Nina Kenwood, The Wedding Forecast

 

• This wonderful new novel by former bookseller Nina Kenwood is a delightful and emotionally deep romcom. I loved her first two YA (Young Adult category) novels but this one is fully adult and is undoubtedly her best.
• It’s about family, friends, partners, mothers, babies, parents, and relationship failures - multidimensional in a real way. But it’s mostly about love, how hard it is to find, the wrenching life-changing depth of it, and the sacrifices it demands. 
• There’s high drama on every level, and absolutely invigorating dialogue. What I particularly liked was Kenwood’s brilliant comic touch. You can’t help but be absorbed and captivated. The more you read the more you’re sucked in. 
• And as Nina admits in the Acknowledgements: ‘As well as being a romcom, this book is something of a love letter to bookshops and bookselling…’
• Buy this book and you’ll love it so much you’ll buy more copies for your family and friends. It’s that good. 

Malcolm Knox, The First Friend

 

• This is not an enjoyable book to read at all. You’re immersed in the ugly history of the Soviet Union since the October Revolution in 1917 until 1938, just prior to the beginning of the Second World War. 

• Post Lenin the Union was led by two murderous, abusive bullies, Josef Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria. They were merciless in their enforcement of Communist Party rule, and murdered hundreds of thousands of citizens in the process. Their egos were huge and their self-entitlement knew no bounds.  

• The central focus of Knox’s novel is on Beria and his years as the Governor of Georgia. He’s a vicious liar, manipulator and rapist, and has no respect for his staff or colleagues apart from his childhood friend and ‘brother’ Vasil Murtov, who is his driver and assistant. 

• I found it difficult to fathom Knox’s fundamental intent in this novel. Is it just a fictionalised history of a rotten autocracy, or does it have a deeper meaning? It can’t be claimed that it offers any insight into today’s Russia under Putin because the two states are vastly different. There is a contrasting narrative though. Murtov is married to Babilina and has two young daughters Ana and Melo. Their love for each other is real, and in the oppressive and brutal society they must survive in, inspiring. They are courageous and define what it actually means to be human. 

• Another aspect of the tale that enlivens it dramatically is Knox’s comic touch. The dialogue is frequently crude and funny, often blokey in an Aussie way. 

Thomas Piketty: Nature, Culture, and Inequality.

 

• Published recently in English by Australian publisher Scribe this small, 82 page, beautifully designed hardback is an absolute gem. I’ve read all of Piketty’s tomes over the years but this very digestible book summarises his principle concerns and arguments very clearly. 

• The graphs and tables are in four colour, and are gems in themselves. His main focus is inequality and how nations around the world have progressed over the last century in all sorts of ways, but they’ve mostly gone backwards in the distribution of income and wealth. He also includes a chapter on gender inequality, demonstrating we’ve got a lot more progress to make, and one on the climate change challenge.  

• He makes no bones about the fact he considers himself a socialist. In his view capitalism, on so many levels, is simply not working. He argues for governments to take certain goods and services out of the marketplace, and that ‘it should be extended to larger and larger sectors…the trend to remove whole sectors of the economy from the marketplace is one there’s no going back on’. 

• (Unfortunately Australia and New Zealand (Oceania) don’t feature in any of his ‘world’ tables. It would be so good to get this historical perspective on Australia, and where we sit compared to all other countries.) 

David Nicholls, You Are Here

 

- Marnie is a freelance copy editor. She's thirty-eight and divorced. Michael is a geography teacher. He's forty-two and separated. There aren't many readers or viewers of David Nicholls' stories of love and its rocky road that aren't utterly sucked in. He's an immensely gifted writer and I've long been a fan. His prose sparkles with verve and wit, and his stories, although quotidian, are full of profound insight into what basic humanity really is. 

- A hundred pages into this novel I wondered - is this a bit predictable? Typically Nicholls? Two lonelies who find each other? But as I read on I became entranced. The main ingredient in the mix is Nicholls' frequent sentences that burst off the page with comic brilliance.  

- The chapters are short, and the voices alternate - Marnie's and Michael's. A friend has organised a walk across one side of England to the other. It will take eight days. They pass through very English towns like Borrowdale, Grasmere, Glenridding, Stonethwaite and Patterdale, climb steep hills, suffer constant rain and drizzle. But they talk and talk and Marnie in particular is as delightful and cheeky a companion as you could get, although she 'hates walking'! These conversations are the substance of the book. 

- They are both child-free and victims of failed marriages. They tell each other their stories and they are immensely sad. Nicholls details the emotional drainage they suffered and are still recovering from. 

- I obviously cannot comment on the ending, other than to say Nicholls does not indulge in any cliches. You'll just mutter 'what a magnificent achievement'.