Recent Reads from Hannah, Laura and Darcy

If I had your face

by Frances Cha

Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a 'room salon,' an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood.

Her roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea's biggest companies.

Down the hall in their apartment building lives Ara, a hair stylist for whom two preoccupations sustain her: obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that is commonplace.

And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy.

Together, their stories tell a gripping tale that's seemingly unfamiliar, yet unmistakably universal in the way that their tentative friendships may have to be their saving grace. 

From Hannah:  This was a really enjoyable novel about daily life in South Korea. It highlights the pressure on young women as they navigate a patriarchal society that is obsessed with beauty – but has a riveting and hopeful story to share as well. A refreshing, informative read if you like modern fiction and want a different cultural perspective!

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Flames

by Robbie Arnott

A young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte, who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire. The answers to these riddles are to be found in this tale of grief and love and the bonds of family, tracing a journey across the southern island that takes us full circle.

From Laura: A great little adult fiction novel about magical realism set in Tasmania. One of the main reasons I liked it so much was that I haven’t read anything quite like it.

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The happiest man on Earth

by Eddie Jaku

Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed on 9 November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on the Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the 'happiest man on earth'.

From Darcy: Everyone should read this beautiful book. This novel from 100 year old Holocaust survivor, Eddie Jaku, is easily digestible and only takes a few hours, but will leave you thinking about it for days and days to come. His moving account of the atrocities he experienced is both insightful, terrifying, and humour filled, as Eddie gives us his account as a young man in Auschwitz. It’s about family, perspective, survival, and kindness. Highly recommend to teens and adults of any age. 5 stars.

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Klara and the sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

From her place in the store that sells artificial friends, Klara -- an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities -- watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara she is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In this luminous tale, Klara and the Sun, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

From Darcy: This is Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, and although it’s the first I’ve read of his it has made me want to read all of his previous titles. It is set in an ambiguous dystopian world where teenagers have AF’s – Artificial Friends, and we read the book from the perspective of Klara, an AF who is bought from a store to live with a family. We join Klara in becoming part of the family and learning all about the real world, and her place in it. This book is not for everyone but it does make us think about humanity, religion, strength, and what it is to be human, and I would still recommend it. 3.5 stars.

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The paper palace

by Miranda Cowley Heller

It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace" -- the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives.

From Darcy: This is one of the best pieces of fiction I have read in a while. I was inspired to read it by the Shameless Book Club (an Aussie podcast) and was not disappointed by the authors poetic account of her main character’s life that has been riddled with family drama, intergenerational abuse (TW), and endless choices of which path to take, with backgrounds of New York, London, Central America and Cape Cod. I’ve recommended it to several library patrons already! 5 stars! 

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The chiffon trenches

by Andre Leon Talley

Discover what truly happens behind the scenes in the world of high fashion in this detailed, storied memoir from style icon, bestselling author and former Vogue creative director André Leon Talley.

During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job assisting Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship and propelled Talley into the upper echelons by virtue of his shared knowledge and adoration of fashion. The Chiffon Trenches is a candid look at the who’s who of the last fifty years of fashion, and proof that fact is always fascinatingly more devilish than fiction. André Leon Talley’s engaging memoir tells the story of how he not only survived but thrived – despite racism, illicit rumours and all the other challenges of this notoriously cutthroat industry – to become one of the most legendary voices and faces in fashion.

From Darcy: I listened to this on Libby, and it was even better due to Talley himself reading it to me in his distinctive, eloquent, touching yet often humour-filled voice. This memoir is a must for anyone who is even slightly interested in fashion or curious about what goes on behind the scenes at Vogue. Talley was raised in humble beginnings in the segregated South, and after hard work and passion found himself in Paris and New York with the heavyweights of fashion, rubbing shoulders with the elite, in a story that is as informative and inspiring as it is juicy. PS – A documentary called The Gospel According to Andre was made a few years earlier and paris with it very nicely. 5 stars! 

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28

by Brandon Jack

A brutally honest memoir that completely rethinks what it means to be a man. Continually told he was born with footballing blood, Brandon Jack has spent his life uncertain of the relationship he holds with the games he's played. Now a writer and musician, he sits in his apartment and reflects upon the years spent pursuing what felt like an inevitability - the footballing life.

From Darcy: It’s not often that I read an autobiography of an athlete – in fact I think this is the first, but I was inspired when I saw he was going to be talking at Writer’s Week here in Adelaide. Jack mentions in the book that it’s not often you read about an athlete who didn’t make it as far as we’ve come to expect; the book is named after the number of football games he played with the Sydney Swans. It’s an interesting account of the life of someone who was raised in a sports mad household with a famous rugby player for a Father, and the influence that had on the start of his life and where he has ended up now (spoiler alert – not paying footy). 3.5 stars.

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