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Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take a look.
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Hello and welcome to Hear This. I'm Frances Keyland, bringing you the Vision Australia Library radio show, where we highlight some of the books in the Vision Australia Library collection - over 40,000 books, over 50,000, I think now in the collection. And also there's newspapers and magazines. Some of the books today have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award, so I do hope you enjoy the show. Let's start off today's show with a tribute to Marianne Faithfull, who just recently passed away. We have Marianne Faithfull's autobiography in the library collection - written in conjunction with David Dalton, it is simply called Faithfull. And if you are going to do a search, Faithfull - all one word, but it has a double L on the end.
When Marianne Faithful settled into a love affair with Mick Jagger, her life looked like a rock n roll fairy tale, except that her passion for drugs increasingly dominated her life. The fairy tale masked a dizzying world of intrigues, affairs and dangerous games that finally brought Marianne's whole world crashing down. She discusses her life as a junkie, her suicide attempts, and her growing will to live, leading to a triumphant return as a songwriter, singer and actress. This autobiography was released in 1994, so it's not totally up to date. I read it many years ago and I enjoyed it.
The narrator for this is Norma West and it's from the Royal National Institute for the blind. It goes for 12 hours and 53 minutes. So quite a long one. And I didn't get a sample of this one, but it is available in audio, so that's just simply Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull and David Dalton. And from the synopsis, you'll already know that there's... sex, drugs and rock and roll, and no holds barred with that autobiography.
There is another book in the collection and I have a sample of this one. It is called Parachute Women - Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and the women behind the Rolling Stones. This is by Elizabeth Winder. More hip to the times than the rockers themselves for women. Inspired, styled, wrote for, remixed and ultimately helped create the legend of the Rolling Stones. This book is narrated by Angelina Rocker, and let's hear a sample now.
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In those days, I really didn't know I had a story of my own. I was just part of their story. Marianne Faithfull Marianne met the stones at a Decca party for Adrienne Posta in March 1964, a time when she was admittedly very pretentious about pop music. Instead of poring over copies of Jackie and swooning over Cliff Richard like a normal 17 year old, she worshipped Paul Valery, Marcel Proust, an obscure cabaret artist of the Weimar Republic. That was Marianne, not just precocious, but from another dimension in her own rarefied world. Whatever her louche, esoteric world was, it certainly wasn't this - an industry launch swarming with slick, sleazy managers and would-be pop chanteuses in baby doll frocks, gobs of mascara and trendy falls.
Desperate for a single or a contract with Decca, braless under her boyfriend's blue button-up, her blonde hair loosely tangled, she clung to the arm of her new man, John Dunbar, a gallery and bookshop owner who sold rare books and art to Paul McCartney. All four Beatles were there, and so were the rambunctious Stones, pranking around like spotty schoolboys. They were nothing to her Cambridge educated bespectacled John, whose tailored pants and artfully disheveled waves put Keith's ill fitting leather jackets to shame. Mick was in the midst of a flaming row with Chrissie, who was sobbing her way towards a modest meltdown, tear drenched lash strips dangling halfway off her lids.
Nearly everyone at the party was drunk. At least half were there for the free booze alone. They barrelled around, shoving each other, slurring too loudly and hovering too close, their faces sweat slick and pinked from cheap beer.
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So that was Parachute Women - Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones by Elizabeth Winder. Elizabeth is [spells author's name]. And it goes for eight hours.
The Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlist was published very recently, and I thought I'd feature a couple of the books that are in that list. So the first book is Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane. In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims families, but its impact travels even further into the past as the murders rewrite personal histories and into the future as true crime. Podcasts and biopics tell a story of the crimes.
Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more. Through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence, across time and place, from the killer's hometown in country Australia to the tropical far north and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread - and at what cost. Let's hear a sample of Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane. It's narrated by Tim Carroll.
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Leena Dhawan had worked at Mason's for less than a week when they started making fun of her. Well hi there handsome. They said when she was out of sight. My name is Lena and I come to you from the 1980s. She looks like an art teacher, said Gemma from sales. Don't you think? Kind of over the top. Kind of demented. And Joe from payroll laughed, as he often did when Gemma spoke because he knew Gemma was unkind. But. But what if she were to come Unfurled. Be private. Open. Alone with Joe. What then? So it embarrassed him to live on the same street as Lena Derwent, and to have recognised her as soon as he saw her at Mason's, with her large buzzed hair, her slipped lipstick, her cleavage.
