Estranged sisters and a curious gift: 14 new books to get stuck into this month

The Age

02-06-2025

It may be the start of winter and things outside are cooling down, but there's no loss of heat in the book world, with a bumper crop of books being published this month. This selection includes an astonishing memoir, speculative fiction, love and other disasters in the `90s and so much more.
Salvage
Jennifer Mills
Picador, $34.99
In her fifth, speculative novel, the always imaginative Jennifer Mills plunges us into the lives of sisters Jude and Celeste. Jude is on an Earth plagued by climate disaster, war and antagonism, struggling to survive in the Freelands. Celeste, meanwhile, is trapped on some sort of spacecraft designed to help plutocrats escape the benighted world. But when something falls from the sky, we learn the full, human story of the estranged sisters.
The War Within Me
Tracy Ryan
Transit Lounge, $34.99
In the second of her Queens of Navarre series, poet and novelist Tracy Ryan turns her focus from Marguerite of Navarre to her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret. It's a story of royal and religious conflict as Jeanne escapes an arranged marriage to find love with Antoine, with whom she reigned before the Counter-Reformation pitted them on opposing sides of the long-running French wars of religion. Ryan is working on a third instalment, To Share His Fortune.
A Beautiful Family
Jennifer Trevelyan
Allen & Unwin, $32.99
There's an irony in the title of New Zealand writer Jennifer Trevelyan's much-anticipated coming-of-age debut as the narrator, 10-year-old Alix, discovers much more about her family and its secrets during a summer holiday in 1985. From Kahu, a boy she meets on the beach, she learns the story of Charlotte, a girl who drowned two years earlier and whose body has never been found. Together, they try to find out the truth of her death, which reveals truths not bargained for.
A Different Kind of Power
Jacinda Ardern
Penguin, $55
Jacinda Ardern became prime minister of New Zealand at the age of 37, and the way she dealt with the travails of high office along with the many major crises in NZ won her international admiration. Just think of her humane response to the appalling attack on the Christchurch mosques. Is there really a different way for politicians − and others − to lead? She argues forcefully that kindness and empathy are crucial. Let's hope other leaders take note of her methods.
Our New Gods
Thomas Vowles
UQP, $34.99
Whether Thomas Vowles becomes a new god of literature remains to be seen, but judging by this debut novel set in the queer world of Melbourne he can certainly write gripping fiction. Ash is new to town and has quickly been befriended by James, who takes him to a party where his boyfriend, the charismatic and mysterious Raf, is DJing. But when Ash decides to leave, he stumbles across Raf outside and what he witnesses him doing is unsettling. Soon Ash is mixed up in something he really doesn't understand.
The Death of Stalin
Sheila Fitzpatrick
Black Inc., $27.99
Black Inc. has made a point of publishing crisply written short books and essays that dissect global and local issues. In The Death of Stalin − not to be confused with Armando Iannucci's satirical film − Australia's pre-eminent Soviet historian tells us about the immediate change of direction after March 5, 1953, that was driven largely by the appalling director of the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria. In the simultaneously published Bombard the Headquarters, Linda Jaivin chronicles the disasters of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.
Aftertaste
Daria Lavelle
Bloomsbury, $32.99
Daria Lavelle's first novel is a bit bonkers really. Kostya's beloved dad is dead, but suddenly he tastes his father's favourite Ukrainian dish, pechonka. Over the years, aftertastes of food appear 'in his mouth like messages', until he discovers that by preparing specific foods or drinks he can bring the dead back from the purgatorial food hall where they are marooned. So, Kostya opens a restaurant to ease them to their next stage of death – but then things go a bit berserk.
Foreign Country
Marija Pericic
Utimo Press, $34.99
Another pair of estranged sisters. When Eva gets a surprise letter from Elisabeta at her new apartment in Berlin she's puzzled to find it contains an airline ticket back to Australia. They've been apart for years, but Eva sets off to the Blue Mountains only to find that Elisabeta is dead and she is left to sort the debris of her life. Tucked into an absorbing narrative about the interaction of past and the present are documents and photos to provide a visual contrast with the emotional discoveries that Eva makes about her sister.
The Prime Minister's Potato and Other Essays
Anne-Marie Condé
Upswell, $29.99
Historian and museum curator Anne-Marie Condé says she meditates on 'how the past can be understood through the interactions of people, places and things'. Her titular essay in this diverse and rather lovely collection tells of a curious 1942 gift from one William Frith to John Curtin as a 'cure for your akes and Pains'. Other essays dwell on the Australian War Memorial, Barry Humphries' character Sandy Stone, and the man who owned the house outside which the school bus would drop Condé each afternoon.
The Name of the Sister
Gail Jones
Text, $34.99
Gail Jones is becoming positively prolific − this is her fourth novel in five years. She has turned away from the literary figures of her previous two books to what might be called literary crime. Who is this 'Jane', found wandering at night on a highway near Broken Hill? Freelance journalist Angie sees a feature in the predicament of the unknown woman, while her detective friend Bev is in charge of the case. Both want to discover the backstory, 'the maw of possibilities, deep down and red'.
New Skin
Miranda Nation
Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Miranda Nation has runs on the board writing and directing the 2018 thriller Undertow and writing the TV series Playing Gracie Darling, due later this year. Which is clearly quite a big one for her as now comes publication of her first novel, one that features an intense first love between two medical students in the '90s, the drugs, the sex, the parties and then flashing years forward to the consequences and emotional hangovers. It's all a question of timing.
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li
Fourth Estate, $32.99, June 4
Yiyun Li's memoir is an account of the death of her two sons, Vincent and James, by suicide six years apart. It is remarkable for its clear-sightedness and sensitivity. The Chinese-born novelist argues that children have to have the space to become fully themselves, and writes: 'I loved them, and I still love them, but more important than loving is understanding and respecting them, and this includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives.'
Apple in China
Patrick McGee
Simon & Schuster, $36.99
June 4
Apple has got itself into something of a jam. As Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee puts it, the tech company's relationship with China 'has become politically untenable, yet the business ties are unbreakable'. Today, 90 per cent of all Apple's production takes place in China. With Apple's future 'inextricably linked to a ruthless authoritarian state', McGee also argues that today's China wouldn't be what it is without the company. Donald Trump may yet have more to say about all this.
A Wisdom of Age
Jacinta Parsons
ABC Books, $34.99, June 6
Following on from A Question of Age, Jacinta Parsons delves into women's 'felt senses' to learn what it means to be human and how this understanding is changed by accumulated years. Through talking to many women around the country, she focuses on the disconnect between the way women who are ageing are treated in society and how they actually feel inside. Ageing, she writes, is not a malady that needs fixing, 'it needs for us to embrace it for what it offers us'.