Summer reads 2018/19

Posted on 17 December, 2018

Need a gift for a book lover or a beach read? 

We’ve got you covered with this curated list from Hayley Jenkins, Milo Millikin and Rebecca Worth of Paperchain Bookstore, Manuka.

Scythe

Neal Shusterman

The first instalment of the Arc of a Scythe series is set in the year 2042. The discovery of gene therapy and the elimination of war and disease have ended inevitable death—ages are reset and decades lived over again in a world of immortality and overpopulation. Society is governed by the Thunderhead, an omniscient computer system with advanced artificial intelligence, ordained to take the place of governments and militaries.

But death still looms in utopia. It is brought by Scythes; masters of death and the only people above the rule of the Thunderhead. Shusterman’s story follows two teenagers apprenticed to a Scythe, training to take the lives of the unlucky few who are selected for ‘gleaning’.

However, neither wishes to be successful in the training, both secretly wishing to remain free from dealing the hand of Death.

The Mars Room

Rachel Kushner 

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018, The Mars Room is a bold and gritty novel, rather than a light summer read.

Romy Hall has killed a man. She is serving two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Kushner observes the kaleidoscopic world of prison through Romy’s eyes—the dreary absurdity, the hustle, the violence, the injustice, the humour.

This is a story told with clarity and vibrancy, a novel filled with countless stories and characters. Kushner immerses the reader in the insular world and system Romy and her fellow inmates are trapped within. This novel is complex and stark. It comments on the prison industrial complex of America, showing that there are no easy answers for those who are no longer free.

Clock Dance

Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler’s newest novel Clock Dance follows the everyday life of Willa Drake, a woman whose sixty years of life have been defined by other people.

Tyler shows us Willa at various points throughout her life, always an accommodating and responsible person who lives up to her family’s expectations. When she receives a phone call asking for help, Willa uproots her life and moves across the country to look after her son’s ex-girlfriend who has been shot. This unplanned change plunges Willa into a new community and gives her a renewed purpose.

Tyler tells Willa’s story of hope and regret with understated insight, accompanied by a rich cast of characters. Rooted in the ordinary and told with compassion, this is a story of finding the freedom to choose your own path.

No Friend but the Mountains

Behrouz Boochani

Currently detained on Manus Island, Kurdish journalist and asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani has written a first-hand account of his experiences there over the last five years.

Boochani uses poetry and prose to vividly lay before us his story of incarceration. No Friend but the Mountains shows us Manus Island through the eyes of a man who is both prisoner and social theorist. Boochani describes the horrors he experiences in detention and offers a philosophical interpretation of oppression.

Painstakingly typed on a mobile phone, No Friend but the Mountains exists as a beautifully written act of survival and resistance. This powerful work of Australian literature has received critical acclaim, shown in Richard Flanagan’s praise of Behrouz Boochani: “Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.”

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf

Arguably Woolf’s finest feminist essay, A Room of One’s Own advocates for women’s financial and intellectual independence. It is told in a meandering fashion, dipping in and out of the voice of Woolf as the author, into the journey of a woman, as creative and capable as her brothers, being kept from pursuing an education.

Woolf impresses upon the reader the idea that for a woman to be free to create, to write and to be, she must have the dedicated space to think and the ability to support herself.

Originally published in 1929, this essay shines a light on the gender inequality of its time and causes readers today to reflect on freedom gained and what the future could hold.

All titles available for purchase instore, paperchainbookstore.com.au.

This article originally appeared in Magazine: FREE for Summer 2018/19, available for free while stocks last. Find out more about Magazine here.

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