Conquering Tinseltown: The next generation of Nicoles, Russells and Cates

Conspiracies, mysterious deaths and a surprise guest: 14 new books to read this month

The Age

2 hours ago

The Age

Conspiracies, mysterious deaths and a surprise guest: 14 new books to read this month

What's good, what's bad, and what's in between in literature? Here we review the latest titles. See all 51 stories. There are plenty of good books around for you in August, including memoir, histories, fiction, short stories and forgotten classics. Why not make the most of the last month of winter by hunkering down with a new book − even if you're heading for a spot where the weather isn't too chilly. Learned Behaviours Zeynab Gamieldien Ultimo, $34.99 When Zaid Saban begins at Brookbank Boys High in western Sydney, he feels lost. He soon finds a friend in Hass Abdallah and their lives intertwine. But then those lives diverge: Zaid becomes a lawyer, Hass is charged with murder and takes his own life in jail. Years later, his sister Amira visits Zaid, asking for help with a diary she has found; she's puzzled by things Hass wrote. When his past resurfaces, Zaid knows he has not transcended it and his desire for certainty only leads to unwanted questioning and more uncertainty. The Visitor Rebecca Starford Allen & Unwin, $32.99 This is the second novel from Rebecca Starford, co-founder with Hannah Kent, of the online literary journal Kill Your Darlings. The first was The Imitator, an acclaimed historical spy drama. The Visitor begins with an elderly couple deserting the Brisbane house they've lived in for 50 years. Why haven't they told Laura, their writer daughter, who's been living in Britain for ages? When the couple die in strange circumstances in the outback, Laura and her family return to Queensland to do up that family home. But why is Laura behaving so oddly, and what does a mysterious photograph reveal about events? Conspiracy Nation Ariel Bogle & Cam Wilson Ultimo, $36.99 As the two authors who have long investigated the intersections of technology, culture, politics and the law write, 'It can come as a shock to a lot of Australians to find that their friends, families and workmates … now understand their lives through the prism of plots, cabals and Manichean fights between good versus evil'. Conspiratorial thinking and misinformation abound in Australia, particularly since COVID-19, and Bogle and Wilson explore the origins of a host of conspiracy theories, including those surrounding the Port Arthur massacre, COVID lockdowns and 'the 28″, an alleged cabal of paedophile politicians. Yilkari Nicholas Rothwell & Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson Text, $34.99 It's fair to say that Nicholas Rothwell, winner of two prime minister's literary awards, writes books that are hard to categorise − an appealing thing these days when marketing forces hold such sway in publishing. Yes, he has written two novels, but both contained elements of autobiography, particularly his first, Heaven and Earth. Now he has joined forces with his Indigenous wife, former politician and now painter Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, to write their 'suite' of the Western Desert. The arrival of a surprise guest, someone met 15 years earlier in Berlin, prompts a fascinating journey of awakening and spiritual discovery. U Want It Darker Murray Middleton Picador, $34.99 Murray Middleton made his mark as a short-story writer – he won The Age award and then the Vogel – spent eight years on his first novel, the magnificent No Church in the Wild, and returns just over a year later with a collection of inventive stories that spotlight the angst and joys of the creative life. As our review will say: 'The dramatic situations are characterised by a collision of two irreconcilable desires: the impulse to create art with the spiritual toll and untenable economic realities. These are the lands of the crestfallen bohemian.' The Last Days of Zane Grey Vicki Hastrich Allen & Unwin, $34.99 I knew of Zane Grey only as the legendary, huge-selling and prolific author of Westerns, notably Riders of the Purple Sage, whose work was frequently adapted by Hollywood, but there was more to him than that. Like Hemingway, he loved big-game fishing, and that passion brought him to Australia (with only 166 pieces of luggage) in search of creative inspiration and the chance to snag a giant shark in the sea off Bermagui. He made a film, White Death, and also managed a love affair with the alluring poet Lola Gornall. Vicki Hastrich, author of the acclaimed memoir Night Fishing, tells a fascinating story beautifully. The Sea In The Metro Jayne Tuttle Hardie Grant, $34.99 Helen Garner described the writing in Jayne Tuttle's two memoirs