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A selection of books out in Australia in March 2017
A selection of books out in Australia in March 2017. Photograph: Steph Harmon/The Guardian
A selection of books out in Australia in March 2017. Photograph: Steph Harmon/The Guardian

Ariel Levy, Krissy Kneen, Cat Marnell – literary highlights for Australia in March

This article is more than 7 years old

Shadowy cults, Paul Robeson-inspired travelogues, stories of rape and reconciliation, and a Booker prize winner are coming to bookstores this month

The Restorer by Michael Sala (Text)

Things are strained when Maryanne returns to her husband Roy after a year-long separation. They move to Newcastle, near the water, into a house that has been ravaged by fire, determined to make a fresh start. But their teenage daughter Freya lashes out, distancing herself from her parents and their new life. Their eight-year-old son Daniel retreats into his own imagination. And Roy struggles to keep his temper.

Delivered in evocative and atmospheric prose, Michael Sala’s domestic drama is tense and filled with foreboding – a further demonstration of the literary chops that earned him a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and a regional Commonwealth Book Prize for The Last Thread in 2013. – SC

Available now.

The Crying Place by Lia Hills (Allen & Unwin)

The curiosity in Lia Hills’ novel The Crying Place comes from the way it was first recorded – orally spoken and taken down with voice recognition software in order to get closer to traditional methods of storytelling. And there’s a certain rhythm in the notes of this novel, which follows the story of Saul, a young man trying to get to the mystery of his oldest friend’s unexpected suicide.

Saul tracks the path to truth via a journey to the centre of Australia, where the landscape takes hold and doesn’t let go. Themes of guilt and grief take centre stage in the desert as he gets closer to the truth. – LC

Available now.

An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen (Text)

If the difference between pornography and erotica is artistic merit, Krissy Kneen’s work falls firmly into the latter category. Regularly explicit but never trashy, Kneen’s writing about sex is daring yet nuanced; her narrative choices are considered, confident and politically aware. She has a particular talent for writing the body: even when her work departs from titillation – as in 2013’s Steeplechase – it is still rich, fluid, and intense.

How could virtual reality change sex? How could it change us as people, as animals, and our relationships with each other? These are the questions An Uncertain Grace considers, and while the novel begins and ends with sex, the terrain it traverses between the covers is varying, complex, fascinating.

In the opening pages, Liv gives Caspar, her former professor and lover, the opportunity to experience their affair all over again – but through her eyes, her skin, this time. Later, she works with Ronnie, a child sex offender; then with Cameron, a robot. The fusion of explicit sex and technology is not to everyone’s taste, but for those willing to wade into more challenging waters, Kneen’s erotic imagination and her deep capacity for empathy makes her one of the most interesting writers in Australia today. – SC

Available now.

The Family by Chris Johnston and Rosie Jones (Scribe)

How did a yoga teacher from Melbourne manage to pull prominent doctors, psychiatrists and scientists into her orbit, amass a fortune, and bring 500 of her “children” into a community in the Dandenong Ranges, convinced that she was Jesus reborn?

“I think LSD helped,” documentary maker Rosie Jones told Guardian Australia in February.

Jones’ new film about the infamous cult that surrounded Anne Hamilton-Byrne is being released alongside this book, co-written by Chris Johnston. Together, they shed light on the unlikely existence of The Family: a group originally named the Great White Brotherhood, which was built on a hodgepodge of religions, new-age spiritualism, UFOs, and the apparently overwhelming charisma of its leader.

Hamilton-Byrne collected 28 children through bogus adoptions and “gifts” during the 60s and 70s, dressing them in identical clothes and bleaching their hair; they were allegedly fed acid and kept under an abusive regimen until they were removed in police raids in 1987. The cult leader is still alive in her mid-90s, and living with dementia – and at least one believer the writers spoke to claims her cult is still alive as well. – SH

Available now.

No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson by Jeff Sparrow (Scribe)

The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who have heard of Paul Robeson, and those who have not. Guardian columnist Jeff Sparrow’s new book is for both of them: an investigation into the life of one of the great cultural and political figures of the 20th century, and a critical reflection on contemporary politics in light of that story.

As an actor, Robeson’s commanding presence transformed even the most marginal roles into works of art; as a singer, his distinctive bass-baritone moved audiences to tears. He could speak fluent Russian, German, Yiddish, a number of African dialects, and could sing in scores more. He was also a multitalented sportsman who was once tipped as a likely challenger for world champion boxer Jack Dempsey.

Robeson’s extraordinary achievements are all the more remarkable when considered in light of the ruthless opposition he faced – not only as a black man and the son of a former slave in Jim Crow America, but as a committed communist and left-wing activist. Hauled up before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 50s, Robeson refused to recant his left-wing beliefs; his career was subsequently destroyed and memory of him erased almost completely from the public consciousness.

Sparrow traces Robeson’s life through the places where his reflection can still be seen – from the streets of Harlem, to the mining towns of Wales, to the battlegrounds of the Spanish civil war and the snow-covered monuments of Moscow – and asks, what can the lessons of Robeson’s life teach us about politics today? – SC

Available now.

South of Forgiveness by Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger (Scribe)

When Icelandic woman Thordis Elva was 16, she was raped by Australian man Tom Stranger. Nine years later, she decided to write to him – setting in motion eight years of correspondence and, eventually, forgiveness.

Written by Elva, with contributions by Stranger, this book – which follows on from their 2016 TED Talk – has become one of this year’s most controversial literary talking points. Earlier this month, London’s Women of the World festival dropped the pair from its lineup following protests; activists said Stranger’s appearance would give a rapist equal weight to his victim, normalise sexual violence, and be triggering for survivors. A petition signed by 2,300 people argued that presenting Elva’s decision to forgive as a “model approach to addressing sexual violence” could have far-reaching consequences for an already under-reported crime.

Elva has defended the book and its promotion, saying on ABC program Q&A earlier this month: “Forgiving was, for me, so that I could let go of the self-blame and shame that I had wrongfully shouldered, that were corroding me and basically ruining my life … [The book] is not about applauding the rapists ... It is about a rapist giving voice to the immeasurable hurt that he caused.”

Scribe has since released a statement clarifying that Tom Stranger will be donating any money he receives to a women’s shelter in Reykjavik. The majority of proceeds will go to Elva. – SH

Available now.

The Last Wolf (and Herman) by László Krasznahorkai (Tuskar Rock)

Written in a single sentence lasting 70 pages, The Last Wolf by Hungarian great László Krasznahorkai is set in Berlin, where a former professor of philosophy is telling a Hungarian barman a story about the last wolf seen in Spain’s barren Extremadura region. The professor’s story tracks the movements of both the wolf’s hunters and the animal’s last moments.

Guardian reviewer Claire Kohda Hazelton says the 2015 International Man Booker prize winner’s writing “is physically affecting: the prose never pauses and so we are compelled to hold our breath. Tension is profoundly magnified and the wolf’s death and the professor’s deep insecurities become all the more vivid and unsettling.” – LC

Available now.

Photograph: Simon & Schuster

The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel (Simon & Schuster)

“Why would a 20-year-old man abruptly abandon the world? The act had elements of a suicide, except he didn’t kill himself.”

Writer Michael Finkel poses the central question of his book, A Stranger in the Woods, about Christopher Knight, who at the age of 20 abruptly left his life and drove into the woods in Maine where he lived as a hermit for 27 years until he was arrested for stealing food – after thousands of covert raids on holiday cabins, pilfering food to stay alive.

Finkel scored a series of interviews with Knight and extracted an extraordinary story about solitude, community, identity and freedom. You can read an extract of the book here. LC

Available now.

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins (Granta)

“From the first page you know you’re in the hands of an exceptional writer,” says Zadie Smith of this collection of short stories by Kathleen Collins, a black woman married to a white man, and a former civil rights activist who wrote stories in the 60s and 70s but never saw them published in her lifetime: she died in 1988 at the age of 46.

Guardian reviewer Colin Grant says many of Collins’ stories are inversions of the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with young black female protagonists. “These sexual and racial adventurers contravene social mores and upset their class-conscious relatives, whose aspirations for family members’ courtships and unions with the lighter-skinned do not extend to dangerous liaisons with white folk.” – LC

Available now.

The Intrusions by Stav Sherez (Faber Fiction)

Stav Sherez consolidates his growing reputation as an exciting new voice in UK crime fiction with his third book in a series starring Detectives Carrigan and Miller. A young woman has disappeared from Bayswater and the investigation reveals a frightening new world of online stalking and obsession.

Guardian UK reviewer Laura Wilson suggests catching up with the other books in the series to be clued into the background, but says The Intrusions’ main plot, “with its online gaslighting, misogyny and obsession, is utterly riveting and truly terrifying”. You may never, she says, look at your computer the same way again. – LC

Available now.

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me by Bill Hayes (Bloomsbury)

At the age of 43, after his partner of 16 years died in bed next to him from a sudden heart attack, author and photographer Bill Hayes moved his broken heart from San Francisco to New York. He “felt at once at home”, he writes: “In the haggard buildings and bloodshot skies, in trains that never stopped running like my racing mind at night, I recognised myself.”

