RETROS SALLY MORRIS

THE CHILDREN’S BACH by Helen Garner (W&N Essentials £9.99, 176pp)

Garner’S sparse style is initially confusing until, like a twisting kaleidoscope, the distinct characters emerge.

They are cultured, oldfashioned Dexter and his wife Athena — domesticated, passive mother to Arthur and severely disabled Billy.

Into their life drifts elizabeth, an old college friend of Dexter’s — bohemian, childless but encumbered by her teenage sister, Vicki. however, it’s elizabeth’s on- off lover, the drug-taking, feckless musician Philip who shakes things up when Athena, wearied by her home life, leaves their Melbourne suburb and follows him to Sydney for an ill-advised fling.

Garner makes you fill in the gaps as this brief story ebbs and flows, but the unvarnished image of a marriage is indelible.

DARK CARNIVAL by Ray Bradbury (Harper Voyager £9.99, 480pp)

FIRST published in 1947, this darkly disturbing short story collection should not be read at night.

In homecoming, young Timothy, the only member of his family not a vampire, is desperate to join the All hallows’ eve reunion and turns to sister, Cecy, who can inhabit other bodies, for help. Cecy reappears in blackly funny The Traveler, where she takes her revenge on a renegade relative.

A long-lost childhood love and the power of loss are hauntingly evoked in The Lake but The Small Assassin, the truly chilling experience of a mother convinced her baby is trying to kill her, is the one that will stay with you after lights out.

The stories may be uneven in quality, but they are, nonetheless, a reminder of just how stealthily Bradbury crawls under your skin.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Penguin £9.99, 432pp)

Next week, Until August, the ‘lost’ novel written by nobel prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his dying days, will be published, ten years after his death. But if you can’t wait, grab this attractive reissue of his astonishing breakthrough novel, one hundred Years of Solitude.

Set in the swampy South American town of Macondo, it follows Jose Arcadio Buendia, his wife Ursula and five generations of descendants, using a blend of fantasy and brutal practicality known as magical realism.

Train lines and capitalist banana factories from the north destroy traditional life while beautiful women ascend to heaven while folding laundry or rainstorms last for four years.

It’s funny, tragic, sometimes disturbing, totally unique and spawned a new literary genre.