Winner Best Young Adult Novel Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards
by Mandy Sayer
When Mark Stamp fires an air gun through the window of his father's shed, he's afraid he may have damaged something. But what he discovers is far worse. Peering through the broken window, he sees such a horrifying sight that he has to flee for his life.
[Via Lisnews]
A New York City bookstore, McNally Jackson, has mounted an exhibit not of new books, but of books that inspired President Barack Obama as a young man in his 20's. The exhibit is entitled "How History Was Made: Books that Inspired a President." Read more ...
The Hour I First Believed: A Novel
by Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times). In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life.
The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.
Sorry Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
by Gail Jones
A story of sacrifice, silence and forgiveness from Jones (Dreams of Speaking, 2006, etc.).Perdita Keene is a little girl growing up in the Australian bush in the late 1930s. Her parents are English. Her father is an anthropologist, but his studies of Australia's native people are never going to produce bold, revelatory theories about primitive humans, and he is never going to return to Oxford as a renowned scholar. Her mother had no idea, when she got married, that her husband would take her to the remote ends of the world. Her only consolation is Shakespeare. He is her religion, and she knows whole plays and sonnets by heart. The Keene marriage is a loveless one, and they make no effort to shield their daughter from the knowledge that she was a mistake. The only kindness Perdita has ever known is that of Aboriginal caretakers, and her only friends are misfits. Billy is deaf and mute - generally considered to be an idiot - and Mary is a native and an orphan. The fulcrum around which this novel revolves is the murder of Perdita's father. The narrative returns to it again and again, each time revealing new information. When Perdita finally understands what really happened, when she struggles to find a proper response to her new and horrible knowing, the story resolves into an allegory about Australia, about the lopsided and lamentable relationship between white settlers and natives. Allegory is not, of course, a form known for its rich character development, and readers seeking narrative intimacy will be disappointed. Jones has a cool, ornate style. She always chooses the philosophical over the mawkish, the universal over the particular. This keeps her tale of neglect, abuse and murder from descending into melodrama, but it also keeps the reader at a distance. Jones's rhetorical flourishes are often arresting, but her psychological insights tend toward the trite.Poignant, but unsatisfying. (Kirkus Reviews)
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Frantic Winner: Best Crime Novel -
by Katherine Howell Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards
In one terrible moment, paramedic Sophie Phillips' life is torn apart - her police officer husband, Chris, is shot on their doorstep and their ten-month-old son, Lachlan, is stolen from his bed. The police suspect Chris is involved with a number of armed hold-ups and that the attack is revenge for his desire to distance himself from the robberies, but Sophie believes the attack is much more personal - and the perpetrator far more dangerous... While Chris is in hospital and the police, led by Detective Ella Marconi, are moving heaven and earth to find their colleague's child, Sophie's desperation to make amends compels her to search for Lachlan herself. She enlists her husband's partner, Angus Arendson, in her hunt for her son, but will the history they share prove harmful to Sophie's ability to complete her mission?
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First choice ... Kate Winslet as Hannah in The Reader.
An award-winning film is the latest success for this philosopher-turned-prolific author, writes Steve Meacham. Bernhard Schlink - considered by some to be the finest legal philosopher-turned-best-selling fiction writer - is jubilant.
At home in wintry Berlin, he's just heard the news from sunny Los Angeles: Kate Winslet has won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress as Hannah in the movie of his hit novel, The Reader.
And I thought I should really point out that the Darwin biographical comic is coming out very soon because it sounds interesting, its a project with some educational as well as entertaiment value (a good way for those who might not pick up a science book to still fill in some gaps in their knowledge of one of the key theories underpinning modern biological sciences) http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=11193
Over seven days the writers at the Guardian have recommended the best books to read about crime, war, fantasy, travel, science fiction, family and love. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/1000novels
A technology blogger named Mark Hurst was reading Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth on a Kindle e-reader recently, and made a fascinating discovery. It began when he noticed Follett’s repeated use of the phrase “his heart in his mouth.”
Longlisted for the Australia Asia Literary Award
by J. M. Coetzee
Novelist Coetzee's 19th book features a stand-in for himself: Señor C, a white 72-year-old South African writer living in Australia who has written Waiting for the Barbarians. C falls into a metaphysical passion for his sexy 29-year-old Filipina neighbor, Anya, and quickly plots to spend more time with her by offering her a job as his typist. C's latest project is a series of political and philosophical essays, and Coetzee divides each page of the present novel in three: any given page features a bit of an essay (often its title and opening paragraph) at the top; C's POV in the middle; and Anya's voice at the bottom.
Diary of a Bad Year is an ingenious work that rivets the reader's attention, and it cannot have been easy to write.
It turns out in the end that Coetzee has written a sometimes sentimental love story that plays out nicely to the legato accompaniment of his pronouncements, political and cultural, some of which hit the bull's eye while some come to the verge of pomposity. I said "his pronouncements," but of course they are JC's essays, which is a reminder that not everything in Coetzee's novel is as it seems. Except this: Lovely Anya has her heart in the right place, and JC is lucky enough to understand that. Is the experimental form the story took a success? I was amused and at the same time hoped that the marvelously inventive Mr. Coetzee will move beyond it.
