ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

The Australian is a travesty of a newspaper but it usually has interesting book reviews at the weekend, and Stephen Romei’s column A Pair of Ragged Claws,  is always worth reading.

Today I was very pleased to learn that next September Text will publish Kate Grenville’s third novel in the historical fiction trilogy which so far comprises The Secret River and The Lieutenant.  J.M. Coetzee will also have a new one out, amalgamating his Scenes from Provincial Life series – so I’d better get on and read Summertime before then!  Charlotte Wood, author of The Children and The Submerged Cathedral, has a new one coming too, and so has Frank Moorhouse, completing his League of Nations series.  It’s been ten years since I read Grand Days and Dark Palace and they were big books, so I hope I can remember enough of Edith’s adventures to make sense of Book Three without re-reading…

From Scribe’s Newsletter I find news of some interesting forthcoming debut novels: Peggy Frew’s House of Sticks, which won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for an unpublished manuscript;  and Lisa Gorton’s first adult novel, Heritage.  However we’ll have to wait for Amy Espeseth’s debut novel, Sufficient Grace, that won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript,  till 2012.

Text Publishing are offering an interesting mix of local and translated fiction.  In translation there will be The Messenger by Yannick Haenel, a story set around the Polish Resistance, and Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (which I’m especially pleased to see because I’d like to read more Asian fiction).  I like the cheeky sound of Lesley Cannold’s debut novel, The Book of Rachael – it’s about the sister of one Jesus of Nazareth!  Craig Sherborne’s third book of memoirs, The Amateur Science of Love will be out in June.  Text is also re-issuing some neglected Australian and New Zealand classics, including Blue Skies (1976) by Helen Hodgman (1945 – ),  and Sydney Bridge Upside Down by Kiwi David Ballantyne (1928-1986).

(I’m also intrigued by Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, because it’s about how celebrated authors, artists and composers discovered truths about the human mind before neuroscientists did.  Also with a neurological theme is British writer’s S.J. Watson’s debut novel  Before I Go to Sleep, about a woman who has lost her memory, retrieves a bit of it each day and then forgets it again).

And overseas, David Legend of a Suicide Vann is publishing a new novel called Caribou Island so there will be plenty to look forward to..