Latest news with #BrandonJack
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
AFL star writes a book about life in the big league featuring players who abuse drugs and get kicked out of clubs - and the VERY rude title says it all
Former Sydney Swans star Brandon Jack has given footy fans a glimpse into the lives of what it's like to be a player on the fringe of an AFL side's first-grade team with his new fictional novel. Jack, 31, is an Australian author, journalist, and a former professional footy player. He played for the Swans between 2013 and 2017, making 28 appearances in footy's top flight, before being delisted by the club. Following the conclusion of his footy career, Jack turned to literature, winning an award after he published his memoirs, detailing what life is like playing pro footy back in 2021. Now, he has published his first novel, entitled 'Pissants'. The fictional book delves into the lives of AFL players contracted to a fictional and unnamed club, but are stuck on the outskirts of the first team. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandon Jack (@brandonjackk) It is a crude and confronting tale about the inner workings of a club, with Jack revealing that even he did not like some of the themes included in the book, but included them to keep the authenticity of what life is like at the top level. 'There are things the characters say, and things that they do, that I disagree with. When I tried to change it, it felt really fake,' he told The Guardian. 'It felt like it lost energy. Because with my experience of the football world, I know that beneath what you see on the field and in the interviews, it's all a little bit dark.' Sport runs in the family for Jack, with his father, Garry, enjoying a distinguished career in rugby league's top flight, winning 22 caps for the Kangaroos between 1984 and 1988. He also made 244 appearances for the Balmain Tigers. The characters in 'Pissants' have nicknames like Fangs, Mud, Shaggers and Big Sexy. The book sheds a light on the extent these players will go to establish themselves as a key member of the squad, from lewd inside jokes, themes of loyalty and bizarre team rituals. The group don't play all that often, instead issuing their resentment to those playing in the first grade side. The bitter players make their own rules. They kidnap a team-mates dog, abuse painkillers during sponsor events and get chucked out of nightclubs. 'The Pissants group, that core group of players that we follow, are unknowingly staring out into the void searching for meaning,' Jack explains. 'They're at their footy club, and they're getting nothing back. They're not wanted, they're not needed. So they're experiencing a kind of existential dread of: 'What is my purpose?', which they funnel through their rituals and drinking games. 'They're creating and cultivating their own meaning in the universe. That's how a lot of us operate.' The unique and innovative book explores themes of masculinity and fragility, with many of the characters putting up a front to mask emotions of loneliness and alienation. Jack adds that the humour, which shines through the book, is something he is grateful for. He adds that the comedy elements in the book also 'capture what was for me a pretty dark place at times.' 'I'm at a point now where I realise there were things in [that experience] which were seriously funny,' he told ABC. 'The reason for all my searching was that I just wanted somebody else around, to be connected. 'To be able to write this in a way that conveys both of those things was important.' One other big theme he explores in the novel is the topic of bullying. The 'Pissants' bond by the abuse they subject members of the group to. From Kangaroo Courts to cruel pranks, the group is ruthless when it comes to their team-mates. Jack says that this is very strong in footy clubs, but adds that in-jokes are also a big deal. 'Sometimes, you really want to be in on the joke, even if it's at your expense, because the alternative is loneliness, and that's almost a worse fate,' he adds to ABC. 'That's why, in my mind, these players are engaging the way they are. I think they're looking for some sort of meaning and connection to other people, and that's the way they get it.' After hanging up his boots, Jack doesn't miss playing at the top level. Instead, he revealed he's moved on from the sport, revealing that it had taken him some time to get back into running. 'It took me a while post-footy to just enjoy going for a run,' Jack said to The Guardian. 'But I've found the joy in putting the runners on, putting headphones in and just going at a slow pace, far less intense than I used to. 'Sometimes I find myself creeping up when it's meant to be an easy 5km run, sometimes I end up flogging myself. There's something I still like about knowing what my mind and body can do.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Brandon Jack: ‘Beneath what you see on the football field and in the interviews, it's all a little bit dark