about her life as an actor and more in Paris as 'joltingly alive, beautiful and terrifying'. The Sea in the Metro completes her trilogy, with Tuttle reassessing her life there and the intricacies of her relationship with her musician husband, M, giving birth to 'the Chunk', writing ads, meeting up again with her friend Sophie, in whose building she had the accident that nearly killed her, and the remarkable 'Balkans Doctor' with his 'bioregulatory medicine'. There is a great immediacy and candour here. My Father Bryce Adam Courtenay Hachette, $34.99 Never let the facts get in the way of a story. It's a saying that epitomises the life of the late Bryce Courtenay, who burst onto the bestseller lists with The Power of One in 1989 and was a fixture there with his regular offerings of stonking great novels such as Jessica and Tommo & Hawk. Adam Courtenay reveals that his father was a wonderful dad to his three sons, but one whose loose relationship with the truth of his own life – 'Dad facts' – and addiction to success, fame, and being the best, challenged their connection. Annie Magdalene Barbara Hanrahan Pink Shorts Press, $32.99 Barbara Hanrahan was known as a printmaker and painter, and then as a writer of novels that were unashamedly domestic and feminist. As The Australian Dictionary of Biograph y puts it, Hanrahan saw these creative forms as complementary: 'printmaking was instinctive and writing was intellectual'. First published 40 years ago, Annie Magdalene is the story of a woman looking back on her life. The prose is simple and direct, the sentiments profound. As Hanrahan writes, 'You must never talk loud to the bees, you must talk softly'. The Leap Paul Daley Summit, $34.99 Paul Daley has followed his acclaimed Jesustown with a sort of Wake in Fright for the 2020s. Traumatised British diplomat Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill is parachuted into The Leap, an outback town far from anywhere, to plead for the lives of two women accused of killing the daughter of local bigwig Cecil Sloper. Daley's novel exposes the years of appalling treatment of the Indigenous population and the worst of outback life. But there are saving graces for Benedict, and thrills for the reader right to the end. Arboresence Rhett Davis Hachette, $32.99 Rhett Davis won an influential Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2020 for an unpublished manuscript and when it was published, Hovering was described as 'immediately striking on both a conceptual and a formal level'. There were distinctly strange elements to it that continue in his second novel, in which a dissatisfied couple, Bren and Caelyn, find themselves drifting apart as Caelyn is attracted to the idea of the eponymous title – people turning themselves into trees. As our review says, Davis uses 'his distinctive creativity to interrogate, mock but ultimately affirm humanity'. Nazis in Australia Graham Blewitt & Mark Aarons Schwartz, $39.99 August 11 This comprehensive book examines the history of the special investigations unit charged with finding the '841 alleged war criminals' who had escaped Europe to Australia after World War II. It was set up in 1987 and resulted in three prosecutions, none of which led to a conviction, and significant effort towards other potential charges. Here, essays examine the unit from various perspectives, including those of prosecution, defence and historians, and consider its legacy. As former deputy director Graham Blewitt writes, 'for a brief period in our legal history, we stood up and did the right thing'. A Fair Day's Work Sean Scalmer MUP, $34.99 August 13 As the Albanese government prepares for its summit on productivity, the question to be asked is whether working Australians will come under pressure to give up some of the gains they have made since the advent of the eight-hour working day in the second half of the 19th century. Work-life balance remains crucial to all Australians and Sean Scalmer's assessment of the long quest for a 'fair day's work' rightly asks the timely question of whether productivity is increasingly associated 'with more time at work, not with more efficient performance of duties'. Loading Fathering Alistair Thomson et al MUP, $39.99 August 13 The five authors of this extensive book say fathers and fathering 'are central to pressing concerns in contemporary Australia', concerns that include poor contribution to child care and domestic work; parental leave and family-friendly work; domestic violence, and the changes to the family structure. They look at individual fathers as case studies and also provide a historical survey of how the idea of being a father and the actuality of it has changed over the past century. A perfect gift for Father's Day?

