It's May!

We're in the midst of my favourite season, which means it's time to celebrate all bookish things with reviews, news and giveaways of some very special books.

May 05, 2023

Hello lovely,

I hope all has been well in your neck of the woods since we last connected. Can you believe it’s May already? Don’t get me wrong, I love Autumn, it’s my favourite season but the year feels like it’s slipping through my fingers. Gah!

Before I forget, happy Mother’s Day to all those nurturing souls carrying the mental load for their families. You go above and beyond and deserve to be cherished and adored — as I reminded Miss 17 only yesterday when I did her a massive drop-everything-and-save-my-butt act of motherly love. But I also reminded her of all the other women who pitched in to get her over the line. I said, ‘this is what makes the world go around—the collective nurturing of women.’ So when I say mother’s day, I mean all of us, who are mothering, nurturing and holding up the world.

Speaking of Miss 17, she goes for her Ps next week. Oh my goodness, I hope she passes. Every night, we’ve been cruising the streets of our town like a couple of teenagers looking for a spot to make out 😊 We have, literally, been parking — as in reverse parking — over and over and over again. Guaranteed she now won’t get a reverse park in her test!

And stop the presses! Thanks to all my gorgeous lovely readers who voted for my books in the Better Reading Top 100 because The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison made the list. Woo-hoo!

I’ve read heaps the past couple of months and I have six great books to recommend to you. Plus five books to giveaway! So enough chit-chat, let’s talk books!

Better Reading Top 100

When I asked (begged?) you to consider voting for The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison and The Tricky Art of Forgiveness in the annual Better Reading Top 100, not for one moment did I think either book would actually make the list. Lightening doesn’t strike twice, right? But I was wrong, it does! A massive THANK YOU!!!! to everyone who picked The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison as their favourite read of 2022, it means the world to me. I reckon Derek would say, ‘what are the chances?’ The Doc would say, ‘none of you would be here if it wasn’t for me.’ And Joey? Mmm, maybe, ‘We’re famous, eh!’

Huge congratulations to Craig Silvey whose wonderful novel Honeybee was the #1 pick as Australia’s favourite book for the second year in a row. And well done to every book that made the Top 10.

Favourite Reads

I read a lot in the past two months, mainly because I sent my manuscript off to my publisher at the beginning of March and that means I had time to rest and recharge before embarking on a new project (aka a new book.) I don’t have the space to review everything but here’s three honourable mentions to add to your TBR.

Have you read Pip William’s new book, The Bookbinder of Jericho? I loved The Dictionary of Lost Words and couldn’t wait to get stuck into this. Given it’s been Number One on the Nielsen Book Scan Bestsellers List for the past three weeks, I’m guessing I’m no island here! I loved it. Williams has such a wonderful sense of character. Her characters are always well-rounded, delightfully flawed and totally relatable. Not to forget that it’s a fascinating story set around World War I and what happened to the lives of the women working at the Oxford University Press. Being Williams, it also delves into the issues around women’s work and women working but she handles the political with great sensitivity.

Incidentally, Kate Morton’s newbie, Homecoming is Number Two on the same list and that is what I’ll be reading once I’ve sent out this email. Can I just say, God I love a chunky book!

There’s been mixed reviews of Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest, Romantic Comedy, with claims that it’s neither romantic or a comedy. For me, that kind of misses the point but, having said that, I am firmly in the same camp as Marian Keyes who said something along the lines of ‘I’d read Curtis Sittenfeld’s shopping list.’ Written as an antidote to lockdowns, Sittenfeld recreates the world of late-night comedy. I loved it. It is witty, snappy, and razor-sharp.

Crushing by Genevieve Novak

Marnie’s adult years have been defined by a series of monogamous relationships that have each failed and provided fresh fodder to feed her insecurities. The latest, Eddie, who’d been ‘having doubts about the forever of it all’ has decided he doesn’t love her leaving Marnie curled around a bottle of her sister’s cooking wine listening to Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’ on repeat.

