Karen

Staff Review: Karen writes: I adore Sadie Jones; she is so mean to her characters. The Uninvited Guests is her third book and again we see her wind her characters tighter and tighter in the stultifying boredom, anxieties and morals of their middle class British lives. Her books have been set in the early to mid-20th century so the appearance of propriety is important. Sadie then has a small incident interrupt her character's day and the resulting emotional maelstrom shifts their place in the world irrevocably. Her writing controls the tension so beautifully that I find myself literally holding my breath when I read her books... yet not much actually happens. This book set in the 1920s explores the relationships and secrets of a family living and about to lose their lovely manor house, Sterne. It's Emerald's 19th birthday and there's to be a small dinner in her honour. That night there's a train derailment and they must accommodate some of the passengers. The ending is truly surprising and quite a departure for Sadie.

Staff Review: Karen writes: It's a glorious January day in Sydney. At Circular Quay there's a bit of a breeze keeping the humidity at bay and during the afternoon the inevitable evening storm will brew. Ellie and James were lovers as teenagers and they are meeting for lunch. Catherine, an Irish tourist, is exploring the area and Pei Xing, now retired, is visiting old friends and haunts on her way up the North Shore. The stories are interwoven and connected by more than that single sunny day. Everyone is weighed down, by various degrees, by their past. Pei Xing has survived the Cultural Revolution; Catherine, the death of a beloved brother and James feels responsible for a tragedy that happened on his watch. Gail Jones is a writer of inordinate skill. She weaves seamlessly complex narratives and explores even more complex emotions with an elegance and clarity I've rarely encountered. It's going to be a humdinger of a Miles Franklin shortlist in 2011 and Five Bells will set a very high bar.

Staff Review: Karen writes: In a year full of excellent Australian fiction Foal's Bread stands apart for me. I'll mention the contenders to give context. Gail Jones's Five Bells, Anna Funder's All That I Am, Charlotte Wood's Animal People Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper and Alex Miller's Autumn Laing are all marvellous. I wouldn't be a Miles Franklin judge for quids. I had such an emotional reaction to Foal's Bread ,and still do, that it's become my favourite novel of 2011. I've thought long and hard about why this is and it's because the characters of Noah or Noey as her family calls her, and her daughter Lainey have haunted me since my first reading a few months ago. The vulnerability and toughness of those women is echoed in the superbly rendered landscape in which they live. Mears brings this world, the landscape and the characters to life so vividly with prose so exquisite and lightly placed that I often paused to reread the sentence. The novel is set before WW2 in north east NSW. The land is beautiful but unforgiving. The Nancarrow and Child family scratch a living from it and are gifted horse people with a history of being prizewinning high-jump riders. In those days the country show high jump circuit was profitable and prestigious. Noah Child and Rowley Nancarrow meet at the local show, fall in love and begin their lives living with his family on One Tree Farm. Noey's toughness, learnt and innate, is her saviour and her downfall. There's a fierceness and courage in Noey that makes her immensely appealing. &quot;Hope on, hope ever&quot; is a family refrain that partly sustains her and makes for an ending so poignant that I blub still. It's a refrain that sounds a little corny in a modern context but feels very authentic when your head's in rural northern NSW with the Nancarrow family. Mears dialogue, with just the right vernacular, is crucial in the recreation of this world.<br />This book gave me goose bumps on the second reading and I am rarely moved to do a second reading.

Staff Review: Karen writes: This is a fabulous and fascinating cook book about the art of baking breads, cakes both small and large, biscuits and desserts. Dan is quite the writer as you'd expect from a bloke who does, among other things, a weekly column on baking for the Guardian. A small taste (sorry): I truly believe that life is improved by cake. Cake soothes and charms all but the stoniest of attitudes, and brings a shine to the eyes of even the grumpiest children. And from the happiest to the saddest of life's experiences, icing and soft crumb give us something sweet to cut and eat quietly when we've run out of words. There's lots of technique to master but explanations are very clear. Recipes have excellent warnings about tricky bits which is nice to know before you cook and there are also hints on how to save a dish if something goes wrong. At 561 pages there are tons of recipes. They all sound delicious, many slightly different to what I've seen in other cookbooks and not terribly fancy. This is definitely not Zumbo territory but more that tasty treat that doesn't take forever to shop for and bake. It will be going next to my Cook's Companion as the go to baking book in our house.<br />

Staff Review: Karen writes: Miranda Kennedy is an American journalist who took herself off to India as an unaffiliated journalist determined to have an experience in India beyond that of a tourist. She has an idea that this experience will be the making of her. Her family had gypsied around the world so she wasn't a completely naive traveller.She is particularly interested in the status and view of women in India. In a rapidly changing country old and new values and expectations collide and the role of women in this new world is fascinating. India is a very conservative society where the status of women seems to revolve around family no matter what your education or employment. Miranda has to fake a husband to get a flat in New Dehli and to the horror of her friends and neighbours rescues a couple of flea bitten moggies from life on the street. Despite being a foreigner she manages to immerse herself in some of the local life and make friends with three women. It's through their stories that we get to know a little of the lives of women in this era of change. Miranda is a wonderful writer with a curious mind and lets herself and her reader experience New Delhi and the role of women without much judgment. I found it a compelling snapshot of New Dehli and of the writer as she absorbs some of India.

Staff Review: Karen writes: These poignant stories are about characters slightly out of place. Stories about validating a secret love, coming home to a village that has no memory of you or living in an alien culture, make wry commentaries on human behaviour. Restrained, exquisite prose makes this selection of stories an absolute treat.

