Kennedy’s Brain

Ath book club November 2008

Henning Mankell - Kennedy’s Brain

An original and breathtaking thriller surrounding one of the most important issues of our time, from internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Henning Mankell.

When archaeologist Louise Cantor’s son Henrik is found dead in his flat, she refuses to believe it was suicide. Despite traces of sleeping tablets in his system, several clues that only a mother knows lead her to believe something more sinister took place.

However Louise soon realizes that Henrik had kept many things from her and is shocked to learn he had contracted HIV. While looking through his papers, she discovers he was obsessed with the conspiracy theory that JFK’s brain disappeared prior to the autopsy—along with the vital evidence regarding bullet exit wounds. The only lead is a letter and photograph from Henrik’s girlfriend in Mozambique.

Louise’s quest to unravel the mystery surrounding her son’s death takes her to Africa, a continent rife with disease, poverty and corruption. Struggling to cope with the oppressive heat and sickness, Louise sees fear in every face, even unexpectedly in the clinics set up by an American businessman. In Kennedy’s Brain Mankell confirms his status as a master of suspense, and delivers a timely and riveting thriller that will have readers on the edge their seats until the very end.

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On Chesil Beach

Ath book club October 2008

Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach

It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

 

The Secret River

Ath book club June 2008

Kate Grenville - The Secret River

Following The Idea of Perfection was always going to be a tough call. Five years on from her Orange Prize-winning bestseller about middle-aged love in the Outback, Kate Grenville has turned to something quite different: historical fiction and a story about convict settlement.

This is a narrative whose outlines we know already: convicts transported to Sydney, eventually pardoned, encouraged to settle what seemed to be an empty continent. They didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have cared, that the land they were occupying was sacred to the mysterious, dark-skinned people who appeared and disappeared from the forests and seemed to them no more than naked savages.

 

Carpentaria

Ath book club Sepetember 2008

Alexis Wright - Carpentaria

Centred on the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance, a township shaped by cyclones, monsoonal floods and a river that spurns human endeavour with its incomprehensible tides, it tells the story of the powerful Phantom family. Led by Norm Phantom, the great fish-embalming king of time, legendary storyteller, suspected murderer and leader of the Pricklebush people, the Phantoms battle to retain sovereignty over a country where “legends and ghosts live side by side”. Sovereignty depends on stories. The official version of the region’s history makes no mention of the Phantoms or the Great War of the Dump that burst the Pricklebush people apart and set Eastsider against Westsider. Nor does it mention the old tribal tensions that resurfaced and the search for lost ancestral stories that lay claim to traditional ownership.

 

The Lying Tongue

Ath book club August 2008

Andrew Wilson - The Lying Tongue

Fresh from finishing university in England, Adam Woods arrives in Venice to begin a new chapter in his life. He soon secures employment as the personal assistant of Gordon Crace — a famous expatriate novelist who makes his home in a dank and crumbling palazzo, surrounded by fabulous works of art, piles of unanswered correspondence and the memories of his former literary glory.

Before long Adam becomes indispensable to the feeble Crace, and he finds himself at once drawn to and repelled by his elderly employer’s brilliant mind and eccentric habits. As Adam comes to learn more about the scandal that brought Crace to Venice years ago, he realizes he has stumbled upon the raw material that could launch his own literary career and makes a bold decision: He will secretly write the famous author’s biography. But outsmarting Crace is easier said than done, and the two soon find themselves locked in a bitter contest over the right to determine how the story of Crace’s life will end. Against the haunting backdrop of the serene city, the two men engage in a ruthless game of cat and mouse that builds to a breathtaking and unexpected conclusion.

 

Two Caravans

Ath book club July 2008

Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

From the author of the international bestseller A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian comes a tender and hilarious novel about a crew of migrant workers from three continents who are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across all of England in pursuit of their various dreams of a better future.