She was the middle aged woman in number 12 who was out every Saturday working in her garden, whose large backside hung above her low front fence like the face of a sunflower. Sometimes she stood up from her gardening and said, morning, sweetheart, as he passed with his dog, Joe, smiling. Polite was never sure if the sweetheart was aimed at him or the dog, and if she was still outside when he returned from his walk, he might smile again as she made an exaggerated motion, wiping her perspiring forehead with one arm or pretending to bark at Groucho. She had a friendly bark. Groucho always replied, seeming to like it.
Once, she asked Joe in for a cool drink and some water for the pooch, and Joe stammered something out, said he had plans. Tried not to walk that way again. So when Lena had arrived at Mason's and said right away to Joe, hello, stranger, it became necessary to laugh when Gemma spoke, when she was unkind. How do you know her? Gemma had asked, and Joe explained that they were neighbors. Oh, out there in Murder Town, she said, and he smiled. He disliked that name, but it was the only private joke they shared. Right in the heart of Murder Town, he said.
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And that was a sample of Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane. Fiona is [spells author's name]. And that book goes for seven hours and hours and 20 minutes. Highway 13 is a collection of... stories that are linked by a murderer's crimes. There are elements in this, as you would know again from the synopsis of violence that may be disturbing for some people. The murderer in this... series of of stories is modelled on the infamous... backpacker murderer Ivan Milat, inasmuch as his victims are all abducted while hitchhiking.
Fiona Wright reviewed it in The Guardian on the 30th of August 2024, and she concludes... Highway 13 is an accomplished collection, stylish and lyrical in its prose and deeply sensitive in its characterisation. The stories are richly layered, often turning back on themselves or in unexpected directions. And McFarlane's precision and craft are one of the great pleasures of this book. So that is highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane, a shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for this year.
Here's another title that has been shortlisted is Woo Woo. So [spells book title] by Ella Baxter. Woo Woo follows Sabine, a conceptual artist on the verge of a photo exhibition she hopes will be pivotal as she plunges deeper into her neuroses and seeks validation in relationships with her frustratingly rational chef husband, her horde of devoted Gen-Z TikTok followers, and even a mysterious, potentially violent stalker. A novel about what it means to make art as a woman and about the powerful forces of voyeurism, power, obsession and online performance. Let's hear a sample of Woo Woo by Ella Baxter. It's narrated by Sonya Kerr.
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This is Not a Love Song - Public Image Limited, 1983. Sabine had traumatised only a few people in her life and one of them was her husband. She stood in their back garden and garden and waited for Constantine to remove the camera from the tripod. It was Monday night. It was about to storm. The sun had set hours ago and dinner time had come and gone without mention. A reminder that we're aiming for stark and otherworldly, said Sabine. Despite her tone, she was not too dictatorial. The sky is actually purple, said Constantine. He held his hand out, palm up, and looked at the cloud overhead. Sabine unbuttoned her vinyl coat, smoothed her hair back behind her ears, and crouched at the base of their fruiting lemon tree, ready to be immortalised.
These photos would be used to publicise her upcoming solo art exhibition. She loved seeing herself named as the photographer for any promotional material. Differentiating herself. No matter how subtly from the other artists represented by the Goethe Gallery soothed her no end. Sabine had briefed Constantine on the importance of capturing the glossiness of her hair and her lively, sanpaku eyes, two aesthetics she was unwilling to compromise on. She demonstrated how she would dip her head at a severe angle, so that a distinct white gap showed between her iris and the lower lid of her eye.
Their garden needed to look untamed and jungle like in the background. The sky must be a deep navy. No stars and get some of the lemons in, said Sabine. It was imperative that the waxy lemons were lurid against all that green. Please, said Constantine.
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That was Woo Woo by Ella Baxter. Ella is [spells name]. And that book is a short one, goes for six hours. Again, let's have a look a look at what the Guardian has to say about it. So this is from a review in the Guardian newspaper by Imogen Dewey on the 9th of August, 2024. Once again, a bit of a warning with this: it does deal with the very real and horrific fact of having a stalker. Dewey writes.... It doesn't all land. This book's uneven sentences recall previous criticism of Baxter's over-explaining of the emotional moment. But then, she writes, it's berserk. Energy pulls it together like a force field. Baxter mercifully switches a too sweet ending for an unsettling finish. But even without that, Woo Woo's guttural, flamboyant imagination would stand it apart - as Sabine decrees somewhere along the way, making art is an athletic achievement.
