Kate and Cassie discuss bestselling American writer Curtis Sittenfeld’s sharp and observant collection of short stories Show Don’t Tell; You Am I frontman Tim Rogers reads First Name Second Name, an excellent debut from Queensland novelist Steve MinOn, and the ABC’s own Zan Rowe (of Triple J, Double J and Take 5 fame) shares her thoughts on Scottish singer-songwriter (from Belle and Sebastian) Stuart Murdoch’s Nobody’s Empire, a case of life inspiring art.

BOOKS 

Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don’t Tell, Doubleday 

Stuart Murdoch, Nobody’s Empire: A Novel, Faber 

Steve MinOn, First Name Second Name, UQP 

GUESTS 

Tim Rogers, lead singer with You Am I and The Hard-Ons, about to launch into a You Am I tour celebrating 30 years of the Hi Fi Way album. Author of Detours

Zan Rowe, Double J’s Music Correspondent and host of Friday Mornings; presenter of Take 5 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies

Robbie Arnott, Dusk

Hannah Kent, works

Lech Blaine, Australian Gospel

Helen Garner, The Season; Monkey Grip

Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days; Horse

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Jennifer Homans, Mr. B 

Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, Emrys Cronin
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence with Nobel Prize-winning English-Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft; while guest reviewers Tim Ayliffe reads Laurent Binet’s Perspectives; and Siang Lu reads David Szalay’s Flesh.

BOOKS 

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Theft, Bloomsbury 

Laurent Binet, Perspectives (translated from the French by Sam Taylor), Harvill Secker 

David Szalay, Flesh, Jonathan Cape 

GUESTS

Tim Ayliffe, journalist and crime writer – whose John Bailey series include the books The Enemy Within, Killer Traitor Spy, and The Wrong Man

Siang Lu, writes for film and TV and is also the author of the books Ghost Cities and The Whitewash 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDMichael Connelly, works Leon Uris, worksJohn Le Carre, worksStephen King, worksAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian Road; MayfliesNick Cave and Swan O'Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage Sara Foster, When She Was GoneCamille Booker, The Woman in the WavesNatasha Rai, An Onslaught of LightSteve MinOn, First Name Second Name

This edition of the Bookshelf was recorded on stage at Adelaide Writers' Week on Sunday 2 March – with Irish writer Niall Williams (Time of the Child), English writer Charlotte Mendelson (Wife) and all the way from the Adelaide Hills, Australian writer Brian Castro (Chinese Postman). How and when do they do their best reading, what have books meant to them, what are their influences and touchstones? With a surprising swerve or to into the bath and to the funeral of a beloved author.

BOOKS MENTIONED

Laurence Sterne, works

James Joyce, works, Ulysses

Samuel Beckett, works

P. W. Joyce, English As We Speak It in Ireland

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Bleak House

W.G.Sebald, Rings of Saturn; Austerlitz

Thomas Bernhard, works

Helen Garner, Diaries; The Children's Bach; Monkey Grip  

Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls; Memoir

Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil

Salvatore Satta, The Day of Judgment

Samantha Harvey, Orbital  

Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts

Louise Glück, works

Anne Carson, works

Jelena Dinic, works

Alistair MacLeod, Ireland and Other Stories

John McGahern, Amongst Women

Percival Everett, James

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall  

James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Patrick Lane, There is a Season

Alba de Céspedes, works

Elena Ferrante, works

Four women’s lives intertwined between Africa and the USA in Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count. Plus, secrets and trauma in the South of France  in Australian novelist Diana Reid’s new one, Signs of Damage; and into the Swedish wilderness to observe a group of seven unlikely people in indie musician turned novelist Annika Norlin’s Colony.

BOOKS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count, Fourth Estate

Diana Reid, Signs of Damage, Ultimo Press

Annika Norlin, Colony, (translated from the Swedish by Alice E. Olsson), Scribe

GUESTS

Peter Polites, Western Sydney writer whose books include the novels Down the Hume and The Pillars, and the memoir-fiction hybrid, God Forgets About the Poor

Stephanie Smee is a translator who works from French into English and whose translations include Hannelore Cayre’s The Godmother, Helene Gaudy’s A World with No Shore and Marie-Helene La Fon’s The Son’s Story

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDChimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun; AmericanaDiana Reid, Love and Virtue; Seeing Other PeopleFiona McGregor, Chemical Palace; IrisJames Parker, Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Ann Marie Debettencor, Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

Irish writer Colum McCann’s Twist dives deep under the ocean and takes on a charismatic mystery; 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s We Do Not Part explores massacres on Jeju Island during (and after) the Korean War, stories actively repressed by both the South Korean and American governments; and Australian novelist Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore takes us to a fictional island between Tasmania and Antarctica, inhabited only by a man and his three children.

BOOKS

Colum McCann, Twist, Bloomsbury 

Han Kang, We Do Not Part (translated from Korean by e. yaewon & Page Aniyah Morris), Hamish Hamilton 

Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore, Penguin Random House 

GUESTS

Beejay Silcox, critic, essayist and regular onstage interviewer of writers. Until last week – Director of the Canberra Writers Festival

Bernadette Brennan, literary scholar and judge, whose books include literary biographies of Australian Helen Garner and Gillian Mears

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Susannah Clarke, Piranesi

Sarah Manguso, Liars

Alba de Céspedes, No Turning Back

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, John Jacobs
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

An examination of family dynamics through three novels...Adam Haslett’s Mothers and Sons reflects on unspoken stories and familial divides; The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr, set in 1970s Ireland, tells the story of a family that takes in a child washed ashore, and Robert Lukins’ Somebody Down There Likes Me depicts an uber-rich family who gather together as their wealth and corruption begin to unravel.

BOOKS

Adam Haslett, Mothers and Sons, Hamish Hamilton

Robert Lukins, Somebody Down There Likes Me, Allen & Unwin

Garrett Carr, The Boy from the Sea, Picador

GUESTS

Claire Mabey, founder of NZ’s Verb Wellington literary organisation and writers’ festival; books editor at The Spinoff; writer whose middle-grade children’s book The Raven's Eye Runaways was published last year. And, here's a link to the NZ book awards Claire mentions: https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/)

Jonty Claypole, CEO Red Room Poetry; co-host of podcast The Secret Life of Books; author, Words Fail Us: In Defence of Disfluency 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDPercival Everett, JamesCharles Dickens, David CopperfieldBarbara Kingsolver, Demon CopperheadSamantha Harvey, OrbitalRobert Lukins, The Everlasting Sunday; LovelandF. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyHerman Melville, Moby DickShakespeare, HamletEvelyn Waugh, Brideshead RevisitedAudrey Magee, The ColonyPaul Murray, The Bee StingPaul Lynch, Prophet SongColm Toibin, worksNiall Williams, Time of the ChildFiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks DownJames Baldwin, Giovanni's RoomJane Austen, Pride and PrejudiceMarilynne Robinson, GileadSusannah Clarke, PiranesiDamien Wilkins, DeliriousHarriet Baker, Rural Hours

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: John Jacobs, Ann Marie Debettencor
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown 

Alaska, folktales and mothers and daughters in Eowyn Ivey's Black Woods Blue Sky. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Anne Tyler is back with Three Days in June, another novel about mothers and daughters; and Italian novelist Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection, a critique of social media and contemporary life.

