2ser Book Club

Levi and Charlotte McAllister’s mother has died and been cremated, only to return to the family as a creature of flesh and fern from the wilderness where her ashes were scattered. It’s not so unusual, and she means no malice, you see many of the McAllister women have returned to visit their family after death, sporting the raiment of the natural world. She takes a shower, because ferns need lots of water, then after a few days their mother seeks out their estranged father only to spontaneously combust on his front lawn.

So begins Charlotte and Levi’s grief. A grief that sees Charlotte flee to a wombat colony on the island’s south and Levi, fearing his sister’s own fate, embarks on a mission to build her a coffin so that she might never fear cremation and return.

Join Andrew and Tess as they dive head first into the weirdly wonderful Flames!

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart introduces us to Alice. As a child she lives with her family in a seaside village, where they have carved out a seeming idyllic existence. Alice loves her mother, but is perplexed by her father’s moods.

Following a tragic fire Alice must leave the town and travel inland to live with her heretofore unknown Grandmother June. June’s farm, Thornfield is a home for women with nowhere else to go and Alice soon falls into the rhythms of nurturing the exotic native flowers that the women are famed for. But June is harbouring a secret that she will do anything to keep lest she lose her granddaughter’s love.

Terra Nullius takes the reader to a kind of fictional future-history of Australia. We hit the ground running matching the frantic pace of Jacky, a Native escaped from the convent school where he is treated little better than a slave. The Settlers are soon on Jacky’s trail and Trooper Rohan, famed and feared for his violent temper, is none too happy to be setting off into the harsh Australian interior to bring the fugitive Jacky home.

Claire G Coleman's Terra Nullius is an important insight into the history and impact of dispossession, and a cracking good read from a new Australian voice!