182 The Australian Women’s Weekly | MAY 2019
REVIEWSBYKATIEEKBERG.PHOTOGRAPH©2017MUSEUMOFFINEARTS,BOSTONCof fee table
The Hollow Bones
byLeahKaminsky,PenguinIMAGINGTHEWORLD
byHenryR. Lew,HybridPress
Lewliterallyhasaneyefor
theartworld.Theretired
Melbourneophthalmicsurgeon
wasanartprodigyasa boy
andin thisextraordinarybook
scienceandartconvergeas
heexploreshowhumanvision
influencesartappreciation.
Stunningcolourplatesinclude
AugustusJohn,JohnSinger
SargentandFransHals’La
BohemienneandAbraham
Behrmann’sTheJewishBride
(bothonthecover).
Australian author and physician Leah Kaminsky’s new
novel is based on a true and very dark story. Ernst
Schafer is a talented ornithologist who, blinded by his
ambition, finds himself working for the Third Reich –
specifically the notorious Heinrch Himmler – to search
for the origins of the Aryan race in the snowcapped
mountains of Tibet. Ernst is not a Nazi sympathiser, but
chooses to ignore his sensibilities to further science. His
new wife and childhood sweetheart, Herta, is much more
suspicious of the expedition Ernst has embarked on and
as Ernst and his colleagues head off, excited at what
they may find, 1938 Germany embarks on a reign of
horror. What follows is poignant and deeply disturbing.Above: Berthe Morisot,
Eugene Manet and his
Daughter Julie in the
Garden. Left: Claude
Monet, Camille Monet
and a Child in the
Artist’s Garden in
Argenteuil 1875.Books
Fromthe Corner
of the Oval Office
by Beck Dorey-Stein, PenguinAs she climbed the marble
steps of the EEOB
(Eisenhower Executive Office
Building) to the lift up to the
“bird’s nest” on the fifth floor,
where the White House
stenographers work, two doors
opened: “It felt like that
moment in The Devil Wears
Prada when Stanley Tucci yells,
‘Alright everyone, gird your
loins’.” Which is apt as Dorey-
Stein is now having her own
Meryl Streep moment; TDWP
author Lauren Weisberger
describing this sharply written
memoir as, “Who knew that
the West Wing could be so
sexy?” Apt too, as when Dorey-
Stein was hired as Barack
Obama’s stenographer in 2011,
she binge-watched the entire
West Wing series. At an
interview she was told
references were unlikely to be
a problem, because Obama’s
daughters were pupils at the
school where she taught. A
natural writer, the last night of
working for Obama in 2017:
“For the past five years this
house was my school, my
house of worship, my
everything. I put on my
backpack. The only sound is
the hollow clank of halyard
against flagpole.” But on
January 20, 2017, “A waking
nightmare. I’m now a
stenographer in the Trump
administration.” Was ... now the
book is going to be a movie.