Brandon Jack is waiting for sunshine to peek through the canopy of Australian figs and evergreen oaks of Sydney's Centennial Park. He has spent many hours traversing the tracks of this park, pushing his mind and body to their limits, but today in baggy jeans and a nondescript hoodie, he is at the mercy of the brisk morning breeze. The former AFL player turned author has lived near the park for more than a decade, after growing up on the other side of the city in a high-profile sporting family then joining the Sydney Swans as an 18-year-old. He doesn't visit Centennial Park nearly as much as he used to, when he would arrive with a defined purpose and plan. A bright red training singlet and high-end runners were the uniform back then, as Jack and a selection of his Swans teammates powered around the 3.5km loop. 'There was a group of players in my position, not really in the team, who were all 20, 21,' Jack says, as we leave the Greenhouse cafe and begin our stroll around the same track. 'We'd come here three or four times a week and run on this footpath. Not slow, we'd be hammering it. A group of nine or 10, some of us were big blokes … and we were just hellbent on getting everything out of our run.' Jack was a dedicated – bordering on obsessive – trainer during his time with the Swans. No matter how hard he worked, it still wasn't enough for him to cement his place in the side. After five years he was still trying to live up to his own expectations, still seeking his place among the well-established stars. A footballer on the brink of breaking into a team chasing premiership glory. The younger brother of Kieren, the club's co-captain. The son of Donna and Garry, the latter an Australian and New South Wales rugby league great. And then, at the end of the 2017 AFL season, Jack was let go by the club. Forced into a not unwelcome change of direction, Jack has since followed a more literary path, penning columns, a memoir and now a novel which revolve, in some way, around the world of elite sport and its culture. The memoir, 28 – named after the number of senior games he played with the Swans – was all the more eye-opening for its brutal honesty. It is a story Jack did not want to tell. 'I hated football, I didn't want to talk about football,' he says. The book was first presented as a collection of essays 'with no mention of footy other than one paragraph – which my editor quickly said was the most interesting thing I'd written. Then I found a box of journals from my footy days, and I was like, 'oh, I forgot about this person'.' Once Jack settled on the idea of writing a memoir that draws heavily on his experiences inside an AFL club, he says he was determined 'not to do a conventional sports memoir, where I'm chaired off the field at the end'. But he concedes he still presented a sense of closure at the end of 28 by 'going back and playing football'. Jack returns to football in his second book, Pissants. This time the professional football club is fictional, though the main players are still on the fringe of the senior team. The setting might be familiar but Jack is exploring more than just the themes he covered in 28. He is out to learn more about himself as a writer. The language used by the characters in Pissants is crude and confronting. Their actions are discomforting and, at times, misogynistic. They live life on the edge but Jack seldom shows whether the characters pay a price when their behaviour crosses the line. 'There are things the characters say, and things that they do, that I disagree with. When I tried to change it, it felt really fake. It felt like it lost energy. Because with my experience of the football world, I know that beneath what you see on the field and in the interviews, it's all a little bit dark.' As we pass by Centennial Homestead and the park's bird sanctuary, the sun is out, the wind has dropped, and Jack has rolled up his sleeves. He puts deep thought into each comment, especially as he connects the Pissants characters to his own time spent as something of an outsider who found himself within the walls of an elite football club. Jack remains curious how sports, clubs and their players present themselves externally, particularly on social media. He brings it up more than once on our walk, perhaps no surprise after he published a 15,000-word essay on the topic last year. He even spent time shadowing the GWS Giants media team to understand how the AFL's undisputed meme champions operate. It only made Jack more cynical of the way that sports clubs use their own channels to connect supporters to the stars, give every No 1 fan a seemingly direct link to their idols. 