Melanie Cheng
Room For A Stranger
Text
Tell us about your book. Meg Hughes is a 75-year-old unmarried pensioner who, after a lifetime of caring for others, finds herself alone in her family home with only her pet African grey parrot for company. Following a shocking home invasion, she joins a homeshare program in the hopes of finding a little companionship and security.
Andy Chan is a 21-year-old international student who is trying to make a home for himself in Australia but is struggling with his studies. When his father’s business in Hong Kong collapses and his parents can no longer afford the rent on his city apartment, he reluctantly moves in with Meg.
While on the surface Meg and Andy couldn’t be more different, they are facing similar internal struggles. Both are attempting to build new and meaningful lives, independent from their families. Room for a Stranger is the story of two people who, in the process of finding compassion for each other, discover a deeper understanding of themselves.
What were you reading while you wrote it? I was reading Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. I loved this deceptively simple tale about two quiet people forging a new and unconventional relationship late in life.
What will you read next? The Lost Arabs by Omar Sakr. I am a huge fan of Omar’s poetry and prose and can’t wait to immerse myself in this collection, which has been widely praised as powerful, visceral and energetic.
Sienna Brown
Master of My Fate
Vintage
Tell us about your book. Master Of My Fate is based on the true story of a boy called William Buchanan who was born a slave in Jamaica, grows up and becomes a rebel. He is transported to the colony of New South Wales as a convict and then escapes to become a bushranger.
The novel is fast-paced, one of high drama, adventure, trials and tribulations, but underneath it’s about familial relationships, love and betrayal. It’s about being an outsider and wanting to belong, to find a way to fit in, and then recognising that you won’t. It’s also about the struggle to be free of bondage, to step outside a predetermined fate and to live one’s best life, regardless of the circumstances.
What were you reading while you wrote it? I found it hard to read novels while writing, but I always seemed to turn to Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End for inspiration. His ability to elucidate the frontier wars in America and then the Civil War – topics I wasn’t drawn to read about – by the soaring beauty and lyricism of his prose, the authenticity of the voices and his tender regard for his characters, no matter how savagely they behaved, always brought me back to why I wanted to write about British colonial slavery and convict life, but more importantly how I wanted to write about it.
What will you read next? Now I’m back to reading I’ve got lots to go through – Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s Stella prize-winning memoir The Erratics; Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko; and Old Men Dying by Tom Keneally.
Nigel Featherstone
Bodies of Men
Hachette
Tell us about your book. Bodies of Men is about two young Sydney men who, for very different reasons, enlist and then serve in Egypt in 1941. Despite the war raging around them, they discover that love – their love – is a mysterious though ultimately welcome force. So it’s a love story. However, it also aims to reveal different expressions of masculinity during wartime, and tries to dismantle the notion that bravery belongs to the male of the species.
It is also about how war, even as just an idea, is dangerous and that it can destroy those on its periphery as well as those down through the generations. Finally, it has a go at the increasingly powerful proposition that all those who serve Australia in a military capacity are gods to be worshipped – an honest version of history reveals that to be untrue, and so does Bodies of Men.
What were you reading while you wrote it? Deserter: a hidden history of the Second World War by Charles Glass; Peter Stanley’s Bad Characters: sex, crime, mutiny, murder and the Australia Imperial Force; and Chaos of the Night: Women’s Poetry and Verse of the Second World War. All three reveal experiences that have been buried under the weight of “official” war history.
What will you read next? No Friend but the Mountain by Behrouz Boochani, because for decades Australia has been a refuge for so many, but we’ve lost our way. We need to rediscover our place in the world, and find our heart. Compassion is neither strength nor weakness – it is what makes us human.
Rohan Wilson
Daughter of Bad Times
Allen & Unwin
Tell us about your book. Rin Braden believes the great love of her life, Yamaan Ali Umair, died in an environmental disaster that destroyed the Maldives, the island nation where he lived. It leaves her distraught and close to giving up on life. But Yamaan has survived. He turns up in Eaglehawk Migrant Training Centre in Australia, one of a chain of facilities built to manage the surge of climate refugees.
Inside Eaglehawk, Yamaan is put to work making electronic toys for Cabey-Yasuda Corrections, the multinational that operates the training centre. When Rin hears he is alive, she’s overjoyed and yet it’s not all good news. She knows better than anyone that being caught inside a CYC facility is a dire fate. After all, she helps the company further its corrupt agenda. Now, Rin is determined to find a way to free Yamaan at any cost to herself.
