Rosemary's Newsletter
Authors of the Month
Matthew Spencer
Matthew was a journalist at The Australian for twenty years, with long stints running the Foreign News desk and as Opinion Editor. He has written for newspapers and magazines in Uganda and Kenya and have been published in The Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald. Matthew has an Honours degree in English Literature from the University of Sydney.
Matthew will be in conversation at the BMI on Wednesday 9 July.
Book of the Month
Shift.
Irma Gold.
Arlie is a moderately successful thirty-something photographer who can’t seem to get his shit together. He can’t hold onto a girlfriend, or much else, and his relationship with his parents is complicated. His agoraphobic mother, Dellie, has long drawn a silence over her South African upbringing. The more she refuses to illuminate, the more Arlie wants to know.
After another breakup, Arlie needs to get away, and there’s only one place he’s drawn to. In Kliptown, he meets choirmaster Rufaro, singer Glory and her younger brother Samson. Amongst the poverty, violence and beauty of this neglected South African township, Arlie begins exploring ideas for an exhibition, and courting the possibility of happiness. But then his father unexpectedly turns up, and a catastrophic event changes everything…
Irma will be in conversation at the BMI on Wednesday 16 July.
Recommended Reads
One Hundred Years of Betty
Debra Oswald.
Born into poverty in pre-war London, and growing up fast during the Blitz, Betty grabs the chance of a bigger life by migrating to Australia. On board the SS Asturias she meets three people who will influence the course of her life.
In Sydney, Betty is making ends meet as a waitress at the famous Trocadero dance hall when she stumbles into a rushed courtship with Donald, a wealthy businessman,and dedicates herself to being the ideal 1950s suburban housewife.
Set against a century of world events and social upheavals, Betty takes us to the frontlines of the anti-war protests and the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, to the AODS crisis during the 1980s, to Mexico and eventually becomes a screenwriter.
Broke Road
Matthew Spencer.
The murder of a woman in her home in the Hunter Valley brings Rose Riley and her partner Piya Patel to Pokobin, right in the middle of the vineyards. It appears that the woman knew her attacker, but the evidence suggests that she was alone. It is a tough case with plenty of suspects around town.
Investigative journalist Adam Bowman finds his way to the scene in the hopes of getting the story, and to work with Rose again.
Nell The Duchess of Manchester
Robert Wainwright.
When an unassuming young Melbourne woman bumped into a handsome naval
lieutenant in a Colombo hotel swimming pool. In 1926 she would never have dreamed of one day being the wife of an English duke with three castles.
Demure but feisty Nell Stead and Alexander ‘Mandy’ Drogo Montagu, son of the 9th Duke of Manchester, fell in love that day and were married within a month in a union that surprised English society. Together the unlikely couple set out to rescue the family’s fortunes.
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