What we read in April
Others were Emeralds by Lang Leav
Growing up in Whitlam, a Sydney enclave bustling with the Asian diaspora, Ai, the daughter of Cambodian refugee parents, navigates the familiar terrain of adolescence alongside her friends Brigitte, Bowie, Tin, and Sying. Though aware of their parents' histories, their final years of high school unfold with anticipated milestones, until a sudden, senseless act of violence fractures their close-knit group and irrevocably alters the course of Ai's life. Leav's narrative delicately and thoughtfully explores themes of otherness and coming-of-age in 1990s Australia.
A collection of interconnected short stories set in the remote coastal settlement of Pātea in the North Island, capturing life in the town through the eyes of a small group of young boys and a few girls. Peeling potatoes for a tangi, manuing into the local pool or listening to Poi E on repeat, these stories are deceptively simple, timeless and beautiful.
Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath
Samantha Strong is a community stalwart, a hardware store owner, a cyclist and a serial killer. She has a mantra - don't murder the locals. But when bodies of Sam's friends start turning up in her own idyllic town, she knows she has a problem.
Brambly Hedge meets Dexter. Cute and bloody.
This book is the result of local author and journalist Arnold's 9 months walking te Araroa 'northbound' from Bluff to Reinga. Apart from being funny and tear jerking, emotional and heart warming, it's really well written, enticing readers into our stunning outdoors through her evocative and beautiful language. A must read for any lover of tramping and doing insane things.
The Night of the Scourge by Lars Mytting, translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin
It's the late 1930s and while modernisation and electricity have arrived, war is also looming over the remote Norwegian community of Butangen. The old pastor Kai Schweigaard, still atoning for a mistake he made two generations earlier is now in his 80s and knows his time is short. But will his death be that prophesied in the long lost Hekne weave? And up on the Hekne farm another generation is coming of age, the twins Astrid and Tarald and their blind sister Esther are making their own ways in the world. And when the Nazis invade Norway, the loyalties between brother and sister, neighbours and friends are tested by five long years of loss, war and destruction. Mytting masterfully weaves (ahem) the stories together bringing the series to a satisfying conclusion. I will miss all these wonderful characters so much.
Read the first two books in the Sister Bells series here.
A woman - artist, mother, wife - takes herself on a cross country road trip from Los Angeles to New York, but flounders a mere 20 minutes from her home, coming to rest in a roadside motel, and falling in lust with a young man she meets there. All Fours is in turns bizarre, insightful and thought provoking but I'm not sure I enjoyed it that much.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
In the grim tenements of Thatcher's 1980s Glasgow where the closure of the mines have put men out of work and brought women to the bottle, young Shuggie Bain can only watch as his mother drinks herself closer and closer to death. Bullied in the playground, abused at school and abandoned by his father, Shuggie's story is one of the desperate love of a son for his mother and the brutal realities of poverty and addiction. A stunning book.
When a hodgepodge group of people up past midnight - bar tender, hotel manager, reporter - stumble across an open grave in an abandoned churchyard, they follow a trail of clues to an unlikely ending. Mixing horror with dark academia, this is a short but fun outing.
The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke
A gorgeously illustrated fairytale/fable of a young woman and her animals in a wintery wood. Clarke, the author of the Women's Prize winning Piranesi and fantasy classic Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is an imaginative and adventurous writer.
In post-war Bristol, Moira and Evelyn, two middle class sisters on the cusp of adulthood attend a dockside party. Hadley deftly captures the 1940s style of writing in this novella that has shades of the Mortmain sisters in I Capture the Castle.
Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq translated from the Kanada by Deepa Bhasthi
A collect of short stories of Southern Indian Muslim women, some brutal and bleak, others rather sweet. All detail the second class nature of the women, from those forced into effective servitude to lawyers and wealthy wives. While not all stories gelled, they were illuminating and eye-opening.
