'The Flatshare' by Beth O'Leary

Received from the Publisher 

FROM THE BLURB: 

Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they're crazy, but it's the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy's at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time. 

But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly-imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven't met yet, they're about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window...

'The Flatshare' by Beth O'Leary is a debut fiction novel, coming out in Australia on April 23.

My first read of 2019 and it’s a favourite! Beth O'Leary’s 'The Flatshare' was AMAZING - I inhaled it in two days, and then went back for a re-read straight away. 

"Tiffy & Leon share a flat. Tiffy & Leon share a bed. Tiffy & Leon have never met."

It's a clever romantic premise that plays out in duelling-narrative chapters, when our protagonists initially communicate via Post-It notes left around the house, and by picking up on one another's moods, days, and personal battles via the social-cues left around the flat. Interestingly, Beth O'Leary says she got the idea for this set-up while living with her doctor-in-training boyfriend, when he worked long hours and she perceived his mood from things like how many coffee-cups were left on the drying-rack, and if his runners laying out meant he'd managed to squeeze in some exercise before work. 

What elevates this novel and the romance aside from the quirky and ingenious premise, are the personal obstacles Tiffy and Leon are overcoming. For her it's a recently disintegrated long-term relationship, and the dawning realisation that her ex was a lot more possessive and calculating than Tiffy ever allowed herself to examine. For Leon, it's his brother who is in prison and currently campaigning for appeal - coupled with his job as a palliative-care nurse who is trying to track down the long-lost love of one of his patients ... eventually these various threads that account for a lot of Tiffy and Leon's anxieties that leave an imprint on the flat, leak out into their real-world evolving relationship with brilliant results. 

Honestly, I need this quirky love story to be adapted into a rom-com movie (my request is for Riz Ahmed to play Leon) because my SOUL needs it! I haven’t fallen so hard for a book and its author since Rainbow Rowell’s 2011 debut ‘Attachments’ (which ‘The Flatshare’ gave me some vibes to in the best way, plus some Mhairi McFarlane feels - which you KNOW means a lot coming from me!)

And, honestly, I haven't instantly re-read a book as soon as finishing since Sally Thorne's 'The Hating Game' - which is high-praise indeed! 

'The Flatshare' is a stellar debut, and needs to be on everyone’s must-read list because Beth O’Leary is a UK author who KNOCKS IT OUTTA THE PARK first time out. Wow.

5/5 

'This Will Only Hurt a Little' by Busy Philipps

Sent by the Publisher in exchange for an honest review

From the BLURB:

A memoir by the beloved comedic actress known for her roles on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson's Creek, and Cougartown who has become 'the breakout star on Instagram stories . . . imagine I Love Lucy mixed with a modern lifestyle guru' (New Yorker).

Busy Philipps's autobiographical book offers the same unfiltered and candid storytelling that her Instagram followers have come to know and love, from growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona and her painful and painfully funny teen years, to her life as a working actress, mother, and famous best friend.

Busy is the rare entertainer whose impressive arsenal of talents as an actress is equally matched by her storytelling ability, sense of humor, and sharp observations about life, love, and motherhood. Her conversational writing reminds us what we love about her on screens large and small. From film to television to Instagram, Busy delightfully showcases her wry humor and her willingness to bare it all.

'I've been waiting my whole life to write this book. I'm just so grateful someone asked. Otherwise, what was the point of any of it??'

*** 

‘This Will Only Hurt a Little’ is Busy Philipps’ memoir, available in Australia by Hachette and available from October 16.

Confession – I instantly flipped to the “Is This It” (The Strokes) chapter of Busy’s memoir when it arrived. The ‘Dawson’s Creek’ chapter – because how could I not? This was the show that defined my teenage years of yearning, and a couple of weeks previously myself and a bunch of rad people on Twitter had concluded an epic live-Tweeting re-watch of all six seasons (#PaceysCreek). We had all been in agreement that Busy’s character of Audrey Liddell had been a low-point in an already terrible final two seasons of a once-great show … but we were also all in agreement that upon re-examination as strong, feminist adults – Jen Lindley and Michelle Williams had been the true breakout star of that show, and we were all smitten with her and Busy Philipp’s best-friendship that had its start in Capeside.

