Emily Paull

Captives Angela Meyer Inkerman and Blunt, 2014 9780987540126 Flash fiction might be a foreign term to many of you.  It's a relatively new term in the mainstream literary world, a genre of short fiction which describes bite-sized morsels of story, moments and thoughts that encapsulate an emotion, an interaction, the calm before disaster strikes.  It is also notoriously hard to publish. But Angela Meyer won't be unknown to you.  For a number of years now, she's been queen of the Australian Book Blogging scene, running her own website known as Literary Minded.  She's judged the AWC Best Bloggers competition Book Blogging segment.  She's written book reviews for The Australian and Crikey.  And these are just the things that I can remember about her without googling her.  I guess you could say that Angela Meyer is one of my heroes. Last month, Meyer launched her debut book, a collection of Flash Fiction called Captives .  Its tag line says it ...

This time around, we're joined by WA crime writer, Robert Schofield, whose first book Heist was reviewed by none other than... my Mum. Robert Schofield's second book, Marble Bar was released in Australia this week, with lead character Gareth Ford returning to the fray in a brand new mystery. Gareth Ford, with a cloud still hanging over him because of his involvement in the Gwardar Gold Heist, has decided to make a new beginning in the iron mines of Newman. But when he returns home from the night shift and finds his flatmate has been murdered, suspicion quickly falls upon him. He, however, fears he himself was the real target and soon discovers he is being tailed. He summons his old ally from the Gold Squad, DC Rose Kavanagh, and soon they find themselves in Marble Bar, searching for the Gwardar Gold and being pursued by a variety of desperadoes, each with their own agendas. But that's enough from me... I'm going to hand over to Robert and let him show you his beau...

Sweet One Peter Docker Fremantle Press, 2014 In a small town called Baalboorlie, up north in Western Australia, The Old Man (a decorated war veteran and Aboriginal elder) perishes in the back of a prison transport van on a sweltering hot day.  The repercussions of this event will blow the town out of the water. Sweet One, The Old Man's grandson, is informed about the death and returns home to exact justice on those involved-- with payment in kind.  As the body count rises, a journalist from Queensland named Izzy Langbourn realises that this is about more than just a story.  This is about the Truth. Part literary condemnation of the fate of Aboriginal and non white prisoners in the Australian justice system, and part crime thriller, Docker's new novel fits into a genre with other rural Australian crime writers-- Robert Schofield, Alan Carter and the like.  The book mixes a strong small town flavour with the thrills and spills of a big city manhunt, and spa...

The Glass Kingdom Chris Flynn Text, 2014 Simply put, The Glass Kingdom is a novel about the ins and outs of meth dealing, set on a travelling carnival.  It is narrated in turn by Corporal Ben Wallace, who returns to his carnie roots after being injured in Uruzgan province in a roadside bombing attack, and Mikey 'Mekong Delta', a wannabe rapper from Fremantle picked up by Ben as the show passed through. But to be less blunt, The Glass Kingdom  is an exciting novel which tests your allegiances with literary skill.  It allows the reader (whatever their level of experience with this criminal underworld) to enter a very specific slice of the world and look out from the inside. The first half of the novel is narrated by Ben.  It moves quickly.  Ben has meth, and is trying to make a killing selling it.  He seems like a nice guy, a little damaged by what he's seen and extremely sensitive about the wounds to his neck, caused by burns sustained in the att...

Only The Animals Ceridwen Dovey Penguin, 2014 Short stories can be wonderful things.  As a reader, you immerse yourself in them quickly and emerge changed not long after you begin, so long as they are written correctly.  A lot of modern short stories are what I have heard termed 'moment of truth' short stories, in which the world is presented as being something that seems normal, and perhaps even innocent at first, but by the end of the story we see that the narrator/protagonist/we are completely wrong.  It's like being punched in the stomach, yet it's pleasant. A lot of readers don't have time for short stories which is a shame.  As a result, a lot of publishers don't have time for them either, unless they are by someone who is already famous for having written a novel or two. Into this comes Ceridwen Dovey, a South African born Sydney-sider, and her collection Only the Animals .  This collection consists of ten pieces told in varying styles which fea...