This is a memoir as much about the city and insomnia as it is about falling back in love – this time with British writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, three decades Hayes’ senior. Bound together by both intellect and attraction, their relationship, Hayes writes, “was something more [than love], something I had never experienced before. I adored him.” The pair remained together for eight years until Sacks died in 2015.

Amid his whimsical, romantic snapshots of the city, Hayes’s book is broken up by fragments from his diaries at the time, which offer delightful insight into Sacks’ absurd, endearing and extraordinary mind at play. Sacks getting high with Hayes; Sacks, perplexed by a celebrity death (“What is Michael Jackson?”): and Sacks, 75, falling in love for the very first time, whispering to his lover in the middle of the night: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could dream together?” – SH

Available now.

The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker (Scribe)

Mel and Sharon meet in an art class at an East Coast college and bond over their passion for classic cartoons. Ten years later they are an acclaimed animation duo, sharing “a piece-of-crap studio in the armpit of Bushwick”.

The pair is struggling to follow up their first film – and when they decide to leave the city to write a film about Sharon’s troubled past (at Mel’s urging), their creative and business partnership becomes strained – as does their friendship.

This debut novel from Kayla Rae Whitaker, 33, draws from the writer’s own obsession with classic cartoons, and her own history: her character Mel is in recovery, and Whitaker herself was in AA by the time she was 21. The complexity of intense female friendships seems all the rage in popular literature right now – but rarely are these friendships drawn with such insight, and rarely are they complicated by business as well.

“The Animators crackles with intelligence,” writes Guardian’s Sian Cain. “Whitaker’s remarkable ear for dialogue reads as if Aaron Sorkin wrote an episode of Girls. She expertly captures the dynamic that exists between women when they’re alone with each other, when performative parts of femininity dissolve.” – SH

Available now.

How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell (Ebury Press)

Cat Marnell became known in the early 2010s for her no-holds-barred “beauty” columns on xoJane: colloquial, freewheeling confessionals with titles like I Snorted A Line Of Bath Salts In The Office Today, which were more about Marnell’s addictions, sex and parties than they were about product lines.

But as commenters questioned the outlet for continuing to finance and profit from the writer’s freefall, she quit in 2012: “Why spend another summer meeting deadlines ... when I could be on the rooftop of Le Bain looking for shooting stars and smoking angel dust with my friends?” she explained at the time. (“We both agreed she wasn’t doing her job,” wrote her editor and friend Jane Pratt.)

So in 2013, when Simon & Schuster offered Marnell half a million dollars to write a memoir, not everyone was pleased. What followed was two stints in rehab, a near-overdose on heroin, and two years of panic and shutdown: “But if I didn’t write it, they were going to sue me,” she recently told Rolling Stone.

Written in her love-it-or-hate-it style, the resulting addiction memoir presents itself as an anti-advice book, propelling you through the drug-fuelled and public meltdown of a writer who is not yet out of the woods. There’s a strange kind of guilt that comes hand-in-hand with that, so: approach with caution. – SH

Available now.

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy (Fleet)

Ariel Levy, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of 2005’s investigation into “raunch culture”, Female Chauvinist Pigs, “defied convention, and then her life fell apart.”

Having put her writing career first and waited until her moderately comfortable mid-30s to focus on having children, The Rules Do Not Apply is Levy’s interrogation into her own deliberate subversion of convention and the spectacular way in which those structures collapsed around her, leaving her without a roadmap in some of the most difficult times of her life.

Hadley Freeman writes for Guardian UK: “It is not the book that many expected would follow Female Chauvinist Pigs, not least because it could be spun as a warning to women about the perils of waiting too long to have a baby ... The alternative way of looking at Levy’s memoir is that she is dealing with a subject that feminism has never been able to resolve: the immovable rock of fertility, butting up against female progress.”

Guardian reviewer Emily Witt writes: “This book is so stark and succinct it can be read in one afternoon, and Levy’s honesty is blistering. The first publication of the account of her miscarriage shredded through the middlebrow nicety of the New Yorker house style like a tornado through a cornfield. The expansion here disappoints only when it veers into what the feminist author Rebecca Traister has described as the ‘don’t forget to have a baby’ school of literature. The joke being: as if you could forget.” – SC

Available now.

This article was corrected on 20 March 2017, with a book listing removed: The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel was first released in Australia in 2016, and has been re-issued in a smaller format.

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