So I flipped to the gosh-darn ‘Dawson’s Creek’ chapter because I wanted goss – particularly on Busy’s sure-to-be-truthful observations as a late-comer to the show and how the dynamics played out by then. And she did not disappoint … or – maybe she did – but not in her gossip content delivery, just in shattering some of my teen idols;

Josh really fancied himself “one of the guys” with the crew. The Creek’s very own mini George Clooney! He’s a good guy and just wanted to be well-liked but I wish I’d known the term “mansplaining” when I met Josh. His ability to turn a conversation into a dissertation was incredible.

Dang it, Pacey! 

There’s also a lot of hints given about the tensions on set between the cast by this point, as Busy points out;

One day, the whole cast was sitting around a table filming the Thanksgiving episode, and James looked at me and said, “See? You got lucky. Your show was cancelled after the first season.”’ 

Gossip delivered. But the chapter offers a lot more than just the Dawson’s Creek revelations I had hoped for… Busy highlights the many ways she was made to feel inadequate about her weight and appearance on the show, particularly in being constantly compared to the “breakout star” of Katie Holmes. The chapter also takes a sharp turn when September 11 happens in the middle of a break from filming, and Busy needing to take a flight back to Wilmington from LA despite being terrified – as everyone was in those days – of getting back on a plane and then having to carry on with life and work. In the wake of it all.

I felt so silly at work the next day, dressed in a costume for the Halloween episode. The world was fucking ending and I was trying to get Joey Potter to come to a party with me. I remember there were a lot of pep talks about how this is what we do. We make entertainment for people so that they can escape the real world for forty-three minutes a week. It’s not without value or merit. It’s important to not just tell stories, but also to remember to entertain. Any anyway, someone’s got to. May we well be us.
And so we did.

And she delves into how she started drinking as a coping mechanism for all the ways the world sucked, and she was made to feel shitty in her little corner of it. The chapter ends on a doozy of a scathing and on-point one-liner and it pulled me up short. Hang on. I was mostly looking forward to this memoir for the celebrity gossip, but … could it be that Busy is actually a good writer?

Yes. She is. A damn fine one, in fact.

I went back to the beginning and then I didn’t stop – I ended up reading the whole book through to 1AM when I finished, teary-eyed and a little weak from the punches she packed.

This memoir is GOOD. Not just good … bloody brilliant! It’s up there with ‘Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?’ by Mindy Kaling and Tina Fey’s ‘Bossypants’ for comedic memoirs … but it’s also more than that. It’s a memoir by an actress in the wake of #MeToo and Harvey Weinstein (who – yes – she knew, but not the extent of his depravity). An actress who is pulling no punches about the toxic masculinity and patriarchy upon which Hollywood is built and Busy acquiesced to for a long time.

Case in point: Busy had the idea for the 2007 film ‘Blades of Glory’ and shared it with her boyfriend at the time who agreed they should write a script together … until he and his brother took the idea and ran away with it, even having the audacity to shop it around without Busy’s name on it, though she’d also contributed to the writing. Luckily she’d registered the idea with the Writers Guild of America screenwriting credit system and they ended up having to credit her, since there was a sufficient paper-trail proving her ownership (so it was fear of potential litigation rather than letting a woman own her damn work as the right thing to do!)

Busy dissects these moments, and many more (including – yes – the one the media has chosen to pick apart in James Franco’s treatment of her on the set of ‘Freaks and Geeks’). But she doesn’t just talk about them in the context of Hollywood. Busy’s memoir – starting from when she’s a child and then a teenager in Scottsdale, Arizona through to her college years acting and early established career – is a searing personal critique of all the ways she tried to contain herself to please men in her life. Tried to be less than, quieter, prettier, thinner, agreeable, laid-back, loving … even at the expense of her own happiness and mental-health. It even results in her convincing herself that being raped at the age of 14 was something that she wanted from the boy, because she convinced herself to love him to make the event “okay” in her own mind.

‘This Will Only Hurt a Little’ isn’t just a memoir. It’s a searing, honest and fantastic examination of a young woman taking control of her life, career and identity. I also got this idea that it’s a little bit ‘La La Land’ meets ‘Lady Bird’ (a film I hated by the way, for its feeling directionless and pointless – but after reading Busy’s memoir I now wish more than ever that Greta Gerwig’s film had some of her beats and honesty to coral it).