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

The Age

6 hours ago

The Age

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

It was the dawn of the new millennium and 22-year-old Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts dance graduate Floeur Alder was on top of the world. Alder had just returned from a dream four-month study trip to Europe that she hoped would set her up for a brilliant career and was tripping lightly down Mary Street to her Highgate home in June, 2000. Then, without any rhyme or reason, a man emerged from the darkness and plunged a knife deep into her face. He said nothing and disappeared back into the night. Alder managed to make it to her home and pull out the knife before dragging herself to a Greek restaurant in Beaufort Street, blood spurting from her neck. The owner called an ambulance and Alder was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital where she endured six hours of surgery and two blood transfusions, with the knife narrowly missing her jugular. While a skilled plastic surgeon managed to repair the surface damage, Alder spent the better part of the decade dealing with the trauma and healing a body that should have been gracing Australian and European stages. 'I was full of anger and rage,' says Alder. 'I was looking at people coming out of WAAPA and comparing myself to them. 'It made me mad. Their lives and careers were progressing while I wasn't going anywhere.' Adding insult to injury was the fact that Alder is the daughter of Perth dance legends Lucette Aldous and Alan Alder. Hanging over her entire life was the expectation she would match her parents' achievements. In particular, Alder was constantly compared to her mother, the New Zealand-born, Perth-raised prima ballerina who was the resident dancer of the Australian Ballet and who achieved icon status performing with Rudolph Nureyev in his famed production of Don Quixote. 'When mum was 21 she was at the Royal Ballet doing Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn. When I was her age I was in a hospital bed recovering from the attack. It was so ironic and painful,' Alder says. 'All my life I was dealing with people expecting so much of me. And I had those expectations of myself. 'So when I was recovering from the attack and barely able to move it was very hard for me to take. I was angry all the time.' That frustration and rage, and her gradual understanding that those emotions were not just because of the stabbing incident but spewed up from a deeper, darker place, is the central to a new documentary by Perth filmmaker Dawn Jackson, En Pointe: Dancing on a Knife, which is premiering this month at the CinefestOZ film festival in WA's South West. What began as a modest hour-long account of the trauma suffered by a young dancer and the way in which she used dance to rebuild, blossomed into a deeply moving feature-length documentary about a high-profile artistic family and the impact of fame on its youngest member. 'People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest.' Floeur Alder Jackson moves between Aldous dancing in Sleeping Beauty and her daughter's convalescence during what should have been her golden years, weaving a tale in which Alder gradually comes back to life as a dancer and a choreographer, culminating in her directing her parents in a piece called Rare Earth (2004). The making of the documentary became a significant part of the recovery process, something which both surprised and unnerved Alder. 'I was much more involved in the film than I ever thought I would be. I certainly didn't think I would be narrating it,' Alder says. Jackson says there were plans for others to narrate the film, 'but we realised it had to be Floeur'. 'It was her story. We had to have her voice.' Loading The reason for the closeness of Alder to the film is that Jackson herself was training as a dancer in the mid-1980s at WAAPA while Aldous and Alan were teaching at the celebrated West Australian 'Fame' school. 'I remember Floeur being there [at WAAPA] all the time, sitting on the floor and eating snakes,' Jackson says. 'All of the students became really close to her. Her parents were busy teaching and she was an only child so we became her family. I even used to babysit for Floeur.' Around the time Jackson pivoted from dance to filmmaking, she caught a performance of Rare Earth and realised she had a great story to tell, one that had the appalling attack at its heart but opened up into other issues, such as Alder's struggle to come out from her parents' shadow. 'I was struck by Floeur's willingness to embrace her legacy after spending so much of her life grappling with it,' Jackson says. 'When she was at WAAPA the gossip was that she was getting all these great parts because of her parents. But she was getting them simply because she was bloody good.' Financing the film proved difficult and dragged the process over a decade. But it meant Jackson was able to document closely Alder's physical and emotional healing and renaissance as an artist, with her subject playing a greater role than normal for this kind of project. 'The long process gave me time to record my mother's history and her work, which became part of the film. This is not just a film. It is part of the story' says Alder. Her parents are both interviewed extensively in the documentary but did not live long enough to see its completion. While Pointe: On a Knife's Edge has all the stuff of an edge-of-the-seat crime series or podcast — we even get to an emotional meeting with the policeman who dealt with the case back in 2000 — Jackson says it is different because the story is told from the point of view of the survivor. 'So often when we watch these crime series it is about the perpetrator or the police trying to track them down,' she says. 'This deals with what Floeur went through — the attack and her healing and her fight to re-establish a career that was derailed when a random stranger decided to take out his anger on her.' Jackson also sees her film as an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge of trauma. 'Trauma was not as well understood when Floeur was attacked as it is today. It separates you from yourself,' Jackson says. For Alder, the documentary has allowed her to finally tell her story. 'It is my truth. It is nobody else's. People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest. This is my story,' she says.

Sydney Morning Herald

6 hours ago

Sydney Morning Herald

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

It was the dawn of the new millennium and 22-year-old Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts dance graduate Floeur Alder was on top of the world. Alder had just returned from a dream four-month study trip to Europe that she hoped would set her up for a brilliant career and was tripping lightly down Mary Street to her Highgate home in June, 2000. Then, without any rhyme or reason, a man emerged from the darkness and plunged a knife deep into her face. He said nothing and disappeared back into the night. Alder managed to make it to her home and pull out the knife before dragging herself to a Greek restaurant in Beaufort Street, blood spurting from her neck. The owner called an ambulance and Alder was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital where she endured six hours of surgery and two blood transfusions, with the knife narrowly missing her jugular. While a skilled plastic surgeon managed to repair the surface damage, Alder spent the better part of the decade dealing with the trauma and healing a body that should have been gracing Australian and European stages. 'I was full of anger and rage,' says Alder. 'I was looking at people coming out of WAAPA and comparing myself to them. 'It made me mad. Their lives and careers were progressing while I wasn't going anywhere.' Adding insult to injury was the fact that Alder is the daughter of Perth dance legends Lucette Aldous and Alan Alder. Hanging over her entire life was the expectation she would match her parents' achievements. In particular, Alder was constantly compared to her mother, the New Zealand-born, Perth-raised prima ballerina who was the resident dancer of the Australian Ballet and who achieved icon status performing with Rudolph Nureyev in his famed production of Don Quixote. 'When mum was 21 she was at the Royal Ballet doing Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn. When I was her age I was in a hospital bed recovering from the attack. It was so ironic and painful,' Alder says. 'All my life I was dealing with people expecting so much of me. And I had those expectations of myself. 'So when I was recovering from the attack and barely able to move it was very hard for me to take. I was angry all the time.' That frustration and rage, and her gradual understanding that those emotions were not just because of the stabbing incident but spewed up from a deeper, darker place, is the central to a new documentary by Perth filmmaker Dawn Jackson, En Pointe: Dancing on a Knife, which is premiering this month at the CinefestOZ film festival in WA's South West. What began as a modest hour-long account of the trauma suffered by a young dancer and the way in which she used dance to rebuild, blossomed into a deeply moving feature-length documentary about a high-profile artistic family and the impact of fame on its youngest member. 'People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest.' Floeur Alder Jackson moves between Aldous dancing in Sleeping Beauty and her daughter's convalescence during what should have been her golden years, weaving a tale in which Alder gradually comes back to life as a dancer and a choreographer, culminating in her directing her parents in a piece called Rare Earth (2004). The making of the documentary became a significant part of the recovery process, something which both surprised and unnerved Alder. 'I was much more involved in the film than I ever thought I would be. I certainly didn't think I would be narrating it,' Alder says. Jackson says there were plans for others to narrate the film, 'but we realised it had to be Floeur'. 'It was her story. We had to have her voice.' Loading The reason for the closeness of Alder to the film is that Jackson herself was training as a dancer in the mid-1980s at WAAPA while Aldous and Alan were teaching at the celebrated West Australian 'Fame' school. 'I remember Floeur being there [at WAAPA] all the time, sitting on the floor and eating snakes,' Jackson says. 'All of the students became really close to her. Her parents were busy teaching and she was an only child so we became her family. I even used to babysit for Floeur.' Around the time Jackson pivoted from dance to filmmaking, she caught a performance of Rare Earth and realised she had a great story to tell, one that had the appalling attack at its heart but opened up into other issues, such as Alder's struggle to come out from her parents' shadow. 'I was struck by Floeur's willingness to embrace her legacy after spending so much of her life grappling with it,' Jackson says. 'When she was at WAAPA the gossip was that she was getting all these great parts because of her parents. But she was getting them simply because she was bloody good.' Financing the film proved difficult and dragged the process over a decade. But it meant Jackson was able to document closely Alder's physical and emotional healing and renaissance as an artist, with her subject playing a greater role than normal for this kind of project. 'The long process gave me time to record my mother's history and her work, which became part of the film. This is not just a film. It is part of the story' says Alder. Her parents are both interviewed extensively in the documentary but did not live long enough to see its completion. While Pointe: On a Knife's Edge has all the stuff of an edge-of-the-seat crime series or podcast — we even get to an emotional meeting with the policeman who dealt with the case back in 2000 — Jackson says it is different because the story is told from the point of view of the survivor. 'So often when we watch these crime series it is about the perpetrator or the police trying to track them down,' she says. 'This deals with what Floeur went through — the attack and her healing and her fight to re-establish a career that was derailed when a random stranger decided to take out his anger on her.' Jackson also sees her film as an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge of trauma. 'Trauma was not as well understood when Floeur was attacked as it is today. It separates you from yourself,' Jackson says. For Alder, the documentary has allowed her to finally tell her story. 'It is my truth. It is nobody else's. People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest. This is my story,' she says.

Conquering Tinseltown: The next generation of Nicoles, Russells and Cates

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Comments

Related Articles

Conspiracies, mysterious deaths and a surprise guest: 14 new books to read this month

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

Conquering Tinseltown: The next generation of Nicoles, Russells and Cates

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Comments

Related Articles

Conspiracies, mysterious deaths and a surprise guest: 14 new books to read this month

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen

Get Started Now: Download the App