What’s worth reading? Our critics tackle 10 new books

his week’s books range from a tiny Polish village at the centre of the universe to the shadowy world of Cold War espionage. Closer to home, there’s outback fantasy noir, coercive control and the epic history of the Labor Party. Our critics cast their eyes over 10 new fiction and non-fiction releases.

Fiction

Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Text, $35)
This ambitious, quirky allegorical novel contains a multitude of worlds within its slim 231 pages. Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk has invented a small Polish village called Primeval (“the place at the centre of the universe”) and populated it with a multi-generational clan from 1914 onwards. Short chapters focus on different, occasionally interrelated characters, creating a mosaic of voices that move in and out of focus. There are even cameos from non-human protagonists, such as the Virgin Mary, God, mushrooms, a house, and a dog.

As expected, dramas, big and small, from births to deaths to everything in between, are exposed in this community against the background of 20th-century war and politics. It can be confusing to figure out how all the seemingly random pieces fit together and how the characters relate to one another, but if you set aside the narrative puzzle, the various episodic entries provide a rich and eventful capsule of life, and Tokarczuk’s writing is studded with lyricism.

The Hurt by Catherine de Saint Phalle (Transit Lounge, $33)
A companion book to her earlier novel about her parents (Poum and Alexandre), The Hurt is a similarly quiet book that focuses on Catherine de Saint Phalle’s account of a particular time in her life, when she was 18 and in Paris, and “Something had happened that broke me in little pieces and poured me onto the ground like a necklace …” Such an explanatory precursor to her storytelling sounds dramatic, and the reader would be forgiven for thinking it may contain elements of shock and horror.

However, The Hurt, a fictionalised memoir, is not a book of thrills, but a meandering discourse on all manner of topics, including the nuances of first love, her relationship with her parents and half-siblings, and, yes, various hurts that she suffers along the way. The narrator tells of her meeting with the self-absorbed Julien and their various interactions, but she also digresses in a non-linear fashion. On a line-by-line basis, de Saint Phalle’s prose is poetic and sensory; her sentences are full of light and air. The book’s introspection makes you want to slow down your reading.

The Doubles by Jacob K Gallagher (Hachette, $35)
A debut from the winner of the 2023 Black&White Fellowship, The Doubles is crime fiction set in a fantasy world that also features the terrain of Country and First Nations culture. An initial worry that these disparate entities may not gel is assuaged once the reader suspends disbelief and goes along for the wild ride. Fast-paced and action-heavy, the novel throws you right into the meat of the story.

The protagonist is Kring, an envoy with magical powers who hunts and evicts Trespassers, murderous monsters from another dimension that dare to enter the human realm. Kring’s new assignment leads her to Werris Creek, a small NSW town where Indigenous children have disappeared, only to be later found dead atop a mountain. Even stranger, the victims have doubles. It’s a homecoming of sorts for our plucky detective, who has local knowledge and is assisted by an officer of magic law enforcement. Jacob K Gallagher has a lot of fun with his world-building, with many different creatures roaming the pages, as well as spells, shape-shifters, and teleportation built into the story. This is outback noir with a difference.

Cold Sunset by William Boyd (Penguin Vintage, $35)
Set in 1964, during the Cold War, this thriller continues and may conclude the trilogy that stars Gabriel Dax, a British travel writer turned accidental secret agent who, in this instalment, is assigned to Russia to deliver a drawing of significance. When complications arise, Dax must smuggle his contact (a fellow spy) out of the country in a high-stakes adventure. The game’s afoot in this dangerous Boy’s Own adventure tale. If you haven’t read its predecessors (Gabriel’s Moon and The Predicament), Cold Sunset still works as a standalone novel and is full of the tropes you’d expect from a spy book: code-breaking, wartime betrayals, double lives, intrigue, and espionage.

William Boyd is a stylish writer, much like his Gitanes-smoking, smooth-operator protagonist. His vivid recreation of the ’60s gives the book an aesthetic sheen, with plenty of whisky and bedroom antics inserted between the sleuthing. The novel cares about its hero (who sees a therapist) as much as it is concerned with the twisty plot, where Dax’s complicated professional and emotional relationship with his handler, Faith Green, provides the pulse and heartbeat of the novel.

Cul-de-sac by Eleanor Limprecht (Ultimo Press, $35)
Eleanor Limprecht’s fifth novel is about the insidious creep of domestic abuse. Jacquie lives in an enormous house in Virginia with her two young children and her American husband, Brandon. They appear to lead an enviable life, all gloss and shine. But beneath the surface, there are hidden bruises, intimidation, fear, and a reluctant acquiescence to maintain the illusion of contentment. A chaotic childhood with food-scrounging moments goes some way to explaining Jacquie’s desire for security.