The clock is ticking down to her twenty-ninth birthday and Marnie is having a full-blown identity crisis. She’s tried to be the perfect girlfriend to every boyfriend she’s ever had. Maybe the only way out of this is to swear off relationships forever. She moves in with determined single, Claudia (Claud), and throws herself into the social experiment of finding out who she really is. Trouble is, that’s when she meets Isaac and his incessant flirting threatens to derail her best laid plans.

It's a truth every writer knows that second novels are really difficult. You’re never sure if you fluked it the first time and actually don’t have another worthy book in you. Novak need not worry. Her debut, No Hard Feelings, was a terrific novel and Crushing is even better. Novak has taken more risks and the writing is much bolder and more confident. In Marnie, she balances self-doubt and self-deprecation with lashing of genuine warmth and humour. Even when Marnie's pissed, she's got style! The supporting cast of Claud, Issac and her workmates, Sam and Kit, is well rounded and the perfect foil to Marnie’s efforts not to self-destruct. The plotting is tight and Novak nails the travails of being a twenty-something in this clever, funny modern rom-com. Crushing has star quality written all over it.

Pineapple Street by Jennifer Jackson

Sasha has married up, wedding Cord, one of the three Stockton children. The Stocktons are no ordinary family they are ‘one-percenters,’ the uber rich with transgenerational wealth beyond most people’s wildest dreams. Mother and father, Chip and Tilda, have generously vacated their Pineapple Street Brooklyn limestone for the pair and moved into a nearby apartment. Cord’s sister, Darley, is married to Malcom, an investment bank high-flyer, and has foregone her own career to care for their two children. The baby of the family, Georgiana, has her own apartment that would be considered well out of reach for most people working in the not-for-profit sector, because most people don’t have their own trust fund. Sasha doesn’t come from this world and behind her back the sisters call her the GD, the gold digger. Her mother-in-law, who is famous for her stunning charity events, never fails to be disappointed in Sasha’s table settings and always brings a whole other meal when they come over for dinner. Sasha married for love but moving into the upper echelons, she soon realises how different this world is from her middle-class roots.

With a setup like that, it would be way to easy to fall into the trap of thinking this will be another a novel about how the other half lives. While author, Jenny Jackson, has plenty of fun with that aspect, Pineapple Street is much much more. The novel was inspired by an article in The New York Times “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.” It’s about the millennials who stand to inherit millions they haven’t earned. In the vein of such people as Bill Gates who have made the decision to not pass the ridiculous burden of their financial success to their children, Jackson poses the question, who are these people without their trappings of wealth?

‘they felt like outside witnesses to bizarre WASP rituals.’

Sasha and Malcolm are an interesting contrast to the Stocktons. They use a code NMF (not my family) to exonerate themselves whenever ‘they felt like outside witnesses to bizarre WASP rituals.’ Though Malcom has done well for himself, he is the self-made son of a Korean family and Darley has foregone her inheritance rather than ask Malcolm to sign a pre-nup. It seemed like a good idea at the time but changed circumstances have left her wondering if she acted in haste. Which also makes Sasha’s nickname seem even more unfair as, unbeknownst to Darley and Georgiana, she did, albeit reluctantly, sign a pre-nup with Cord. And as Georgiana grows increasingly aware of what real poverty actually looks like, she starts to question why she deserves a life of privilege at the expense of others not even being able to access clean water, healthcare and reproductive rights.

Pineapple Street swings smoothly (mostly) between Sasha, Darley and Georgiana’s points of view. This allows Jackson to illustrate the divides between one person’s take on an event and another’s. It’s when the wheels start falling off the various Stockton’s lives that things get truly fun and interesting. Jackson has an acute eye for character and the juxtaposition of the one-percenters’ view of the world versus the rest of us. But it is also a novel about the peculiarity of families, the secret codes, the shared stories and the shorthand that comes with being deeply embedded in each other’s lives. This turns out to be as true of Sasha’s family as it is of the Stocktons.

It's also about marrying for love and the dawning realisation that some differences grow sharper with time. Interestingly, while this is Jackson’s debut novel, she’s mostly well-known as a ‘literary hitmaker’ publishing the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Emily St. John Mandel and Kevin Kwan. Thanks to lockdowns, she had time to create this this fictional universe to replace real-life people watching. Pineapple Street strikes all the right notes. It’s a fantastic romp, well-written and smart as a whip.

