Author Event ~ Ceridwen Dovey ~ Only The Animals

Ceridwen Dovey will be appearing at Abbey's on Thursday May 29.

Ceridwen's new novel is titled Only the Animals and it contains beautiful and thought-provoking stories that explore the complex relationship mankind has with animals. Dovey has used cleverly used the device of speaking from the perspective of various animals as a means to approach some of the major conflicts of the past century in a fresh way.

The thoughtful and reflective tone of the novel is leavened with humour that comes from combining human understanding and expression with each animal's basic drives and behaviours.

Ceridwen will be appearing at Abbey's at 6pm on Thursday 29 May where she will be in conversation about her book and the ideas behind it. Light refreshments will be served and no animals will be harmed in the making of this event.

CERIDWEN DOVEY ~ ONLY THE ANIMALS

THURSDAY 29 MAY

6PM

131 YORK STREET

(Tucked safely behind the QVB)

FREE EVENT: If you would like to attend the event please RSVP to events@abbeys.com.au

One final note on pronunciation: Ceridwen is pronounced 'Keridwen'.

More about Ceridwen:

SMH interview

POP.EDIT.LIT interview

See you on the 29th!

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Conversations in Crime Alley Wrap

On the evening of Thursday 10 April...
an incident occurred at the premises of Abbey's Bookshop located in downtown Sydney at 131 York Street.

Two individuals, identifying themselves as crime authors,...
entered the premises at approximately 6pm and proceeded to regale onlookers with tales of crime writing and other evil doings. This activity was observed to continue for a duration of approximately 1.5 hours, during which time the imbibing of alcohol was also seen to occur. The suspects then fled the scene. Current whereabouts unknown.

It was only due to the quick response of PC Jessica Slade that the following notes were taken down while the actions described above were being carried out.

CRIME EVENT NOTES

Suspect 1: P M Newton (PM)
Suspect 2: Malla Nunn (M)

On their own writing:

‘Place’ is important to both authors and plays a significant role in shaping their stories.

• “Story comes out of place” (M)
• “Embedded in place” (PM)
• “I want to feel that they [characters] have some connection to the land”

Exploring a “fascinating setting” assists with character and plot development, at times explaining the actions and decisions of particular characters

• “Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the good guys are” (PM on M Nunn’s books)

On true crime genre:

• “Too sad”, “there is no resolution for the people the crime has happened to” (M)
• “Not a huge fan; the resolution is missing” (PM)

On crime TV shows (in particular ‘True Detective’):

• Cross-over between TV and books
• Books are starting to replicate the complex nature of crime shows
• True Detective – “embedded with literary clues” (PM)
• The Wire – “the visual impact of having a cast that is so black” (M), communicates visually perhaps in a more successful way than through text

New crime readers:

• Crime is such a broad genre
• “I find what I like by reading… do I find it interesting, exciting, does it hook me in?” (M)
• “Ask what’s out there” (PM)

Recommendations:

The Cutting Season (Locke)

The Quiet American (Greene)

• “Crime is ‘The Quiet American’” - the perfect crime novel (PM)

The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Wahloo & Sjowall)

• 10 books; more like a 10 part novel
• Plays around with and questions the ideas of their genre
• “They are the mama and the papa of Swedish crime during that period [they were writing in]”

Bony series (Upfield)

Anil’s Ghost (Ondaatje)

• crime novel from a literary writer
• “beautiful, breathtaking phrases”

What’s next?

• Present Darkness by Malla Nunn coming out in June
• “Some Ned and also non-Ned ideas” (PM) are being thrown around

VIEW P M NEWTON'S BOOKS

VIEW MALLA NUNN'S BOOKS

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey ~ May 2014

It’s good to have the First Tuesday Book Club back on air.

It was especially good to hear those lovely people talk about David Marr’s choice, which was Graham Greene’s The Quiet American - a book which qualifies as a Little Gem. And you can almost always be certain to find such back-list titles at Abbey’s. I checked Abbey’s website after the programme and found sixteen Graham Greene titles available ex-stock and almost all of them at the excellent price of $12.95 or $12.99. What more can you ask? We even offer The Third Man in Persian or Short Stories / Nouvelles in French. Of course this means you must go upstairs to the First Floor but remember, if you are in a hurry or your legs are not so good, you can now go up in the lift from the lobby. Just ask one of the staff.

Also upstairs is GALAXY Bookshop. I read a nice piece of trivia about Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. This classic film was not initially met with great acclaim. For a year, while sales were hard in London, John Lennon bought two seats to every performance and gave them away. Is that called Bums on Seats or Word of Mouth? They both work.

10% OFF Claire Tomalin's The Invisible Woman during May when you use the Promotion Code EVESMAYBLOG when you order.

