Ash Mountain by Helen Fitzgerald

This was an unsettling read for me and I almost gave up on it, but I am glad that I kept with the story. From the beginning we are thrown right into the story and it took a while for me to get used to the style of writing and the characters. The reader is taken to different time periods as the town’s secrets are effectively revealed. It is a dark story covering topics such as religion, abuse, drugs and sexuality but is broken up by some lighter moments. Adding to this unsettling feeling is the authors use of characters, many only named by a tag such as boarder #1 and a bushfire threatening to wipe out the town.

A single thread by Tracy Chevalier

In 1932 Violet Speedwell is known as a ‘surplus woman’. She lost a brother and a fiancé during the Great War, and at 38 is unlikely to marry. Living with her cantankerous mother is becoming unbearable, so she moves to Winchester on her own. Life for a single woman is hard, but she finds solace in a group of broderers – women who embroider items for the cathedral. Between the wars in the U.K. is one of my favourite settings, and I really enjoyed a detailed look at life for those women who missed their chance for the expected married life. Well-researched, but not dry, with a great sense of time and place, and endearing characters.

The road trip by Beth O’Leary

The premise of this book, a road trip with your ex crammed in a mini, sounded great. I enjoyed her previous book The flat share and was looking forward to reading this. But it was not as cute and cheerful. I did not connect with the characters until the end, so the first 3/4 of the story was a bit of a slog, but it all pulled together at the end. A contemporary romance that doesn’t shy away from some heavy issues.

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu

Nadia Owusu’s Ghanaian father worked for the UN, and her Armenian-American mother abandoned her when she was two. They lived in many places across the world, and then Nadia’s beloved father died. Aftershocks is a beautiful, poetic memoir about the impact of abandonment, the question of identity, womanhood, and a sense of fractured self, in a fractured world. It is the story of a colourful, varied, privileged outer life, and the inner struggles of a woman trying to make a place for herself.

The Order of the Pure Moon reflected in water by Zen Cho

I had no idea what wuxia is, but chose this because I enjoyed Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen. Wuxia is a genre of Chinese fiction featuring itinerant warriors of ancient China, often capable of superhuman feats of martial arts – like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A young nun of The Order of the Pure Moon falls in with a gang of thieves, and they all get more than they bargained for. The cover is just gorgeous, and it is a quick, fun, and sweet read.

The trivia man by Deborah O’Brien

This was a delight to read over a wet, wintry weekend. Kevin usually attends trivia as a one-man team, but for the first time he joins another team and meets Maggie. Through their voices and those of Kevin’s sister and nephew we discover their stories over the 12 week trivia competition. The story is about the labels we give ourselves and each other, how those labels play out in social situations and of course love!

The living sea of waking dreams by Richard Flanagan

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is about an elderly woman in hospital with declining health, whose children seek to prolong her life at all costs, in a world that is on fire, and facing extinctions of many kinds. There are elements of magical realism, unlikeable characters, language which accentuates the difficulty of finding meaning, relentless onslaught of ecological and personal loss, and the complicated struggles of modern life, yet it is not without hope or glimmers of light, and is certainly thought-provoking and immersive. It seems like Richard Flanagan looked at the world in the summer Australia burned, and was tempted to despair, but wrote out his feelings resulting in this poetic, dream-like story.

Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan

A gently sad, and nostalgic novel about friendship, life, and meaning. James and Tully grew up together in a small town in Scotland in the 1980s, and the first part of the novel is about their lives at that time, especially a magical trip to Manchester to see some bands. The second part is set around thirty years later when Tully receives life changing news. It is a celebration of 1980s music, of lasting friendships forged in younger years, of beloved books and films, and of the struggle to live life to the full . Not a book that offers, or even seeks hope for the future, it looks to the beauty of what is available to us now. The audio version is read beautifully by the author.

The boy with blue trousers by Carol Jones

The story set in China and Australia in the 1850s. At the heart of the story is two women from these cultures who are both fighting for their independence. Little Cat escapes to the gold fields of Australia disguised as a man and Violet is a governess for a family in Robe after fleeing England. It was interesting to read about the cultural differences of these 2 women, who were escaping their pasts and figuring out their futures on the goldfields of Australia, their different actions and how they were shaped by their culture.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

I knew very little about Michelle Obama before reading this. It’s hard work for me to have any interest in Australian politics, so I have made little to no effort with that of other countries, however prominent. This is the story of a working class girl, with a stable, loving family, naturally inclined to work hard, and supported by those around her so that she achieved all she set out to do, and sought to use her gifts to make a difference in the lives of others. It is long and detailed, but I found it enthralling, at least until Barack Obama entered politics. It’s about the importance of education, representation, having people who believe in you, and hope. It really does make the years that followed even more incomprehensible. I listened to the audiobook, beautifully read by the author.