'We should be more wary of this type of media, because they're controlling the narrative even more,' he says, before pointing to the disconnect between disarming social media 'banter' and the behaviour of several Giants players at a post-season party last year. 'When that came out, I just thought 'that's scarier than the shit I'm writing'.' But Jack is adamant that his novel 'is not a comment on the footy world' or the young men – and, to a lesser extent, women – who inhabit it. 'I just wanted to prove to myself that I could write funny characters. Obviously there are things I'm subconsciously exploring, but there's no agenda to this book for me. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion 'On 28, we had 'masculinity' on the cover, and I regretted it straight away,' Jack says. 'It's a word that still makes me uneasy. It was my first book, I didn't know how to trust my gut. It makes me shrink up when I hear that word now. I don't use it, never really have. That goes back to why I've written a novel about characters, because I don't need to use that word, 'masculinity'. I can show it. 'The Pissants group, that core group of players that we follow, are unknowingly staring out into the void searching for meaning,' he adds. 'They're at their footy club, and they're getting nothing back. They're not wanted, they're not needed. So they're experiencing a kind of existential dread of 'what is my purpose?', which they funnel through their rituals and drinking games. They're creating and cultivating their own meaning in the universe. That's how a lot of us operate.' Jack's walking pace begins to slow as he tries to find the right words. He is usually at ease discussing the darker side of elite sport, it is terrain that he has covered many times before. But occasionally he hits a nerve within himself, this time when considering his Pissants characters and their place in the sporting and broader world. 'Unknowingly or unconsciously, we're just trying to fill that gap that would be loneliness or lack of purpose, by giving meaning to random things,' he adds. The 31-year-old distances himself from the AFL club and culture that he was part of for five years. He rarely watches matches on TV let alone attends the Swans' home games at the stadium that we could walk to with a slight diversion. But he still catches up with friends who happen to now be among the established players at the club that he was once desperate to join. Football and being part of the inner sanctum has been pushed into Jack's past but it remains within him. It remains his muse. He is no longer looking for validation from coaches and teammates. Now he writes – and runs – for himself. 'It took me a while post-footy to just enjoy going for a run,' Jack says. 'But I've found the joy in putting the runners on, putting headphones in and just going at a slow pace, far less intense than I used to. Sometimes I find myself creeping up when it's meant to be an easy 5km run, sometimes I end up flogging myself. There's something I still like about knowing what my mind and body can do.' Pissants by Brandon Jack is out now through Simon & Schuster
ABC News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Former Sydney Swan Brandon Jack pens debut novel Pissants exploring life on AFL's fringe
When the Western Bulldogs played the Sydney Swans earlier this year, former footballer and author Brandon Jack got a text about the game from an unlikely source. "I got this random message from [author] Helen [Garner] saying, 'I don't know about this Tom Papley,'" he tells ABC Arts. "[She thought] he was being a bit of an instigator." Garner, an ardent Western Bulldogs fan whose latest book, The Season, followed the fortunes of her grandson's under-16s AFL team, had found a kindred spirit in Jack. "It's so funny that we've become friends, but it's nice that this very highly regarded writer approves of [my] work," Jack says. Mixing the unlikely worlds of AFL and literature is very much the MO for Jack, whose new novel, Pissants, takes us to the fringes of AFL football. The 31-year-old played 28 games for the Sydney Swans over five years before becoming interested in literature and studying creative writing. His 2021 memoir, 28, won praise from Australia's literary establishment for its insights into masculinity and addiction. But Jack says he still "didn't feel like much of an author" after writing it. Pissants, Jack's first novel, sketches out a world he knows well. It follows a ragtag bunch of contracted AFL players who exist on the periphery of the mega-popular sport. Our antiheroes — who have nicknames like Fangs, Mud, Stick, Shaggers and Big Sexy — don't play much football. Instead, they train, resent the star players, abuse painkillers to get through an inane sponsor's function, fill out bingo cards of the cliches spouted by the team's ineffective psychologist and get kicked out of nightclubs. Underneath all their shenanigans and abrasive behaviour