Summer reading

Wonderful books for lazy holidays, edited by Katie Ekberg and Juliet Rieden.

Literary reads The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell, Hamish Hamilton

Actor, playwright and author Leah Purcell grew up reading Henry Lawson’s famous 1892 short story The Drover’s Wife carrying around her own battered copy of the book and annotating it with her childish sketches. The tale of the pregnant woman isolated in the family’s two-bedroom hut with her four children deep in Australia’s high country reached into her soul. This novel, which also incorporates some of Leah’s family history, is just one of her reworkings of the tale – first came the stage play and soon there’ll be a film.

And in this courageous reimagining of the classic she has created something of a thriller, with the woman now named Molly Johnson and Aboriginal. The result is engrossing and truly powerful.

INLAND by Téa Obreht, Hachette

The American dream comes under the microscope in this lyrical tale of Arizona frontierswoman Nora

Lark, whose husband has disappeared while searching for water and whose elder sons have also vanished. As Nora waits with her younger son and hopes for the return of her menfolk we also meet Lurie Mattie, actually our hero and a murderer on the run. Superb storytelling with a mythical aura.

MAYBE THE HORSE WILL TALK by Elliot Perlman, Vintage

Black humour abounds in this slick and thought-provoking part thriller, part love story. The author has no doubt drawn on his own early experience as a junior lawyer in a commercial law firm, where bullying and intimidation were the norm. Protagonist, married father-of-two Stephen Maserov, has swapped teaching for law and now realises he is stuck working all hours in a job he hates. When his wife asks him to move out, he gets desperate and embarks on a risky assignment to defend a company besieged by sexual harassment accusations.

AKIN Emma Donoghue, Pan Macmillan

Michael is a boy in need. His father died of an overdose 18 months ago, his mother is in prison for drug possession and his grandma, who was looking after him, has just passed away. His new guardian is greatuncle Noah, a retired chemistry professor who lives in New York’s Upper West Side and opts to take Michael with him on a visit to his childhood hometown of Nice in France. The duo is so very different but what unites them is where the poignancy of this novel shines through.