The most impacting chapter to me was ‘Tear in Your Hand’ (Tori Amos) which delves into Busy’s first true teenage love affair that ends with an abortion and then winds up somewhere miraculous. It’s a chapter that you feel down to your bones, and is so incredibly literary perfect – I want to see it reproduced in The New Yorker or made into an indie movie (again – better than ‘Lady Bird’ in all ways) or maybe even fictionalised into a contemporary YA novel. This is the chapter that sealed the deal for me – and not just because it shits all over James Franco’s ‘Palo Alto’ wankery. But because it’s genius, perfectly crafted. That I read Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ right before delving into Busy’s memoir further highlighted this for me – the beauty in writing about the pain of teenagers and teenage girls in particular, the finesse and fierceness was all in this chapter. It makes me hope that Busy has another film-script up her sleeve, or another book – collection of essays, further memoir or fiction – I don’t care, I just want more of her words, thoughts and ideas.

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5/5

'Words in Deep Blue' by Cath Crowley

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:  

Second-hand bookshops are full of mysteries  

This is a love story. 

It's the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets, to words. 

It's the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea. 

Now, she's back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal. She's looking for the future in the books people love, and the words that they leave behind.  

Sometimes you need the poets

‘Words in Deep Blue’ is the new contemporary young adult book from Australian favourite, Cath Crowley.

Crowley’s ‘Words in Deep Blue’ is her first new book since 2010’s extraordinary ‘Graffiti Moon’ – and it was worth the wait. It’s a book about books – about loving, reading, and imprinting on books – with the story pivoting around a second-hand bookshop called Howling Books, where a long-lost friend returns to escape grief, and where a family unit and all its individual members have love lives that are well and truly in the in the tumults. It’s mostly the story of Rachel and Henry – once best friends, until Henry fell for a girl called Amy, and Rachel confessed her love only to move away. It’s a story about the Letter Library that resides in Howling Books, where people are encouraged to write in the margins, underline, and use books as conversations to be had with other readers. It’s a book about finding the right book at the right time.

But before I get into just how much I loved this particular book, I want to tell you all about this 2015 article I read in The New Yorker that stays with me. It was by Adam Gopnik, and titled ‘When a Bookstore Closes, an Argument Ends.’ I have a favourite line from that article, and it’s something I kept thinking about while reading ‘Words in Deep Blue’ (indeed; I got so caught up in this story and its wisdom, and especially the characters – that I wanted nothing more than to print out a copy of Gopnik’s article and leave it for Henry or his father Michael, folded into a book in their Letter Library). Here is that line of Gopik’s that I love;

At a minor level, once a bookstore is gone we lose the particular opportunities for adjacency it offers, determined by something other than an algorithm. It is rarely the book you came to seek, but the book next to that book, which changes your mind and heart.

The pivotal setting of ‘Words in Deep Blue’ being Howling Books – a second-hand bookshop – is nothing short of genius. On one level, a book about books is just catnip for readers, and young adult readers especially. And Cath Crowley gets very meta in this book, where she frequently title-drops and author-drops the names of works and writers she loves dearly. Be prepared to read this book with a notepad and pen beside you, so you can quickly jot down the books mentioned that you’ll definitely want to check out later. From John Green’s ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ to Kirsty Eagar’s ‘Summer Skin’, ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’, Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, and the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges – this is Crowley revealing quite personal parts of herself, I feel, in the books she loves and has loved. Readers will feel a spark of joy and closeness to the author when they read one of the characters espousing dearly about a book they likewise adore, just as I did with this remembered exchange between father and son;

He and I have had hundreds of conversations about the characters in books. The last one we had was about Vernon God Little, a book by D.B.C. Pierre. I’d love it enough to read twice. 

‘What did you love?’ Dad had asked. 

‘Vernon,’ I’d said, naming the main character. ‘And the way it’s critiquing America. But mainly it’s the language. It’s like he’s left the words out in the sun to buckle a while, and they don’t sound like you’d expect.’

I also loved that this is a book about imprinting on books – which means highlighting, scribbling in the margins, and dog-earing – all the things some bibliophiles get horrified over the very notion! But I am an avowed dog-earer, under-liner, margin-scribbler and I’m glad the characters in ‘Words in Deep Blue’ are too. I’m of the firm belief that creases and scribbles in a book are like laugh-lines on a face – signs of love.

This is also a book about loving the places where books can be found and talked about – flesh and bone books, with spines and smells and heft. Though its setting is a second-hand bookshop, the way these characters talk about finding books and connecting with people over stories is in itself a love letter to all bookshops, and libraries, friends who loan their copies, street libraries and any place else that good books and the people who recommend them can be found;

‘I read an article that said second-hand books will be relics eventually,’ I tell him, still trying to make excuses for how things went tonight. 

'Do you know what the word relic actually means, the dictionary definition?’ he asks, offering me the prawn crackers. 

I take one and tell him I don’t know. 

‘It means sacred,’ he says, breaking his cracker in half. ‘As in “the bones of saints.”’

What’s kind of ironic and meta in this book about loving books though, is that all those authors and stories Crowley’s characters mention? Just as many people would list Crowley’s own works amongst the greats that have changed and upheaved them.

‘Words in Deep Blue’ is also a love-story … or, a few love stories really. Rachel and Henry take centre-stage for much of the book, as their history of unrequited love and friends-to-more unfolds amidst grief, jealousy and heartbreak, to eventually evolve into acceptance, forgiveness and revelation. There’s also Henry’s sister, George, who has a secret letter-writing admirer and a boy from school who wants to break through her tough exterior and become friends. Then there’s Henry’s parents whose great love story is in its final throes, and Henry and Rachel’s mutual friend Lola whose great love is music and the band she’s been dreaming about for years.

Anyone who has ever read any of Cath Crowley’s books knows that her characters are exquisite, and those in ‘Words in Deep Blue’ are no exception. I remember a long time ago (2013, to be exactly exaggerated) and Cath Crowley wrote in her blog about what I can only assume now was writing this very book. She said;

‘I keep hoping that one day I’ll find a shortcut, a door that takes me from one novel into the next. Takes me straight from Ed and Lucy’s kiss, through a small gap in the air, onto the street where Giselle and Charlie are waiting. Or even better, couldn’t I just walk a little way down the road, and have them existing on different streets in the same world?’
 

I know Crowley was writing about the frustration of finding story, but as one of her readers and biggest fans I wish for it too, on a fundamentally non-fictional level. I think the best way to describe how much I love Cath Crowley’s books is to say how much I want the characters to be real people that I could go visit. I’d love nothing more than to go from watching one of Gracie’s soccer matches, to hearing Charlie Duskin sing and seeking out new Shadow street-art – and now visiting Howling Books to tell Henry that my absolute favourite poem is Anna Akhmatova’s ‘You Will Hear Thunder’, so I could lend him my Everyman's Library Pocket Poets book of hers.

I loved these characters. I loved Henry and Rachel’s enduring friendship amidst complication. I loved meeting Cal in letters. I adored George’s bite;

‘What are you reading?’ he asks this afternoon. 

‘Kafka’s Metamorphosis,’ George says, without looking up. 

‘And what’s it about?’ 

‘Guy turns into a giant bug and eventually dies.’ 

‘Not exactly life-affirming,’ Martin observes. 

‘Life isn’t exactly life-affirming,’ George says.

And my Gosh, did I love reading new words from Cath Crowley. She has a way with language that’s poetically blunt when necessary, or can be languidly lush and is just utterly genius – and there’s just as much to admire in her words as the great wordsmiths her characters esteem.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged according to George, that shit days generally get more shit. Shit nights roll into shit morning that roll into shit afternoons and back into shit starless midnights. Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn’t have. I’m an optimist but tonight I’m coming around to her way of thinking.

I loved ‘Words in Deep Blue’. I waited six years for it, but I fell in love after the first page, and by the last it was a new favourite.

5/5

'The Angels' Share' The Bourbon Kings #2 by J. R. Ward

Received from the Publisher 

From the BLURB:

Behind the glamorous facade of Kentucky's most famous family lurks a secret - one that threatens its very foundation . . .

In Charlemont, Kentucky, the Bradford family is the crème de la crème of high society - just like their exclusive brand of bourbon. And their complicated lives and vast estate are run by a discrete staff who inevitably become embroiled in their affairs. This is especially true now, when the apparent suicide of the family patriarch is starting to look more and more like murder.

No one is above suspicion - especially the eldest Bradford son, Edward. The bad blood between him and his father is known far and wide, and he is aware that he could be named a suspect. As the investigation into the death intensifies, he keeps himself busy at the bottom of a bottle - as well as with his former horse trainer's daughter. Meanwhile, the family's financial future lies in the perfectly manicured hands of a business rival, a woman who wants Edward all to herself.

Everything has consequences; everybody has secrets. And few can be trusted. Then, at the very brink of the family's demise, someone thought lost to them forever returns to the fold. Maxwell Bradford has come home. But is he a saviour . . . or the worst of all the sinners?