When she returns home to Australia for a holiday with the kids, far away from her husband’s coercive control, gaslighting, and casual violence, the clarity of distance cuts through her confusion, and Jacquie decides she wants to stay indefinitely. But Brandon is not about to let his family go without a fight, pressing for international parental abduction charges. Cul-de-sac is a cautionary tale about how being lulled by comfort and money can make you hesitate to register and call out abusive behaviour, and, more importantly, how you can reclaim your power after years of bullying. It’s an empathetic exploration of the demands of being a wife and a mother.

Non-fiction

The Light on the Hill by Ross McMullin (Scribe, $55)
They did things differently in 1891. When the shearers went on strike at Barcaldine against the pastoralists (who wanted complete “freedom of contract” and had already organised scab labour), the Queensland government sent in police, mounted troopers and artillery. The strike failed, but it was the spur for the unions to enter politics and form the Labor Party, soon after resulting in the first Labor governments in the world. It’s just one of the tales in Ross McMullin’s updated history of the most enduringly significant project in Australian political history: the ALP.

But it’s no rose-tinted portrait. McMullin incorporates the many defeats and self-inflicted splits from which it seemed the party would never recover as well as a “colourful characters” rogue’s gallery, and a pantheon of famous party heroes. Figures like Billy “the Rat” Hughes (who precipitated the party’s first split during the conscription debate) loom just as large as messianic figures Whitlam and Hawke, and the untouchables such as Curtin and Chifley. It’s an epic, even Shakespearean tale, brilliantly told: scholarly, but written for the general reader, with an ironic eye on the foibles and failures of the party, as well as its stunning achievements.

Useless Footy Stats by Aaron Delaporte and Bill Skelton (Affirm, $35)
The emphasis in most compilations of footy stats (in this case AFL/W) is usually on the outstanding, the tragic or the quirky. Useful anecdotal facts ready to throw into a conversation. The intention of Delaporte and Skelton, however, was to put together a collection of completely useless stats – and you’ve got to hand it to them, they’ve done just that.

Take player given names, for example. Statistically, over the years, whenever a Bernie plays a Bert the win/loss ratio is perfectly balanced – but all hell breaks loose when Bernies play Ernies. A stat selectors will, no doubt, consider in future. On the tragic side, they provide a large, impressive list of Essendon players who played and won in finals after leaving the Bombers. Club mascots get a gig, along with worst career starts and the best-performing moustachioed player in AFL history. Clearly, the very uselessness of these facts makes them funny, and much of the time they are – while, at other times, they’re just, well, useless.

Better Man by Ben Vasiliou (Simon & Schuster, $37)
By 2014, to outward appearances, Ben Vasiliou’s life ticked all boxes: married, “wonderful” wife, children, good job and great friends. But he had a secret – he was gay. It drove him not only to the heart of loneliness, but to the edge of suicide. Ultimately, he decided to come out and the experience of that year impelled him to examine accepted notions of masculinity, this book being the result. He’s the chief executive of The Man Cave – a mental health charity for young men with mental health problems, 75 per cent of suicides being male, 2500 deaths a year – and his study is informed by years of work.

Masculinity, he says, needs to be reconstructed and not conform to outmoded, destructive stereotypes. At the core of this is the idea of creating a space where young men can freely explore their identity, which, in turn, hinges on establishing three foundations: being able to articulate emotions, having strong internal values (not social values like “status”) and having a sense of belonging while avoiding conformity. Hopefully, all leading to the eponymous “better man”.

100 Ways I Almost Died by Bram Connolly (Allen & Unwin, $35)
While in East Timor in 2001, Bram Connolly (Special Services Commando) spent five days in a cold, wet mountain observation post observing the village below. Five days was enough. So, when base called to ask about the weather (high winds) before sending a helicopter, he lied and said it was fine. When he and his men approached the copter a powerful gust of wind knocked it sideways, the rotors lurching towards him. He felt the whoosh of the blades lift his hair.

There may not be a hundred near misses here, but there are enough to raise anyone’s hair. But what’s impressive about this account of a commando’s life is not so much the drama of the incidents, but the quality of the writing (strictly no fuss, but very effective). It also has a calm, reflective air: a kind of meditation on mortality precipitated by those moments when life hangs in the balance, leading to a deeper appreciation of just being alive. And, often, the simplest things, like the crisp dawn air when you thought you’d never see another sunrise. A cautionary tale.

Drives a Bit Funny by Stephen Corby (HarperCollins, $35)
I’ve always thought of cars as a convenience that gets you from A to B. Nothing to get excited about. Not so for petrol-head, veteran motoring journalist Stephen Corby, and it shows in the impassioned quality of his writing as well as the droll wit.

The cars he’s driven and tested are, in a sense, markers, there at key moments in his life and often informing family portraits and people he’s known along the way. His grandfather’s “battered ... indomitable Land Rover”, is symbolic of the man himself, a farmer whom Corby remembers only ever speaking “three or four words”. At other times, like being gobsmacked by the Grand Canyon, the defining car is always present. There are also memories of early days in journalism that take us back to the lost world of copy-boys and copy-takers. A memoir with vroom and style.

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