Staff Review: Karen writes: I can't tell you how reluctantly I approach a war novel. It was only the donkey bomb that got me through those first few pages. Toploader by Ed O'Loughlin is a marvelous, cynical account of a nameless war in a nameless desert. The vested interests are military hardware corporations, media conglomerates and egotistical, corrupt officers trying to get ahead. Hapless foot soldiers armed with the best military bling keep the local inhabitants walled in and just surviving. Children throw rocks at remote controlled tanks. It could never happen! Toploader refers to a missing washing machine, top of the line mind, that must be retrieved after being used as part payment of a bribe to a reluctant double agent. This book is hilarious but very black, almost painfully so. Ed O'Loughlin's previous novel, Not Untrue And Not Unkind was long listed for the Man Booker. Toploader shows that nomination wasn't a fluke. He is a superb writer. Not recommended for members of Peta but highly recommended for everyone else.

Staff Review: Karen writes: This is a fascinating, compelling portrait of middle class Britain before WWI, in particular the struggle for women's suffrage. Will is from a privileged background and is a rising star in county cricket. Tamburlaine is a famous cricketer whose career is waning and Connie is a bright middle class girl whose family lives in more straightened circumstances since the death of her father. After a long illness as a child she became fascinated with the idea of becoming a surgeon. She studies for a year at the London School Of Medicine but has to drop out to earn a living when her dad dies as her brother's university education is given preference. Connie believes that giving women the vote is a matter of logic and commonsense and she is part of the suffragette movement as it escalates from peaceful marches and debate to violence against property, notably the smashing of windows. Her resulting imprisonment changes her and her relationships with those closest to her. This novel is as cool and calm as the character of Connie. The human frailty of the characters gives it poignancy and the history of the suffragette movement makes it fascinating. It's a subtle, beautifully written portrait of an age.

Staff Review: Karen writes: If you loved David Simon and Ed Burns' The Corner or Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets then Alphaville will appeal. Before Rudy Guilliano started his controversial clean up of New York the Lower East side was a ghetto filled with drugs and the violent crimes that accompany the drug lords and the junkies. Mike Codella is a Sicilian Italian American who grew up in Brooklyn. His dad was a cop but his granddad was a wise guy. They were the two career choices in his neighborhood as he was growing up. In the late 80s policing was about statistics and results so a partially blind eye was turned towards cowboys within the police force. Mike and his partner Gio were headed in that direction. He wasn't taking bribes but he had no compunction in setting up a "bad" guy if he got a conviction. I love his honesty about the adrenaline rush this gave him until he was pulled up by a respected, "by the book" superior. What is also very appealing about this book is the history the authors weave throughout. The waves of immigration and the housing policies and politics of the area over the years are fascinating.

Staff Review: Karen writes: This terrific novel explores the young lives of Neil and his friends, who grow up in Sydney's Sutherland Shire. Neil goes off to Uni in Bathurst, Courtney studies in Sydney and Stu and Gordon pursue business interests, nefarious and otherwise. How It Feels poignantly and sometimes hilariously, explores what it is to belong, what's important in life and how we learn that. It does it beautifully in prose that seems effortless. There is no sense of trying too hard with words that don't fit that sometimes occurs in first novels. What is exceptional and hopefully will get the book shortlisted for various prizes and a hence bigger readership is the perfectly pitched voices of the teenage characters. It's most noticeable when a page is turned and Neil is an undergraduate at Uni. It still makes me smile. This is a wonderful, wonderful book and is one of my favourite novels of 2010.

Staff Review: Karen writes: Between 1958 and 1962 Mao Zedong unleashed his Great Leap Forward. Not much was known about this period until the recent archive law which has released thousands of documents and material into the hands of researchers. The radical collectivisation of almost everything leads to the unnecessary deaths of at least 45 million people. Previous estimates had put this figure at between 15 and 32 million deaths. This book places the Great Famine as the pivotal point in the Maoist regime. The result of the Great Famine was almost social and political disintegration as people schemed and fought to stay alive. From this disaster, orchestrated by Mao, rose the Cultural Revolution in 1966 also orchestrated by Mao, as he struggled to retain his power. In fact it would be difficult to plan such rampant waste, so ludicrous a trade policy, such ridiculous agriculture practices and the destruction of so many infrastructures. Forty percent of housing was lost as the building were razed and crumbled to provide fertilizer for the fields. Dikotter makes such an overwhelming event accessible and brings home the impact on the lives of the Chinese people living in the countryside and the cities. It's a fascinating place to start investigating the Maoist regime. For a good general overview try The Penguin History Of Modern China by Jonathan Fenby. I would also recommend a rather curious perspective of the beginnings of the cult of Mao in The Long March by Sun Shuyun.

Staff Review: Karen writes: This excellent stand alone Sci-fi novel deals with what makes us human. The world is divided by faith. A chaotic impoverished majority have rebelled against the wealthy science/atheist community and most are locked out of the rich Balkan city-state. Robots fulfil service and policing roles and some, covered with a layer of living flesh, called syntecs, are even programmed to fulfil a person's sexual fantasies. A virtual world that hooks up to the human brain can fulfil almost every desired human experience. As robots become more sophisticated and self taught the question of sentience is raised. George, a comfortably off white collar administrator, becomes obsessed with Lucy one of the syntecs who service a high class "brothel". George's job takes him into the frontier lands and when Lucy stops behaving as programmed he flees to these lands with Lucy in tow. There is terrific tension in the novel as the powerful wealthy city state and the superstitious masses try to appropriate the sentient or holy, depending on your view; Lucy for their own ends. This novel raises all sorts of fascinating issues, many contemporary, but it never loses the powerful narrative that makes it so enjoyable.