Somewhere in the heart of the green and pleasant land called England is a valley filled with strawberries. A group of migrant workers, who hail from Eastern Europe, China, and Africa have come here to harvest them for delivery to British supermarkets, and end up living in two small trailer homes, a men’s trailer and a woman’s trailer. They are all seeking a better life (and in their different ways they are also, of course, looking for love) and they’ve come to England, some legally, some illegally, to find it. They are supervised-some would say exploited-by Farmer Leaping, a red-faced Englishman who treats everyone equally except for the Polish woman named Yola, the boss of the crew, who favors him with her charms in exchange for something a little extra on the side. But the two are discreet, and all is harmonious in this cozy vale-until the evening when Farmer Leaping’s wife comes upon him and Yola and does what any woman would do in this situation: She runs him down in her red sports car. By the time the police arrive the migrant workers have piled into one of the trailer homes and hightailed it out of their little arcadia, thus setting off one of the most enchanting, merry, and moving picaresque journeys across the length and breadth of England since Chaucer’s pilgrims set off to Canterbury.

Along the way, the workers’ fantasies about England keep rudely bumping into the ignominious, brutal, and sometimes dangerous realities of life on the margins for ŽmigrŽs in the new globalized labor market. Some of them meet terrible ends, some give up and go back home, but for those who manage to hang in for the full course of this madcap ride, the rewards-like the strawberries-prove awfully sweet-especially for the young Ukrainians from opposite sides of the tracks, Andriy and Irina, whose initial mutual irritation blossoms into love.

 

The Time We Have Taken

Ath book club May 2008

Steven Carroll - The Time We Have Taken

One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one hundred years old. That same morning, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband’s snores, yet it is years since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, has left for the city, and is entering the awkward terrain of first love. As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, Michael’s friend Mulligan is commissioned to paint a mural of the area’s history. But what vision of the past will his painting reveal? Meanwhile, Rita’s sometime friend Mrs Webster confronts the mystery of her husband’s death. And Michael discovers that innocence can only be sustained for so long.

The Time We Have Taken is both a meditation on the rhythms of suburban life and a luminous exploration of public and private reckoning during a time of radical change.

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The Dancer Upstairs

Ath book club April 2008

Nicholas Shakespeare - The Dancer Upstairs

The Peruvian guerilla leader Ezequiel is responsible for tens of thousands of fiendishly cruel murders, yet he consistently eludes capture. But in Agustn Rejas he has an indefatigable pursuer. From secluded city streets to the paths of a mountain village the policeman persists, tracking and anticipating Ezequiel’s every move. Rejas’ only reprieve is his love for his daughter’s beautiful dance teacher — until he begins to pick up unmistakable signals that her circles — and Ezequiel’s — intersect.

Based on the extraordinary manhunt for the leader of Peru’s notorious guerilla organization, The Shining Path, The Dancer Upstairs is a story reminiscent of Graham Greene and John Le Carré — tense, intricate, and heartbreaking.

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Journey to the Stone Country

Ath book club March 2008

Alex Miller - Journey to the Stone Country

Betrayed by her husband, Annabelle Beck retreats from Melbourne to her old family home in tropical North Queensland where she meets Bo Rennie, one of the Jangga tribe. Intrigued by Bo’s claim that he holds the key to her future, Annabelle sets out with him on a path of recovery that leads back to her childhood and into the Jangga’s ancient heartland, where their grandparents’ lives begin to yield secrets that will challenge the possibility of their happiness together.

With the consummate artistry of a novelist working at the height of his powers, Miller convinces us that the stone country is not only a remote and exotic location in North Queensland, but is also an unvisited place within each of us. Journey to the Stone Country confirms Miller’s reputation as one of Australia’s most intelligent and uncompromising writers.

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Antarctic Writer on Ice

Ath book club February 2008

Hazel Edwards - Antarctic Writer on Ice

This candid diary is a unique look at electronic creativity on ice and the workstyle of a professional author.

This diary was compiled by Hazel using only the limited email resources available following the collapse of her laptop computer. Via satellite from a beset ship, she kept up correspondence with family and friends, fulfilled publishing commitments to newspapers and magazines as well as conducting polar radio interviews. Surrounded by ‘wildlife experts’ she researched fact, faction and fiction. To relieve the inactivity and close confinement of an ice beset ship, she created ‘The Lachieberg’ a personalised iceberg story which expeditioners could email to their children, started belly dancing classes and even conducted a virtual book launch.

This candid diary of Hazel Edwards’ adventure combines the writing styles of narrative text, email and published newspaper and magazine articles.

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