Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
Non-fiction/fiction, PRH, $32.99
Question 7 is Flanagan’s finest book, a treatise on the immeasurability of life in the meditative story structure of memoir, history and auto-fiction. Taking its title from Chekhov’s Question 7, a parody of a school exam question, Flanagan pulls at a thread to unravel an entire tapestry.
The Booker winner travels to the metaphorical weaver, the shearer, the shepherd, and the hooved animal itself to reach into the deepest past where, as he is so astute in writing, “there is no memory without shame”. On the page we meet the author, ourselves, our country and our fellow, complicit man. – Tara June Winch
I Don’t by Clementine Ford
Nonfiction, Allen & Unwin, $34.99
Ford, the Fight Like a Girl author and marriage abolitionist, throws a grenade into the wedding-industrial complex, exploding every myth women have been sold about wedlock. In an expletive-speckled manifesto that stretches to almost 400 pages, Ford methodically outlines how “society tricks women into aspiring to marriage and then shames them into staying”.
From the entrapment of the proposal to the eye-wateringly expensive big day to the free domestic labour, Ford uses devastating facts and funny anecdotes to detail how marriage saps women’s time, energy and freedom. Whether you’re a hopeless romantic or a “pitiful cat lady”, this is a galvanising read. – Janine Israel
The In-Between by Christos Tsiolkas
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Tender might not be the first word you think of when you think of Tsiolkas, a man credited variously with destroying the middle class in The Slap and scandalising literary critics with the physicality of his pungent gay sex scenes. But The In-Between is his gentlest story, following Perry and Ivan, two middle-aged men scarred by love who find an unexpected, restorative sense of contentment with each other late in their lives.
All the while the couple must negotiate the complications of adult children, past partners, old friends, monogamy and ageing – but at the point you start feeling genuinely worried that these two old blokes will be OK, you realise you’re really loving this book. – Sian Cain
Bright Shining by Julia Baird
Nonfiction/memoir, Harper Collins, $34.99
In this luminous companion to her pandemic bestseller Phosphorescence, the journalist and TV host turns her focus to the search for grace – or “moral beauty” – in a world awash with vitriol. Drawing on science, contemporary examples and her own life and health struggles, Baird shows how we can build on our shared humanity with acts of generosity, forgiveness and courage.
The gift of restorative justice; the request in the Uluru statement of the heart; the nurses comforting dying Covid patients; Jacinda Ardern’s compassion after the Christchurch massacre; the holy man who rescued Baird from an attack in India, are all held up as acts of grace. A work to both devour and savour, Baird has, once again, written a book the world needs now. – JI
Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking by Emiko Davies
Cooking, Smith Street Books, $49.99
I call this “gentle cooking”: a genre of recipes where the methods are simple and meditative, and the results are understated yet refined. Slow television, but edible. And Gohan is the epitome of gentle cooking.
Davies, an Australian-born, Florence-based cook and author, explores Japanese home-style recipes, interwoven with her food memories of her Japanese grandparents, from braised lotus root and nasu dengaku (miso-glazed eggplant) to yakisoba and okonomiyaki. An entire chapter dedicated to rice – the literal translation of the Japanese word “gohan” – is particularly beautiful. Savour this slowly, one grain at a time. – Yvonne C Lam
Women and Children by Tony Birch
Fiction, UQP, $34.99
In Women and Children, the Melbourne-based writer, activist and academic offers a novel that tackles domestic violence. Birch’s writing is exquisitely simple, the unfurling of his narrative beguiling. At first it felt as though I was reading a young adult novel, such is the straight-forward, unpretentious tone.
The flow of events is centred on the adventures of Joe Cluny, a kid who struggles to follow the rules at school. As the novel unfolds a deeply serious story of three generations of the Cluny family and their struggle with domestic violence is revealed. – Joseph Cummins
The Conversion by Amanda Lohrey
Fiction, Text Publishing, $32.99
The Conversion continues Lohrey’s fascination with the way spaces we live in change us more than we change them. Following The Labyrinth, winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin award, Lohrey’s ninth novel takes a city solicitor to a deconsecrated church in the country after her husband’s death. How to turn a soaring space freighted with religious history and personal ghosts into a comfortable home is Zoe’s challenge.
Lohrey has serious fun with her “late conversion” and her “camping ecclesiastically” among stained glass windows and plaques to the dead. Embedded in the renovation story is a profound look at contemporary attitudes to belief, family, mental health and community. – Susan Wyndham