We all love convenience, and what's more convenient than being able to log onto a website and search for that book/ cd/ other that we want, pay a fraction of the price for it and then have it delivered straight to our door.  But is this ease of access in the online world making us unreasonable in the real world? First, take a look at this article that was published on the esquire site earlier this week.  It was shared by lots of Perth bookshops via their Facebook pages.  I originally found it via Elizabeth's Bookshops. What's great about this article is that it's doing something.  It doesn't just sit there on the web like some angry little hate bundle, pissing people off, either because they agree but nothing changes, or because they disagree.  No, this article, by Stephen Marche celebrates real book stores and what's wonderful about them in a cheeky set of instructions on how to use them. But it also illustrates to me the root of a fairly common problem ...

BOOK: Harvest by Jim Crace Format: Hardback Although some sources name it the favourite to take out this year’s Man Booker prize, I have to say that Jim Crace’s Harvest was the title that interested me the least out of this year’s bunch.  It is one of the few that was available for purchase long before the release of the longlist, and although I’d seen it, I’d never picked it up to have a look.  From the title and the colouring of the cover, I had it pegged as a kind of rural drama, probably set in outback Australia, thus revealing my cultural bias.  In fact, Harvest is an English historical drama centred around the conversion of a small nameless village from wheat and barley farming to sheep farming.  The story begins with a broad scope, describing the landscape and the hard work being done before zeroing in to the privileged ‘I’ position of Walter Thirsk, although his name is not given away until a few chapters in to the book.  He was not born in t...

Book: TransAtlantic by Colum McCann Format: Trade Paperback (I own a copy) We're past the half way point now of last year's Man Booker Prize longlist, and I'm definitely finding that this sort of reading makes for a lot of diversity.  Colum McCann's TransAtlantic  is a series of interlinked narratives that experiment with the idea of Irish identity in relation to a changing interaction with America and Britain (depending on the level of influence these countries have in the time period used as setting.)  Narrative one tells the story of two World War One pilots who are attempting to fly across the ocean from America to Ireland, and the media furore that follows their wait for good weather.  In particular, two journalists are singled out: Emily Ehrlich and her daughter Lottie, who are tenacious reporters but outsiders in the eyes of the other journalists.  The second narrative follows Frederick Douglass on his tour of Ireland following the publication of his b...

Book:  The Kills by Richard House Format:  Hardback (Courtesy city of Melville Library) I would be lying if I said I was excited to read this particular book.  The Kills is a 1000+ page novel about American contractors operating out of post-war Iraq, consisting of four separate novels as well as interactive content if you happen to be reading the book on a tablet or kindle etc.  The four novels are: Sutler, The Massive, The Kill and The Hit.  Sutler is the codename of the character introduced in the first pages, who has already been given a new identity but reverts to his old name after he is set up to take the fall for the embezzlement of large amounts of money from a contracting company.  He takes off across the desert with a professional hitman on his tail, and the overarching figure of his boss, a man named Paul Geezler.  The Massive is the name given to a project that does not officially exist, and this the project being worked on at the t...

BOOK: We Need New Names FORMAT: Hardback (borrowed from Library) While voices in the diaspora are becoming more and more recognisable to the average reader, I would hazard a guess that only the smallest few are familiar with the vast bodies of African literature available in English at the present moment.  Books such as We Need New Names take an important step in bridging cultural differences between European/ Western societies and developing African nations because more than anything else, they highlight the similarities.  This is what struck me most about this remarkable book.  Darling and her friends are normal children.  They play games of make believe like the country game, where everyone wants to be a ‘good ‘ country like the USA or Australia or Britain, but no one wants to be somewhere like the Congo.  They play ‘Find bin Laden’.  And they hunt for guavas because they are hungry.  But this is not childish hunger- this is starvation....

BOOK: The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin Format: Hardback, courtesy Simon Clark (on loan) Weighing in at just over 100 pages (something akin to between 30 000 and 40 000 words I think), The Testament of Mary  was the shortest contestant on the 2013 Man Booker Prize longlist, and is in fact more of a novella than a novel.  While in comparison to this year’s winner, that might seem dwarfing, I have come to realise that the length of a book, its form and structure, are as much a part of the story itself.  The Testament of Mary tells the story of Jesus’ crucifixion from the point of view of his mother, Mary, who is under the watch of a few sullen guards.  She tells her story from a point of grief struck awe, not understanding what has happened or why.  The words of Monty Python spring to mind: “He’s not the messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy!”  As Mary observes her son’s influence and popularity among the people of Jerusalem, and hears of h...