BOOKS

Eowyn Ivey, Black Woods, Blue Sky, Tinder Press

Anne Tyler, Three Days in June, Chatto & Windus

Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection (translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes), Text

GUESTS

Alice Pung, novelist, memoirist and editor. Her books include Unpolished Gem, Laurinda and One Hundred Days

Dylin Hardcastle, novelist, artist and screenwriter, currently completing their PhD. Their novels include Below Deck and A Language of Limbs 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDEowyn Ivey, The Snow ChildJohn Marsden, worksAnne Tyler, worksJazz Money, Mark the DawnDavid Owen Kelly, Host CityKirsty Jagger, RoseghettoWeike Wang, Joan is Okay

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, John Jacobs, Tegan Nicholls
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

A story of yearning, belonging, secrets and identity from Native America in Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit; rusted robots, prosthetic limbs, AI and noisy families in Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author; and coercive control and walking on eggshells in Irish writer Roisín  O’Donnell’s Nesting; and a brief foray into the world of ‘romantasy’ and the international bestseller Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros.

BOOKS 

Morgan Talty, Fire Exit, Scribe 

Rebecca Yarros, Onyx Storm [Book three in the Fourth Wing/Empyrean series], Piatkus 

Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author, Gollancz 

Roisín O’Donnell, Nesting, Scribner 

GUESTS 

Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Sydney; and co-host of the podcast Film Versus Film

Sarah Gilbert, journalist, Executive Producer, Impact Studios, University of Technology, Sydney. Her latest book is Unconventional Women: The Story of the last Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Australia. She is currently writing a biblio-memoir set in Buenos Aires, and has a podcast coming with Sydney Review of Books called Fully Lit

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Nikki May, Wahala

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Cazalet Chronicles

Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery

Elene Ferrante, works

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, John Jacobs and Harvey O'Sullivan
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Cassie and Kate read Marie-Hélène Lafon’s The Son’s Story, a family story that spans the twentieth-century, full of melancholy beauty and secrets. Crime writer Hayley Scrivenor reads Geoff Parkes’ When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, a story of small towns, envy and threat in New Zealand; and documentary maker Johan Gabrielsson reads Swedish bestseller The Group, by Sigge Eklund, in which art, sun, wealth and beautiful people meet and mingle in Madrid.

BOOKS

Marie-Hélène Lafon, The Son’s Story (translated from the French by Stephanie Smee), MLP

Geoff Parkes, When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, Penguin Random House

Sigge Eklund, The Group (translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles), Ithaka Press

GUESTS

Hayley Scrivenor, crime writer whose books are Dirt Town and – her latest – Girl Falling

Johan Gabrielsson, documentary maker: longtime Australian resident, he was born in Sweden

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Mary McCarthy, The Group

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley

Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Cold Truth

Sara Foster, When She Was Gone

Samantha Byres, Dead Ends

James Bridle, Ways of Being

Slavoj Zizek, Too Late To Awaken 

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman, Harvey O'Sullivan
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie are back for 2025!

In this episode, a discussion of Panic by Catherine Jinks, about a young woman looking for a fresh start after posting a drunken rant that went horrifically viral. Novelist George Haddad, and Professor Sue Turnbull, who specialises in crime drama and fiction, are also along, to take a look at new novels by Miles Franklin winner Shankari Chandran and American author Garth Greenwell.

BOOKS

Catherine Jinks, Panic, Text

Garth Greenwell, Small Rain, Picador

Shankari Chandran, Unfinished Business, Ultimo Press

GUESTS

George Haddad, novelist, artist and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Western Sydney. His novel Losing Face was published in 2022

Sue Turnbull, Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, who specialises in crime drama and fiction. She is also chief crime fiction reviewer for The Age and SMH

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDKaliane Bradley, The Ministry of TimeAlice Winn, In MemoriamRichard J. Evans, Hitler's PeopleGeorge Eliot, MiddlemarchCaroline Darian, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again:  Turning our family trauma of Chemical Submission into a collective fightCurtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell; Romantic Comedy; EligibleGarth Greenwell, CleannessShankari Chandran, Chai Time at Cinnamon GardensKatherine Brabon, Body FriendBen Watt, Patient Alexandros Papadiamantis, The MurderessMichelle de Kretser, Theory and PracticeRonni Salt, Gunnawah Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Cold Truth; Dark ModeKatherena Vermette, The Stranger family trilogy

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Tegan Nicholls, Harvey O'Sullivan
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown