This Body of Death, by Elizabeth George, Hodder & Stoughton, $32.99.
With any long-running series, loss of potency can be a huge issue as characters cease to develop and plots stagnate. But the 16th novel in Elizabeth George’s bestselling series featuring Scotland Yard’s sharp killer catcher DI Lynley is a thrilling exception.
The multi-layered stories between Lynley in London and his former colleagues in the backwaters of England, offer such dynamic contrasts – and take twisted turns so subtle you really can’t see them coming – that I was left blissfully guessing right to the final full-stop. This is so much more satisfying than figuring it all out before we’re supposed to! The newest department chief, Isabelle Ardery, is out to prove her mettle in all the wrong ways, and brings a fresh complexity to the Scotland Yard team. The result is a richly deceptive and sinister murder mystery with inspired and intricate plot twists.
I’m an McEwan tragic, I admit. So, I thought, if anyone was going to pull off the coup of turning the subject of climate change into a compelling novel, it was surely the master.
Rather than lecture, he’s given us a black comedy –a farce, almost – centred around the monstrous character of Michael Beard: a fat, greedy, amoral, self-centred, philandering scientist who won a Nobel Prize during his brilliant youth and has been trading on it ever since. Repellent but cunning, he sniffs the zeitgeist and pinches a colleague’s work to become the front man for renewable energy, specifically converting the sun’s rays into hydrogen and so, potentially, saving our carbon-choked world – and salvaging his collapsing fifth marriage while he’s at it. But nothing goes quite right for Michael Beard, whose appetites and ambitions come to represent all of us who want to do the right thing for the planet, yet avoid a single personal sacrifice. It’s a virtuoso performance by McEwan, combining some brilliant set-pieces with a deep knowledge of the field, but a book in his Saturday rather than Atonement mode. Feeding the brain and funny-bone rather than the heart.
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad, by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit, Penguin, $22.95.
There’s not a lot of Jane Austen in this true story of an unlikely friendship between a tough-minded Iraqi lecturer on literature and a BBC journalist, but if the title reels in readers, all to the good, because this is a book to remind you of one of the best things about being a woman. Which is our connection with other women.
These two are like chalk and cheese – Bee is in London juggling job, housework and three daughters while May is trapped in the bombed-out, blockaded city of Baghdad, facing bullets and food shortages and religious persecution. At first, Bee is just after some colour about life in a war zone to go with the dismal news reports. Three years and hundreds of emails later, these strangers are calling each other sister and Bee is moving heaven and earth – and draining her own bank account – to get her friend to safety outside Iraq. Meanwhile, they share confidences about everything from loved but lazy husbands to crippling depression, from the importance of a good hairdresser to the character of Saddam Hussein. It has flat spots – doesn’t life? – but you can’t help but get caught up in their fear and their joy.
Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel, Text Publishing, $32.95
Beatrice is a donkey, Virgil a howler monkey. They are loyal friends with a taste for philosophy – or at least they were. Now, after an epic journey, they’re no more than stuffed specimens in a taxidermist’s window, where they attract the interest of a successful Canadian writer, Henry, struggling for a fresh way to write about the Holocaust (to the horror of his editor, who regards this as publishing poison).
He pieces together their dark story – in which man turns out to be the cruellest animal. Nine years after the sensational success of [itals]Life of Pi[enditals], Yann Martel here proves, again, that he’s a gifted story-teller who can write in the simplest style of the most profound subjects. [itals]Pi[enditals], you’ll remember, told of a young Indian boy who crossed the ocean in the company of a ferocious Bengal tiger called Richard Parker and emerged unscathed. As unlikely a tale as a talking howler monkey. Which takes nothing from the power of the parable and each reader’s right to interpret it as they like.
Reading By Moonlight, by Brenda Walker, Hamish Hamilton, $29.95.
One woman’s journey through the books that saved her life. Not changed it, not improved it, but saved it when, out of a bright blue sky, the unimaginable happened and she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Perth-based author Brenda Walker did what she had to do medically, but it was the books she loved and shares with us here which restored her psyche and, she insists, physical health since “the books and the illness interlace with each other”. A big claim, but I loved this book so much we’re doing it for our July book club on television. It’s no literary self-help manual but a graceful and immensely moving hymn of praise to the power of reading, and how it can touch your soul.
The Last Station, by Jay Parini, Text Publishing, $23.95.
Jay Parini’s historical novel on the last days of Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy is about to be discovered by hordes of film fans. Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren were nominated for Oscars for their portrayals of Count and Countess Tolstoy, and the flick is sure to be a success. But don’t forsake the book for the film, as it is one of those rewarding reads that stays with you long after the last page is turned.
It’s 1910 in the Russian countryside, and as Leo Tolstoy’s health begins to fail a battle begins between his wife and his acolytes, over his fortune and his love. Based on historical documents, and told from the perspectives of several members of his household, the book is redolent of Russia at a turning point in history, of life with a living legend, the rewards and sacrifices of marriage and even of the meaning of life.
House Rules, by Jodi Picoult, Allen & Unwin, $32.99.
