The Bookshelf ABC listen

Award-winning U.S. author Willy Vlautin's The Horse is his poignant new novel about the life of a lonely country musician in Nevada and his chance encounter with a half blind horse. Plus, bookseller David Gaunt reviews Ammar Kalia's A Person Is a Prayer, one family's story of migration from Kenya and India to the UK; and Wellington based critic and curator Claire Mabey looks at Laurence Fearnley's At The Grand Glacier Hotel, which follows a stormy family holiday set on New Zealand's South Island.

BOOKS

Willy Vlautin, The Horse, Faber

Ammar Kalia, A Person is a Prayer, Oldcastle Books

Laurence Fearnley, At the Grand Glacier Hotel, Penguin

GUESTS

David Gaunt, co-owner, Gleebooks, Sydney – independent bookshop [and one of the founding board members of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation]

Claire Mabey, NZ based books editor and critic; founder of Verb Wellington readers and writers festival, co-curator of the writers program at the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts – and she has just written her first novel for children, The Raven’s Eye Runaways

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Patrick O'Brian, Aubrey–Maturin series
Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
Evie Wyld, The Echoes
Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne
Sinead Gleeson, Hagstone 

CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans  + Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Russell Stapleton
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate Evans and Jonathan Green with guests Pip Williams and Sarah Bailey read Dylin Hardcastle's A Language of Limbs, Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword, Valeria Usala's A Woman in Sardinia and Jean-Baptiste del Amo's The Son of Man. Australian fiction, novels in translation, secrets and violence, cities and regions, queer love and emotional truths, and a hint of fantasy.

BOOKS

Dylin Hardcastle, A Language of Limbs, Picador

Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword, Del Ray

Valeria Usala, A Woman in Sardinia (trans from the Italian by Katherine Gregor), Text

Jean-Baptiste del Amo, The Son of Man (trans from the French by Frank Wynne), Text

GUESTS

Pip Williams, writer whose novels include The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho [Adelaide studios]

Sarah Bailey, crime writer whose books include The Dark Lake, The Housemate and – her latest, released in February this year – Body of Lies [Melb studios]

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED:

Shubnam Khan, The Djinn Waits 100 Years

Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveller

J P Pomare, Seventeen Years Later

Frederick Backman's Beartown

Arthuriads (an incomplete list)

Thomas Mallory, Le Morte D'Arthur

Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave etc)

T H White's Once and Future King + series

Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon

Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Guy Gavriel Kay, Fionavar Tapestry/ The Darkest Road trilogy

M K Hume's Merlin Emrys trilogy

Victoria Gosling, Bliss and Blunder

Sophie Keetch, Morgan is my Name

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Jonathan Green

• Producer, Kate Evans + James Pattison

• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman + Simon Branthwaite

• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

 

Money, kidnapping, reality TV, politics, corruption, families, love, and betrayal in all three books on this edition of The Bookshelf. Kate Evans and Jonathan Green, with guests Farz Edraki and Johan Gabrielsson, read Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise, Porochistaa Khakpour's Tehrangeles and Patrick Holland's Oblivion. Awfully rich, richly awful.

BOOKS

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Long Island Compromise, Wildfire

Porochistaa Khakpour, Tehrangeles: A Novel, Ultimo Press

Patrick Holland, Oblivion, Transit Lounge

GUESTS

Farz Edraki, Iranian-Australian writer and producer. Presenter of the ABC audio series, 'Days Like These'

Johan Gabrielsson, Swedish-born, Sydney-based filmmaker – and Bookshelf regular

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Hossein Asgari, Only Sound Remains

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman is in Trouble

Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

James Joyce, Ulysses

Graham Greene, The Quiet American

Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case

Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields

Claire Keegan, Antarctica

James Salter, works

Jonathan Franzen, works

Philip Roth, works

Miranda July, All Fours

Clive James, Poetry Notebook

Niklas Turner Olovzon, Iceberg

The band is back together! Join Cassie and Kate as they head to an island off North America in Julia Phillips’ Bear, plus two Australian novels – Jessie Tu’s The Honeyeater and Finegan Kruckemeyer’s The End and Everything Before It.

BOOKS

Julia Phillips, Bear, Scribe

Jessie Tu, The Honeyeater, Allen & Unwin

Finegan Kruckemeyer, The End and Everything Before It, Text

GUESTS

Tom Wright, theatre writer and literary adaptor; Artistic Associate at Belvoir Theatre

Nicole Abadee, books writer for the Good Weekend, interviewer at festivals, and Board Member, Indigenous Literacy Foundation 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Julia Phillips, Disappearing Earth
Jessie Tu, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing
Ben Okri, The Freedom Artist
Robbie Arnott, Limberlost; The Rain Heron
Willem Frederik Hermans, Beyond Sleep 
Catherine Newman, Sandwich; We All Want Impossible Things
Clare Lombardo, Same as it Ever Was

​CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Russell Stapleton + Beth Stewart
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate Evans is joined by guest host Richard Aedy to discuss Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War, a novel of love, war and friendship. Plus, two debut novels... Big Time by Jordan Prosser, set in a not-too-distant future Australia where pop music is propaganda, and Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna, set during a heatwave in London as tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

BOOKS

Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War, Fourth Estate

Jordan Prosser, Big Time, UQP

Oisín McKenna, Evenings and Weekends, Fourth Estate

GUESTS

Mark Mordue, poet and music writer/ rock journalist. His books include Boy on Fire – the Young Nick Cave, and the poetry collection Darlinghurst Funeral Rites. He’s also co artistic director of the Addison Road Writers Festival in Sydney

Patrick Carey, writer and digital producer; manages content at the Sydney Theatre Company


OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
Catherine McKinnon, Storyland
Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, American Prometheus
George Orwell, 1984
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Andrew O'Hagan, Caledonian Road
Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire; Septology
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Wolves of Eternity 
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork 
Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers; The Mars Room
Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans + Richard Aedy
Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Nathan Turnbull + Beth Stewart
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate Evans returns with guest reviewers to discuss Bruce Pascoe’s Imperial Harvest, an epic of brutality and imperialism; along with Jenny Ackland’s Hurdy Gurdy, a circus saga set in a near-future Australia; and Miranda July’s All Fours, which looks at one woman's quest for a very unique kind of freedom.

BOOKS

Bruce Pascoe, Imperial Harvest, Melbourne Books

Jenny Ackland, Hurdy Gurdy, Allen & Unwin

Miranda July, All Fours, Canongate

GUESTS

Beejay Silcox, writer, critic and literary judge. Artistic Director, Canberra Writers Festival; chair of the Stella Prize 2024

Kate Mildenhall, writer whose latest novel is The Hummingbird Effect

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; Oryx and Crake
Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything 
Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven
Claire G. Coleman, Terra Nullius
Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy
Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things
Naomi Alderman, The Power
Lisa Taddeo, Three Women
David Owen Kelly, Host City
Scott Alexander Howard, The Other Valley
Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War
Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North 
Sharlene Allsopp, The Great Undoing
 

CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans
Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Russell Stapleton + Beth Stewart
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown