BOOKS OF REVELATION
Whitney, Sir Ian and Elton all revealed in new bios, plus the Call Me By Your Name sequel and more, headed our way for Christmas and beyond!
Whitney, Sir Ian and Elton revealed in new bios, plus the Call Me By Your Name sequel before Christmas!
Some of his revelations may be controversial, even explosive, given McKellen’s ability to shock and surprise.
A SONG FOR YOU: MY LIFE WITH WHITNEY HOUSTON
By Robyn Crawford (mid-November) Robyn and Whitney were inseparable friends and collaborators. They are also widely rumoured to have been lovers.
Since Whitney’s death in 2012, Crawford has stayed out of the limelight and kept the memories of her life with Whitney close to her heart. But finally, Robyn breaks her silence to share the moving and often complicated story of her life and relationship with Whitney.
With warmth, candour and an impressive recall of detail, Robyn gives readers insight into Whitney’s life and career. A Song For You is the previously untold story that provides an understanding of the complex life of Whitney.
Finally, the person who knew her best sets the record straight.
IAN MCKELLEN: THE BIOGRAPHY
By Garry O’Connor (mid-September) Few actors achieve in their lifetime what Sir Ian McKellen has. A repertoire of vast commercial success (The Lord Of
The Rings and X-Men films) coupled with critically acclaimed and authoritative Shakespearian roles.
He is an ardent campaigner for LGBT rights and has become an icon for our community in the process.
Garry O’Connor’s definitive biography reveals the man behind the actor and pulls no punches. Some of his revelations may be controversial to his fans, even explosive, given McKellen’s constant ability to shock and surprise. The author has himself directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and directed McKellen in some of his very first roles.
This is an unflinching, yet deeply intimate and affectionate, biography.
ME: ELTON JOHN OFFICIAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
By Elton John (mid-October) In his first and only official autobiography, music icon John reveals the truth about his extraordinary life.
Christened Reginald Dwight, he was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in the London suburb of Pinner and dreamed of becoming a pop star.
His life has been full of drama – from the early rejection of his work with song-writing partner Bernie Taupin to spinning out of control as a chart-topping superstar; from half-heartedly trying to drown himself in his LA swimming pool to disco-dancing with the Queen; from friendships with John Lennon, Freddie Mercury and George Michael to setting up his AIDS Foundation.
All the while, Elton was hiding a drug addiction that would grip him for over a decade. He writes powerfully about getting clean and changing his life, about finding love with David Furnish and becoming a father. In a voice that is warm, humble and open, this is Elton on his music and his relationships, his passions and his mistakes.
FIND ME
By André Aciman (November 2019) The author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me By Your Name (three-quarters-of-a-million copies have been sold) revisits its beguiling and unforgettable characters decades after their first meeting.
In Find Me, Elio’s father, Samuel is on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the upends Sam’s plans and changes his life forever.
Elio moves to Paris where, he too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.
Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me
brings us back inside the magic circle of a sublime romance to ask, “Does true love ever really die?”
UNREQUITED LOVE: DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST
By Dennis Altman
(late August)
Altman went to the
United States as a graduate student during the era of
Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. His early writing stemmed from the counterculture that developed in the States in the mid-1960s. Altman was involved in early Gay Liberation, and his 1971 study, Homosexual: Oppression And Liberation is regarded as a classic work in its field.
Since then, Altman’s writings have touched, in various ways, on the shifting terrain of sexual politics, including the AIDS epidemic, which he witnessed from the onset while living in New York.
His memoir, Unrequited Love, is as wideranging and remarkable as his career, moving between Australia, the United States, Europe and parts of Asia. He also details encounters with intellectuals and writers including James Baldwin, Gough Whitlam, Dorothy Porter, Christos Tsiolkas, Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag. Written through the lens of recent activism and the global rise of authoritarianism, this is a story of a halfcentury of activism, intellectualism, conflict and friendship.
LIE WITH ME
By Philippe Besson (early September) Outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe, a famous writer, chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back to Philippe’s teenage years, to a winter morning in 1984, a small French high school, and a carefully timed encounter between two 17-year-olds. It’s the start of a secret, intensely passionate, world-altering love affair between Philippe and his classmate, Thomas.
Some readers may be surprised to learn that this novel has been translated by actress Molly Ringwald. In fact, she has written two books; a memoir and a novel that was widely praised.
Besson’s exquisitely moving coming-of-age story captures the tenderness of first love – and the heart-breaking passage of time.
DAMASCUS
By Christos Tsiolkas (November) More than ten years ago, Tsiolkas hit the big time with The Slap, a novel that became an Australian and international bestseller and was also long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2010.
This was followed by Barracuda in 2013 and now six years later, his publisher Allen & Unwin are unveiling his ambitious new novel, Damascus. At the time of going to print, few details were available. What is known is that it takes on the founding of the Christian Church, focusing on Saint Paul and the generations after Christ’s death.
CLEANESS
By Garth Greenwell (mid-January) Greenwell’s debut novel What Belongs To You was a literary sensation as he depicted an American teacher’s entanglement with a charismatic Bulgarian hustler. His readers will be gratified to learn that in his highly anticipated follow-up the novelist is revisiting Sofia, Bulgaria.
In Cleaness he expands on the themes he explored previously – foreignness, obligation and desire. As an American teacher prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with a younger man opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: VOL 2: THE BRUTALITY OF FACT
By Larry Kramer (mid-January) Part One of Larry Kramer’s epic was published in 2015 and ran to 800 pages. 2020 will kick off with the publication of Part Two and a further 1,000 pages.
It ranges from the brothels of 1950s Washington to the activism of the 1980s and beyond. Kramer explores (among other things) the sex lives of every recent president; the complicated behaviour of America’s two greatest spies, J Edgar Hoover and James Jesus Angleton. And there’s a searing indictment of the US health-care and drug-delivery systems. Kramer tracks a terrible plague that intensifies as the government ignores it and depicts the bold and imaginative activists who set out to shock the nation’s conscience.
This promises to be a historical novel like no other – satiric and impassioned and driven by an uncompromising moral and literary vision.