review TOP 4 BOOKS TO READ THIS MONTH
A BOOK LOVER’S REVIEW BY JACQUI SERAFIM
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Set in 1960s California, meet the uncompromising, unconventional Elizabet Zott, your new favourite heroine. We have all loved this debut novel! “A book that sparks joy with every page!” Elizabeth Day
The Labyrinth
Wake by Shelley Burr A nerve jangly thriller with a brilliantly twisty plot. Fabulous Australian crime fiction. “Wake will appeal to fans of Jane Harper, Christian White and Chris Hammer”. Books+Publishing “One of the year’s best debuts". Chris Hammer Freezing Order by Bill Browder Bill Browder returns with another gripping story of how he became Putin’s number one enemy. Thrilling tale of assassinations, legal battles and billions in cash. It would be entertaining fiction, but it’s true! Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A F Steadman The first book in the hotly anticipated new fantasy adventure series for readers aged 10+. If you like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, you’ll love this. With unlikely heroes, magic, fierce sky battles and bloodthirsty unicorns!
by Amanda Lohrey “The cure for many ills, noted Jung, is to build something.” Erica Marsden has had a traumatic life. Abandoned by her mother at a young age, her psychiatrist father killed by a patient, and later deserted by the father of her child, she has struggled alone to raise her troubled son. When Erica’s son is imprisoned for manslaughter, she leaves her current life and moves to an old shack in a small rural hamlet on the south-east coast of New South Wales. The hamlet is near the prison where her son is incarcerated and allows her to visit him while maintaining a level of anonymity. The recent torment of her son’s situation and the traumas of her past plague her and she is seeking to calm her mind. Labyrinths date back 4,000 years as a walking meditation and as a tool for personal psychological and spiritual transformation. They are about the journey not the destination and, unlike a maze which is designed to trick and confuse, they lead you inevitably to the centre in a single, continuous path. They are designed to be calming. It is fitting then, that Erica, inspired by the memories of the labyrinth of her childhood in the grounds of her father’s asylum, seizes on the idea of building a labyrinth as a passage to healing. Her father “believed in the mind as a divine engineering project designed for the invention and use of tools. Homo faber: man the maker. The use of the hands is a powerful medicine, he would say.” The first person narrative shifts effortlessly between Erica’s memories of her traumatic past and her troubled present where she seeks a simpler, more peaceful “pastoral” life, closer to nature to heal her soul. Her obsession with building a labyrinth is inspired by her memories of the labyrinth in the grounds of the asylum where she grew up and lost both her parents. It provides a concrete link between her past and her present and provides a focus for her healing both in practical terms as she focuses on “making” something and in spiritual terms as she reconnects with the natural world and the people around her. Strangers become neighbours in the act of involvement in the project. Lohrey’s delineation of the healing process is deft – demonstrating without sentiment that each of the participants has their own goals and needs being met. There is no sentimentality – just moments of connection which is enough for each of them. Lohrey’s writing is rich in layered images and lyrical description. We experience the jarring juxtaposition of the peaceful environment of her childhood living in the asylum and its traumatic events, then the somewhat sordid depiction of Erica’s adult life in Sydney and the contrasting wild beauty of the south-east coast. The characters are artfully drawn; we see them as Erica sees them through her observant but emotionally distant lens. Lohrey’s The Labyrinth is a work of haunting beauty, stark brutality and yet is almost meditative in its delivery. It is poignant yet hopeful for it reveals a way forward in the face of overwhelming loss.
The Labyrinth is the winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2021, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Fiction Prize, 2021, and the Voss Literary Prize, 2021.
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