May book-ish love from New Voices Down Under
It’s Sunday here and I’m coming to you from my little studio in the garden. And it’s COLD!! Not that I’m complaining, I prefer the cool and, really, who needs an excuse to snuggle down with a book!
Well hello!
It’s Sunday here and I’m coming to you from my little studio in the garden. And it’s COLD!! Not that I’m complaining, I prefer cool to hot and sweltering. And really, who needs an excuse to snuggle down in front of a roaring fire with a good book, maybe some knitting while listening to a podcast or an audio book, and a warming cup of chai? Not me!
In our May edition, I’m adding something new to the mix, I hope you like it. It’s Happy Publication Day! Really, the reason I’m doing this is to add even more books to whet your appetite. I’ve also reviewed three very different books and I’m excited that our Meet the Author segment features Naima Brown and her intriguing novel, The Shot.
There’s been several award announcements in the past few weeks too and it’s always exciting to see new books celebrated. More titles for the TBR. Sigh 😊
Happy publication day!
There are so many wonderful debut novels out this month. In this new section, we give a shout out, filled with love and good wishes, to all the new stories that are coming our way in the next few weeks.
Bunny by S.E. Tolson (30 May)
For fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things, a haunting psychological-supernatural thriller that delves into the role that addiction plays in family dysfunction, and how it inevitably changes everyone around it. A chilling, page-turning tale about love conquering most ... but not all. Written by husband-and-wife team Emma Olsen and Vere Tindale under the pseudonym S.E. Tolson.
Preorder here
The Days Toppled Over by Vidya Madabushi (20 June)
The highlight of Malli’s life is a weekly phone call with her younger brother, Surya, who is studying in Australia. When Surya misses their call for the first time, Malli seeks answers online. She’s grateful when a user on a missing persons forum, Nayan, offers his assistance. But, as days pass without news, Malli decides to travel to Australia to find out what has happened to her brother.
Vidya Madabushi is an Indian writer living in Sydney. her first novel, Bystanders, was published in India in 2015 and a previous version was longlisted for the Australian Vogel Award. The Days Toppled Over is her Australian debut.
Preorder here
When One of Us Hurts by Monica Vuu (27 June)
Port Brighton hates outsiders. The small coastal town has its own ways of dealing with the evil, the foolish, the misled, and it holds tightly to them. But the seams start to split after two deaths occur on the same tragic night: a baby abandoned at the foot of a lighthouse, and a drunken teenager drowned in the storming sea. Monica Vuu was born in Langley, British Columbia. She made the big move to Tasmania in 2019 and was inspired by the remoteness of rural Tasmania to write When One of Us Hurts.
Preorder here
Books to Love
The Interpreter by Brooke Robinson
Published 6 June 2023 (Australia) Also available in the UK and the US.
Having grown up living all over the world, Revelle Lee is a hyperpolyglot — a person fluent in eleven or more languages. As a freelance interpreter, her work often sees her in court, interpreting the words of witnesses, victims or the accused. The work is stressful, one wrong word could change the outcome, see a guilty person go free or an innocent person in gaol. Although, it’s not stressful compared to the hoops she’s had to go through to try and adopt six-year-old Elliot. She’s been so careful — rented a flat she can’t afford in a nice neighbourhood, made sure he has everything a little boy should have, especially one who has endured more trauma in his young life than anyone deserves. Adopting Elliot is her chance to create a family of her own, to have someone to love and be loved in return. Because she knows what it’s like to grow up unloved, unwanted and friendless and this is a chance to change both their lives.
Revelle has an impeccable reputation as an interpreter and she’s acutely aware that her position is one of great trust. She’s often the only person in the court room who knows exactly what client is saying and the only one who can translate their words for the permanent record. It’s also made her adept at judging whether the client is telling the truth or lying. If she were ever caught deliberately misinterpreting the words of her clients, she could go to gaol for perverting the course of justice. She’s never put a foot wrong, up until the day she’s asked to interpret for a witness whose statement may allow a guilty man to go free. Just a word here or there, a pink shirt not blue, no one will ever know. And if they do find out, she can easily pass it off as a simple mistake. And, having done that once, it’s hard to resist the temptation to do it again. That is, until someone starts blackmailing her, and the rosy future she’s imagined with Elliott will never happen if she goes to prison. Revelle Lee will do anything to avoid that outcome.
The Interpreter has all the ingredients of a riveting edge-of-you-seat thriller. Revelle Lee’s murky past slowly has the reader doubting whether her words can be trusted, cleverly casting the reader in the position of interpreter. Is she a wronged a woman trying her best to be a good mother, someone who is prepared to take a risk so that innocent victims can live their lives safe in the knowledge that their perpetrator is behind bars? Or is she hiding something from us and presenting a good front so that no one discovers who she really is and what she is capable of. Her unreliable narration has the reader second-guessing her every step of the way, fearing the worst for poor Elliott and trying to figure out exactly what Revelle wants no one to know. Robinson’s narrative twists and turns, intrigue is an insistent throbbing pulse, blanketing the reader in a chilling sense of foreboding. The truth is drip fed in the most painstakingly small doses and it all adds up to make this a gripping page turner.
A little bit about the author …
Brooke Robinson grew up in Sydney and as a playwright, has had numerous plays commissioned and produced in her native Australia. In the UK, her work has been shown at the Old Vic theatre and London's Vault Festival. She studied drama at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) and City, University of London. The Interpreter is her debut novel.
Find Brooke Robinson
Instagram: @brookewrote
https://www.brookerobinsonwriter.com/
Preorder or read an extract here
My Father the Whale by Gina Perry
Published 7 June 2023 (Australia)
Nine-year-old Ruby and her father Mitch have been on the road since her mother died when she was a few months old. In their beaten-up old Kombi, they’ve travelled the country, making ends meet through busking. Talk of her mother is forbidden and Ruby has never met any of her extended family.
One day, the Kombi breaks down in the northern coastal town of Whaler’s Bay and Ruby finds herself thrust into a life of normalcy. School and trying to make friends while Mitch picks up whatever work he can. Befriended by a girl in her class, Fiona, for the first time ever Ruby glimpses family life and a mother’s love through Fiona’s parents, Pauline and Max. When Mitch decides it’s time to hit the road, Ruby is torn between her new life and the father she loves. He leaves without her and creates a rift that one-sentence postcards from around the world cannot heal.
Years later, Mitch returns to Whalers Bay and wants to resume their relationship. But the sense of abandonment is a wall between them and Ruby realises that he can’t provide the answers she seeks. She must make her own journey to discover who her mother was and who her family is.
Like writers such as Sophie Laguna, Gina Perry creates a rich and vibrant world as seen through the eyes of a child. Ruby’s coming of age, is a story filled with holes and half-told truths. As she navigates her way to adulthood, the return of her charismatic but inadequate father reveals how impossible it is for her to find her place in the world, to know who she truly is, without understanding her past. Mitch’s return brings anger, sadness and loss to the surface. In so many ways, his parenting leaves a lot to be desired but Perry balances this with a strong undercurrent of a man who is trying his best and failing to make the mark. His absence has left Ruby stuck in a place where she doesn’t know who she is. Ruby needs the reconciliation of self and family to be able to find self-love and make peace with the past. This is a heart warming tale about yearning, belonging and finding oneself.
A little bit about the author …
Factual writer by day, novelist by night, Gina Perry is an award-winning author, science historian and former psychologist. Perry is author of two books of non-fiction, the acclaimed Behind the Shock Machine and The Lost Boys. My Father the Whale, her first novel, which was shortlisted in the 2021 HarperCollins Banjo Prize.
Find Gina Perry
Instagram: @gina_perry_writer
Website: http://www.gina-perry.com/
Preorder or read an extract here
The Secrets of the Huon Wren by Claire van Ryn
Published 27 June 2023 (Australia)
Journalist, Allira Ambrose, goes to interview an elderly resident at a local nursing home as part of a series to capture the stories of the extraordinary lives of those who have lived the history of the rugged Tasmanian Central Highlands. Unfortunately, the man died overnight and the manager suggests she might like to meet Nora, who has no family and won’t go anywhere without a baby doll. Intrigued, Allira is drawn to Nora, whose memories are fixated on a fragmented past and the unanswered question, ‘where is my baby?’
With little to go on, Allira knows that somewhere, hidden in Nora’s past, is a story. With few clues, except a small blue wren carved out of Huon pine, Allira begins to unravel Nora’s story and in so doing, begins to understand her own sense of loss and unresolved grief.
The novel moves between the budding relationship between Nora and Allira in the present and 1953 and the tragedy of Nora’s childhood. Her difficult mother, her loving but ineffectual father and the love affair that world come to define her life. Set against the dramatic and harsh landscape of the great Western Tier, van Ryn draws the reader into a complex story of love and grief. Compelling and beautifully told, The Secrets of the Huon Wren combines all the best elements of a mystery, a lush historic landscape, romance and drama. It’s a gorgeous, moving read.
A little bit about the author …
Claire van Ryn began her career as a newspaper journalist but has also filled roles as magazine editor, communications specialist, writing teacher, blueberry picker and shoe fitter. She lives in Tasmania and extensive travels have only affirmed her love for Australia’s southernmost island state. She recently spent a year travelling Australia with her husband and two children in a caravan. Creating is Claire’s favourite thing: whether with words, watercolours or whatever else is close at hand.
Find Claire van Ryn
Instagram: @clairevanryn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clairevanryn.writer/
Website:
https://clairevanryn.com/
Preorder or read an extract here
Meet the Author
Naima Brown has spent over a decade working in news, current affairs and documentary — save for her brief stint in reality TV, which inspired this novel. She was born and raised in Northern California before living and working in Yemen and Afghanistan, and now lives in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales with her husband and her dog. Naima, alongside Melissa Doyle, is the co-author of How to Age Against the Machine: An Empowering Guide for Women Ageing on Their Own Terms. The Shot is her first novel.
A little bit about the book …
Producer Mara Bolt is the queen of reality TV. Ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, Mara will do anything for ratings. When she meets Kristy Shaw, Mara is certain she's found the star of her newest series, The Shot.
Kristy is languishing in her small hometown and a dead-end job, pining for her first love, Max Irving. The Shot offers her a Total Body Transformation — extreme plastic surgery to render her unrecognisable — as a way to recapture Max's affections under a new identity. But there's a catch: if she doesn't secure his heart in thirty days, she must have her surgeries reversed, and go back to her previous life.
As the cameras start rolling, Mara and Kristy both feel there is something happening behind the scenes — something that threatens to reveal old wounds and create new secrets. If they are going to keep the show on track, they must repress the truths and desires that lie just beneath the surface.
Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind this story and why you just knew you had to write it?
I worked on the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise. I was in a fairly junior role, having taken a break from news and current affairs to do something I expected to be fun and light-hearted. Like many audience members, I assumed that everyone, from the producers and crew to the talent and contestants, was all in on it. That nobody was really taking the conceit — that this was a real way to find real love — seriously.
I was floored when I realised that the majority of the women who were competing on The Bachelor were sincere. And that they were educated, interesting, professional, creative, lovely human beings that I could see myself in — not (with a few exceptions) the fame-seeking opportunists I’d expected. And, to make things more confusing, the production crew was also composed of kind, curious, well-intentioned people. I made lasting friendships on both sides of this divide. But it was my experience that nobody — not the contestants nor the crew — comes out the other side unscathed. I’ve come to believe shows like this ask us to set aside our moral compass, to blur the line between entertainment and exploitation.
The relationship between “the crew” and “the talent” — how those power dynamics impact our behaviour and alter our values — was the seed from which The Shot was grown.
After my time on The Bachelor, I was seized by the desire to explore what I’d just experienced through fiction — and the earliest iteration of The Shot was born. It took me seven years to finish The Shot for all the usual reasons. In that time, it has been shaped and deepened by the continuing obsession that we, as a culture, have with evermore outrageous Reality TV coupled with the rise of True Crime. In my mind, these two genres sit side-by-side, however uncomfortably. True Crime, for the most part, allows us to see villains - from scam artists to murderers — get their just desserts. In Reality TV, audiences want to see the losers lose as much as they want to see the winners win. I don’t think we can, in good faith, deny this. Ritual humiliation has been entertaining to human beings for ages - from ancient Babylonian rites to the Roman arena. What interests me, and what underpins The Shot, is why we, the audience, can’t seem to get enough.
What was your favourite part about writing The Shot?