I went, with much expectation, to see a preview of Ralph Fiennes’ new film The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, as this is one of my favourite books. It is a scholarly and exciting investigation into the rumour that Charles Dickens, that supreme icon of domestic bliss, had a young mistress for thirteen years before his death. Claire Tomalin, the author, is an excellent biographer and she makes a more than positive case. It is amusing that the male reviewers of the film find it hard to admit the rumour might be true! Just as the early biographers of Dickens, usually his friends, made no mention at all of Ellen Ternan, yet must have met her sometime, if not regularly. I was disappointed that the new edition of The Invisible Woman was not mentioned in the opening remarks. Some knowledge of the story would be very helpful as the film goes forwards and backwards often. The film wisely concentrates on the single story line of Ellen and Dickens but read the book for further stories. Ellen’s sister, Fanny, married Thomas Trollope, the brother of Anthony and thus became a second Fanny Trollope. To confuse you even further the second Fanny Trollope also wrote novels, not very good ones, but she was well-known, although nowhere near as famous as his mother.

Of course Dickens’ life is as entertaining as his famous novels and if you know a little of this you will enjoy the film even more. A recent addition to the list is by Claire Tomalin. It is called Charles Dickens: A Life. All Tomalin’s biographies are wonderfully readable. Jane Austen: A Life is a standard text. There is a new edition due of Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life
 while other titles are Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, or The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft and most importantly, Mrs. Jordan’s Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King. This is a terrific story. Mrs. Jordan was not only a hugely popular actress but also the mother of ten children to the son of George III. This is part of the story of how Victoria became Queen.

While I was thinking about how useful it is to read Invisible Woman when you see the film I remembered the film of The Go-Between. When this was showing, years ago, people were so puzzled about what was actually happening in the film that eventually Abbey’s took copies of the book by L.P. Hartley over to the cinema and people bought it on their way out! Very thankfully!   Some films are spoilt if you have read the book and some people really demand that you read the book. Have fun! I’ve heard from the shop that Invisible Woman is reprinting but stock is due next month. Maybe try your library.

10% OFF Michael Lewis' Flash Boys during May when you use the Promotion Code EVESMAYBLOG when you order.

It is surprising how exciting non-fiction can be. I was absolutely enthralled when I read the latest expose of the financial world from Michael Lewis. His first book Liar's Poker, published in 1989, about the deals on Wall Street, was an enormous bestseller and since then he has written many other books with an emphasis on the financial world. He has an Economics Degree and did once work on Wall Street, before he wrote Liar's Poker. His latest book, Flash Boys: Cracking the Money Code is really a thriller and it has caused a few important people to look again at the most recent improvements on Wall Street. The story concerns the effect of the activities of High Frequency Traders who are able to make enormous amounts of money buying and selling because they have first look at incoming trades. It all comes down to micro-seconds.

A manager with Royal Canadian Bank first began looking into this (and the “dark pools” where trades were kept hidden until the right moment) and gradually he gathered around him a team of exceedingly unusual (read that as nerds, crackpots and genius) but all interested in remaking the Exchange as a place of fairness for everyone. It won’t spoil the story to know that they did indeed succeed in this – by starting a new exchange called IEX which stands for Investor Exchange. Lewis admits this would not have been possible without last minute support from newly appointed managers at Goldman Sachs. The whole story is fascinating and the writing superb. Don’t miss it, even if you have never bought a share.

Keep well.

Eve


Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright wins 2014 The Stella Prize

THE FORGOTTEN REBELS OF EUREKA by Clare Wright

WINNER – The 2014 STELLA PRIZE

The winner of the Stella Prize, the major new award for Australian women’s writing, receives $50,000 in prize money. This is the first time a nonfiction work has won the Stella Prize. Last year’s inaugural winner was Carrie Tiffany for her novel Mateship with Birds.

Of the winning book, Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of the 2014 Stella Prize judging panel, says:

“The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka sheds a bright new light on a dark old Australian story. In her account of the Eureka Stockade and the years leading up to it, historian Clare Wright revisits that well-trodden territory from an entirely new perspective, unearthing images, portraits and stories of the women of 1850s Ballarat and the parts they played not only in its society but also in its public life, as they ran newspapers, theatres and hotels with energy and confidence.

“A rare combination of true scholarship with a warmly engaging narrative voice, along with a wealth of detail about individual characters and daily life on the goldfields, makes this book compulsively readable.”

On winning the Stella Prize, Clare Wright says:

“No one writes books to win prizes, but holy flip it feels astonishingly good to have won the Stella. Of all the prizes on offer, I reckon this one is the sweetest of all. The Stella Prize is like the Brownlow Medal of the literary world: all muscle and spine, with a touch of glamour. Without fail, the books on the 2014 Stella short and long lists demonstrate astonishing grunt, tenacity, courage, grace, vision, skill and sheer determination to reveal the world at its potential fairest. The Stella helps to keep the playing field at its level best. I am honoured to be in the company of these brilliant authors.

