reaction and nothing will ever be the same again…

Over a decade later, at the wedding of two of the friends drugs, debauchery, alcohol, sex, lies, deceit come to a head with powerful consequences.

Neil, Gordon, Stuart and Courtney – four friends, four tortured souls. One becomes famous, two find each other and another dies. What happened to this friendship and the twisted existences of these main players?

How it Feels is a book that is powerful, graphic, interesting and modern. It is very dark, disturbing and confronting with a touch of comedy. I can’t say I liked it but then I couldn’t put it down. I won’t stop talking about it either.

those who come after

by Elisabeth Holdsworth

Picador. Australian, history. Hardcover RRP $29.99

Juliana Stolburg is an Australian woman who has travelled the world as an intelligence specialist for NATO. She has now come to the end of her amazing career and looks forward to what will follow. Juliana’s life has been eventful and drawing from her colourful family background, past and present, she relates to the audience how she has arrived at where she is now.

From Middelburg in the Netherlands to a farm outside of Goulburn, the life of this diplomat has come to a fork in middle age. Juliana is looking at living with her husband, Oscar, on his mother’s farm in Goulburn – that is until Oscar meets Frederick. Her last living relative, Lady Katrien, has died and Juliana is left the surviving family jewels and a small castle, Buitenrust, surrounded by German bunkers in Middelburg. She must travel back to her ancestral home to sort out the paperwork and decide what is to be. Oscar and Frederick decide to tag along.

Juliana is the narrator of her story and we meet her titled famous family and travel along with them on their journey through two wars, floods and droughts - her Jewish mother who is tortured in Dachau and survives to live a strange existence; her eccentric father who loves his daughter and wife but also his motorbike and his job. When Juliana’s father’s parents die he decides the best course of action is to take his precious family to Australia, a warmer place, a place where they can mend their bodies and minds.

those who come after is slow to start but soon you are caught up in this marvellous mismatched group of characters and the surprises keep happening. There is no hero or heroine. There is no suspense. Instead there is one wonderful woman’s story.

http://eholdsworth.com/

The Fear

The Last Days of Robert Mugabe

by Peter Godwin

Picador. Biographical. Paperback rrp $34.99


Guest Reviewer - Di Bates

‘Bearing witness’ is a phrase usually associated with religion, but there is no missionary zeal about the way in which the author bore witness in Zimbabwe. It’s June, the year is 2008 and elections – marked by intimidation – have just been held in the African nation. Robert Mugabe’s increasingly tyrannical rule should be at an end as the people have overwhelmingly voted out him and his MDC party. However, instead of conceding defeat, Mugabe digs in his heels and retaliates against those he considers his enemies.

As a background to the 2008 election, it helps to know that Mugabe had earlier formed a coalition government with Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), but he removed Nkomo in 1982. In 1984 the two parties were merged as ZANU – Patriotic Front, as Mugabe moved to convert Zimbabwe from a parliamentary democracy into a one-party socialist state. His rule was marked by violence and intimidation and by a decreasing tolerance of political opposition. Long-simmering political tensions between Mugabe and the opposition party, headed by Morgan Tsvangirai, led to the 2008 hotly contested presidential election and a protracted political crisis.

Into this uneasy climate enters Godwin, an international journalist from America who has previously incurred Mugabe’s displeasure. Author of Mukiwa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, Godwin decides to document the unfolding calamities that beset the post-election period as the tyrant Mugabe sends his ZANU-PF thugs to plunder, destroy, rape, torture, mutilate and kill his opposition.

This is not a book for uneasy stomachs, but it is a book that needed to be written. As he travels the country, Godwin listens to many stories of survivors who speak their truths with great courage and belief that justice will prevail. Many of the stories are truly horrific; whole villages were decimated as death squads roamed the country and many were imprisoned in the worst of gaols. Zimbabweans called this period The Fear. Diplomats, farmers and ordinary people risked their lives to end the deaths and destruction. Godwin bore witness to the carnage over a three month period before leaving the country.

Finally, on the political front, an agreement for a power-sharing government was reached in September 2008. Mugabe would remain president but would cede some power to Tsvangirai, who would become Prime Minister. The power-sharing government was implemented in February 2009.

As a post-script to the book, tensions rose after Mr Tsvangirai was injured and his wife, Susan, was killed in a car crash on March 6, 2009, that many of his supporters believe was an assassination attempt. Mr. Tsvangirai, though, called it an accident. In 2010, Mugabe was still in government.

Dianne (Di) Bates
http://www.enterprisingwords.com/

Room

by Emma Donoghue

Picador. Adult fiction. Paperback rrp $32.99

Reviewed by Barbara Brown

What sort of story do you get when you have a small boy who has never been outside one room?

Jack has just turned five and he and his Ma live in Room. Jack has been brought up in Room and thinks that he and his Ma and Old Nick are the only ones in the real world. The un-real world is in the television.

Old Nick kidnapped Ma seven years before and has kept her in a sound proof reinforced room. Now Ma is worried for her and Jack’s life. Old Nick got angry and cut their power a few days ago. What if he doesn’t turn it back on? Ma has to ‘unlie’ to Jack about the real world to try and get him to help lead the escape to Outside.

Can Jack really save himself and Ma? How can an isolated five-year-old manage to get help from the real world all by himself? ? Will Jack be able to interact with others when he has only ever known Ma?

Room is a wonderful story told through the eyes of Jack. A boy who, after escaping Room, has to learn everything, from wearing shoes to walking up a staircase. Although the story of Ma and Jack is horrifying, but told through Jack eyes, it is an uplifting story of a child’s innocence and resilience. I cried and cried. Brilliantly written. Brilliantly crafted.

http://www.emmadonoghue.com/

Madigan Mine

by Kirstyn McDermott

Picador (Pan Macmillan Australia). Adult Fiction, Australian. Paperback, rrp $32.99


The story starts with Madigan’s funeral. Alex is sorry she’s dead but relieved the relationship is over and she can’t reach out to him again. He wants to leave the past behind and that includes any association with the “marionettes”, his name for Madigan’s friends and followers. He wants to forget the bad memories.

Madigan was the love of his young life, a childhood sweetheart. When her family moved overseas he was devastated. Many years later she returns, keen to renew their friendship. They quickly become lovers.

As a little girl, rich and beautiful, Madigan always got what she wanted. ‘Mine’, she used to yell. Now Alex belongs to her. He’s aware of her possessiveness but it’s not a problem for him. “Madigan, mine,” he thinks in return.

At first, Alex refuses to see that Madigan’s behaviour is often irrational and unbalanced. She has a genetic heart condition that could kill her any day and uses her fear of death to justify increasingly erratic activity. Alex readily believes her excuses. Because she is sick. Because he loves her.

His friend Ruth warns him that Madigan is dangerous but Alex ignores her advice. As Madigan becomes more irrational and threatens Alex with a knife, the relationship unravels. By the time she commits suicide, they have parted.

But Madigan has found a way to hang on to Alex even in death and her purpose is chilling. This dark and supernatural thriller will keep you awake at night but that won’t stop you from reading it. A real page-turner.

http://kirstynmcdermott.com/

The Lost Art of Sleep

by Michael McGirr

Picador. Australian, Adult Non-Fiction. Paperback rrp $32.99

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

McGirr is the author of the brilliantly entertaining, Things You Get for Free. His writing is never only about the theme he has chosen. It encompasses all the nooks and crannies of the subject, engaging the reader with his humorous and entertaining narrative style, which speaks of life and the many encounters along the roads travelled. Since the birth of their first child Benny, followed by twins soon after, McGirr and wife Jenny have searched for that lost treasure, sleep. The subject of sleep, or the lack of it, is the thread that binds all the chapters together in this exceptional book.

Woven into the many stories and reflections, are factors connected to sleep such as beds and other places of rest, sleeplessness, sleep apnoea, narcolepsy, the drugs prescribed, and documented stories about these points. There are quirky stories of where and how people slept or what kept them awake (like the story of coffee), and the famous people that lived and functioned with very little sleep either by choice or the lack of options.

These cover the story of Colin Sullivan, a leader in the field of sleep medicine and his discovery of the breathing masks that saved thousands of lives. He also delves into history and the life and writings of the ancient philosophers for examples; into Shakespeare’s work and sleeping arrangements right up to uncovering the bed he willed to Anne Hathaway; the sleep habits of Thomas Edison, Charles Dickens, John Milton, Mark Twain, R.L. Stevenson and Winston Churchill, amongst others. Added is the fascinating story of Florence Nightingale who took to her bed after the Crimean War and stayed there for fifty-four years, dying at ninety.

Each chapter is a magic box that is filled with entertainment, surprise, and the unexpected. At times moving and compassionate, and at other times filled with humour and laughter, it is always brilliant, clear and precise. A gifted writer, McGirr was a former Jesuit priest who left that calling in 2000, and answered the writing call which has benefited the world.