The 11 books to read in April
By Jason Steger
Check out new books by Pip Williams, Toni Jordan, Don Winslow, Curtis Sittenfeld and more.
What was it that T. S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land? “April is the cruellest month … ” Not for readers, though.
There are stacks of books hitting the shops, with fiction in particular having a strong month. It’s also the time for April Fools’ Day, but there’s nothing foolish about these books. Happy reading!
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Praiseworthy, Alexis Wright
Giramondo, $39.95, April 1
The Waanyi writer’s fourth novel is something to be celebrated. As our review says, “this is a long journey through the imagination, a novel both urgent and deeply contemplated”. It’s set in the fictional town of Praiseworthy, where a “haze” has settled in, bringing disruption and disturbance. Central to the book is the Steel family, “whose disparate lives take on the epic magnitude of Dreamtime myths and legends”. A Wright novel is frequently challenging, but always rewarding.
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Shy, Max Porter
Faber, $24.99, April 4
The fourth work of fiction from the English author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Lanny and The Death of Francis Bacon is a novella about the eponymous character who’s banged up in some sort of school for troubled teens. So he goes on the run through the surrounding countryside. As our upcoming review says, “it is a radical act of empathy, disorienting at first but, once you grasp the rhythm, exciting and insightful.”
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Dust Child, Nguyen Phan Que Mai
Oneworld, $32.99, April 4
The Vietnamese writer’s second novel in English takes as its subject the now middle-aged children who were fathered by American soldiers, but left in Vietnam after the US withdrew 50 years ago. Life has been tough for them and rejection has been the hallmark of their lives. Dust Child looks back to 1972, but is set in 2016, when Phong is turned down by American immigration officials and former soldier Dan returns to tackle the guilt he feels towards the pregnant local woman he discarded. Que Mai is a guest at next month’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
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The Bookbinder of Jericho, Pip Williams
Affirm Press, $32.99, March 28
The question has been: how will Pip Williams follow the huge success that was The Dictionary of Lost Words? Three years later, we have the answer. She has gone back to Oxford, specifically the world of Oxford University Press, for a novel that affirms her interest in women’s stories and who gets to tell them, as well as the restrictions of gender and class during World War I. What’s more, a couple of favourite characters from the earlier book return.
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Dr. No, Percival Everett
Text, $32.99, April 4
If you read the prolific Percival Everett’s Booker shortlisted The Trees, which took an imaginative leap from the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955, you’ll be licking your lips at the prospect of this one. In Dr. No, an expert on the subject of “nothing” is created to help create a Bond villain. Yes, really. As Molly Young wrote in The New York Times: “Everett returns to certain themes: academia, language games, boxes containing secrets, Blackness and nonsense. Dr. No hits all of them”.
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Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy, Steven Powell
Bloomsbury, $32.99, April 6
James Ellroy’s crime fiction is singular, brilliant and hard to take at times. His 75 years have been overshadowed and driven by the unsolved murder of his mother when Ellroy was 10. Best known for the LA Quartet and American Tabloid, his novel about the lead-up to the assassination of JFK, his work represents alternative histories of America. The “demon dog” remains a fascinating figure and one of the great characters of American writing.
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Thirst for Salt, Madelaine Lucas
Allen & Unwin, $32.99, April 4
This first novel by the New York-based, Australian writer is about the relationship between our unnamed 24-year-old narrator and Jude, a furniture restorer 18 years her senior, whom she meets in a small NSW coastal town. As Lucas says about the novel: “I see it as an accumulation of my obsessions and desires: wayward mothers and cautious daughters, beloved dogs and dead birds, the wounding allure of cowboy types, and the curative powers of swimming in wild, salty ocean waters”.
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Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld
Transworld, $32.99, April 4
The American novelist is perhaps best known for her first novel, Prep, and then American Wife and Rodham, her two novels that bounce off the lives of former US first ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. The premise of her latest, which lives up to its title, is to test the notion that it’s fine for men to date out of their league, but not women. Set in a TV comedy show, the narrator is a writer who comes up with an idea to boost a sketch involving an ageing pop star.
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The Anniversary, Stephanie Bishop
Hachette, $32.99, March 29
The author of the much-loved and garlanded The Other Side of the World is back with the story of a writer who has had a passionate affair with, and married, an older film director. When she wins an award that coincides with a cruise to celebrate their 14th anniversary, all seems smooth sailing. Then, in the waters north of Japan, he goes overboard and his body is found a few days later. Gradually and deftly, Bishop reveals what happened.
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Prettier if She Smiled More, Toni Jordan
Hachette, $32.99, March 29
Loved the effervescent family comedy Dinner with the Schnabels? Then you’ll be delighted that Toni Jordan is back with the story of Kylie, a woman with a full life who is forced to move back home to look after her injured mother. “The world has a bad side and a good side mixed up together, and I’ve always tried to reflect that because it’s just a more genuine kind of story,” Jordan has said of her writing. “I’ve leaned more heavily on the funny side.”
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City of Dreams, Don Winslow
HarperCollins, $32.99, April 16
Don Winslow has written many brilliant modern noir novels including The Cartel Trilogy, about the Mexican drug wars. This is the second in a new trilogy featuring Danny Ryan, who has fled to the west coast of the US after losing out in a bloody bust-up between Irish and Italian crime syndicates back east in the late 1980s. Winslow was a fierce opponent of former US president Donald Trump (you should see his videos on social media) and is a noted champion of other writers, notably Irish Australians Adrian McKinty and Dervla McTiernan.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.
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