Fans of Jodi Picoult’s work know what to expect. House Rules delivers it all: the shifting perspectives of several narrators, a child with a disability or illness, a court case, and cleverly explored ethical issues.
Single mum and agony aunt Emma Hunt has two sons, Jacob and Theo. Jacob suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, Theo suffers from living with Jacob and the attention he demands from their mother. When the family is caught up in the death of a young woman, Jacob’s inability to make eye contact or show empathy helps make him a suspect, but is it Theo who is hiding something? Picoult’s flashes of humour and ability to draw sympathetic characters, carry the reader through one barely believable coincidence, and many frustrating moments when you feel like giving every member of the family a good shaking.
The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, by Alan Bradley, Orion, $49.99.
Flavia de Luce is, without question, the most delightful detective ever created. An 11-year-old aristocrat gone wild, with a passion for chemistry, she’s a 1950s’ crime scene investigator who’s not above poisoning her sisters’ chocolates or snooping in the vicar’s study.
When a travelling puppet show comes to the village of Bishop’s Lacey, a performance of [itals]Jack and the Beanstalk[enditals] ends in murder, and Flavia streaks ahead of the police to unravel the crime. But how does it relate to the death of a child in the village years ago? And is Flavia unwittingly risking her own life? An adorable protagonist, an intelligent book and, I was delighted to learn, the second in a series of Flavia de Luce novels. Lead me to number one and bring on number three.
Every Day in Tuscany – Seasons of an Italian Life, by Frances Mayes, Bantam Australia, $34.95.
Part travelogue, part cookbook, part memoir, Every Day in Tuscany is all escapism. It’s 20 years since Frances Mayes first fell in love with everything under the Tuscan sun, and she’s still aglow with adoration.
This third Tuscan memoir follows Mayes on a succession of delicious meals, bocce games, family visits and day trips to see art and scenery. There’s a brief flurry of excitement when she unwraps a gift on her lawn to find a grenade, along with a threatening note. Mayes’ love for everybody and everything Tuscan isn’t returned by the developers of a local pool against which she’s been stridently protesting. If you’d like to be picking fennel, foraging for truffles, sipping “lissom, faintly flowery wine” and dining on trestle tables with simpatico Italian pals, or reading about it in extremely descriptive detail … then this is the book for you.
A burgeoning career, a new man and a baby on the way … Bryce Corbett discovers how Dannii Minogue has finally found her mojo.
A funny thing happened to Dannii Minogue on the way to 40. She found her way into our affections. After more than 30 years of singing and dancing her heart out for our entertainment pleasure and 30 years spent living in her big sister’s shadow, Australia’s most famous sister is stepping into the spotlight. At the age of 38, Dannii seems to have finally found her mojo.
On the career front, things have never looked brighter. Starring roles in one of Australia and the UK’s most popular TV formats have seen Dannii make a triumphant return to our living rooms. And on the personal front, everything’s coming up roses. There’s a new love in her life and a baby on the way.
“It feels like the stars have finally aligned,” Dannii tells The Weekly. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it all seems to be happening.
“The funny thing is, I don’t think I’m doing anything different from what I was doing before, but all of a sudden, it feels like I can do no wrong,” she says. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice to be swimming in the slipstream for a change, instead of against it.”
There’s no denying Dannii has spent a good part of her career swimming against the current. Constantly compared to her over-achieving sister Kylie, Danni has been unlucky in love, the subject of swirling rumours of intense sibling rivalry, criticised for fake boobs, Playboy magazine spreads, a Botox obsession and her dogged pursuit of a pop career. For the longest time, whether because of bad choices or dumb luck, our Dannii just didn’t seem to be able to catch a break.
Yet what a difference a couple of years and a duo of popular talent shows can make. Since bursting back onto our TV screens, in 2007, as a judge and mentor on Australia’s Got Talent and, soon after, the UK’s The X Factor, Dannii hasn’t been able to put a Jimmy Choo-clad foot wrong.
After decades of writing her off, we’re suddenly in love with Dannii; her hair, her clothes, her genuine desire to give the benefit of the doubt to every half-baked talent that steps on stage before her. And while the public adulation is well and good, it pales in comparison to the truly good news in Dannii’s life. She is head over heels in love and about to become a mother.
The man in her life is Kris Smith, 31, an English former rugby professional-turned-model, who, if his public declarations of adoration are to be believed, is as in love with Dannii as she appears to be with him. They have bought a house together in Melbourne, are busily choosing names for their unborn child (they know the sex, but aren’t telling), due in mid-July, and are publicly referring to each other as “the one”.
And where, in years gone by, Dannii would have been focused on how many more hits she could squeeze into the next five years, she is now weighing up how many more mini-Minogues she and Kris might be able to produce.
So she’s hit the jackpot. She’s found a sort of professional and personal nirvana. “It’s only taken 30 years for me to get here,” she says laughing. “But I got here in the end.”
Your say: What do you think of Dannii? Share with us below.
Read more of our exclusive chat with Dannii in the May issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Out now with Susan Boyle on the cover.
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