Jennifer ByrneREVIEWS
Jennifer Byrne is the host ofThe Book Club on ABC TV.178 AWW.COM.AUAUGUST 2017
REVIEW BY KATIE EKBERG.The Midsummer
Garden
by Kirsty Manning,
Allen & Unwin.
Ripe to be plucked for a screen
adaptation, this mouth-watering
debut novel – meticulously
researched and crafted – raises
the bar in contemporary and
historical fiction coupling.
Planting her story in both
modern Tasmania’s mudflats
and a 15th-century French
chateau kitchen, Manning’s eye
for parallel characteristics of
our protagonists – marine
biologist and chef Pip, and
baker and herbalist Artemisia- is exquisite. As Pip mentors
student sample-taker Taj,
Artemisia helps maid Emmeline
shadow her seasoned sauce
turning. Pip’s discovery of
medieval parchment recipes
in an heirloom copper pot from
her mother whisks us off on her
journey to France and Italy; the
aromas of mushroom foraging,
the mixing of wormwood and
botanicals for vermouth,
infusing every page as our
two tales knot. Our heroines
are compelling, compassionate
and admirable. Pip always put
diving bells before wedding
bells, which frustrates
winemaker fiancé Jack;
Artemisia cannot wait to be
betrothed to spice merchant
Andreas. But only one of our
proud women shall walk down
the aisle in a gown edged with
Artemisia, Mother of Herbs.
H AVA N A : A
SUBTROPICAL
DELIRIUM
by Mark Kurlansky,
Bloomsbury.
He’s made bestsellers of
suchunlikely subjects
as salt and cod, so I
picked up Mark
Kurlansky’s latest, on
the Cuban capital of Havana, with high
anticipation. And an excellent job he’s done,
evoking a city of heat and history, music and
politics, pirates and slaves and prostitutes – a
place both gloriously colonial and hopelessly
ramshackle which is nonetheless “the most
romantic city in the world”. Travellers have
heard for years that one must “get there
before Castro goes”, before tourism takes
over, butHavanareminds us of how many
lives this city has had since Christopher
Columbus, in 1492, sailed the ocean blue to
declare Cuba “the most beautiful that eyes
have ever seen”. The book is beautifully
packaged with the author’s own drawings.THE MINISTRY OF
UTMOSTHAPPINESS
by Arundhati Roy,
Hamish Hamilton.
It’s the book we have
beenwaiting for:
Arundhati Roy’s second
novel, arriving 20
years after her Booker-
winningThe God of
Small Things, exploring class, caste and
family secrets in Roy’s home-state of Kerala.
Her canvas is broader this time, sweeping
from a transgender community founded in
a Delhi graveyard by ahijra (someone born
with both male and female sex organs), to
the fighting fields of Kashmir, where three
friends get caught up in the independence
struggle. She still writes like an angel and
manages to tie her two stories together – one
a human tale of outsiders striving to build
their own form of family, the other focusing
more on India’s political failures. Yet all are
struggling to achieve the “utmost happiness”.THE AMAZINGSTORY
OF THE MAN WHO
CYCLED FROM INDIA
TO EUROPE FOR LOVE
by Per J Andersson,
Oneworld.
Everything about this
true-life romance runs
long: its title, the full
name of its hero (373
letters!), and the bicycle journey he took to
be reunited with the Swedish tourist,
Charlotte, he met in Delhi in 1975. It is the
unlikely story of a cute meet – she asked
him to sketch her portrait – and a whirwind
romance, culminating in a tribal marriage.
But Charlotte had to return home, leaving
her unofficial husband known as PK to work
out how to bridge the 7000 kilometres
separating them. Flying was out of the
question so he got on his bike and peddled
like fury. He crossed countries and continents
and this story of how he made it, and how
they are still together 40 years on with two
children, is as charming as any fairy tale.KILLERS OF THE
FLOWER MOON
by David Grann,
Simon & Schuster.
This gripping true story
ofgreed, murder and
race starts in the 1920s,
when oil was discovered
on the land of the Osage
Indians of Oklahoma.
Almost overnight they became the richest
people in the world, a state of affairs which
so distressed white Americans they conspired
to rob them of their wealth. When inter-
marriage worked too slowly, they used
shotguns, poison and explosives to kill their
own wives and relatives. This is also the story
of the early years ofthe FBI, which stepped
in after years of bungled prosecutions to
confirm the murder of dozens of Osage –
though fresh research by David Grann (who
also wroteThe Lost City of Z, soon to be a
major movie) suggests the true number who
died was in the hundreds. A riveting book.