The obvious, and unsatisfying, answer is: all of it. And that’s the truth. But, if I had to choose one of the elements of writing The Shot that really lit up my synapses it would be the Kristy-Imogen continuum. As it turns out, the power dynamics inherent in Reality TV are an ideal vehicle for exploring ever-more fascinating themes, chief amongst them: identity and trauma. Exploring the ways that trauma informed Kristy’s experience of becoming Imogen, and Imogen’s experience of Kristy within her, felt a bit like a science experiment at times. How do you write the inner voices of two characters who are inhabiting the same form? How do they communicate with each other? How do I achieve this not only in concept and prose, but in clarity and ease of reading for the reader? This was something I unpicked and restitched numerous times with my sensational editors. It was a puzzle, but every time a piece found its place it was like fireworks in my chest (in a good way).
And what do you wish you knew about the writing process before you started?
That while a piece of writing may come to an end, in the sense that there is an inevitable moment where it’s “down tools” — no more edits can be made, no last minute additions or subtractions — the story inside of us never ends, at least for me.
I’ve had to make peace with the fact that what made it to print is enough, because the lives of these characters go on inside me and the urge to continue to create and extend them on the page is strong — but that would make for a very big and unwieldy, and likely unenjoyable, book.
So, allow your book to end with the first sight of proverbial land. It’s ok if some of the story lives solely within the mind of the author (and hey, that’s what sequels are made of, right?).
How did The Shot come to find a publisher?
If it were a cocktail, it’d look something like this:
1 part serendipity
1 part zeitgeist
1 part synergy
Shake vigorously and serve over ice, garnish with humility.
The serendipity refers to the fact that my manuscript almost fell through the sieve (because of my email error) at the offices of what would — serendipitously — become my fine literary agency, Curtis Brown. The zeitgeist refers to the fact that The Shot, I do believe, is a story that speaks uniquely to our time. The synergy refers to the almost preternatural collaborative and creative symbiosis I had with the talented minds at Macmillan (the publisher) almost immediately — choosing to work with them was a full-throated yes. The humility garnish is important, though. I am in a perpetual state of awe and gratitude. There are a lot of amazing writers out there who struggle to find their publishing homes, and I carry that with me all the time.
What are you most looking forward to about the publicity tour?
Discussing, debating, discovering — rinse and repeat. I have been chomping at the bit to discuss The Shot with readers. I want to know what other people think about the line between entertainment and exploitation. I want to know what other people think about the ritual humiliation embedded into so much of our tabloid and entertainment culture. I mostly discuss these things with my dog, because writing is a solitary endeavour. So I cannot wait to get stuck into the nitty gritty with readers.
Find Naima Brown
Instagram: @naima_brown_official
Preorder/ buy the book here
Freebies!
Australian publishers are simply the best! Thanks to the wonderful folk at HarperCollins Publishers Australia, we have five copies of My Father the Whale to giveaway. To win a copy all you have to do is send a reply email with the answer to this oh-so-difficult question.
Where does Mitch abandon Ruby?
Thanks to the super people at Pan Macmillan Australia, we have five copies of The Shot. If you would like to win a copy, send a reply email with the answer to this question.
What does reality TV show, The Shot, offer Kristy?
The fine print: Giveaways are currently only open to subscribers and you must reside within Australia to be eligible to win (postage!) The winners will be picked at random and will be emailed on 21 June 2023. Good luck!
Newbie News
This week has seen a few award announcements. The Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) were announced on Thursday night. Recipe Tin Eat’s, Nagi Maehashi, took out the ABIA Book of the year for her fabulous cookbook, Dinner. The Matt Richell award for new writer of the year was won by Shelley Burr for her debut crime novel, WAKE.
In the UK, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced the shortlists for its prestigious Dagger Awards. The ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for debut fiction features three Australian titles out of a total of six on the shortlist. They are Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town, Emma Styles’ No Country for Girls and Patricia Wolf’s Outback. This award is a huge honour and let’s hope one of these titles takes out the Dagger when the winners are announced on 6 July. Good luck!
2023 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards
Debra Dank’s memoir, We Come With This Place took out a record four awards in the 2023 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, including the Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction, the Indigenous Writers’ Prize, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and the Book of the Year. Described by the judges as:
‘an outstanding narrative of outback Aboriginal life, family and traditional philosophy …Dank gently takes the reader into her Gudanji universe … There is humour, tragedy, and ceremony too, all told with meticulous care for historical truth and for the reader’s experience.’
The End
I hope you enjoyed this jam-packed issue of New Voices Down Under. Please leave a comment, follow us on socials and come back again next month where there will be more bookish news, reviews, interviews and freebies. See you soon!
Don’t forget, you can always catch up with us on Instagram @newvoicesdownunder