Five books to make lockdown 2.0 more bearable
Posted on
HerCanberra’s resident bookstagrammer Sephora Scott (@antisocial.influencer) has everything you need in a lockdown read, aided by her trusty sidekick, Gary.
Lockdown 2.0 feels like the shitty sequel no one asked for. But at least if the number of books you read goes up, we’ll have an increasing stat to celebrate.
If you’re in need of a virtual holiday, try Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic
View this post on Instagram
Asylum Road is the story of a couple in flux across places and cultures but through a contracted eye slit of time. In what should have been a story awash with the dullness of the everyday, the tension was so taut I felt it in my gut.
Sudjic had me right there in every location (particularly the sun-washed streets of Croatia), on ferries and in cars, in every conversation and in every awkward lull. In its writing style, Asylum Road reminded me of Rachel Cusk’s work. Not a word was out of place or redundant.
The characterisation of not only the couple, but also the cities in which they found themselves, was so masterful. I find it hard to compute that this is only Sudjic’s second novel.
I loved, in particular, the fish-out-of-water Anja (an escapee of the Balkan war) in the privileged world of her boyfriend and his parents. Anja was also a fish-out-of-water in her own family, estranged by the decisions she’d made which came to the fore in the space of a few days in her hometown.
An undercurrent of anti-belonging comes through so keenly in most of this story. I loved the discomfort of it; I revelled in the telling.
If you’ve only got time for 100 pages, try Assembly by Natasha Brown
View this post on Instagram
The writing in Natasha Brown’s Assembly is propulsive, evocative and mildly explosive. A melange of mediums all exceptionally well-deployed creates a fragmented but ultimately revelatory story of a young black woman surrounded by white people.
Over the course of primarily a weekend at a country house with her boyfriend’s parents, we experience the microaggressions or macro barriers that make the protagonist’s life perceptibly more difficult or uncomfortable. Brown’s observations are so biting and, despite the character’s personalised experience, they are in some ways so thoroughly universal.
Brown turns her excoriating pen to relationships, millennial malaise, and being only one woman among men in the workplace. For me, the most resonance reverberated through this line: “Every day is an opportunity to fuck up. Every decision, every meeting, every report. There’s no success, only the temporary aversion of failure.” Oooft, right in the solar plexus.
If you’re looking for mythical escapism, try Sistersong by Lucy Holland
View this post on Instagram
Sistersong was thoroughly transporting. It is about three Celtic sisters, all daughters of a pagan king who has renounced his beliefs.
With that renouncement has come a diminution of the king’s power and of the everyday magic previously wielded by his subjects, including his own daughters.
The story unfolds quite beautifully with most of the plot’s power reaching its canter in the second half. There are impressively hewn transgender characters, ineffable fires, magical herbs, famines, foreign interlopers, romances, power skirmishes, betrayals, epic battles and deaths. Quite the read.
If you’re looking to lose yourself, try Magpie by Elizabeth Day
View this post on Instagram
Magpie had more twists than a dance scene in Grease and I was gobsmacked at almost every turn.
Without spoiling anything, I was most impressed by the powerful ways in which Elizabeth Day plays with perspective and Magpie is the epitome of the Pythagorean theorem that every question has two sides. (And there’s another one about hypotenuses, I think, but that one’s less famous.)
The writing was clear, crisp and captivating with a thrumming subtlety in the perfect petite nods to popular culture and to influences like Daphne Du Maurier. It’s no surprise how expert the writing is when you think about how much of her career Elizabeth Day has spent putting pen to paper.
Magpie will have you as riveted to the spot as you would be if an actual magpie were swooping. You will forget to breathe, let alone eat, bathe and acknowledge the existence of your loved ones.
Thanks to Harper Collins Publishers Australia for an advanced review copy.
If all this social isolation has you craving a little romance, try One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
View this post on Instagram
One Last Stop was the train I didn’t want to get off. And speaking of getting off, this was as racy as one of those Japanese bullet trains—and just as smooth.
Yes, the storyline of a lesbian (Jane) stuck in time and on a train was as ludicrous as Ludacris’ Christmas album but, geez, if it wasn’t a clever narrative device to support a searing discussion of LGBTIQ+ rights, the heartbreaking battles of the ’70s and the hard-won but deserved gains of now.
Protagonists Jane and August were surrounded by a fantastic cast of queer characters, all with their own idiosyncrasies and contributions to storyline and awareness-raising.
The gang had incredible amounts of fun with pancakes and drag shows (sometimes combined) and exposed their vulnerable softness and beautiful uniqueness for us. I was right there with them through it all. Unless the ‘there’ is the having sex on a train part of this book.
Even more than the logic-defying, Looper-style time-suck in which Jane found herself, the one aspect of the storyline I just couldn’t believe was the willingness of two women to have sex on a commuter train. I choo-choo-choose not to accept it.
Thanks to Pan Macmillan Australia for sending me a review copy.
