Bestsellers for July 2009

1	The Slap    Christos Tsiolkas    Allen & Unwin    $32.95
		At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event. In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires. What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.
2	We are all Made of Glue    Marina Lewycka    Penguin    $32.95
		This is the delightful third book from the author of “Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian”. Marina Lewycka is one of the funniest literary authors around and the characters in “Made of Glue” are bound to delight. Marina combines the story of Georgie, an adhesives magazine writer, whose wealthy husband has just left her, with that of the eccentric and elderly Mrs Naomi Shapiro, whose shadowy past in wartime Europe is gradually revealed. You will enjoy the unlikely friendship that grows up between the two women and the hilarious cast of characters that become involved as Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital. An ideal read if you would like a humorous book for a change!
3	Jasper Jones    Craig Silvey    Allen & Unwin    $29.99
		Late on a hot summer night in the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-out. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress. Jasper takes him through town and to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion as he locks horns with his tempestuous mother; falls nervously in love and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey Lu. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.
4	The Secret Scripture    Sebastian Barry    Faber & Faber    $32.95
		Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her one-hundredth birthday - no one is quite sure - faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene. This relationship, guarded but trusting after so many years, intensifies and complicates as Dr Grene mourns the death of his wife. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges - of Roseanne's family in 1930s Sligo - is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland. Exquisitely written, it is the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.
5	A Mercy    Toni Morrison    Random House Australia    $24.95
		On the day that Jacob agrees to accept a slave as payment for a debt,little Florens's life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress, Florens has never blended into the background and now she begins a new life with the other women in her master's household. Together they face the trials of thier harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutal landscape of North America in the 17th century.
6	The Tricking of Freya    Christina Sunley    Harper Collins    $32.99
		Christina Sunley’s debut novel, shifts from New York, to Connecticut to Manitoba to Iceland, and deftly combines Icelandic history and mythology into an absorbing family story. Freya is writing a letter to a cousin whom she never knew she had, and telling her about her childhood in Connecticut and her fabulous summer holidays spent with her Icelandic grandmother and aunt in Manitoba. Through the course of the letter, Freya tries to come to terms with her heritage, her aunt’s mental illness and her family history. Sunley’s writing style is quite unique and there is a wonderful rhythm and joy to her language, with just the right amount of detail and information.
7	Burnt Shadows    Kamila Shamsie    Bloomsbury    $32.95
		August 9th 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences –a novel mesmerising in its evocation of time and place and already nominated for the Orange Prize!
8	Chanel    Charles-Roux Edmonde    Allen & Unwin    $29.95
		She revolutionised how women looked – she banned corsets, shortened skirts and scented the world with Chanel no.5. She became an icon, but her real story only came to light when Vogue editor, Edmonde Charles-Roux, intrigued by Chanels’ carefully moulded image, decided to pursue the true history of this fascinating woman. Born illegitimate and raised in an orphanage, not by the two aunts whom she always talked of, Gabriel Coco Chanel’s story is fascinating and absorbing. This book is the inspiration for the film “Coco before Chanel” starring Audrey Tautou, but also provides a huge amount of additional information and social and fashion history.
9	Wesley the Story of a Remarkable Owl    Stacey O'Brien    Bantam    $24.95
		When biologist Stacey O'Brien met a 4 day old baby barn owl, little did she know that this fateful encounter woudl turn into a 19 year love affair. This lovely, humourous and also scientific account of the owl's life will appeal to all animal lovers.
10	In the Sanctuary of Outcasts    Neil White    Allen & Unwin    $32.95
		This is the story of Neil White, a white-collar criminal, who was sentenced to a year in a Louisiana jail in 1993. The 32 year old, saw the potential to make some money out of his story, especially as his jail was the last leprosarium in the country. He imagined that he had the perfect story, but during the time he was in jail, his wife filed for divorce and he realised that picking up the pieces of his life wasn’t going to be as easy as he had imagined. The experiences and life stories of his fellow inmates certainly taught him many life lessons – “surrounded by men and women who could not hide their disfigurement, I could see my own” he says. It has taken him fifteen years to write the book that he had imagined would be an immediate career-boosting success, but on the way since then he has picked up more wisdom to add to the lessons which he learned amongst the lepers and prison mates.

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Previous Bestsellers Lists

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3 September 2010
3 August 2010
4 July 2010
3 June 2010
5 May 2010
6 April 2010
3 March 2010
2 February 2010
28 October 2009
29 September 2009
3 September 2009
30 July 2009

Book of the Month
September 2010

Freedom
by
Jonathan Franzen