The next book is a non-fiction... nomination, or shortlisted title for the Prime Minister's Literary Award. Another non-fiction that comes with a lot of warnings. This is called The Lasting Harm - Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. This is by Lucia Osborne Crowley. In December 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex trafficking of minors and is now serving 20 years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day, centering the stories of four women and their testimonies, and supplemented by extra material to which Osborne Crowley has exclusive access.
The Lasting Harm brings this incendiary trial to life, questions our age-old appetite for crime and punishment, and offers a new blueprint for meaningful reparative justice. Let's hear a sample of The Lasting Harm - Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. And this synopsis does have... warnings that it is... that it does mention issues of sexual abuse. It's narrated by Eva Seymour.
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West Palm Beach, 9th of September, 2022. The Floridian heat overwhelms me as I step out of Miami International Airport and begin to make my way to the airport hotel. The air is heavy and full of moisture. The hot wind carrying an ominous feeling, a sense of dread. My flight out of Heathrow was delayed by several hours due to the Queen's death. And so I have missed my train to West Palm Beach, and instead am staying in a hotel for the night and finishing my journey in the morning.
Already this trip feels doomed. I am here because a few weeks ago, I sent an email to a lawyer named Jack Scarola about his client, who is known only by her first name, Carolyn. Carolyn, who is now 36, was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell beginning when she was just 14 years old. Carolyn testified at Maxwell's trial using only her first name to protect herself and her family from the disastrous consequences that too often come with speaking out. Carolyn has also never spoken at length to a journalist before.
When I emailed Scarola asking to interview Carolyn, I did not expect that she would say yes, but I nonetheless sat down and wrote, as I always do, a long email about all the ways I ensure that my journalism is trauma informed and that my interview style is safe, sensitive, and always puts victims needs and comfort first. I also, as I always do, disclosed that I myself am a survivor of child sexual abuse, and have dedicated my investigative reporting skills to trying to contribute to a better understanding of the scourge of sexual abuse and its long shadow. To my great surprise, Carolyn responded to Scarola almost immediately.
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That was a sample of The Lasting Harm - Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne Crowley. Lucia is spelt [spells author's name]. And that book goes for ten hours. So they're three of the works that have been nominated for this year's Prime Minister's Literary Award. A couple of other Australian novels to mention. And again, I didn't plan it this way, but these ones are again have sensitive content in them, so just be aware that they deal with issues that may be distressing.
The first book is by Australian author Jane Caro and it is called The Mother. Recently widowed, Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was thrilled when her younger daughter Allie married her true love. But as time goes by, Miriam wonders whether all is well with Allie as she moves to the country and gradually withdraws, finding excuses every time Miriam offers to visit. Their relationship has always had its ups and downs, and Miriam tries to give her daughter the distance she so clearly wants, but is all as it seems when the truth of her daughter's situation is revealed. Miriam watches in disbelief as Allie and her children find themselves increasingly vulnerable and cut off from the world as the As the situation escalates and the law proves incapable of protecting them, Miriam is faced with an unthinkable decision.
Let's hear a sample of The Mother by Jane Caro. It's narrated by Jessica Douglas Henry.
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It doesn't fit properly, and I hate it. Alison was in tears as she marched down the hallway to the family room and threw a large dress bag onto the couch. She then cast herself theatrically down beside it and sobbed noisily into a bolster. Miriam felt a wave of irritation. Why did everything involving her younger daughter have to be so dramatic? Miriam had battled hard over the years to control her own emotional reactions to life's inevitable upsets, because it didn't come naturally to her. She admired restraint and despised its opposite. Perhaps that was why her youngest daughter's behaviour so often got under her skin.
She took a deep breath. Don't be silly, darling. It looked beautiful at the fitting last week. Miriam was now sitting beside her daughter, perched on the few available inches of couch, stroking her back in what she hoped was a comforting manner. Ali didn't bother to lift her head. The tears stain. Miriam wondered, was Ali wearing mascara that might run? The couch was pale cream and had cost a bomb. Miriam wished her daughter had picked an older piece of furniture on which to cry so extravagantly. I was trying to convince myself it did, but I didn't even like it then. I thought it looked better when it was tighter. And I'm sure it does. No it doesn't. I told you it doesn't fit. Ali spat the words at her mother as if all this was somehow her fault, repressing her answering spurt of rage.
Miriam reminded herself this was merely pre-wedding jitters. Here, let's try it on in my bedroom and see. No, I never want to see it again. Ali kicked at the bag and it slid silkily to the floor. Miriam's stroking became a rather firm pat between the shoulder blades. Alison, darling, you are not 12. You are getting married tomorrow and you are going to have to wear something. And this is the only wedding dress you've got. Though she was doing her best to sound calm and reassuring, Miriam felt a lurch inside her belly as she thought about the wedding day ahead.
