The Bookshelf

Memory, lost conversations and almost-fathers-and sons in Ben Lerner's Transcription; children divided by the throw of a dice, and that's just the start of it, in Steve Toltz's A Rising of the Lights; no such thing as unskilled labour, in Siân Hughes' No Such Thing as Monday, where a woman works as a drycleaner, trying desperately to rid herself of the stains of her childhood; new crime releases, and an Australian in Hollywood is reconsidered. Kate and Cassie with reviewers Michael Robotham and Geordie Williamson.

BOOKS

Ben Lerner, Transcription, Granta

Steve Toltz, A Rising of the Lights, Penguin

Siân Hughes, No Such Thing as Monday, Penguin

Tana French, The Keeper, Viking Penguin

Candice Fox, Redbelly Crossing, Penguin

Patricia A. O'Brien, Errol Flynn: The true story of Australia's Hollywood Icon, Allen & Unwin

[Keep scrolling for other books and writers mentioned in the discussion]

GUESTS

Michael Robotham is an internationally-acclaimed crime writer whose books include the Joseph O'Loughlan and Evie Cormac series. His latest novel is The White Crow — and his next one, Tell Me Something True, will be his first to be set in Australia

Geordie Wiliamson is a literary critic, writer and publisher at Picador, whose books include a critical study of Alexis Wright in the Black Inc Writers on Writers series; and The Burning Library — on neglected Australian writers

Other books mentioned in the discussion

Karl Ove Knausgård, works

Rachel Cusk, works

W G Sebald, works

Alexander Kluge, works

David Foster Wallace, works

Jonathan Franzen, works

Wallace Stevens, works

Les Murray, works

Saul Bellow, works

Philip Roth, works

P D James, works

Agatha Christie, works

Sam Twyford-Moore, Cast Mates: Australian Actors in Hollywood and at Home

CREDITS

• Presenters: Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producers: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett, Tracey Trompf
• Sound Engineers: Craig Tilmouth, Roi Huberman
• A/ Arts Editor: Sarah Corbett

What does it mean to write using an 'ethical imagination'? Colum McCann onstage with Kate Evans at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, on his novels Twist, Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin and many more; and his work with the social justice storytelling movement, Narrative Four.

• Presenter/ Producer: Kate Evans
• Sound Engineers: Simon Branthwaite, Antonia Gauci
• Acting Arts Editor: Sarah L'Estrange

This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adelaide’s When I Am Sixty‑Four, and dives into queer Sydney in the 1940s with Fiona Kelly McGregor’s The Trap. 

BOOKS

• Fiona Kelly McGregor, The Trap, Picador
• Debra Adelaide, When I Am Sixty-Four, UQP
• Yann Martel, Son of Nobody, Text

GUESTS

• Tom Wright, theatre writer and adaptor; Artistic Associate, Belvoir Theatre
• Hannah Kent, novelist, scriptwriter and memoirist, whose books include Burial Rites, Devotion and Always Home Always Homesick

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet
• Delia Falconer, works
• Peter Cornell, The Ways of Paradise 
• Ingrid Horrocks, All Her Lives: Nine Stories

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound, Craig Tilmouth and Hamish Camilleri
• Arts editor, Sarah L'Estrange

A rich mix of voices and stories in short fiction from acclaimed Native American writer Louise Erdrich; essays and memories from two‑time Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller; bleakly funny childhood tales by English author Mark Haddon; and, from Michael Winkler, a surreal and darkly comic story about a man who decides he’d rather be the family dog.

BOOKS 

• Michael Winkler, Griefdogg, Text 
• Louise Erdrich, Python’s Kiss: Stories, Corsair 
• Alex Miller, Journey to the End of Time, Allen & Unwin 
• Mark Haddon, Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour, Chatto & Windus 

GUESTS 

• Shannon Burns, writer and critic from Adelaide, whose first book Childhood: a memoir, was published in 2022 
• Tony Birch, poet, writer, and Professor of Australian Literature at Melbourne University. His latest book is the short story collection Pictures of You 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Grimmish, Michael Winkler
• Act of the Damned; Fado Alexandrino, António Lobo Antunes
• What We Can Know, Ian McEwan
• The Transformations, Andrew Pippos 
• Brawler, Lauren Groff

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett, Ce Benedict
• Sound: Craig Tilmouth, Antonia Gauci
• Arts editor: Sarah L' Estrange

What if the most talked‑about streaming show of the moment was a mirror reflecting your most private fears and failures? That unnerving question sits at the heart of John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, a sharp novel about resentment, revenge, money, class and generational unease. Plus: the art of the short story, as Hannah Kent reads and reflects on Lauren Groff’s new collection Brawler; and a woman’s inner life rendered with quiet and devastating precision in Mary Costello’s A Beautiful Loan.

BOOKS

• John Lanchester, Look What You Made Me Do, Faber
• Lauren Groff, Brawler, Hutchinson Heinemann
• Mary Costello, A Beautiful Loan, Text

GUESTS

• Hannah Kent, novelist behind the phenomenon Burial Rites + The Good People, Devotion and Always Home, Always Homesick
• Tim Rogers, author of Detours; frontman of You Am I, The Hard-Ons and various musical escapades. His solo tour Le Charme Defensif kicks off this week

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Andrew O'Hagan, Caledonian Road
• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
• Michelle de Krester, Theory and Practice
• Jacqueline Maley, Lonely Mouth
• Erin Somers, The Ten Year Affair 
• James Joyce, The Dubliners; The Dead 
• Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
• Colm Tóibín, The Magician
• Steve Hanley, The Big Midweek: Life Inside the Fall

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound: Craig Tilmouth, Antonia Gauci
• Arts editor; Sarah L'Estrange

A Bookshelf festival special featuring Kate Evans onstage with writers Jock Serong and Emily Maguire on historical fiction, from the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival.

GUESTS

• Emily Maguire is a novelist and essayist whose books include An Isolated Incident and Love Objects, and her latest, Rapture
• Jock Serong is a novelist and lawyer, whose books include The Rules of Backyard Cricket, On the Java Ridge, the Preservation series, The Settlement, and his latest, Cherrywood

CREDITS

• Presenter/producer, Kate Evans
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman
• Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Statues come alive and London is re-imagined in Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, and surprising parallels in two Australian novels of secrets, shame, land and time in M L Stedman's A Far-Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Minstrels. Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh, Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves - to help you decide what to read next.

BOOKS

Francis Spufford, Nonesuch, Faber

Eva Hornung, The Minstrels, Text

M L Stedman, A Far-Flung Life, Penguin

GUESTS

Michael Robotham, internationally acclaimed crime writer – whose books include the Joe O’Loughlin series, the Cyrus Haven/ Evie Cormac series, and his latest – featuring Philomena MCcCarthy, The White Crow. His first Australian-based novel is out later this year

Roanna Gonsalves, writer whose collection of short stories is The Permanent Resident, and whose first novel (The Servants) will be published later this year. She is also one of the hosts of a monthly book club at the State Library of NSW

Other books mentioned:

Phillippa McGuiness and Richard Neville (eds) The Library that Made Me (you can write your own stories about libraries that have shaped you right here)

Anita Heiss, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray: River of Dreams 

Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Rashida Murphy’s Old Ghosts  and Karleah Olson’s Bloodwood (forthcoming)

Michelle de Kretser, The Hamilton Case

Natasha Brown, Assembly, Universality

Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore

Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog, The Death and Life of Bobby Z,  The Final Score [stories]

• Presenters: Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans
• Sound engineers: Timothy Jenkins
• Arts Editor: Rhiannon Brown

In this episode, we travel from the Swiss Alps to the quiet strangeness of Danish suburbia and the fierce edges of American literary drama. We begin with the visceral intensity of Gabriel Tallent’s latest novel, Crux, where characters cling to passion and survival with bloodied fingertips. Claire Thomas reflects on art, ambition, and the lure of towering peaks in On Not Climbing Mountains, and Helle Helle's They, a delicately surreal portrait of mothers, daughters, and the lives lived between silences. 

BOOKS 

• Gabriel Tallent, Crux, Fig Tree 
• Claire Thomas, On Not Climbing Mountains, Hachette 
• Helle Helle, They, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken, Giramondo 

GUESTS

• Hannah Kent, novelist, scriptwriter, and memoirist, whose books include Burial Rites, The Good People, Devotion, and Always Home Always Homesick 
• Tom Wright, theatre writer and adaptor; Artistic Associate at Belvoir Theatre in Sydney 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Olga Tocarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
• Rachel Cusk, works
• W.G. Sebald, works
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
• Henry James, works
• Rainer Maria Rilke, works
• James Baldwin, works
• Katherine Mansfield, works
• Leo Tolstoy, works
• Teju Cole, works
• Muriel Sparks, works
• Johanna Spyri, Heidi
• Blaise Cendrars, works
• Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow
• Harry Matthews, Sleuth
• John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent 
• Harry Mathews, Tlooth 
• Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume
• Catherine Lacey, The Möbius Book

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Micky Grossman and Roi Huberman
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been marketed as "the greatest love story ever told", which is not typically the description given to the original novel. What does this adaptation achieve, and what does it sacrifice in the process?

The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and Radio National's Arts Hour's Sky Kirkham discuss what they felt did and didn't work in this film and, in an expanded podcast extra edition, they also discussed the film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet

Kate and Cassie read Kin, the latest novel from Tayari Jones — the acclaimed American novelist behind An American Marriage, a book that resonated with both critics and readers alike. Her work sits alongside a bold mix of stories in this episode, from a vampiric love story to speed‑dating slasher fiction, and South African writer Nadia Davids adds her own unsettling brilliance, taking us into the life of a furious yet outwardly obedient domestic servant in a mysterious house on a hill in Cape Fever.

BOOKS

• Tayari Jones, Kin, Penguin
• Nadia Davids, Cape Fever, Scribner
• Shailee Thompson, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates, Atria Books
• Pip Knight, Aubrey Wants to Die, Harper Collins  

GUESTS

• Tony Birch, poet and novelist; Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at Melbourne University
• Beejay Silcox, writer and critic

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• David Peace, The Red Riding Quartet; Twilight series
• Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
• Dan Jennings, Dancing Through the Fire
• Rebecca Perry, May We Feed the King
• Maylis de Kerangal, Painting Time

CREDITS

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