READING ROOM:
Cooler days call for cosying up with a good book – here are our book reviewing team’s favourites.
our reviewers select top titles
Literary reads Agatha
by Anne Cathrine Bomann, Hachette
A charming novel about a ready-to-retire Paris psychiatrist, who is counting the hours until his final session. Our protagonist has never spoken to his nextdoor neighbour, although he hears the old gent rattling around at night. He has never enquired about the welfare of his secretary of 30 years, Madame Surrugue. He shovels down creamed potatoes and ham at the same café, and has never been in love. Then one day Agatha walks into his office, demanding to become a new client. He protests, dreading another gloomy story looming ahead of him. But the girl, whose hair smells of apples and cinnamon, turns his world upside down. As their sessions progress, our doc bakes a cake for his neighbour, takes flowers to his secretary when her husband is sick and remembers that he once loved his job. Not surprisingly, this feel-good read has become a global bestseller.
PARIS SAVAGES
by Katherine Johnson, Ventura Press
There’s a horrific moment in this important novel, which is a testament to the mistreatment of First Australians. Bonangera, one of three Aborigines who sailed to Europe to be put on display, is subjected to full body casting in one sitting. Using cut-price, lime-contaminated plaster, the suffocating cast burns his body; two metal pipes inserted in his nostril barely allow him to breathe. When the cast is removed it takes his skin and hair with it. Based on a true story of Aborigines taken from Fraser Island, the story is told through the eyes of fictional character Hilda Müller. It sheds light on the late-19th century fascination for parading those of ancient cultures, gawked upon by white, paying crowds and experimented on by “anthropologists”. A tragic tale brilliantly told
– the author researched it for six years. It’s even more poignant when you find out that Bonangera’s cast is still on display in a museum in Lyon, France.
SMALL DAYS AND NIGHTS
by Tishani Doshi, Bloomsbury Circus
Grace has travelled from the US to Madras in India, where she was born, for her mother’s cremation. It is 2010, and Auntie Kavitha and neighbour Mrs Dalal sit crow-like as she tries to hug Ma’s body in a freezer box on the floor. “Didn’t you ever wonder where your mother disappeared to as a child?” asks Auntie. “Kavitha is unravelling every memory and replacing it with something else,” realises Grace. She finds out she has a sister, Lucia, with Down syndrome, who lives in a care home. Taking Lucia and Auntie to live in the pink house in Madras she has inherited, Grace tries to build a new life. But it’s not easy. A deeply affecting novel.