is a deep well of desperation. But Jack says he didn't intend Pissants to critique football club culture. "I'm sure there are many interpretations of it but, to be completely blunt, I didn't have a message or anything I was trying to solve with this book. I just enjoyed writing it." Instead of mapping out the plot in advance, Jack followed the more freewheeling approach of one of his most admired authors, Booker Prize-winner George Saunders. "[Saunders] says that if you try and wrestle back a story from where it's leading you, then you're doing a disservice to it." Pissants departs from traditional novelistic storytelling, including elements such as footnotes, betting slips, Facebook events and transcripts of a kangaroo court the group runs. Similarly, we never learn which club the Pissants play for; this information is always blacked out in the text, like a redacted name in a court document. Jack says he was influenced by writers like Irvine Welsh and Jennifer Egan, who use unusual literary devices to flesh out their fictional worlds. He also says he used a kaleidoscopic approach out of "necessity". "To be honest, I'm not the kind of writer who can sustain a single voice for 300 pages. My writing, if I do that, dies on the page, so it made sense for me to bounce around between voices and techniques." One constant in the Pissants group is what looks to outsiders like blatant bullying. The players bond through abusing members of their group who step out of line. They also engage in cruel and elaborate pranks at each other's expense. "That's definitely very strong in footy clubs," Jack says of bullying. The group also have scores of elaborate running in-jokes in their group chat. "Sometimes, you really want to be in on the joke, even if it's at your expense, because the alternative is loneliness, and that's almost a worse fate," Jack says. "That's why, in my mind, these players are engaging the way they are. I think they're looking for some sort of meaning and connection to other people, and that's the way they get it." None of the Pissants seem to enjoy their life as footballers. They resent their place in their world but feel powerless to change it. Yet the game is often a large part of their identity and their only developed professional skill. Jack himself had profoundly mixed emotions when the Sydney Swans delisted him, ending his AFL career at just 23. "I knew I didn't want to play sport anymore, but I was still f***ing hurt by it," he says. "I only realised a few years back how lost I was and how much I was struggling. Jack's characters often deal with their despair through gallows humour. The action often resembles the pitch-black comedy of Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers, especially in a chapter where the players kidnap a teammate's dog for a lark and things go downhill. "I'm glad that it's got that humour and that it captures what was, for me, a pretty dark place at times," Jack reflects. "I'm at a point now where I realise there were things in [that experience] which were seriously funny. "The reason for all my searching was that I just wanted somebody else around, to be connected. "To be able to write this in a way that conveys both of those things was important."
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list
From a comic satire on the world of professional AFL to queer romances; from a study of the creative chemistry between John Lennon and Paul McCartney to a memoir of life as an elite policeman, this week's books cover wide ground. Pissants Brandon Jack Summit Books, $34.99 Former Sydney Swans player Brandon Jack penned an acclaimed memoir, 28, which exposed life in the AFL machine. Some truths can't be fully imagined in non-fiction, a defect colourfully remedied in his debut novel. Pissants is a super-sweary inside job on the world of professional football, a pitch-black comic satire that takes in rivalry and camaraderie and misdeeds. There's locker room goss, sports psychology and the creeping derangements of being steeped in a culture of toxic pressures – from ultra-competitiveness to the psychotic hypermasculinity of bonding and hazing rituals. There are plenty of jaw-dropping shenanigans tinged with narcissism, and the sense of impunity that attends fame on the field, but there's also a fair whack of misery and unacknowledged woundedness. Jack incorporates bingo cards and WhatsApp chats into more conventional narrative modes, as all the dirty laundry gets an airing. AFL fans should enjoy the fly-on-the-wall-of-the-locker-room vibe, and Jack draws out the attractions of elite team sport – and much that's repugnant about how it operates behind the scenes – with brutality and hilarity. Taylor Jenkins Reid became a global publishing phenomenon with the rise of BookTok during the pandemic. Her previous bestsellers have included Daisy Jones & The Six (loosely