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That was the Mother by Jane Caro. Jane is [spells author's name]. And that book goes for nine hours and 15 minutes. Jane Caro is a Walkley Award winning journalist, social commentator. And and this is a gripping domestic thriller with a moral dilemma at its core. Michael Rowbotham, the author, calls it... A timely, tense and important story that takes you to the heart of a toxic relationship, fighting to get free. Tracy Spicer called it or says... Every Australian should read this. Truly, I could not put this book down. And Sterling and Women's Weekly called it... A clever domestic noir with a plot that keeps you guessing. Thought provoking reading.
I did give this a listen, and dear, Jane Caro's passion for social justice and for women's rights really comes strongly through in this story. But yes, a bit of a warning: it does deal with... violence, toxic relationships that contain, again, sexual abuse and psychological abuse. But it's a great examination about how things can become so out of hand in relationships and... how it affects not just the people involved, but the people around them.
And the next book is The Unbelieved by Vikki Petraitis. And again, a warning with this one as well. Even small towns have their share of secrets. When senior Detective Antigone Pollard moves to the coastal town of deception Bay, she is still in shock and grief. Back in Melbourne, one of her cases had gone catastrophically wrong. And to escape the guilt and the haunting, haunting memories, she'd requested a transfer to the quiet town she'd grown up in. But there are some things you can't run from. A month into her new life, she is targeted by a would be rapist at the pub and realises why there have been no convictions following a spate of similar sexual attacks in the surrounding districts. The male witnesses in the pub back, her attacker and even her boss doesn't believe her. Hers is the first reported case in Deception Bay, but soon there are more.
Let's hear a sample of The Unbelieved by Vikki Petraitis. It's narrated by Maria Angelico.
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By the time I sat at the bar and ordered a drink, the pub was almost empty. A few stalwarts remained. Older men mostly. Only one other woman besides me. The threadbare towel along the top of the bar was beer soaked and pungent. A bomb, and appeared like a cockroach from a small doorway to serve me. You new in town? He said accusingly. Antigone. Pollard. I stretched my hand out over the bar. He looked at it with suspicion, like newcomers might bring disease or something. Eventually he shook it. Then when I asked for a wine, he sloshed a house white into a glass. An old jukebox in the far corner pumped out country hits from another time. The central theme. He'd done me wrong. And my hearts are broken.
I took a deep breath. Then a long sip of wine. I knew all about heartbreak, but the real stuff was so much more complicated than country singers could capture. I exhaled, still not sure I'd made the right decision to come back to deception Bay after all these years, but sometimes a lack of choice is a decision itself. Wow, aren't you a pretty one? slurred a drunk appearing suddenly at my side. He was twice my age, chin carpeted in salt and pepper prickles. Breath that could stop a truck. How about a dance, love? A leering grin and a nod towards a small, empty dance floor in front of the jukebox. His watery eyes lingered momentarily on my face before dropping lower.
Um, no thanks, I said, trying to strike just the right chord that every woman knows so well. Assertive. Dipped in polite. His voice steamrolled over my refusal. Ah, don't be a stuck up love. The drunk lost his balance and bumped into me, splashing beer down the front of his shirt. Oh, look what you made me do.
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That was a sample of The Unbelieved by Vikki Petraitis and Vikki is spelled Viki. Viki Petraitis is [spells name]. And that book goes for nine hours or nearly nearly ten hours. There are some other books by Vikki Petraitis in the library collection. There is the Dog Squad, incredible true stories of courageous police dogs and their handlers. Also, Once a Copper, The Life and Times of Brian the Skull Murphy. Nonfiction police stories. Compelling true stories from the front line of Australia's police. I think this is her first non... her first fiction novel, The Unbelieved. So she's largely known for her true crime podcast, so you can listen to her podcasts as well. And she's quite the expert. That's Vikki Petraitis.
Thank you for joining us on Hear This today. I'm Frances Keyland, and thank you for listening through those synopses. And just again, hearing the warnings that come with, I think all of those books, without exception, they do deal with very sensitive and sometimes distressing issues. If you would like to submit your own recommendation for a book, it can be any sort of book you like. It can be light-hearted, it can be serious, it can be non-fiction or fiction. We would love to get your recommendations. You can always ring the library on 1365 4656. That's 1365 4656. Or you can email the library at.... That's Library at Vision Australia dot org. Have a lovely week and we'll be back next week with more Hear This.