‘The Angels' Share’ is the second book in a new family saga and contemporary fiction series by J. R. Ward. It’s following on from the events of first book, ‘The Bourbon Kings’ – which is also where the series takes its title name.

I didn’t mind last year’s first book in this new contemporary series from J. R. Ward, who is branching out from her insanely popular romantic urban fantasy vampire series’ ‘Black Dagger Brotherhood’ (the 14^th book of which is also out this year), and her gritty angel series, ‘Fallen Angels’. But I was suitably forewarned ahead of my reading ‘The Bourbon Kings’, not to expect a romance. As such, I came away from that first book thinking it had a lot of problems, but had also laid some interesting enough foundations for me to come back for the second instalment … unfortunately ‘The Angels' Share’ is a hot mess. Or, rather, not even a hot mess; as the problems of the first book seem to have carried over and been exacerbated to an almost unreadable point in this second foray. Let me see if I can explain …

Partly why I was keen to come back for round two with Ward’s Bradford Family, was the hopes that the lacklustre semi-protagonist and HEA pairing in the first book wouldn’t pull such a focus in the second. Middle-son Lane and his Sabrina-esque romance with landscape gardener Lizzie was a total snooze-fest in ‘Bourbon Kings’. A lot of their romance was about alluding to their love affair of two years prior, and asking readers to believe that they really were as hot n’ heavy as they kept saying they were.

I was keen, from reading the blurb of ‘The Angels' Share’ that this second book would follow a similar series structure to the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and only allow Lane and Lizzie to pop in for cameos, but would otherwise let eldest and broken brother Edward take the story reigns and so on with each subsequent instalment, alternating character-focus … unfortunately, that’s not the case. Lane still gets majority page-time, and as he’s taken over the declining family business we still get a lot of him. Except this time it’s a lot of him crunching numbers with family lawyers, blackmailing his accountant buddy from New York to keep crunching numbers, and just generally being a snooze-fest. That extends to his still lacklustre relationship with Lizzie – the two of them don’t even get sex scenes, instead they get this;

“When you and I were in my father’s office, I wanted to push everything off the top of his desk and have sex with you on the damn thing.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes.” He shrugged. “Depraved?” 

Lizzie considered the hypothetical with a smile. “Not really. Although I actually can’t decide whether that’s erotic or just going to create a mess on the floor that it’s going to kill me not to clean up.” 

.... Yah.

This scene ends, FYI, with Lizzie and Lane having sex (that we don’t read about) on Lizzie’s desk, but not before Lane suggests carefully placing Lizzie’s laptop on the floor instead of pushing it off in the heat of passion. Cue: missionary.

Edward’s storyline from the first book had him in unrequited love with the daughter (and CEO) of a rival business family. But when we first meet up with Edward in ‘The Angels' Share’, there’s no mention of Sutton and instead he’s playing with fire (in a halfway titillating way too!) with his new stable hand, Shelby. Unfortunately this goes nowhere, and Shelby as a character joins the rank and file of about 20 others who don’t really make a whole lot of sense in this series, and roughly 18 of them should probably vamoose off the page …

Look, I know Ward thinks she’s writing Dallas meets Downton Abbey. I get it. She even has Lizzie allude to the fact;

Lizzie looked away, her brows lowering. When her eyes shifted back, she spoke in a soft voice. “Just so you and I are clear, yes, I may be staff, but I don’t need the wake-up call that’s coming your way. I am well aware of the situation this household is in, and if it makes you feel better to play Downton Abbey with me, that’s fine. But it’s not going to change the reality that your ‘modest’ wedding reception is more than you can afford right now. And I’m not ordering so much as a dandelion head without your brother’s permission.” 

Gin felt the branches of her extensive family tree straighten her spine. “Well, I have never—”

But it’s not working here. And her trying to cover all manner of upstairs/downstairs commentary has made for a fractured series in which I don’t end up caring or even liking any of the Bradford Family, I speed-read through the scenes of Master Distiller (I’m not even kidding) Edwin “Mack” MacAllan and wonder what the heck Lane’s NY accountant buddy is even doing here if there’s not going to be an inkling of set-up for him in future books beyond a minor plot-point in ‘Angels’ Share’ …

I only slogged through reading this book (and then speed-reading a far chunk of it) for Bradford sister (and Daisy Buchanan-wannabe) Gin, and her broken romance with family friend/lawyer, Samuel T. Gin had a violent encounter resulting in rape towards the end of the first book, at the hands of the man she convinced herself she needed to agree to marry because Samuel T. wouldn’t have her, and she was running out of money. Gin’s storyline is the only one with high stakes and interest for me, and it’s not that I want to read her being repeatedly abused (the scenes are mostly alluded to in this book, not as graphic as in the first) but it’s also that she and Samuel T. have been set up with believable back-story that’s the only one I’m invested in … in the form of Gin having been a pregnant teenager, giving birth to Samuel T’s lovechild, Amelia, whom Gin seems to have neglected throughout her young life and Samuel T doesn't even know is his.

I was purely reading ‘The Angels’ Share’ in the end, to get caught up on the Gin/Amelia/Samuel T. saga. That’s it for me – and though it was especially unsatisfying in this book (again: Amelia who actually makes sense as a character loses page-time to the likes of accountant buddy, stable hand and Master Distiller) I will probably come back for the third, only in the hopes that their fractured family pull focus, and J.R. Ward at least attempts to correct the course of this train-wreck series.

‘The Bourbon Kings’ series is not good, let’s just put that out there. It’s actually pretty goddam awful … if you like the idea of a Bourbon Family Legacy in the genteel South, then I suggest you pick up Tiffany Reisz’s new book ‘The Bourbon Thief’ for a good bout of mystery-erotica too. Because right now, J.R. Ward’s ‘The Bourbon Kings’ is suffering from a lack of clear direction and an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ saga-syndrome. It’s refusal to be a romance is also clearly hindering the scope of possibility, and direction for many characters.

1/5

'When Michael Met Mina' by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

A boy. A girl. Two families. One great divide.

When Michael meets Mina, they are at a rally for refugees - standing on opposite sides.

Mina fled Afghanistan with her mother via a refugee camp, a leaky boat and a detention centre.

Michael's parents have founded a new political party called Aussie Values.

They want to stop the boats.

Mina wants to stop the hate.

When Mina wins a scholarship to Michael's private school, their lives crash together blindingly.

A novel for anyone who wants to fight for love, and against injustice.

‘When Michael Met Mina’ is the new contemporary Australian young adult novel by Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Michael is a teenager growing up in Sydney’s North Shore. He gets good grades, has great mates, and parents whom he describes as ‘good people’ – but for most of his life they’ve been ‘angry about almost everything.’ Michael’s Dad is so angry and riled up, in fact, that he’s founded an organisation called ‘Aussie Values’ – rallying a group of like-minded people who want to “stop the boats” and the “Islamisation of Australia”.

Mina grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. She and her family escaped the war-torn city then travelled to Pakistan, where they were interred in an equally uncertain and unsafe refugee camp, before booking passage on a leaky boat to the safety of Australia. From there her family were placed in a detention centre, where they waited until being granted asylum. That was ten years ago, and these days Mina’s family couldn’t be happier – especially since she’s just been granted a scholarship to a prestigious private school for the next two years.

Michael attends an ‘Aussie Values’ rally, against asylum seekers.

Mina attends the same rally, supporting asylum seekers.

The next time they meet will be at Michael’s North Shore high school, where Mina’s just won a scholarship.

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s ‘When Michael Met Mina’ is a timely and intelligent new contemporary YA novel. In many ways it is a modern Aussie suburban interpretation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’– A boy. A girl. Two families. One great divide. – Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Sydney, where we lay our scene. Because for all that there’s a lot of political examination going on (and I’ll get to that in a moment) ‘When Michael Met Mina’ is also very much a romance. There’s undeniable chemistry when these two meet; and the tension of their two families and conflicting values make for a compelling if rocky love story.

But the political and social underpinnings of the romance is really where this book thrives, and finds unique footing in the Australian YA contemporary landscape.

In many ways it’s rather depressing to think how long this book has been in the making. The first I can remember being aware of such issues as Abdel-Fattah is touching on here, was the 2001 ‘Children Overboard affair’ of the Howard government. I have a friend for whom the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party (1997–2002) was the first he had an inkling of something being not-quite-right in Australian political rhetoric. For teenagers today I can imagine there are any number of events making them hyper-aware of the manipulation of media and empty-rhetoric of politicians when it comes to human rights and asylum seekers. From the deaths of Aylan Kurdi and Reza Berati, to the rise of politicians like Cory Bernardi, or the horrifying images out of war-torn Syria juxtaposed with the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration. Australian teen readers will be very much aware of the background to Abdel-Fattah picking apart these issues, but what’s fantastic is that she’s written characters who are closer to them than many of us can imagine.

