***
Night Swimming by Sharon Kernot
Fiction, Text publishing, $34.99
This very compelling thriller-in-verse is Kernot’s first book for adults, following January “Clare” Colson who is haunted by the drowning death of her best friend, Julie, when they were both teenagers. Now in her 40s, she drifts through her days in a haze of sedatives, alcohol and insomnia (“sleeplessness brings its own dangers / Its own kind of madness”) when, by chance, she runs into an older man who was also there when Julie died, but escaped police attention.
He doesn’t recognise Clare, who is invigorated by the chance to seduce her way back into his life – though her purpose is only revealed in the tense final pages. – Sian Cain
***
How to Love the World by Ilka Tampke
Fiction, Simon & Schuster, $34.99
A woman out walking in the forest is crushed to the ground by a falling bough. Trapped, Nellika must grapple with the arc of her own life and with what it means to live in a place to which she has no ancestral connection.
How to Love the World is a suspenseful narrative of survival, and a reckoning with family history and motherhood. This is an ambitious novel, one that draws deeply on the arboreal intelligence of the forest to frame urgent questions about family, survival and the more-than-human life of the planet. – Catriona Menzies-Pike
***
Wormhole: My Journey into the Dark Heart of Alternative Medicine by Hannah McElhinney
Nonfiction, Allen & Unwin, $36.99
It’s hard to imagine the grief of a relative dying during an unnecessary medical procedure in a foreign country, especially when no one in the immediate family even knew she was there – or why. This is the starting point for Hannah McElhinney’s gripping page-turner that follows the wellness wormhole her cousin went down after years of struggling with chronic health conditions.
With deep empathy but a firm eye on the science, McElhinney achieves what so many on the internet fail to do: maintain an understanding of why people with undiagnosed conditions fall prey to dangerous health conspiracies, while explaining simply and convincingly why they’re not the answer. It’s like true crime for wellness – with an urgent message.– Gabrielle Jackson
***
The Northern Tomb by Isabelle Li
Fiction, Puncher and Wattmann, $32.95
Like many, I’m wary of fiction set during Covid lockdowns (too soon! TOO SOON!). But the Northern Tomb had me absorbed from the start. Mr Zhao is an elderly widower in north-east China who begins isolation – and an unlikely intimacy – with his pragmatic, middle-aged carer, Sister Fu. Told from both perspectives (and that of Zhao’s son), the novel is as much set in the present as it is in the past, spanning 80 years of Chinese history – with fascinating detail of wars, politics and traditional life – and the grief and trauma each character is trying to transcend.
This is a quiet and melancholic story, told in unadorned sentences that belie hidden depths. With three narrators, a veil is slowly lifted on the vast gap between how each character sees themselves, and the impact they’re having on others. – Steph Harmon
***
Smoke, Rice, Water by Kishwar Chowdhury
Cookbook, Hardie Grant, $50
Lately there have been plenty of Australian cookbooks, of varying quality, that fill the “easy” and “midweek” recipe canon. So it’s a breath of fresh air to see one that writes, specifically but sumptuously, about Bengali food culture through an Australian lens.
The title of the book is a reference to the “smoked rice water” Kishwar Chowdhury served on a MasterChef Australia season finale – a modern riff on panta bhat, the humble Bengal breakfast dish of fermented rice. From these beginnings, Chowdhury unspools the rich history of Bengal food from the influence of the Nawabs and Mughals, the joys of Bangla-Chinese food, and the waters where hilsa (the national fish of Bangladesh) swim – though in Chowdhury’s Melbourne home it’s usually barramundi that simmers in the mach’er jhol, the spiced, sour fish broth that is a mainstay of the cuisine. A beautiful book. – Yvonne C Lam
***
No God But Us by Bobuq Sayed
Fiction, Ultimo Press, $34.99
The buzz around Bobuq Sayed’s debut novel is mighty loud. But when you read the opening chapter of No God But Us – set backstage at a drag bar in Washington DC – you’ll see what all the fuss is about. This book is alive.
It’s the tale of a collision: two queer Afghan men in exile. Newly outed, Delbar is moving east, away from the United States and the strictures of his family. Unable to live freely in Tehran, Mansur is moving west towards the fragile promise of Europe. When the two meet in Istanbul, it feels like destiny. But destiny is a luxury in a world of borders. The year is 2015. The characters don’t know what’s coming. But we do. – Beejay Silcox
***
At Sea by Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Fiction, Allen and Unwin, $32.99
It has been a decade since writer, activist and former young Australian of the Year Yassmin Abdel-Magied suffered intense public condemnation for a Facebook post she made on Anzac Day invoking “lest we forget” for refugees in offshore detention and people in Palestine and Syria. In that time she has moved to London and written six books, including children’s novels You Must Be Layla and Listen Layla.
At Sea is her first adult fiction, which channels some of her own experience working as a mechanical engineer on an offshore oil rig for Shell. In a pacy, thriller-like narrative, it follows Zainab, an expert driller, who has taken charge of a failing rig staffed by an all-male crew. Not only is it a hostile workplace for a young Black Muslim woman, but the rig itself is on the brink of collapse. Can Zainab convince the guys to listen before it’s too late? – Emma Joyce
Krank Fuss by Andrew Upton
Fiction, Puncher and Wattmann, $34.95
Krank Fuss is a most unusual debut novel from Australian playwright, film producer and theatre director Andrew Upton. Its protagonist is a chicken with a disfigured foot. Its conceit is that it was written by a traumatised first world war veteran for his unborn daughter and found in a briefcase after that daughter’s death. It is set on a small farm in Bavaria in the gathering gloom of the second world war. An allegory in the spirit of Animal Farm, the titular chicken explores the world around her, alongside her friend Gibby, a philosophical toad.
It is a brutish world for the animals who share our planet. Layered and beautifully written, the wonders of the natural world are on a collision course with humanity, and each other. – Susan Chenery
***
Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything by Ed Coper
Nonfiction, Allen and Unwin, $36.99
“Angry noise is our new political capital,” writes Ed Coper in his treatise on the new type of power defining not only our political and cultural debates, but trajectory. Angertainment – both the name of the book and its central concept – describes the ways in which our natural human inclinations towards anger are hijacked and harnessed in the attention economy in which only the most entertaining survive.
In a series of compelling, short and accessible chapters, Cope provides a framework to understand the forces shaping each of our lives – along with a sense of how we might fight against it. – Celina Ribeiro