“My thanks to the Stella judges, the Stella board, the many donors and sponsors who make this a truly grassroots award, my family for their constant love and support in the face of absence and Eureka madness, and to my magnificent publishers, Text Publishing, for taking the plunge on a big book of historical nonfiction about a bunch of noisy sheilas getting up to no good on the nineteenth-century frontier.”

The 2014 Stella Prize was awarded at an event in Sydney on the evening of Tuesday 29 April. The winner received $50,000 and each of the other shortlistees received $2000, courtesy of the Nelson Meers Foundation.

At the award night, Clare Wright announced that she would donate10% of the prize money to be split between two organisations close to her heart:

“The first is the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF), who work at a community level to raise literacy levels and close the gap in educational outcomes between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. $2500 will allow the ILF to get 20 early literacy kits in the Book Buzz project into the hands of families (mothers, babies and toddlers) in the family engagement program that is run in Alice Springs through the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress.

“The second is my local high school, whose dedicated teachers work within the constraints of an under-funded public system to give all our kids the benefits of the free, secular education that is their birthright in a democratic nation. I will donate $2500 to Northcote High School, to be held in trust to fund an annual academic award, the Eureka Prize for Women’s History.”

Clare Wright is an historian who has worked as a political speechwriter, university lecturer, historical consultant, and radio and television broadcaster. Her first book, Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia’s Female Publicans, garnered both critical and popular acclaim. The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, her second book, took her ten years to research and write. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and three children.

The Stella Prize is open to works of both fiction and nonfiction. From more than 160 entries, this year’s Stella Prize judges – critic and writer Kerryn Goldsworthy (chair); journalist and broadcaster Annabel Crabb; author and academic Brenda Walker; bookseller Fiona Stager; and writer and lecturerTony Birch – selected a longlist of twelve books, which they then narrowed down to a shortlist of six. View the lists below.

The paperback edition is due out from 8 May 2014.

Earn Double Reward Points on this book during May (and earn your $10 voucher faster).

THE STELLA SHORTLIST
Burial Rites	Hannah Kent
Night Games	Anna Krien
The Night Guest	Fiona McFarlane
Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir	Kristina Olsson
The Swan Book	Alexis Wright
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka	Clare Wright
TITLES THAT MADE THE STELLA LONGLIST
Letter to George Clooney	Debra Adelaide
Moving Among Strangers: Randolph Stow and My Family	Gabrielle Carey
Mullumbimby	Melissa Lucashenko
The Misogyny Factor	Anne Summers
Madeleine: A Life of Madeleine St John	Helen Trinca
All the Birds, Singing	Evie Wyld

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ~ AFTER DARKNESS by CHRISTINE PIPER

AFTER DARKNESS by Christine Piper

WINNER – The 2014 Australian/Vogel's Literary Award

The Vogel is always an interesting award, going as it does to an unpublished manuscript by a writer under 35. Over its 30-something years, it has had its share of controversy (The Hand that Signed the Paper, anyone?) and launched a number of important authors (hello Tim Winton/Kate Grenville/Gillian Mears!). Changes in the award structure a few years ago meant the book was published and released the day after the announcement of the winning story. Or, if you are lucky enough to attend the announcement ceremony, the showbag you leave with contains a couple of boxes of Vogel's breakfast cereals, and a copy of the winning book. So, I went home on Tuesday night and thought I'd better have a look - and four hours later had to put it down half-finished to be resumed and greedily finished the next day.

Tomakazu Ibaraki is the main character. The story starts in 1942 as he is on his way to an internment camp in South Australia. He had been working as a doctor in Broome, before being detained and sent to Loveday camp where a number of resident Japanese nationals (as distinct from prisoners-of-war) are interned. Many of the men had lived and worked in Australia for years, but some of them are locked up merely for having a Japanese parent, even though they are Australian-born and bred, and it is the anger these men feel at being treated as enemy aliens that is one of the most interesting themes of the book. As the reserved Tomakazu struggles to fit in, it becomes apparent that he is suffering from a sadness and guilt that predates his arrival in Broome in 1938. The novel moves in time, from 1942 back to 1938 and also 1934, when as a new medical intern Tomakazu is offered the chance to pursue microbiology research at the Army Medical College. Only gradually does he learn what the aim of the research truly is, and the internal conflict between his moral integrity and the need to retain honour by keeping to his commitment of confidentiality creates insurmountable difficulties that affect the rest of his life choices.

After Darkness is a compelling and finely written book. It reveals a little-known aspect of World War II history through a character who has not been able to reconcile societal expectations and personal experience. I truly think Christine Piper is an author to watch, and I won’t be surprised if in years to come her name is in the list of great Australian authors launched by the Vogel Award.

Lindy Jones


‘A brave, profound meditation on identity, trauma, loss and courage… reminds us that there are two sides to every war and that history never ceases to be written… A novel that demands its place alongside Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Mark Dapin’s Spirit House.’ – Stephen Romei, The Australian

~O~

Christine Piper's short fiction has been published in Seizure, SWAMP and Things That Are Found in Trees and Other Stories. She was the 2013 Alice Hayes writing fellow at Ragdale in the United States. She has studied creative writing at Macquarie University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Technology, Sydney, where she wrote a version of this novel as part of her doctoral degree. She has also worked as a magazine editor and writer for more than a decade.

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

The Miles Franklin 2014 Longlist

Australia’s most prestigious literary award was established through the will of the writer Stella Miles Franklin, best known for her novel My Brilliant Career. The bequest came as a surprise to the literary world as Franklin had told nobody – save her trustees – of her plans.

Miles Franklin had first-hand experience of the struggle to make a living as a writer and was herself the beneficiary of two literary prizes. She was also extremely conscious of the importance of fostering a uniquely Australian literature. She wrote,

"Without an indigenous literature,

people can remain alien in their own soil."

Accordingly, the Award is presented each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.

The Miles Franklin was first awarded in 1957. Since then, the annual announcement of the winner has become an event anticipated and discussed throughout Australia and around the world.

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey ~ April 2014

Have you stumbled across archaeologist Neil Oliver talking about the Vikings on SBS? Well I’m sure you have because he is that nice man who often fronts up on Coast. But this is not about those rough Vikings marauding and killing but about the traders who journeyed, not only to Ireland and England but also down the Russian rivers to Constantinople! Very interesting. A friend spent some happy time browsing in Abbey’s recently and she happened to come home with Ibn Fadlan and the Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North.  It turns out in 922 AD Ibn Fadlan encountered Vikings on the Volga River and is one of several Arab travellers who left meticulous descriptions of these encounters. Do click on this title... as it is a Penguin Classic it is only $9.95. I was happy to see her arrive home with three very different books – the result of browsing. Checking the database is convenient and fairly quick but peeping inside the covers of books with intriguing titles is even more fun.

My friend also brought home yet another book by Charles Allen, historian and travel writer, whose most famous book is Plain Tales from the Raj, which used to be read on ABC Radio. He also wrote the definitive biography Kipling Sahib. This latest one is called Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor. British Orientalists have spent many years researching old monuments to discover more about Ashoka who was the first ruler of all India, who transformed Buddhism from a minor sect to a World Religion only to be forgotten for two thousand years.

Her third book was The Sea: A Cultural History by John Mack who uses history, maritime archaeology, art history, biography and excepts from famous writers. He is fascinated by all aspects of the society of the sea – how seamen behave differently ashore, use different words for the same things, how the sea changes and what it means to us. (Ed: See also The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine)

My friend lives in the country and does use the internet but she counts a visit to Abbeys as one of the highlights in any trip to town.

Popular Penguins at $9.95 each have been a huge success – for everyone. It is so good to see certain backlist titles racing to the fore again and you certainly can’t complain that books are too expensive. Another new series is now coming out featuring military stories. They will have a khaki cover and most of the authors are Australian. The titles are Anzac to Amiens by C.E.W,.Bean, An Anzac’s Story by Roy Kyle, Patsy Adam-Smith’s The Anzacs, Australia in Arms by Phillip Schuler, Flesh in Armour by Leonard Mann, Generals Die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison, Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning, Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger and The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry edited by George Walter. War Popular Penguins are all only $9.95.

I have finally finished reading Eleanor Catton’s book The Luminaries which won the 2013 Man-Booker Prize. 832 pages means I don’t rush into it but this has proved to be a book well worth the time and one ready to be read again soon after. Enjoy the language as well as the story, which as you may know is set on the wild west coast of New Zealand’s South Island during the Gold Rushes of the 1850’s. There is a most interesting review of this book by Julian Novitz in the Sydney Review of Books. Did you realise that each succeeding chapter is half the size of the previous chapter? I'd noticed this and wondered if the author was running out of steam or had simply realised that people like to get to the end!

It was a matter of coincidence that I have read the film-tie in edition of Robyn Davidson’s Tracks and Tim Cope’s On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through The Land of the Nomads. Two entirely different books: one very slender and one very thick, but both classic travel writing from a young Australian. Both highly recommended. I suspect I had not read Tracks previously but I have sold so many copies over the years I had begun to think I had read it!

Some nice recent news includes awards for Frank Moorhouse for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and the Patrick White Award to Louis Nowra for significant but inadequately recognised contribution to Australian literature. Bravo. Well deserved.

Keep well.

Eve


Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers