Beyond the Door of No Return<\/strong><\/em>
David Diop, Pushkin, $32.99<\/strong><\/p>\n
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Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n French-Senegalese author David Diop wrote At Night All Blood Is Black<\/em>, the winner of the 2021 International Booker. Where that novel took up the stories of West African soldiers fighting in World War I, Beyond the Door of No Return<\/em> fictionalises the travels of an 18th-century naturalist, Michel Adanson, and his encounters with the Atlantic slave trade. Both faces of the Enlightenment are addressed: the French botanist witnesses the violent and dehumanising reality of slavery, drawn by intellectual curiosity and a commitment to natural philosophy. A teenage guide, Ndiak, tutors Adanson in Wolof, and his pupil develops an understanding of the harmonies of Senegalese culture, in stark contrast to the rapacious ethos of European colonial conquest. When Adanson meets a village chief whose niece was sold into slavery and managed to escape her captors, he embarks on a journey that takes him the island of Gor\u00e9e, a slavers\u2019 outpost with an infamous \u201cDoor of No Return\u201d. Diop\u2019s erudition on 18th-century literature enlivens a tragic adventure novel related in crisp epistolary form.<\/p>\n Good Material<\/strong><\/em> Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n An urban hetero millennial ties himself in knots trying to understand a relationship breakdown in Dolly Alderton\u2019s Good Material<\/em>, which has been compared to Nick Hornby, though it\u2019s sharper and funnier and warier of romantic clich\u00e9. Andy is a jobbing comedian blindsided when his partner Jen leaves him because, as she says, she wants to be single. But in Andy\u2019s mind there must be some better reason, and if he can work out what, he can win Jen back, right? Cue pathetic Insta-stalking, a strategic retreat to the parental home, and hanging with emotionally stunted mates. Andy does get around to grieving the relationship and hops back in the saddle, re-entering the minefield of dating apps. And Jen\u2019s perspective on the whole episode is revealed at the end. Alderton\u2019s stint writing agony aunt columns for the UK\u2019s Sunday Times<\/em> and her bestselling memoir on millennial romance, Everything I Know About Love<\/em>, are good creative fertiliser for the novel. It\u2019s strewn with pearls of wisdom, maxims quirky enough to be amusing and wise enough to be true, and droll observations on millennial manners and culture. Thankfully, Good Material<\/em> also resists the typical romantic arc for novels like these.<\/p>\n The Interpretation of Cakes<\/strong><\/em> Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n Playing upon Sigmund Freud\u2019s The Interpretation of Dreams<\/em>, this slender novel from psychotherapist Allan Tegg begins with a framing meta-narrative: the author realises he must divest himself of thinking like a psychotherapist to truly embrace retirement. Easy to say, but psychotherapy might be regarded as a form of religion, and as Jung noted, if you throw that out the door it comes in through the window. The Interpretation of Cakes<\/em> follows cake-shop owner Isaak Brodsky, a Hungarian Jew who inherits the business from his father as a young man in 1916. (Brodsky snr can\u2019t confront the strained mask of false positivity that\u2019s made the shop such a success and suffers a spiritual crisis, retreating into the Torah.) Isaak realises that there\u2019s more to selling cake than typically understood, and mirroring the birth of psychoanalysis, matches cakes to customers in ways that reveal the mysteries of the conscious and unconscious mind. A sly and charming introduction to \u201cCake-analysis\u201d that will tempt anyone who wants to have their cake and eat it, as well as more psychologically literate readers.<\/p>\n Here, And Only Here<\/strong><\/em> Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n The social hierarchy is ruled by a tyrannical teen styling himself \u201cthe prince\u201d, and a clique called the Top-Secret Cub forms to investigate the source of strange occurrences and rituals at the school. Those are everywhere. Footprints on ceilings. Weird charts dividing students into \u201cHigh\u201d and \u201cLow\u201d status. An eerie and unnameable presence that seems to have soaked into the school\u2019s foundations. Christelle Dabos\u2019 novel tries and fails to make the familiar strange. While the brutalities of teen socialisation are certainly portrayed, the eccentricity isn\u2019t imagined in an immersive or coherent manner. The book\u2019s remorseless staccato prose conveys a doom-y, claustrophobic atmosphere, to be sure, but limits character development and world-building.<\/p>\n NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK<\/strong> Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cWe will be well on the way to colonising Mars before we definitively grasp the secrets to the workings of our own minds.\u201d Implicit in this irony is one of Alain de Botton\u2019s key concerns: human avoidance of the monsters of our inner space. And yet, he argues, it is the very act of facing them that brings healing or at least helps us live with them. In this meditative yet practical guide to the journey out of inner darkness and despair, art is a guiding light as a source of consolation and a portal into self-knowledge. As he has done with philosophy in previous books, de Botton demystifies the psychotherapeutic process by grounding it in everyday language and showing how it works. Even though the book is framed by the journey from breakdown to recovery, it is written in the second-person plural, emphasising that no one is alone in this journey and no one exempt from the potholes on the road.<\/p>\n The Best Australian Science Writing<\/strong><\/em> Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n As she climbs the \u201cbiggest blue gum in the universe\u201d, Lauren Fuge takes us on a giddying journey through time and space. Capturing the sensations and insights yielded at each level of the canopy, she reflects on how \u201cour bodies still hold memories of our ancestors\u2019 arboreal lives\u201d. But first-person, immersive writing is only one of the many approaches to science happening now as showcased in this stimulating collection. There are reflective essays and personal profiles, in-depth journalism and poetry, reportage and spare statements of the brutal facts. Such a cross-section is akin to the deep-core samples from Antarctic ice in Jo Chandler\u2019s piece, revealing the secrets about Earth\u2019s interconnected systems while canvassing the impact of political funding and the history of Antarctic co-operation in this part of the world. All a provisional snapshot in time, like science itself.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the Menopause<\/strong><\/em> Anyone who has been through it knows that \u201cmenopause\u201d and \u201cfun\u201d are mutually exclusive terms. A book about this phase of life that is fun to read is an achievement worth celebrating.<\/p>\n Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n Especially when it is informed by the latest medical research, gives voice to women\u2019s diverse experiences and is full of useful advice, from self-help strategies to how to avoid rip-off merchants. Typical of Kaz Cooke\u2019s style is the dance scene from Jane Austen as an analogy for what happens to the hormones when perimenopause hits. When it\u2019s all going decorously, that\u2019s the 28-day cycle. When it turns into a chaotic free-for-all with the band playing industrial emo cowpunk, that\u2019s the beginning of the change. Cooke uses humour to engage and explain without letting it obscure or dumb-down the crucial facts of menopause, the medical treatments available and how it impacts on women\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n Being Henry: The Fonz … and Beyond He was the coolest dude in America and yet he still felt like a kid inside. Being dyslexic, he could hardly read his scripts, something he hid with his flair for improvisation.<\/p>\n
Dolly Alderton, Fig Tree, $34.99<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Allan Tegg, Puncher & Wattmann, $32.95<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Christelle Dabos, Text, $22.99
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Adolescent anomie gets a supernatural twist in Here, And Only Here<\/em>, a YA novel that perhaps loses something in translation from French. Four students at the School of Here \u2013 Iris, Pierre, Madeleine, and Guy \u2013 face everything from bullying and ostracism to insecurities so severe they inspire imagined superpowers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A Therapeutic Journey<\/strong><\/em>
Alain de Botton, Hamish Hamilton, $36.99<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ed., Donna Lu, NewSouth, $32.99<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kaz Cooke, Viking, $45<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/em><\/em>Henry Winkler, Macmillan, $36.99<\/strong><\/p>\n