Mina being a refugee who arrived with her family by boat, and Michael living in a household with angry parents entering into the political fray – and the book being written in alternate chapters from their perspectives – puts readers closer to these issues than they’ve maybe ever been. And while there are many instances of both Michael and Mina witnessing the wider social ramifications and community reactions, for the most part they are in the thick of the action;

The report ends with the reporter outside a mosque, telling the audience about some people’s fears of ‘creeping sharia’. There’s a shot of the man who’d harassed us in the restaurant. He’s a member of a new organisation that wants to stop the ‘Islamisation of Australia’. There’s a shot of the founder, Alan Blainey. Then there’s some file footage of a group of people at an anti-asylum seeker rally. 

‘But is all this just fear-mongering?’ the journalists asks in the end. 

A bit too late for that. 

I feel like vomiting.

A lot of this book hits uncomfortably close to home, especially reading it as I did in the thick of an election campaign. Pauline Hanson has reared her ugly politics again, for instance, and the ‘Aussie Values’ of Michael’s father hints disturbingly hard at the United Patriots Front anti-Islam, xenophobic rhetoric. Indeed – the very concept of Michael attending an ‘Aussie Values’ rally while Mina wants to ‘stop the hate’ is a reference to the many United Patriots Front and ‘Anti-Racism’ rallies.

What I love though, is how slowly and thoroughly Abdel-Fattah teases out the fact that Michael needs to think for himself, and not just swallow his father’s rhetoric. Mina’s political and worldviews are clear – growing up a kid in Kabul, escaping with her family and ending up in a detention centre – but Michael’s growing up in his father’s household has influenced his opinions for far too long, and meeting Mina is what prompts him to seek truth through connection and reason. 

‘I don’t worry about them,’ he says with scorn. ‘Do they know what I have seen? Do they think they can scare me after what I’ve been through?’ 

‘No, Baba.’ 

'When we arrived in this country we had to learn the differences of this new place and we had to also learn that for everybody we are the difference. I think, Mina, there is something the majority wants us to do in order to be fully accepted, but they never tell us what it is.’

This is a fantastic book with good timing – I can’t think of a better novel for kids to be reading this post-election, especially after a certain xenophobic senator is back front and centre in Australian politics. It’s a book that asks kids to think for themselves, and to look outside their own worldviews and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. There’s a cracking good romantic subplot here, but the politics playing front-and-centre is what makes this book a thoughtful and intelligent winner.

5/5

'Australia to Z' by Armin Greder

Received from the Publisher 

From the BLURB:

Juxtaposing words and images, the multi-award-winning author of The Island shines an uncompromising light on what it is to be Australian. I don't normally review picture books - not because I don't read them and love them (I do, I really do!) but because I think to do them justice I'd have to dedicate an entire blog to the reviewing of them (Hey! There's an idea...) and I personally love the book blogs in which actual children review picture books (and I'll admit, their opinions hold more weight than mine!)  But I simply have to rave about Armin Greder's 2016 picture-alphabet book, 'Australia to Z'.  Look, all picture books are art books as far as I'm concerned. But Greder's especially feels sharp and subversive - and a perfect example of how children's picture books especially, can say so much with so little.  In Greder's alphabet book, A is for 'Aborigine', 'Boat People' is for B 'Rupert Murdoch' stands for R and 'Meat Pies' comes before 'Nationalist' (with a drawing of a man wearing an Australia flag cape ...) Author Libby Gleeson perfectly summarises what this Alphabet Book is really all about, and how it's for everyone: "... Armin Greder has cast his critical eye on us and our symbols." Indeed he has - the good, the bad and the downright ugly (aforementioned 'Nationalist' and 'Rupert')  This book says a lot with so little - flipping through the pages and acknowledging the chosen alphabet symbols is sometimes uncomfortable for Greder's scathing accuracy - P is for Pokies - but there's beauty alongside the brutal, and Greder's underlying message is a powerful one worthy of applause.  'Australia to Z' is probably going to be my favourite picture book of 2016. I expect to see it winning awards in the coming months, as a celebrated picture book for the young and old - indeed, an important book for all of us to read and listen to its powerful message.

5/5

'Clancy of the Undertow' by Christopher Currie

Received from the Publisher 

From the BLURB:

We’re sitting there with matching milkshakes, Sasha and me, and somehow, things aren’t going like I always thought they would. We’re face to face under 24-hour fluorescents with the thoroughly unromantic buzz of aircon in our ears and endless flabby wedges of seated trucker’s arsecrack as our only visual stimulus.

In a dead-end town like Barwen a girl has only got to be a little different to feel like a freak. And Clancy, a typical sixteen-year-old misfit with a moderately dysfunctional family, a genuine interest in Nature Club and a major crush on the local hot girl, is packing a capital F.

As the summer begins, Clancy’s dad is involved in a road smash that kills two local teenagers. While the family is dealing with the reaction of a hostile town, Clancy meets someone who could possibly—at last—become a friend. Not only that, the unattainable Sasha starts to show what may be a romantic interest.

In short, this is the summer when Clancy has to figure out who the hell she is.

‘Clancy of the Undertow’ is a new contemporary YA novel from Australian author, Christopher Currie.

So strange that on the day I set aside to write my review of ‘Clancy’, I was getting all sorts of ping-alerts about this YA author Scott Bergstrom who had, advertently or inadvertently (but either way: stupidly), dissed the entire YA readership by claiming that his self-published YA novel (which recently had film rights bought by Jerry Bruckheimer) was more “morally complicated” than anything else in YA. A hashtag has since started up, with a whole bunch of authors and readers calling out Bergstrom’s self-absorbed, White Knight bullshit (and Chuck Wendig probably has the best response so far).

But it was amusing to me, because here I was trying to write a review of this book by Christopher Currie … a book with a lesbian protagonist, growing up in a rural small town whose already dysfunctional life is thrown into chaos when her father is involved in an accident that kills two local teens and the family suddenly finds themselves local enemies No.1

Yeah.

No moral complexity here AT ALL.

Move along.

The phone’s off the hook because some reporter from Brisbane got our number and Titch answered when she called. Mum ripped the cord and she was still shaking half an hour later. Kept saying, ‘Vultures,’ over and over. A news van came up to the top of the driveway one afternoon, a satellite dish poking out conspicuously from its roof. I was up in my room and I saw it creep up, stay for a moment, then drive away. Dad sleeps most of the day, goes out to the shed late in the afternoon and stays there until late at night to listen to the cricket. Angus is out most of the time. Probably up in the mountains or out at the observatory, who knows. 

In the mornings I collect the paper and take it up to my room. Dad’s name is in there now, going from ‘a local man’ to ‘council worker Robert Underhill.’ They’re still not calling him a suspect, because they can’t, but it’s clear the town’s already made up its mind.

‘Clancy of the Undertow’ is a complex, slow unravelling … of a town, a girl and an investigation. There were parts that reminded me of Robert Drewe’s ‘The Shark Net’, and more than once I found myself quietly comparing Currie to Raymond Carver, particularly for his short story "So Much Water So Close to Home" (which the film ‘Jindabyne’ was based on).

Currie has written about his transition from an Adult author to a Young Adult one – and to some extent, I had this article of his in the back of my head while reading his book (not least because I loved this metaphor: “equivalent of Superman trying to write his memoirs with a Kryptonite pen”). He said he stumbled across his 15-year-old protagonist, and then didn’t stop writing once he found her … I was thinking about this because a plot like ‘Clancy’ has, about the death of two local teens and impact on the family of the accused local man, has such multi-faceted possibilities. But there’s real power and impact in 15-year-old Clancy to be the one telling this story.

Clancy has a crush on the local hot girl. Her family was already dysfunctional, long before her father became front-page local news and the eyes of the town turned on them … There’s a sense when reading Clancy’s turbulent year, that we’re witnessing a young woman being forged in flames here. The story certainly had lots of possibilities, but coming from Clancy’s first-person point of view heightens everything to a delicious, heart-sickening tension – that this huge and devastating event has happened right when Clancy’s in the middle of figuring herself and her world out, to suddenly have it all ripped away from her.

Morally complex YA, yo!

I’ve said Currie’s storytelling reminded me of Robert Drewe and Raymond Carver ... allow me to add one more; ‘Clancy of the Undertow’ also feels like it could be a Paul Kelly song – all Australian setting and moral questions, being told by a young woman stuck in the middle of her life. Currie may not have consciously set out to write a YA novel – but I’m glad he found 15-year-old Clancy, and I hope he comes back to this readership who will welcome any new words from him with open arms.

5/5