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

Orphaned at six years of age and raised by her grandfather in New York City, Clover has always lived to a very small orbit — struggling to make friends, afraid to put herself out there in case she gets hurt, preferring to observe than to be observed. None of this is helped by the fact that she has been fascinated by death since her first-grade teacher toppled over from a massive heart attack right in the middle of reading the class Peter Rabbit. She’s grown used to the fact that most people think she’s morbid and weird. Having studied thanatology (death science) at university, she now works as a death doula. Clover spends her life helping the friendless, the lonely and the frightened make that inevitable transition from life to death and what may lay beyond. She keeps a record of their final words in three separate journals — advice, confessions and regrets.

But when a new neighbour moves into the apartment downstairs and she’s asked to help nonagenarian, Claudia, reconcile to her past in her final days, Clover is forced to confront that her efforts to protect herself from getting hurt have meant that she’s forgotten what it means to live. Armed with her journals of wisdom, Clover, who has endured more grief and loss than any person should by her age, slowly learns the lessons of life that have always surrounded her as she opens her heart to a world of possibilities.

‘Grief is just love looking for a place to settle.’

All the hype around this delightful, heartfelt, uplifting book is real. It’s no surprise The Collected Regrets of Clover has already sold into over 22 countries and the film rights have been snapped up. Mikki Brammer must be pinching herself. Comparisons to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine are obvious, particularly in the at-times hilarious way Clover navigates life in the real world. All the characters are simply wonderful, from her fellow tenants, Sylvie and Leo, to the gorgeous Claudia and (without giving too many plot points away) the love interest. The Collected Regrets of Clover might be a book about death but as Clover herself says, ‘Grief is just love looking for a place to settle.’ Clover’s story is set to touch many hearts deeply. Everything about it indicates it’s going to be a huge hit.

Giveaways Galore!

Thanks to the good folk at HarperCollins Publishers, I have two copies of Crushing to giveaway. And thanks to the good folk at Penguin Random House, I have three copies of The Collected Regrets of Clover to giveaway. To win a copy of either title, all you have to do is send me a reply email with the answer to these questions (or both if you’d like a chance to win both books.)

Crushing by Genevieve Novak
What is the name of Marnie’s love interest?

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer
What does Clover do for a living?

**Remember, winners will need to be Australian residents because, postage.

Upcoming Events

StoryFest

Thursday June 15 to Sunday June 18, 2023

StoryFest is on again in 2023! Regional festivals have such a great atmosphere and really, who needs an excuse to spend a weekend talking books and writing and ideas on the glorious NSW South Coast? Program details are available on their website www.storyfest.org.au. Some events have already sold out so don’t leave it too long to buy your tickets.

From Page Turner to Premiere

It’s every writer's dream to have their books transformed onto stage or screen. Or is it? Join Markus Zusak (The Book Thief was released as a film and now The Messenger has been made into an eight-part ABC television program) and Pip Williams (The Dictionary of Lost Words is taking to the Sydney Theatre Company’s stage in October) to explore the reality of taking the story from the page to another place. Hosted by Meredith Jaffé.

South Coast Writers Festival

Friday 18 to Sunday 20 August 2023

The South Coast Writers Festival returns in August to Wollongong Town Hall. It was so much fun last year and I’m looking forward to returning for two events in 2023. More details to come. Tickets go on sale June 30.

New Voices Down Under

Thank you to everyone who signed up for the New Voices Down Under newsletter and for all the lovely comments. If it slipped your mind, it’s not too late to sign up in time for the May newsletter, coming out on the 28^thover here. It features some fantastic new fiction, including giveaways plus we’ll be chatting with Naima Brown, author of The Shot about her journey to publication.

And if you’d like to read my reviews and be in the running to win a copy of one of these fantastic titles, then make sure you subscribe before April 21 and answer the giveaway questions. You can find the April edition of New Voices Down Under over here.

The end of the cup …

Well, my friend, my cup is empty. I hope you've found some wonderful new books to add to your (teetering?) To Be Read pile. I wish you all the best for the coming months.