inspired by the story behind Fleetwood Mac) and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (a romantic mystery following a glamorous Hollywood star of yesteryear). Her ninth novel combines romance with adventure and disaster in space. Astrophysicist Joan Goodwin joins the NASA space program in the early 1980s. Training as an astronaut with a team of brilliant, big personalities, she must navigate institutional sexism, a growing bond with colleagues on a dangerous mission, and budding romance. Catastrophe looms, and the action and suspense of the emergency frames a love story that delves deeply into the rigours and routines of life as an astronaut, and how trailblazing women resisted the male-dominated atmosphere of NASA in the 1980s. It's a page-turner with high emotional stakes; Reid's fans are probably producing tear-streaked TikTok vids already. Author of Ghost Wall, Summerwater and The Fell, Sarah Moss is, among other things, an expert excavator of the effects of post-Brexit politics on the British psyche. In Ripeness, the politics turn to reproductive rights, migrant identities and the rights of refugees. Edith is the daughter of a French Jewish Holocaust survivor who escaped being murdered by the Nazis when she was granted asylum in the UK in 1941. Now over 70, comfortable, living in western Ireland, Edith is troubled by her friend Méabh's attitude to African refugees (and notes it doesn't apply to displaced Ukrainians), though she's drawn into her friend's family mystery. Méabh discovers she has an unknown brother, adopted by an American family, who wants to connect with his biological relatives and find out more about his roots. The novel's action flits between this contemporary strand and a trip to Italy in the 1960s, when Edith was a nerdy 17-year-old accompanying her older sister, who is enduring an unwanted pregnancy. Moss crafts a fine balance of sympathy in her portrayal of Edith, contrasting first-person and third-person narration to interrogate how social identities are forged, how rights must be fought for, and the growing cost of complacency. Ordinary Love Marie Rutkoski Virago, $34.99 Queer romance reignites in Marie Rutkoski's Ordinary Love when teenage sweethearts Emily and Gen reunite as 30-somethings. Their lives have taken different paths since their schooldays. Emily suffers through an abusive marriage to the wealthy Jack and leaves him after a frightening episode of domestic violence at the book's outset. Gen meanwhile becomes an Olympic athlete, aggressively embracing her sexuality through a string of affairs and hook-ups with other women. The story of their adolescent courtship and the homophobia it ran up against is told in flashback, revealing Emily and Gen to be old flames with old wounds that have shaped the courses of their adult lives. Rutkovski is sharp on just how difficult it can be to leave an abusive relationship, especially when the abuser seeks to isolate the victim from support networks. A subplot involving friends of Emily fighting to help her overcome Jack's influence is so full-blooded it almost becomes the main event. Yet the intimacy and vividness Rutkoski brings to her characters' sexual life is unusual – sex writing so often goes awry – and this is a romance novel that feels refreshingly grounded, written for adults. Big Feelings Amy Lovat Macmillan, $34.99 Another queer romance from Newcastle-based Amy Lovat, returning with a second novel following her debut, Mistakes and Other Lovers. This one's billed as an 'anti-romantic comedy', and it takes place in the shadow of an idealised relationship. Sadie's obsession with finding the perfect partner comes from witnessing the passion and devotion of her parents' marriage – complete with Insta-love tropes and mad romantic pursuits and the happily-ever-after that spawned her. When she meets Chase, Sadie falls wildly in love and thinks she's found the ideal woman, but it isn't long before cynicism, neurosis and self-sabotage rear their heads, and Sadie comes to question what she really desires. Big Feelings captures the relaxed flavour of its setting on the NSW North Coast, while the somewhat unreliable narrator ties herself in comic knots over a relationship we know will break up from the beginning. The mystery is how and why, and Lovat's chaotic ride into the messiness of romance should attract lovebirds of a more sardonic and streetwise disposition, fans of Fleabag or High Fidelity among them. The key contention in this absorbing study of the creative chemistry that existed between Lennon and McCartney, is that we get them 'so wrong', largely because 'we have trouble thinking about intimate male friendships.' But, do we get them so wrong? Much of what Ian Leslie documents – the intensity of the relationship, the shared early deaths of their mothers, the immediate recognition of being soulmates when they first met at the Woolton Church fete (with Paul's flawless rendition of Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock), the competitiveness, the bitterness and the love that bound them – is common knowledge to many. Indeed, there were few times when he told me anything I didn't already know. All the same, in its comprehensiveness, the authority with which he details the collaboration (especially contested territory of who did what, Lennon claiming much of Eleanor Rigby, McCartney likewise with In My Life), and the poise and compassion with which he brings his two magicians to life, it's a compelling dissection of the repercussions of that day in 1957 when two 'damaged romantics' met and the culture of the western world shifted. This guide to how to live a more satisfying life is, at least, more informed than most. Fabian, an Associate Professor at Warwick University, begins by distinguishing between the pursuit of happiness and the more complex and fulfilling notion of wellbeing – which embraces life, existential warts and all and a more nuanced sense of self: the good, the bad and the ugly. It's divided into three parts. A Pleasant Life, in which he delves into the wisdom of the Stoics (who seem to be roaring back into public popularity), the Fulfilling Life, about self-realisation and the idea of authenticity, and the Valuable Life, about overcoming modern nihilism. Woven into this are aspects of his own story (early depression and release through rock-climbing) and, more broadly, the positives of living in a pluralistic society as apart from religious orthodoxy. Deliberately 'popular' and, like all of these guides, reads like a talk. Few sportspeople enter the playing field facing the possibility of death like Formula One drivers. In fact, in the 1958 season four drivers died. But it's not the death-defying stunts of the drivers that Reid and Sylt are concerned with here, it's the astonishing money that goes into this international business – these days generating revenue of $3.4 billion and valued at $20 billion, the top drivers receiving around $60 million in wages. The driver's seats are individually designed and the steering wheels cost $75,000. And that's just scratching the surface. In order to trace how this came about, the authors take us back to the leisurely hobbyhorse days of the 1950s when princes and barons drove their Maseratis in competitions. That didn't last long, thanks in large part to a colourful Englishman, Bernie Ecclestone, whose name is now synonymous with Formula One. The drivers and their vehicles might capture the limelight, but this takes us into the billion-dollar industry under the bonnet. When writer/journalist Daniela Torsh's father died in 1958, she was 11 years old and believed she was Christian. What she discovered in the days following his death– she writes warmly about her father, but honestly as well in detailing the fraught nature of the relationship – was the depth of her Jewish ancestry. Her parents had met in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp just north of Prague, in the 1940s. They survived, had Daniela, and eventually immigrated to Sydney in the early 1950s. Her parents were determined that the horrors they had experienced during the war would not be passed on to their child, so they kept her Jewish ancestry a secret. Torsh's tale, told simply but effectively and frequently jumping time frames, is, among other things, a record of intergenerational trauma, of how growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust played out in her life in ways she didn't understand until she put together the pieces of her family's history. A calm retrospective voice, but one that inevitably contains tragedy, anger and deep sadness. Through Fear and Fire John Taylor (with Heath O'Loughlin) Pan Macmillan, $36.99 When John Taylor was growing up in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne he was frequently in schoolyard fights, always outraged by the injustice of the actions of school bullies. It led to joining the Victoria Police Force in 1987, then the Special Operations Group (SOG) two years later, and in 2003, the Bomb Response Unit (BRU). In many ways this is a portrait of a driven individual – his description of the physical training required to get into the SOG is exhausting just to read. And while he might be matter-of-fact in his description of defusing, say, a bomb left in a bus shelter (at the same time dismissing Hollywood myths about the process), you are always in no doubt that it is a highly dangerous occupation. Likewise, his account of his first operation with SOG. At the same time, he also goes into the effect of the job on his family: Taylor, at times, while walking with his wife, imagining threats that aren't there. If you've ever wondered what kind of person is drawn to join an elite force, this will give you a good idea.
The Age
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list
From a comic satire on the world of professional AFL to queer romances; from a study of the creative chemistry between John Lennon and Paul McCartney to a memoir of life as an elite policeman, this week's books cover wide ground. Pissants Brandon Jack Summit Books, $34.99 Former Sydney Swans player Brandon Jack penned an acclaimed memoir, 28, which exposed life in the AFL machine. Some truths can't be fully imagined in non-fiction, a defect colourfully remedied in his debut novel. Pissants is a super-sweary inside job on the world of professional football, a pitch-black comic satire that takes in rivalry and camaraderie and misdeeds. There's locker room goss, sports psychology and the creeping derangements of being steeped in a culture of toxic pressures – from ultra-competitiveness to the psychotic hypermasculinity of bonding and hazing rituals. There are plenty of jaw-dropping shenanigans tinged with narcissism, and the sense of impunity that attends fame on the field, but there's also a fair whack of misery and unacknowledged woundedness. Jack incorporates bingo cards and WhatsApp chats into more conventional narrative modes, as all the dirty laundry gets an airing. AFL fans should enjoy the fly-on-the-wall-of-the-locker-room vibe, and Jack draws out the attractions of elite team sport – and much that's repugnant about how it operates behind the scenes – with brutality and hilarity. Taylor Jenkins Reid became a global publishing phenomenon with the rise of BookTok during the pandemic. Her previous bestsellers have included Daisy Jones & The Six (loosely inspired by the story behind Fleetwood Mac) and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (a romantic mystery following a glamorous Hollywood star of yesteryear). Her ninth novel combines romance with adventure and disaster in space. Astrophysicist Joan Goodwin joins the NASA space program in the early 1980s. Training as an astronaut with a team of brilliant, big personalities, she must navigate institutional sexism, a growing bond with colleagues on a dangerous mission, and budding romance. Catastrophe looms, and the action and suspense of the emergency frames a love story that delves deeply into the rigours and routines of life as an astronaut, and how trailblazing women resisted the male-dominated atmosphere of NASA in the 1980s. It's a page-turner with high emotional stakes; Reid's fans are probably producing tear-streaked TikTok vids already. Author of Ghost Wall, Summerwater and The Fell, Sarah Moss is, among other things, an expert excavator of the effects of post-Brexit politics on the British psyche. In Ripeness, the politics turn to reproductive rights, migrant identities and the rights of refugees. Edith is the daughter of a French Jewish Holocaust survivor who escaped being murdered by the Nazis when she was granted asylum in the UK in 1941. Now over 70, comfortable, living in western Ireland, Edith is troubled by her friend Méabh's attitude to African refugees (and notes it doesn't apply to displaced Ukrainians), though she's drawn into her friend's family mystery. Méabh discovers she has an unknown brother, adopted by an American family, who wants to connect with his biological relatives and find out more about his roots. The novel's action flits between this contemporary strand and a trip to Italy in the 1960s, when Edith was a nerdy 17-year-old accompanying her older sister, who is enduring an unwanted pregnancy. Moss crafts a fine balance of sympathy in her portrayal of Edith, contrasting first-person and third-person narration to interrogate how social identities are forged, how rights must be fought for, and the growing cost of complacency. Ordinary Love Marie Rutkoski Virago, $34.99 Queer romance reignites in Marie Rutkoski's Ordinary Love when teenage sweethearts Emily and Gen reunite as 30-somethings. Their lives have taken different paths since their schooldays. Emily suffers through an abusive marriage to the wealthy Jack and leaves him after a frightening episode of domestic violence at the book's outset. Gen meanwhile becomes an Olympic athlete, aggressively embracing her sexuality through a string of affairs and hook-ups with other women. The story of their adolescent courtship and the homophobia it ran up against is told in flashback, revealing Emily and Gen to be old flames with old wounds that have shaped the courses of their adult lives. Rutkovski is sharp on just how difficult it can be to leave an abusive relationship, especially when the abuser seeks to isolate the victim from support networks. A subplot involving friends of Emily fighting to help her overcome Jack's influence is so full-blooded it almost becomes the main event. Yet the intimacy and vividness Rutkoski brings to her characters' sexual life is unusual – sex writing so often goes awry – and this is a romance novel that feels refreshingly grounded, written for adults. Big Feelings Amy Lovat Macmillan, $34.99 Another queer romance from Newcastle-based Amy Lovat, returning with a second novel following her debut, Mistakes and Other Lovers. This one's billed as an 'anti-romantic comedy', and it takes place in the shadow of an idealised relationship. Sadie's obsession with finding the perfect partner comes from witnessing the passion and devotion of her parents' marriage – complete with Insta-love tropes and mad romantic pursuits and the happily-ever-after that spawned her. When she meets Chase, Sadie falls wildly in love and thinks she's found the ideal woman, but it isn't long before cynicism, neurosis and self-sabotage rear their heads, and Sadie comes to question what she really desires. Big Feelings captures the relaxed flavour of its setting on the NSW North Coast, while the somewhat unreliable narrator ties herself in comic knots over a relationship we know will break up from the beginning. The mystery is how and why, and Lovat's chaotic ride into the messiness of romance should attract lovebirds of a more sardonic and streetwise disposition, fans of Fleabag or High Fidelity among them. The key contention in this absorbing study of the creative chemistry that existed between Lennon and McCartney, is that we get them 'so wrong', largely because 'we have trouble thinking about intimate male friendships.' But, do we get them so wrong? Much of what Ian Leslie documents – the intensity of the relationship, the shared early deaths of their mothers, the immediate recognition of being soulmates when they first met at the Woolton Church fete (with Paul's flawless rendition of Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock), the competitiveness, the bitterness and the love that bound them – is common knowledge to many. Indeed, there were few times when he told me anything I didn't already know. All the same, in its comprehensiveness, the authority with which he details the collaboration (especially contested territory of who did what, Lennon claiming much of Eleanor Rigby, McCartney likewise with In My Life), and the poise and compassion with which he brings his two magicians to life, it's a compelling dissection of the repercussions of that day in 1957 when two 'damaged romantics' met and the culture of the western world shifted. This guide to how to live a more satisfying life is, at least, more informed than most. Fabian, an Associate Professor at Warwick University, begins by distinguishing between the pursuit of happiness and the more complex and fulfilling notion of wellbeing – which embraces life, existential warts and all and a more nuanced sense of self: the good, the bad and the ugly. It's divided into three parts. A Pleasant Life, in which he delves into the wisdom of the Stoics (who seem to be roaring back into public popularity), the Fulfilling Life, about self-realisation and the idea of authenticity, and the Valuable Life, about overcoming modern nihilism. Woven into this are aspects of his own story (early depression and release through rock-climbing) and, more broadly, the positives of living in a pluralistic society as apart from religious orthodoxy. Deliberately 'popular' and, like all of these guides, reads like a talk. Few sportspeople enter the playing field facing the possibility of death like Formula One drivers. In fact, in the 1958 season four drivers died. But it's not the death-defying stunts of the drivers that Reid and Sylt are concerned with here, it's the astonishing money that goes into this international business – these days generating revenue of $3.4 billion and valued at $20 billion, the top drivers receiving around $60 million in wages. The driver's seats are individually designed and the steering wheels cost $75,000. And that's just scratching the surface. In order to trace how this came about, the authors take us back to the leisurely hobbyhorse days of the 1950s when princes and barons drove their Maseratis in competitions. That didn't last long, thanks in large part to a colourful Englishman, Bernie Ecclestone, whose name is now synonymous with Formula One. The drivers and their vehicles might capture the limelight, but this takes us into the billion-dollar industry under the bonnet. When writer/journalist Daniela Torsh's father died in 1958, she was 11 years old and believed she was Christian. What she discovered in the days following his death– she writes warmly about her father, but honestly as well in detailing the fraught nature of the relationship – was the depth of her Jewish ancestry. Her parents had met in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp just north of Prague, in the 1940s. They survived, had Daniela, and eventually immigrated to Sydney in the early 1950s. Her parents were determined that the horrors they had experienced during the war would not be passed on to their child, so they kept her Jewish ancestry a secret. Torsh's tale, told simply but effectively and frequently jumping time frames, is, among other things, a record of intergenerational trauma, of how growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust played out in her life in ways she didn't understand until she put together the pieces of her family's history. A calm retrospective voice, but one that inevitably contains tragedy, anger and deep sadness. Through Fear and Fire John Taylor (with Heath O'Loughlin) Pan Macmillan, $36.99 When John Taylor was growing up in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne he was frequently in schoolyard fights, always outraged by the injustice of the actions of school bullies. It led to joining the Victoria Police Force in 1987, then the Special Operations Group (SOG) two years later, and in 2003, the Bomb Response Unit (BRU). In many ways this is a portrait of a driven individual – his description of the physical training required to get into the SOG is exhausting just to read. And while he might be matter-of-fact in his description of defusing, say, a bomb left in a bus shelter (at the same time dismissing Hollywood myths about the process), you are always in no doubt that it is a highly dangerous occupation. Likewise, his account of his first operation with SOG. At the same time, he also goes into the effect of the job on his family: Taylor, at times, while walking with his wife, imagining threats that aren't there. If you've ever wondered what kind of person is drawn to join an elite force, this will give you a good idea.
