Book Nook 2577

19/03/2025

19/03/2025

SOLD. amagourami crochet mouse.

19/03/2025

Atul Joshi reviews

"Second Place" by Rachel Cusk

Cusk's writing seems to elicit polarised opinions. Her recent Outlines Trilogy was acclaimed as moving the format of the novel in a new direction - a kind of observational narrative form where the protagonist appears to passively extend enough rope to those she meets on her journeys to hang themselves, blurring lines between fiction and non fiction. What was undisputed was her searing use of language - beautifully constructed sentences that cut to the bone and had you scrabbling for your notebook to copy extracts out. I stood in the 'against' Cusk camp and so was unsure about her latest novel. But the premise of the work - a woman asks a painter to come stay on her property and paint its landscapes, triggering a series of events and encounters that have a dramatic affect on everyone staying there  - and the promise it held to be unlike the previous trilogy, as well as its Booker Longlisting, intrigued me enough to read the book. I am glad I did, because upon finishing it, I wanted to immediately read it again. Here once more you find Cusk's amazing way with words - reflections on art, life, love, that sear into your brain. But the narrative is more active - to me it reads like a series of concentric circles depicting gendered power struggles and attempts at relationship making between men and women; some that work, some that fail, some that do both. And overlaying it all is a meditation on the meaning of art and its ability to mediate experience, or its failure to do so. If that all sounds a bit highbrow and high stakes, don't be put off. Read the book as a series of miscalculations, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, between couples, and the price of finding and maintaining self-esteem and connection. You will be amply rewarded with a rich reading experience and the knowledge that Cusk is a likely front runner for this year's Booker. No longer polarised, count me a Cusk fan.

19/03/2025

One we prepared earlier...

The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott reviewed by

This Miles Franklin shortlisted novel trom Tasmanian writer Robbie Arnott is part eco-fable set in a future Australia wracked by coups, part quest to capture a mythic bird and part meditation on righting the wrongs of the past and ensuring a future that's worth living for. The Rain Heron, the capture of it and subsequent desire to control it, is an astute parable for our own manipulation of climate and that action's terrible consequences.  Overlaid on this is the story of a woman who loses her own humanity then rediscovers it despite the many mistakes she makes and the terrible price she and others have to pay along the way. Written in flint-like prose that's at times terrifyingly beautiful (the descriptions of the flight and constant metamorphosis of the heron are particular stand outs) and at times aching in its portrayal of  loss, it should appeal to both adult readers of the literary fantasy/dystopia genre and mature young readers (emphasis on the mature: there are moments of graphic violence in this book!). Filled with man-eating squids and body-part snatching birds, it's quite unlike any other Australian book I've read. The closest description I can come up with is; it's like Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things meets The Hunger Games.

19/03/2025

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