BOOKCLUB RECOMMENDATIONS MARCH 2010

Trespass    Rose Tremain    Random House    $32.95
	Rose Tremain has tried her hand at many different genres, with huge success. Her ability to take us into another time and place is outstanding and she does it again with this psychological thriller set in the South of France. From the very first paragraph we know that we are entering dangerous territory and the suspense doesn’t let up. Her cast of characters – two elderly French siblings trying to hang on to their family home, whilst hating each other at the same time and two elderly English siblings trying to make a new home in France, are set on an inevitable collision course. The French countryside is described as both inviting and inhospitable at the same time and the title “Trespass” resounds through the book on many levels. Fantastic writing.
Where Have you Been?    Wendy James    UWA Press    $32.95
	This book is also a thriller, dealing with the age old story of the missing sibling. Susan’s sister, Karen, went to her school ball and never came back. Her family have long given up on their hope that she might still be alive, but when Susan’s mother dies and her will reveals that her estate has to be shared between Susan and Karen, the family lawyer suggests advertising to see if Karen is still alive. Before long Karen (or Carly as she is now called) comes back into Susan’s comfortable life in suburban Sydney, but is she all she claims to be? Deceptively simple, this book exerts a mounting tension and involvement over the reader, with characters that we can all relate to and motives and reactions that demand to be examined.
Mornings in Jenin    Susan Abulhawa    Bloomsbury    $32.99
	It has been commented that this heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel could do for Palestine what “the Kite Runner” did for Afghanistan. Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulheja family are settled into the Jenin refugee camp. Exiled from their beloved olive trees, they face the challenges of the camp with varying attitudes and hopes and fears. Covering three generations of the family, this book clarifies the indignities and sufferings of the Palestinian nation and forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflicts of our lifetimes. Originally printed under the title “Scars of David” in 2006, this book has been re-issued to wide acclaim.
Counterpoint    Anna Enquist    UWA Press    $32.95
	This beautiful novel comes with your own copy of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on CD. In the novel, the unnamed woman practises the same pieces of music and muses back over her life. She is coming to terms with the death of a child and reflecting on her life, family, music and desparately trying to master the technicalities of the music. Anna Enquist is a Dutch musician, poet, psycho-analyst and writer and this novel has been beautifully translated. Despite the dark themes this is very readable and thought –provoking.
Nothing to Envy    Barbara Demick    Fourth Estate    $35.00
	Journalist Barbara Demick spent 10 years covering North Korea – a sinister country, which makes the world of Orwells’ book “1984” seem real. It is a country where Big Brother is everywhere and noone is allowed to have an opinion or a life as we know it. Through the eyes of a defector, Mi-ran, Barbara shows us the more human side of North Korea, where people still fall in love and have memories of a better time before the present regime. Excellently researched, with fascinating photographs, this is a really interesting and absorbing book.
A Brush with Mondrian    Yvonne Lewis    Allen & Unwin    $29.95
	Yvonne Louis’s family emigrated from the Netherlands to Sydney after the second World War and brought with them a few precious family treasures. Especially important were several paintings, which as time went by became more and more fascinating to Yvonne. Her efforts to discover whether they were painted by the famous Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian, took her on many eventful trips to Holland and this was combined with finding out more about her extended family. An intriguing mix of family history, art detective story and personal search for identity, this is a well-written and beautifully illustrated book that pleases on many levels.
Our Father who Wasn't There    David Carlin    Penguin Aus    $32.95
	David Carlin was six months old when his father committed suicide in Bridgetown, West Australia. This beautifully written memoir, which combines the known and the conjectured, is a masterful piece of writing and combines facts that David has researched carefully with beautifully written pieces that fill in the gaps. David confronts the silence surrounding suicide and mental illness in a gentle and moving way and also creates a cameo of life in Western Australia in the decades surrounding the Second World War.

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