What were you reading while you wrote it? Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry. An incredibly powerful account of the 2011 disaster that taught me more about life and death in Japan than any other book.
What will you read next? Bruny by Heather Rose, which is out in October. A political thriller set around an election campaign in Tasmania? With the wit and humour of Heather Rose? Sign me the hell up!
Chris Womersley
A Lovely and Terrible Thing
Picador
Tell us about your book. A Lovely and Terrible Thing is a collection of stories set mostly in Australia, or at least in a version of Australia that many readers will recognise – whether it’s an inner-city swimming pool, a beachside town, a lake that once submerged a country town, or an isolated farmhouse inhabited by a girl with incredible and unwanted powers. The stories are about revenge, desire, missed opportunities and unlikely connections.
What were you reading while you wrote it? Many of the stories in A Lovely and Terrible Thing have a surreal, fable-like quality to them, in which strange things happen in landscapes that seem otherwise ordinary. This is a quality I’ve always enjoyed in Jorge Luis Borges’ work, so if my stories have a literary companion, it might be the late, great Argentinian. There’s also a bit of Little Red Riding Hood in there and perhaps a dash of another Argentinian, Silvina Ocampo.
What will you read next? I’ve been lucky enough to read an advance copy of Lenny Bartulin’s forthcoming novel Fortune, which follows the adventures of several people, both historical and fictional, who were present when Napoleon entered Prussia in 1806. Covering more than a hundred years and dealing with a large cast of characters, it’s a novel of great scope, light on its feet, beautifully written and immensely entertaining.
Margaret Rice
A Good Death
Murdoch Books
Tell us about your book. My aim was to use my personal experience of two deaths significant to me as a touchstone to find out about other peoples’ stories. I wanted to talk to a cross-section of people and I did, capturing the experiences of well over 100 subjects, including medical specialists and everyday people. From that I wanted to create an anthropological view, but in the vernacular. I wanted the work to wander into controversies and secrets about death – which it did. And from that I wanted to tell us about ourselves and our attitudes. I realised we can make death much better than it is in our modern world, since it’s one of those areas where we’ve lost something because of our modernity and I want to give people a guide so they’d have confidence to do their own reclaiming, no matter how small.
What were you reading while you wrote it? I deliberately read outside the subject matter and one of my favourites was Stasiland by Anna Funder. I really admired how Funder documented a culture at a particular time and captured its essential truths so powerfully, simply by picking up a recorder. That showed me where to start with mine.
What will you read next? No Friend But The Mountains, by Behrouz Boochani, which I’m also hoping will be another autobiographical journey that bears witness to the lives of the others and makes us think anew about things we take for granted.
Eleanor Gordon-Smith
Stop Being Reasonable
NewSouth
Tell us about your book. Stop Being Reasonable is comprised of six true stories about and interviews with people who changed their minds in big, high-stakes ways, and what their stories can tell us about our models of public discourse and rational persuasion. It tries to bring narrative and philosophy together in a way that each learns from the other.
What were you reading while you wrote it? I read a lot of William James’s lectures for philosophy at its most operatic and listened to a lot of Jack Hitt’s radio for prose at its most concentrated.
What will you read next? I’ve somehow managed to not read Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton. I’m excited to see what happens when someone so well versed in reporting turns his hand to his own story.
Ava Benny-Morrison
The Lost Girls
ABC Books
Tell us about your book. The Lost Girls is a true crime book that delves into the murders of a young mother and her daughter, Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and two-year-old Khandalyce. Karlie’s body was found in the Belanglo State Forest in 2010 and Khandalyce’s remains were found in a suitcase in South Australia in 2015. It offers an insight into the police investigation that put their killer behind bars, but more importantly puts the victims at the centre of the story. Family members, friends, witnesses and detectives who have never spoken tell the case through their eyes, from a dirt-bike rider who found a woman’s skeleton in a forest to a forensic biologist who identified Karlie and Khandalyce seven years after they left Alice Springs, to a friend who followed through on a promise to bring the two home. The book is a full account of the horrific case and, at times, is difficult to fathom but in the end it shows the best and the worst of humanity.
What were you reading while you wrote it? In the latter stages of writing I read Chloe Hooper’s The Arsonist. It was incredibly well-researched, fair and empathetic. I couldn’t put it down but it left me wanting to scrap everything I’d written and start again!
What will you read next? I’m looking forward to reading Kerry O’Brien’s A Memoir. He is one of Australia’s greatest interviewers and I’m hoping to draw a bit of wisdom from him.
